In life, we are guided by something higher than the human mind. I know many people who live in total ignorance and in the reality created by this society. They have no desire to learn anything more, they do not even think about how life works. Theoretically, their life is simpler, but I worry about where it is all headed. Everyone is affected by collective negativity, and people stop trying to bring about change in their lives. Every day we are bombarded with misinformation from the media, and no one is trying to do anything about it. Of course, an individual is not enough to do this. I feel sad about how people walk with the crowd and let themselves be swallowed by it. I think this is a consequence of the times and of everyone trying to secure as much as possible only for themselves. The world is terribly materialistic.
Television, the media, politicians, and members of the elite keep us where they want us to be. They probably want us to live in fear and for no one to stand out, because then others might follow. That is why they keep suggesting that the world is evil, that there is no money, and that it has to be this way. When we turn on the television or go to a film at the cinema, we find that most plots are based on wars and killing and on backbiting between people. On the other hand, there is tabloid journalism, where we learn only who is living with whom this week and who deceived whom. No one condemns it; everyone sees it as something normal. Just as normal is to pry into other people's lives, and people identify with this. They take it for granted and begin to copy it: we are being brought up to unhealthy behavior.
Seven-year-old children live in virtual reality. They play games in which people are killed, and they see their friends only at school and in photos they have on Facebook. They do not go out and play hide-and-seek, as I did. They do not form real friendships and do not learn what a real relationship is or what it is about. They do not know their close surroundings or the world out there. Their parents are worn down by worries, money, and thoughts of how they will pay the rent, repay a loan, and what they will eat. So they do not deal with the reality that their child sits at a computer for eight hours. The result is divorces and depression, because we cannot shake off our worries. We are always forced to deal with negative things.
Adults communicate through social networks. In their statuses they write how they are feeling at the moment. They live a parallel life. Everywhere on the internet, they are targeted with ads for things they do not need at all, but will buy because there is a fifty percent discount. Yes, this makes life easier, but even that should have limits. A young person today cannot build a relationship except on Pokec or another dating platform. There is democracy, and a person can choose. But what can one choose from? I think we are manipulated and shown only what they want us to see.
Christmas is coming. All hypermarkets are overcrowded with unnecessary things. Flyers come to our mailboxes, and television bombards us with ads. They force us to buy what we do not need. The real point of Christmas is being lost. What matters is that people spend money.
Every event changes the course of life. Mistakes are part of the complex process of shaping and forming a person, though not everyone realizes this. I have reflected a lot on the events that happened in my life, not only in the recent but also in the distant past. Perhaps in this way I want to free myself from responsibility for my mistakes, and that is why I nurture the thought that what happened simply had to happen... That it is fate and that we are simply being guided by a force we cannot see or understand. I have looked at my life from almost every possible angle that exists, and I am increasingly convinced that things truly do not happen by chance. I do not claim that each of our lives is pre-written in some great book, but I do not think that everything takes place only in this material world and that nothing exists above us. At the moment I think our future depends mainly on our thoughts and on our faith in the events we want to attract into our lives. I noticed that when I really wanted something and asked for it not only with my mind but especially with my heart, life then began to guide me in the right direction and things began to happen that helped me. The right people came, and the right events took place. Sometimes it does not work exactly as I imagine, but I believe that the Force above me has a reason for that. Perhaps it is simply not the right time. That is why I no longer feel anger.
Anger is an extremely negative emotion, hard to control. Maybe we will never learn to. Anger has brought me only guilt, so I try to suppress it. I am afraid that a person is an endless well, and all the emotions and feelings they suppress deep under the ribs will one day surface, and the person may go crazy, or worse. We should find some outlet through which we can release it. Ideally, it would be best if such emotions did not enter our lives, or at least if positive ones were more numerous. But, unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world. Still, I believe I am not alone in this, and when I ask from the heart, I will reach the goal.
There are some things I do not understand because something bad keeps happening that makes me ask why... But I believe the answer will come when I am ready to understand it. Everything has its time. I do not believe things happen randomly, because every single event that occurs, even a tiny detail, leaves a trace in us that influences our further decision-making. And not only that. It completely changes the course of our lives. For example, such absurdity as missing a bus. Because of that we have to walk, and we meet a person who completely changes our decisions. Or, conversely, we do not meet a person who would have influenced us negatively. For that, we arrive home later, it completely changes our whole day, and we decide to organize it differently. That gives us space for new thoughts and ideas. Everything revolves around cause and effect.
