Society? Me? WTF? (An assignment)
This
is my assignment (my very rushed assignment) in my sociology class. I really
like my sociology class, mainly because I enjoy the unorthodox, NOT the
typical prof-write-on-board-copy-on-note-memorize-till-your-brain-bleeds-lets-have-our-finals-in-three-minutes,
teaching style of my professor.(taking note on his unorthodox teaching stance
too, his trademark of sitting on the desk of the armchair and resting his foot
on top of the seat, hehe. Now where did I heard someone saying that bombs come
in weird packages?). It is rare that I enjoy social sciences (well, I’m not
saying that I enjoy all natural sciences), but when I met my sociology
professor, it made me realize that I do not merely study, eat, drink, breathe ,
work, spend, make money, get rich, starve, shit, urinate for myself, family or
even friends. This sociology class thought me that I have far greater
responsibility than that.
Now,
what does it have to do with posting this blog? Well, I just met this professor
in sociology today after the sembreak, asking this assignment be emailed to him. He
gave me the email addy where I’ll send it but when I pushed the send button, a
few seconds passed and a daemon returned it to me. I resent it and it bounced
once again. I’m actually wondering what he’ll do with this. It might be
important so I decided to put this here in friendster blogs hoping hell find it
here. Newayz I’m out. Still have to waky waky at 7am and its already 1:30am (My my, am I getting
deprived of sleep.) This has been my sleep pattern for quite some time now.
Well, till here. Barny out.
Society to Me,
Me to the Society
Bryan B. Lising
BSP Physics IV-1n
June
28, 2006
“Here’s what I mean by building your own
sub-culture,” said Morrie, “I don’t mean you disregard every rule of your community.
I don’t go around naked, for example. I don’t run though red lights. The little
thing, I can obey. But the big things—how we think, what we value—those you
must choose yourself. You can’t let anyone—or any society—determine those for
you” –An excerpt from “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom, page 155. Tuesdays
with Morrie is a true story about the ‘last thesis’ of a dying sociology
professor, Morrie Schwartz, and his former student, which is the author
himself.
There
were several instances in my life where I did question why I needed to dress
like this, eat this way, get high grades, do assignments, obey my parents, go
to church, have a religion, pay when I buy, be spanked when I do something
wrong, and mile long list of whys. Morrie was right, society tells we do this
we do that, but what we follow, what we believe, what we want to become of
ourselves, is for the individual to decide. Society would want us to become
rich to be acknowledged, wear a suit to look pro, this is what society presses
on us and is also the reason why some people get rich while most were taken the
opportunity to even live a decent life. Sad to say, but the truth is inevitable
that our society works this way. People think only of themselves and
opportunity is roughly even distributed.
“The problem, Mitch, is that we don’t
believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites, blacks, Catholics and
Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be
very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about the
family the way we care about our own. We all have the same beginning—birth—and
we all have the same end—death—so how different can we be?”
“In the beginning of life, when we are
infants, we need others to survive right? And at the end of life, when you get
like me, you need other to survive right?”
“But here’s the secret: in between, we need
others as well.”
This is true for
whatever angle we view it. We need to give something to someone in order for us
to acquire what we need to survive. Friends, food, shelter, family, all these
we need to exist and to have them we need to give something of ourselves, be it
physical, intellectual or emotional support. If we could only contribute as
much of ourselves to the people we can reach, we can expect to have a better
environment for ourselves, our family, our children and probably the people
around us.
