Thursday, April 25, 2013
I thought it was really interesting in class today how we discussed the length at which people strongly believe that most of the change in their life is behind them after a certain point. A lot of people I know, especially before leaving for college, frequently expressed how afraid they were of the change, how they didn't want it, they wanted to go back to high school, etc. Even now, I have some friends who still lament over how much they miss high school. Yet, for a society that seems to fear change so much, we also seem to hold a lot of frustration towards mundane things. It seems that so many people in this society dread waking up, working 9 to 5, etc. Despite their unrest with their daily lives, they also don't welcome change, even if it could provide a better daily life than what they are currently experiencing. Humans are just fascinating creatures sometimes.
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I think it's an odd mental feature we all share. Consider another possible reality in which you had made one significantly different choice in the past. Would you want to be that person? Are you happy where you are now, and don't want to risk that choice resulting in something more negative. Even if it were a great outcome, would you want to be that other you?
ReplyDeleteBut I think I digressed a little. People are too keen to look on the past through rose-tinted lenses I find. Take a good example that might come off as strange if you don't explicitly understand the reference.
In the first generation of Pokémon (almost 20 years ago) there were some notably unenthusiastic designs (such as Grimer/Muk [which are just purple blobs with faces and arms] and Voltorb/Electrode [which are just red/white spheres with faces]). Many people tend to criticize the most recent generation as having bad designs (Garbodor being a trash bag monster but notably more detail than either Muk or Electrode) while defending the first generations as being almost perfect in terms of design. The truth is, the designs are about the same across the board in terms of creativity. The past designs are not better because they came first. Many people have a similar issue with real life, where the past tends to be oh-so-much better than any possible future.
I think we get too comfortable with our daily life and routine. Once we get to a place in life that is satisfying enough, we stop moving forward. Change may help or improve our lives but, there are also risks and uncertainties we are not willing to take. We do not want to give up the stability we have now. For example, an individual may want to be an artist. However, she settled for a career in business and she is comfortable. It pays well and she is successful but, she would prefer to be an artist. There is a possibility for her to become an artist but, her frame of thinking is stopping her from going after her passion.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that our society puts such a large emphasis on change, yet a lot of society likes to stick to their same life. I do believe that the typical 9-5 work day does have a strong hold over the youth. A lot of our youth is scared to be stuck in a job they hate for the entire day every day and try to cling to their youth as long as they can.
ReplyDeleteI think a large part of what it means to be human is to have a contradictory nature, or at least a seemingly contradictory one. Because humans are so capable of acting at any and all extremes of any spectrum you find (good/evil, conservative/liberal, cat people/dog people, etc), as well as falling anywhere along said spectrum's, we end up holding contradictory beliefs. Also, there is always the issue of looking at the past with Rose-colored glasses, like how Al mentions the bias some people have towards the first 150 (151 if you include Mew) Pokemon. The same is true for anything that happened in the past, yet life also is described as harder. Everything was better, but we also had to walk to school uphill both ways. Humans are odd creatures, and contradiction seems to be in our nature.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's not that we contradict ourselves in any serious way; just that we don't listen very closely to ourselves.
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