A Wolf in Sheep´s Clothing

What’s the purpose of life? What are we here for? This of course, I cannot tell you, but what I think (here I totally agree with Savater) is we should enjoy the little pleasures life give us TODAY. Nowadays, due to us being all the time on the go, our life revolves around our worries, duties, problems, etc. That’s to say, our mind is never relaxed taking pleasure in a moment, a flavour, a song, etc. I believe we should slow down a bit and find those little things in our lives that make us feel happy and take time to enjoy them to a full extent. Another important thing to consider, when talking about pleasures, is our control or lack of control over them. The concept of pleasure is often misunderstood. On the one hand, it is believed it’s wrong to enjoy any pleasure as it may be unfair to get pleasure from something others don’t have, so you should feel ashamed! On the other hand, many times people cannot distinguish between use and abuse of “pleasures” and end up losing control of their own lives. When we use a pleasure, we enrich our lives and you not only like this pleasure more but also you love your life more. But when we abuse, we impoverish our lives and then we are not interested in enjoying our lives but only one pleasure. This issue is closely related to what happens nowadays all around the world, especially when talking about the use of drugs. People usually resort to drugs to escape from their own harsh reality and I consider it vital to make a point of this. The abuse of drugs is not a pleasure in life which makes it better but it’s a way of escaping from life as it makes you its slave. It’s a punishment disguised as a pleasure that many times leads you to death.

What you really are

One of the main characteristics of human beings is our capacity to imitate. Our behaviour, likes and dislikes are mainly conditioned and shaped by others´ actions. This is closely related to education as it is proved that children learn how to behave and treat others first by imitating their parents and later on by imitating their teachers and classmates. Educators state that children should treat others as human beings, recognize them as peers by trying to put ourselves in others shoes, imagine what it would feel like to be in their situation, being as objective as possible; and always having in mind they are not identical to us. That is to say, as Bernard Shaw said: “Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.” I’ve found this very interesting, we all have something in common, an underlying characteristic that make us humans: we communicate through language; and unlike animals and plants, our whole world is built on symbols. But at the same time we are all different, each of us is unique and we must show our students the value of this and help them realise they have to respect these differences.

All in all, as children are innate imitators, our actions must be accord with what we teach; otherwise we would be giving an ambiguous message to the them.

“After a while you learn that what you really are is all the experiences and all the thoughts you've ever had and all the people who have touched your life, no matter how briefly.”

Anonymous.

The naked truth is always better than the best dressed lie.

Responsibility is a key issue to discuss with children and adolescents. As I pointed out on previous posts, as human beings we are free to choose how to live our life, and once we have made choices it is crucial for us to assume responsibility for those choices. What does this means? To be responsible is to be consciously free for good or for bad; it is to know that every choice we make define us as people. This is why it is vital to face the consequences of our acts and not just the ones that have positive outcomes but the negative ones too. This seems very difficult to achieve; but as teachers we should show our students the importance of being responsible for our acts even though they may feel ashamed or afraid. Admitting having done something wrong is much more valuable than lying, because in the long run it would destroy us in the inside.

Wake up Neo

While reading this chapter some questions popped into my mind: What do children and adolescents think it’s important in their lives? What do they think means “living a good life”? And of course, I ended up reflecting on publicity and television shows. Today advertisements on television tell us (and the children) that we cannot live a good life without owning things. You need a new brand cell phone to be happy, to be cool; “to be in”. TV shows and magazines also show kids that to be happy you should be famous, competitive, uninhibited, show no interest in culture or intellectual skills, of course not all TV show are like this but the great majority are. I think this created a crisis in children’s priorities and values; and as a result their lives revolve around material objects and superficiality. For example, when adolescents come across something interesting or unexpected in the street or wherever; or even when being in a birthday party, their only concern is to record those moments with their cell phones so as to upload those photographs or videos on their fotologs later on. By doing this they miss all the real experiences of their lives, they don´t enjoy the present moment but think about that virtual world they surf on where everything and everyone are merely images on their screens. This reminds me of “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury a short story we analysed last year where two children are figuratively abandoned by their parents when they are left in the care of a technological baby setter. What I believe is that children need to be shown the importance of human relations and to reflect on the fact that to be happy doesn’t mean what others say to be happy means namely money, power, influence, technology, fame, etc. They should try to define what makes them really happy. A way to do this can be trough stories or debates concerning current news formulating questions that trigger more questions and reflections on their part. I know it is a difficult task as television spends more time “educating” children than parents but as teachers we should give it a try. Don’t you think!

Humanise Me

Ethics is not more or less than a rational attempt to discover how to live better, how to have a good life; but not just a good life, a good human life. To achieve this, we need to understand we are social beings; that is to say, we cannot survive if we don’t relate with others and establish bounds with them. We are incomplete creatures, for example we cannot survive without being fed by another person, animals can. Would you be happy if you were the last living human on earth? You would posses everything you’d ever wanted to own, but they would just be valueless objects. Would you still call yourself a human being? We are humans because we live within a society where we are “humanized”, and this is a reciprocal process: for me to be treated as human I must treat others as humans, right? The story called “Human Is” by Philip.K.Dick, revolves around this concept: one of the main characters behaves and treats his wife as a piece of furniture, showing no feelings towards anyone or anything at all, so at the end of the story he is treated the same way by his wife.
I believe that to have a good life you need to built worthy relationships and value them because they are going to give you things that material objects don’t such as support, love, affection, friendship, etc; and not spend all your life working hard and trodding over others trying to gain power so as to own material things.