#13. Reflective Essay: What I Believe in is Power of Humanity

Yeji Park / 111053 / 6

Mr.Garrioch

English Composition

November 23 2011

Reflective Essay: What I Believe in is Power of Humanity

“If procedure is bad, and result is good, isn’t that idealistic?”

This claim smacked me severely. It was Introduction to English Literature class, and students were discussing Death of a Salesman. The scene was Howard firing Willy, as Willy protested for being road salesman and asked for New York job. I don’t remember exactly how discussion flew that way, but one classmate suggested the idiom “Procedure is more important than result”. Most of the students in the class was in favor of this maxim, and agreed that despite the result is disappointing, good procedure makes the experience valuable. Then one of them questioned how about the opposite, and another student who did not raise his hand for approval to the idiom suddenly opened his mouth – that it is perfect, idealistic state.

!!! OH MY GOD !!!

My first impression was; Oh, My God. My eerie gaze maybe made him uncomfortable, and he started to explain about his argument. What he believed was “efficiency”; he said Howard’s decision to fire Willy was rational and efficient, since Willy was merely an old salesman who did not gain any profit to the company. The classmate said wrong procedure is the easiest way to achieve good result.

The only respond I could show to his opinion was murmuring OMG continuously in my mouth. Efficiency surely has been an important factor in society ever since the Industrialization. One way society believed to maximize efficiency was competition, via distinguishing talented and untalented. In Willy’s times, salesman had to compete with other salesmen to win a contract for higher commissions. Today’s society is no difference; from the moment one joins a firm, he starts hard struggle to beat co-workers for promotion. Actually, society even facilitates competitions directly sometimes; the representative example is education. Richard Wagner, a psychologist at Florida State University, says, "In terms of how we evaluate schooling, everything is working by yourself. If you work with someone else, it's called cheating". Cheating – this is how the society abandons cooperation.

I, without doubt, agree that efficiency is fundamental factor in today’s society; still, I don’t want to see it being the only fundamental factor. What I believe in is the power of humanity—empathy, attachment, and cooperation. Traditional belief was that human nature is competitive and selfish. But there is something more in human. Jeremy Rifkin proposed empathy as a new human nature, in his book The Empathetic Civilization. On Christmas Eve, 1914, in France Flandre area – the German and the British forces stopped their war, sang carol, buried the corpse, shared cigarettes and biscuits, talked about own Christmas memories, all together. Before starting the war again forty-eight hours later, these soldiers felt connected with each other as “human versus human” not as “German versus Britain”. If human nature is only destructive, selfish, belligerent; well, this conciliation would never have happened.

Following this newly-discovered nature, the society can be more efficient than under the control of competitions. The representative is Wikipedia, more generally, collective intelligence. The term refers to a group intelligence that emerges as individuals collaborate. People do not compete over article fee, but cooperate by sharing what they know. This results in voluminous information, which was not even imaginable previously. What society plays now is win-win game, not zero-sum one.

I remember my interview for KMLA entrance. I wrote in my self-introduction letter my interest field is economics, specifically marketing and PR. Teachers then asked me how I could serve for the community, as a businessperson whose goal is maximizing profit. I hesitated few seconds, and then answered that I would try to apply humanistic values in my businesses; for example, inserting a scene of volunteer workers in orphanage into advertisement. Looking back this clumsy answer I gave a year ago makes me smile mischievously; still, I appreciate the spirit in my answer. The spirit that is conscious about power of humanity, the spirit who tries to gaze the world in different perspective from cold competitions. The spirit that pursuits better result via good procedure.

                                                                                                                                     

#8-1. Life Lesson: Sir Nubi and #8-3. Life Lesson: Use Short Times in Balance are another reflective essays I wrote =)  Actually they are quite short to be called essays... Lighter and easier to read, so if you have time, enjoy these too! XDDDD