Nothing stays current for long. In just a blink of an eye, the present might easily be a thing in the past and the future we’re expecting might not be the future ahead of us. The Contemporary World is an ever-changing diversity of economic growth, social and political changes, technological advancements, and other transformations that is much evident in this modern world. This also includes people’s interconnectedness around the world with convenience at our hand. The Contemporary World features not just how different today’s society is to the one that existed so many years ago but also the positive and negative effects it has brought that we should be aware of.
According to Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, there are 5 levels of human needs and that is physiological needs, security and safety, love and belongingness, esteem and self-actualization. Only after a man’s lower needs have been satisfied, will he recognize his need at the next higher level. Fulfilling these kinds of needs make people think their life today is way greater or way more beautiful than yesterday. In my honest opinion, the modern world plays a big role in why it is hard to reach self-actualization and earn satisfaction because of the problems occurring now. The only positive thing the contemporary world has given to us is the technology and innovation, but, as the world becomes increasingly globalized, more negative things have been accumulated in which the whole world suffered from these following severe conditions including poverty, unemployment, corruption, economic crisis, cultural abnormalities, moral indecencies, cyberbullying, terrorism and war, and even global warming.
“The Contemporary World” should not be taught in the tertiary level
And now, for the question, should “The Contemporary World” be taught at the tertiary level? I think it should not be taught at the tertiary level; It shouldn’t just be a ‘teacher to tertiary students’ relationship. Teach and arm the students with the tools in the secondary, might as well, in the primary. Let elders know and fight for what’s just before they bid their goodbye, encourage the out-of-school youth as they are still the hope of the nation, teach those who are unaware and reorient those who are aware. We should ought to be taught. We all can be educators, hence; It’s everyone’s responsibility, to learn and to teach.
How well prepared are we to assume our role in the vast deterioration of the world? How well prepared are we to understand that we are educators to everyone? We deserve to have a deeper global awareness and understanding. Make this kind of learning as one of our needs; be it redundant until the ignorance is gone. It should be taught to everyone. Learn from it for a lifetime because we live in it, we live in this present time. How we choose to deal with these emerging frontiers will give hope for the upcoming generations. Let’s make a step, a history in this contemporary world.
What is my world like?
Why is the world like this?
Still unanswered.
In the first place, I don’t know if this is really the place I’ve ever wanted to live. I think of myself as a non-entity, a lost soul, wandering to find something I can’t wary. I’m always nostalgic about something that it brings so much melancholia. These, then, trigger mixed feelings, ‘saudade’, the ‘missingness’, or in other terms, the ‘emptiness’ that doesn’t typically have any obvious reason or might be due to a combination of shallow and deep reasons. One reason why I often get sad is that the world gives me so many reasons to feel sad.
I’ve read a book entitled Reason to Stay Alive by Matt Haig in which he described the world as depressing for us. He also stated that happiness isn’t very good for the economy. Maybe because, he thought that if we were happy with what we have, why would we need more. There are plastic surgeries to highlight physical flaws. There are gym and diet plans to make us conscious with our appearance. There are fancy clothes and accessories to insist there should be competition for everyone. There are gadgets and technologies to imply we won’t get a life satisfaction. I’ve realized, for so long, we have mistaken that business is good for us. But, it just gives pain to our monotonous life. It will define what is happiness to us and we are a bunch of stupid cowards because we are patronizing it. I guess people are engrossed with fake happiness. Real happiness is uneconomic. That’s how I began to believe Haig’s perspective and description to this kind of unrealistic world.
Impurities and Self-centered attitude, people have acquired such disheartening qualities. Instead of unity and cooperation, people now do not focus on the same wavelength. Where sex is free, and love is just a delusion. Where technology disconnects people rather than getting them in touch. Where fun is belittling and discriminating someone, and loneliness comes from committing the same mistake we’ve seen coming. What we are seeing is a vast improvement in terms of innovation and technology, but have we tried to really open our eyes? There’s so much to it. There’s something wrong and it needs to be right. We are flawed, we are hopeless but there’s something that will blossom. A pessimistic soul believes so.
Wotsgaaanon Dawn 