NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
We only need to switch the T. V on. News bulletins, headlines, 'Breaking News' alerts keep flashing periodically on the screen throughout the day. We get news updates on our mobile phone, we get them in our mail, it's there on the coffee-table, and it's there flashing on billboards. Nerves under strain and being jarred by an overdose of information inflow is the hallmark of living in this century. We are living through the information explosion.
Ask any youngster born, bred and baptized in the spirit of the age, and you will be astounded by the lack of information, interest and concern they have for bigger things in life beyond narrowly personal trivia. It is clearly an absurdity. This widespread and deep ignorance is a malaise very real. It shows itself in the general attitude we have towards life. It is an attitude of narcissism, that is to say, a pre-occupation with the self and its material well-being which is obsessive enough to pale down what happens in the wider world. This Narcissism has become a whole lifestyle which reflects the inner shallowness, the thoughtlessness and the depravity we are all victims of.
It is all so very typical. The average modern has very typical tastes, mannerisms, pastimes and ideas, because he is the mass-produced product of our age. To a typical youngster, life is reduced to a minimal existence centering around chatrooms, pornography, cigarettes, teen hangouts, luxury gadgets. The pace of our lives is madly rushy, full of trivia, which, in the final analysis, matter nothing at all. Everyone is really busy but no one is doing something actually; such a life is like a vehicle with its brakes failed, screeching madly onward: what this destination-unknown life does with us is that it makes us lose touch with the ebb and flow of life.
The breathless pace creates in the mind restlessness and impatience so characteristic of the youth. It is like drugging oneself into the routine, so that when the drug diminishes, it leaves one hungering for what's next. Hence there is a compulsive inner need to keep oneself busy with something exciting, thrilling and pleasurable 24 / 7. It gradually becomes a habit to such an extent that life shrinks in its meaning to just these. Insulated in their air-conditioned, gadget-infested lives, we shut the windows that bring in the real world, content to live in a make-believe El Dorado. To judge the truth of this, one only needs to look at how disinterested and unconcerned we have become about what goes on in the world around.
Even a passing reference to politics or any serious department of life sickens us. Shamefully enough, we do not have a perspective with which to look at the world. We do not have a worldview or a philosophy of life. We are ill-equipped to deal with reality, and so conveniently avert our eyes from it. However, what goes on in the world has a strong bearing on our lives. We are products of the politics that go on on high, creating policy that dictates social life.
Being unaware of the factors that make us what we are, we do not understand our society and ourselves. Mind-controlled like zombies, we cannot see the reality of the dynamics that shape our lives, or get down to rectify it. This attitude towards life is hostile to any kind of serious contemplation, introspection or the desire to stretch out into what's larger than life. It makes one thoughtless, mindless, heartless. Human faculties kept away from the greater things in life expend themselves on the frivolous and fleeting pleasures. Why so?
one is led to ask. The modern philosophy of life and the social institutions shaped by it are the agents continually churning out a generation of fleeting shadows that merely occupy space. Everything in the system trains us not to think but to go on careening maniacally towards the black hole. Education and media are the primary agents helping create this culture of thoughtlessness.
The policy makers of our education and media are the 'thought-police' who feed the job-market, to create efficient, malleable employees who can feed an average family comfortably. It does not create individuals but parts of a system, smoothing out those stubborn irregularities God put in there to make us unique, so that the 'parts' can make a perfect fit in the little hole the society leaves out for each. He cannot stretch out his neck, he cannot extend. We are taught to absorb and take in so as to reproduce exactly what the system demands, and to grow up to be an efficient, plastic yeoman the stereotype of success. Education is not humanizing any more. It does not build upon the innate faculty of wonder; it does not teach to question, discover, explore the uncharted and dare to disagree.
We kill colour and individualism to generate clones to keep the decrepit social machine going. The system is perfectly programmed to churn out Alphas, Betas and Gammas, each moulded to do exactly the job the society demands of him, not to find his true potential by trial and error. And so, we have degree holders and professionals, but hardly a human being. Economic conditions are such that education is now merely seen as a means to win bread and butter amidst the cutthroat battle for social survival. No wonder then, that the Humanities are totally neglected and hardly anyone who wishes to survive and feed a family can opt for the discipline. The choice does not even exist.