God sometimes has a strange sense of humor, yet I still trust Him and believe that He guides our steps in the right direction. The question is whether He guides them where we want to go, or has another plan for us. Perhaps this is because there are people who have no clear goal and do not know where they want to get on life’s path. God touches us. He probably knows that this is what we need. That we need to feel His presence. That we need to reinforce faith in Him and in ourselves. But we must learn to perceive and accept His way of addressing us. To listen to what He wants to tell us. I believe He is with us and will support us in what we want to achieve.
All bad events move us somewhere higher. I am among the people who try to extract the good from things that in a given period seem to bury me alive. I try to treat life tests as steps to heaven. Heaven is high, but human determination and faith can accomplish incredible things. So let us keep walking.
The lines above are the statement of a first-year student of Social Work. A young person reflecting on the meaning of life, on its direction and on his own way, trying to find ways out of dead-end situations, and doing so because the complexity and difficulty of life circumstances he had to face in the recent past moved his thinking from the light-hearted carefree state typical for his age group into deep philosophical and ethical-religious reflections. Although he does not always find answers to his questions and often wavers in doubts, it is admirable that he does not give up and anchors his recurring uncertainty in faith—faith in God and in the goodness of the human being.
In his reflections, František points to three key problems of our time, which are a potential threat in our globalized society: media manipulation, virtual reality, and consumerism.
In the past, commonly shared values and myths that positively shaped our patterns of behavior are today deformed and displaced by the symbolic, image-based language of mass media, which disturbs us with its communication smog and imposes on us an image of the world for which we yearn, even though it is unattainable for us. The thought of Tadeusz Zasępa (2002): “Modern media by their very nature have the power to create symbols that play a significant role in shaping the moral environment of the contemporary person” is key in this case, and it should serve as the starting point in our shared effort to eliminate the negative effects of media manipulation on value formation, especially in the thinking of contemporary youth.
In the case of the hyperreality of media models, this is not about distorting reality, nor about evoking the illusion of reality, but about simulation that completely replaces reality. It is therefore a reality of the model, which is more real than reality itself. Its essence lies in the disappearance of differences between the true and the deceptive, and thus between the real and the simulated (Baudrillard, 1994). Zasępa (2002) characterizes individuals who belong to the potentially most at-risk groups in terms of dependence on the internet and virtual reality as follows:
- people who, before they encountered the internet, had already overcome an emotional disorder that required psychiatric intervention,- former alcoholics, or otherwise dependent people,
- men who strive for power, social status, and dominance,
- women who seek support in friendship or romantic affairs, who complain about their husband and want to confide in someone,
- young men up to eighteen with weak awareness of their own worth.
Virtual reality thus becomes a trap in which an individual’s isolation deepens, leading him to relinquish his own opinion and identify with the majority view, according to which “nothing is really happening; everything is fine as it is.” On a broader social scale, this creates a spiral of silence (spiral of silence theory), which needs to be broken through interventions with individuals, through deliberately targeted social work. The sooner an individual understands where fiction ends and real life begins, the greater the chance that they will be able to take reality as it actually is. They will be able to address their problems and not run away from them.
Today’s consumer mass society, together with mass media culture, has created a mechanized and standardized person, an object of economic interests, and surrounds that person daily with the full range of pleasures that ultimately dull, atomize, and frustrate him. Frustration stems primarily from the subsequent realization that the consumer lifestyle is not attainable for everyone. One way to free oneself from the destructive influence of consumerism is the restoration of living social interactions in place of where they were pushed out by intensive contact with mass media and the hyperreal world of cyberspace.
Social work and counselling should, in the effort to solve problems related to the circumstances mentioned above, focus first on a qualified assessment of the client’s condition and an accurate identification of the source of their problem (dependence on virtual reality, pathological influence of consumerism, media) and the assessment of appropriate resources that can be used to meet their needs, change their current social attitudes, and reassess the significance of social contacts. It is important to transfer knowledge, not just information, and to break the passive attitude that does not need truth and does not ask for anything. The individual capable of apprehending Christian values needs to regain the challenged right of Christian ethics in a scope that can significantly and positively influence their further life direction and help them not only orient themselves in problems but also adopt suitable strategies to solve them. No less important is restoring the family environment so that it becomes a fully adequate support base for every potentially threatened individual.
Authors: František Ruman, Mgr. Lenka Jalilah Hrušková Used Literature
BAUDRILLARD, J. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan : The University of Michigan, 1994. 194 s. ISBN 0-472-09521-8. ZASĘPA, T. 2002. Médiá v čase globalizácie. 1. vyd. Prel. Marián Kováčik. Bratislava : LÚČ, 2002. 425 s. ISBN 80-7114-387-1