Some would say that our world is pretty fascinating. Look how much science and education has progressed in just the last fifty years, let alone this century. Technology is a wonder. Medicine is miraculous. But why do I feel that, sometimes, we need something more? Is materialism no longer appealing? I'd rather sit by the fireplace and and reminisce with my parents and little brother rather than turn on the Wii and start driving virtual monster trucks across virtual race tracks. I'd rather smile at a stranger from across the street than explore intricate applications on the iPhone. Or what about that feeling when you just finish a series of books and want to erase your memory so you can go back and read it again and have twice as much satisfaction as you did the first time? I always find myself wanting to be a character in the book, wishing that I could somehow interact with vibrant personalities begging to jump off the page. I wouldn't say this happens because the characters are ideally portrayed or because they happen to know the exact course of their lives. Rather, maybe we're just not satisfied with what we have. We're often scolded for not "appreciating" what we're given. It seems that I've had this discussion with so many people lately; maybe we're all running on a similar frequency. So what is this telling us?
Are we really shoved so much into the corner that we've come to admire fictional characters? What is it that we truly need, and why is it so hard to find? It's a shame that fantasy and reality can't mix. So if you could be any character from any fictional work, who would it be?
My main point here is that despite what we're offered (even on a grand scale, at times), we perpetually seek something "more." What is this more, and how can I find it?
(Sam Maliha)
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4 comments:
I think that we think like this because it's human nature. We are always looking for satisfaction. When we can't obtain this satisfaction through usual ways, we look for it elsewhere. To a certain point, we seek something that we know is impossible to obtain with the circumstances in our lives. I think that we are so interested in fictional characters because they live a situation that we cannot experience ourselves.
But why is it that we blame everything on human nature? Doing that seems like the easy way out of an argument; I've caught myself doing it a lot lately, and I'm sick of blaming something I can't change. I'm just still trying to look for some other explanation, something that I can tweak.
(Sam Maliha)
I think one of the reasons that we are never satisfied is that when we finally obtain what we think we wanted, we find that it's not what we thought it was at all. Yes, computers are great inventions, but do you sometimes get off of the computer after a couple of hours and think to yourself, "man, I just wasted three hours of my life"? I certainly do.
Humans are created to seek satisfaction. We are created to search for something more. We don't want to find something to be less than what we expect it to be; we yearn to find something that is so much more than we ever imagined it would be. We've had enough of disappointment. We want true satisfaction. The question is, where can that satisfaction be found? Some people look to money, but from the feelings Sam is expressing, it doesn't seem that money is what she is searching for. We all have money available to us, but yet we all still yearn for something more.
Would you agree with me that we, as human beings, tend to yearn for something that is so much better than we ever imagined it to be, as opposed to something that turns out to be less impressive than we expected?
Emily T.
Well, the ironic fact about technology is that it often complicates life instead of simplifying it. The Blackberry, or Crackberry (as some call it), is an excellent example. Thanks to this handy little device, people are now accessible and attached to their workplace no matter where they physically are or what they are doing. "Vacationing", in the old sense of the word, doesn't really exist anymore when you constantly have a virtual tether to the office.
So of course, the more complicated things become, the more we desire simplicity. As we learned in AP Euro, this mentality has been exhibited since the beginning of new "technology", such as with the Luddites. Thus, although we now have fancy computers and video games and TVs, sometimes it feels best simply to curl up with a good book by the fire.
-Eric W
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