And so education does not educate, it only trains us to become part of the system and survive in it. It is the degree in your hand that counts, not you. That's the way of the world. Sad that this degree in no way makes us better able to understand the world and life, or to help us make the crucial choices clear-eyed. It makes us fit our job as a hired employee, but not our job in this world as a human being with a sense of purpose. The 'whys' and 'hows' of life remain unanswered, and as our busy life begins to brim with those myriad jobs to do, those basic existential questions are locked up in a rusty box and shut away in the furthest corner of our consciousness.
In living the 9 to 5 life, rusty relics of Thought are no longer a utility. The media has to share the culpability here. It will not be an overstatement to say that it is the Media that controls the world with an outreach that is indeed very pervasive. The media is no less than a pandemic, and its influence is enormous, particularly when it's television.
Whoever has a minute to spare from the usual chores turns on the T. V. In our country where outdoor life is minimal, T. V is just what every other person turns to. Ask the housewife nextdoor about the latest episode of a popular Star T. V soap and you " ll know.
The saying 'Too much telly turns brains into jelly' has never been truer, and the quality of all that is aired on T. V is enough evidence of it. Regardless of the role it can play, television today merely entertains. It pleases our basic senses, and lets the higher faculties rust away out of disuse. It is, at best, our window into a glamour-filled unreality. The bombardment of overdone news coverage and information inflow it gives becomes unreal in its impact simply due to the stale, prosaic sameness of the way it is presented.
Tales from far away, to be watched lying back in your couch out of habit. When it's over, the temporarily interrupted sequence of song and dance can resume, and our minimal world will function normally yet again. It's a terrible waste, to say the least. For, electronic media is one of the most powerful means of reaching out to change lives.
Yet it is all geared towards pleasing popular tastes, not growing the nation up. It is geared towards jeopardizing thought as it feeds fat the basal instincts. Our institutions are all out on a mission for 'dumbing down' the people. So well-executed is the mission, that it seems a whole strategy, a conspiracy against humanity. Our youth are extremely energetic and talented. However, they seem to be hopelessly pitted against the onslaught of the culture of thoughtlessness.
The system creates jelly-brained clones who live so ephemerally their meaningless lives. It robs them of the ability to think, so much so that the slightest demand on the intellect or thought bores them, tires them. As the style of life becomes increasingly Westernized, strewn with material comfort, the meaning and essence of life shrinks into unimportance, and living becomes an animal pursuit of sensual satisfaction, no more. We are a painfully impoverished generation, sorry victims of the conspiracy against thought.
I say 'conspiracy' because by dulling God-given human sensibilities we become easy targets for indoctrination that can make us gullible, unchallenging, unthinking, so that the status-quo remains. This has very serious repercussions. The world beyond lies burning, and the stage seems to be set for the final showdown. At home, miseries of our people and the ever-present causes behind them proliferate.
The destruction, the spiralling into chaos goes on unnoticed as we busy ourselves with trivia. Fatal documents are signed on high, and the streets remain empty, except the usual Saturday-night rush, of course. As we get sucked into the unreality of our air-conditioned, domestic paradise with the Cable T. V, MSN and Orkut, the Reality of Life begins to grow an unreal, latent habit. We become ignorant, indifferent, unprepared for facing the world, incapable of understanding it and ourselves.
We become incapable of challenging the status-quo, which imperiously intensifies the oppressive regime, eliminating the possibility of being questioned or challenged after having 'dumbed down' an entire generation. The result is a withered passivity, a withdrawal of the energetic young from the reality, a reticence and unpreparedness to participate in the business of life and to take the plunge to make your presence felt in the real world. It breeds a criminal, disinterested neutrality in times of crisis, so characteristic of our nation. This passivity and neutrality is what strengthens the hand of the oppressor and gives him the license to perpetuate himself. For, we have taken the bait and stopped bothering about anything at all, except that which doesn't matter. We have stopped looking for the meaning in things and asking 'WHY?' This is the death of humanity.
Free research essays on topics related to: philosophy of life, t v, things in life, life begins, status quo
Research essay sample on Things In Life Philosophy Of Life
