Marcos Montero
September 28, 2015
English 101
Natural Humans
People in the world come from all different backgrounds and places and we all have this thing
where we go with the flow and don’t question enough about the world and us. All we have to do is take
a step back and breathe. Looking at the whole picture will help each and every one of us be happier in
our lives. People today have the tendency to only look inward and at themselves, to acquire happiness
for themselves and riches for themselves. With these tendency, people also becomes jerks to others,
which is not good at all for everyone. This natural aspect of humans is heavily influenced by technology,
people’s background, culture, access to knowledge and education, and people’s health. These main
aspects have help me develop my own social literacy, through personal experience and experiences of
others.
People have this coding programmed into them at a very young age, through school parents,
the idea of everything is for me. Schools teach people that they need to do certain things or steps in
their life to improve their life style or status so that they themselves can be happy. Make more money,
have a nice house, nice family, nice car so that they can be happy. I’m not saying that people should not
want any of those things, or to be happy, but the way to achieve Real happiness and the thinking of
having it be changed. Parents do so much so that their children can be successful and happy in their life
which is good. But parents do spoil their kids, with buying things for them and raising kids to be brats.
Many factors come into that for example parents working too much and not spending time with their
children. These codes programmed into people make them very self-centered and selfish.
People across the globe have different accessible to education and the knowledge that can be
acquired from it. Education is a huge tool to help people at a young age to understand people and the
earth that we reside on. The problem is that education does not focus on the main points that help
people to understand each other, tolerate people and their ideals. Education does not sometimes paint
the whole picture of events in history, only telling their countries side of the event which deteriorate the
students’ viewpoint on the other countries and their peoples. A goal example is the revolutionary war
between the America colonials and the British. The schools focus on the American pride or nationalistic
fight against the British through guerrilla warfare, bravely winning major battles that would tip the scale
of war. What they do not really talk about was the French involvement in the war. The schools might
slightly touch on it but just skim the surface of the information. The French had a huge involvement in
the American liberation. The English and the French were in a huge rivalry around the globe at the time,
with the American situation being a pawn in the big chess game. The French destroyed many ships that
the English had, which the English were going to use to crush the rebels in America. This event that the
education system either skips or lightly touches, makes American students think that American were this
soldiers out of nothing fighting for their freedom and winning their freedom by themselves. This then
turns the student’s uber nationalistic, which is not bad for the people, but implements the idea of being
better than other peoples or nations.
With the right education, people can obtain true knowledge about people and life and
find the way to approach them with a new viewpoint. Not looking from their narrow, self-minded
viewpoint. Education has the obligation to change that way of teaching to help students at a young age
to open their eyes and see things with many different viewpoints, being able to see reasons behind
those viewpoints. With that knowledge people will be open to new ideas, tolerate people’s ideas or
religions, and ultimately gain happiness in general.
Health has a major impact on our lives, in which we can gain happiness that comes from our
health. Being healthy has major connections with positivity, neuron activity and our lifespan. Health isn’t
just solely eating right and exercising, it also includes day to day thinking, friends and family, positive
and negative thoughts that run through our brain, and emotion. Some factors that can help us that can
lead to a healthier and happy life could be optimism, self-examination and regulation, friends and family
that are close to you where you can discuss with them and be given support and emotional vitality.
Having negative thoughts, even those that could be small day to day things, can sometimes be harmful
to your happiness when in reality they shouldn’t even matter. If a person cuts you off in traffic but
doesn’t harm you, you might get upset and irritated. But to hold that negative emotion inside you will
not benefit you at all. If you just let it go, and focus on positive things that are around you, you will feel
happier when you continue your day.
