Sunday, March 08, 2009
Topic of the Day:
HUMANS' LIFE ARE SHAPED BY THE SOCIETY
It makes me thinking about this a few days ago...
I was talking to my sister and we were discussing what is good behaviour and what is not...
So, I begin to ask my sister...Who came up with all these good and no good?
Surely, it will have to be one of the people in this world...
and if you track it back, who tells that person that so and so is not a good behaviour?
That's where I start to think that we live our life like how the society wants it to be..
One common issue I've heard here is on deciding house mates...
e.g. if a guy wants to stay with a girl in 2 bedroom house...
I'm sure a lot of people will frown and say that it's not a good practice for them to stay in a house..
and if you insist on a reason, I'm sure we will be shrugged off with a typical answer "Because you just can't" or "Because other people say so"...
So what if other people say it's not good?
The first question to ask them is "Is this your life or my life?"
There are always quotes about life like "Live your life the way you want to" or "Life is short, do what you want before you regret it"
As long as we have this traditions of not doing things because other people say so, the above quotes will always be seen idealistic than realistic..
And I think another common misconception is the definition of having life...
I've heard a lot of people here saying that having a life means to socialise, to go out and stuff..
Yes, I agree with that...
but it seems that the definition of "to socialise" has been distorted by the society..
I've started to hear things like certain people have no life because they stay home most of the times or they rarely go out with friends..
which bothers me..
So, I went to dictionary.com and search for the meaning of socialise..
It returns this definition: to associate or mingle sociably with others
So, socialising means to associate, to interact, to mingle with the society or others as mentioned above..
Note the definition includes the word OTHERS ...
which means that you must have OTHERS to interact with before you can be considered socialising...
And let's think about the term given to people who don't have life - ANTI-SOCIAL...
I'm not a linguistic person...
but to me, anti means the opposite of or against something..
e.g. anti-war means you are against war, etc..
so anti-social means the opposite of or against the activity of socialising..
If you link this back to the definition of socialising, anti-social means against the act of interacting with others...
To me, anti-social is more appropriate to be given to people who INTENTIONALLY avoid interacting with others..
If you stay at home, and no one is home most of the time, can you interact with anyone???
Consistent with the definition, if you don't have OTHERS to interact with, you can't socialise..
So, in other words, staying at home does not mean you have no life
Does not mean you are ANTI-SOCIAL...
Another thing is...
Does the definition mentions going out???
To me, a person is socialising as long as he interacts with others...
You don't have to go out to interact right?
You could call or SMS too...
We have the technology, why not make use of it?
Another issue I've heard is also on deciding our future..
More often that not, I've heard people following public opinions just because public says it's good..
The same principle and analysis applies and I'm not gonna delve more into this..
As an ending note, I'm not saying this to defend myself...
I just hope it would open the reader's mind as to how our society has actually dictated our life and how we should live it...
Thanks to all the blogs i referred to (countless) for html code help :) (esp. cyn' and sixseven)
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