Through personal experience I have had the pleasure of witnessing the effects culture, correct
schooling and health, which I found in Europe. To be more specific, Oslo, Norway. One day walking
around the city of Oslo, I started my walk in the train station called Jernbanetorgert and headed west
along the main road of Karl Johans gate. The sun was out which meant every Norwegian possible was
out and about taking in all the sun they can get, since throughout the year they only get so much warm
sun. Families and young adults enjoying their company walking in the main road, sitting by the
fountains, enjoying a beer or ice cream here and there. These people were being healthy, in the sense of
enjoying positive emotions throughout their day, even though there is probably crap flying around in
their day due to work, family issues or some other cause. They throw that all out, and just enjoy the
warm sun, with a nice beer or ice cream, chatting with friends or family.
Technology now helps people flame the self-centered flame in many ways. Social media has a
huge impact on people, with things such as Facebook and Instagram. People putting up pictures of
themselves or selfies and extremely wanting “likes” on their picture of themselves so that they can feel
good about themselves. They write on their wall about themselves and how they feel or what they
want. Sharing with people how they feel or what they want to say is fine, but the way you share it and
how you do matters. Technology takes away the face to face human touch. This also goes hand in hand
with the discussion of kindness. Technology helps people be mean and negative, because they don’t
need to deal with that person who that want to “hate” on, face to face. You take a situation where
someone say that they think someone is fat and ugly, and put them face to face, the person who is
mean most likely isn’t going to say those things straight to that person, unless that person is a complete
douchebag. Technology makes it easy for people to forget to be kind and be negative and rude. The
answer does not involve completely removing technology, which would never happen or work. One way
is to educate people and children on how to communicate and the aspects of online communication or
life with the ideas of kindness and respect being the backbone of the education. Teaching people how to
navigate through this new life and new communication will help people be kinder and less self-centered.
Technology itself is a great way to educate people, since it can reach people at anytime and anywhere. It
also gives people a voice, which in turn could be really negative or positive.
These aspects that are now in everyone lives, whether they like it or not, have become a cord
that we must all figure out how to use within our lives. They all have certain limits to themselves which
we must know for ourselves. Everyone has a different limit with each of the three aspects. People
should be somewhat self-centered to a certain extent, because you as a human want to be happy, and
doing everything for others won’t necessarily make you completely happy. You need to take time for
yourself and acquire and do things for yourself. The commencement address by David Foster Wallace
addresses the “natural default setting” that we have, and how we should push away from that setting.
But that it is okay. It is our choice to how we are going to see things and think on it. He said “The capitalT Truth is about life before death”. This shows that we need to enjoy our time on this place we call
home and earth. You need to be kind, but being kind to everyone, especially to people who are rude and
mean may not be the right thing to do, since they might not learn from their rudeness and could
continue being mean. Saunders said, in his commencement speech, “What I regret most in my life are
failures of kindness”. This idea of kindness and loves can take people a real long way which everyone
should develop or take into matter on a daily basis, practicing the art of love and kindness. Technology
also has its place. It is a great tool to help people and others, to achieve certain goals, and desires. But at
the same time it is an instrument that could be used for wrong, which could hurt others and be used for
unkindness. So people in our world need to learn how to management these three aspects in each and
one of our lives so that we can be happy and enjoy our human life.
These aspects of health, culture, education and technology that I have experience with myself
and viewing others has help me develop a more rounded social literacy, being able to communicate with
others the important things in our lives. With this knowledge you can help others view the world in a
different way, a positive viewpoint.
Biblography
Rimer, Sara. "Happiness & Health." News. Ed. Madaline Drexler. Sara Rimer, Winter 2011. Web. 05 Oct.
2015.
Scott, M.S. Elizabeth. "The Link Between Happiness and Health." The Link Between Happiness and
Health. Elizabeth Scott, M.S., 19 Jan. 2015. Web. 05 Oct. 2015.
Saunders, George. George Saunders' Commencement Speech (n.d.): n. pag. Syracuse.com. Chris Baker,
02 Aug. 2013. Web. 20 Sept. 2015.
Rimer, Sara. "Happiness & Health." News. Ed. Madaline Drexler. Sara Rimer, Winter 2011. Web. 05 Oct.
2015.