I am thinking about my next vacation. This what I always do!!
Australia sounds great!! How is it really 2 years ago
Dear readers,
Enjoy your freedom to write your comments on my blog. Share your ideas that you may contribut to the process of constructing and deconstructing knowledge. That, afterwards we can come to a better understanding of the realities in our world.
Billions of people have access to online social networks. Facebook, MySpace and Multiply are among the many social networking sites available for anyone with Internet access. Purposively, they are functional in many ways, but as a glass house of interconnected users, these platforms serve as space basically to see and be seen and to interact with people in a borderless and timeless spa.
Privacy is utmost important to almost everyone. Socially, privacy is an individual right. Psychologically, it is a construct of self-preservation from others. These are contradicting forces that should constraint anyone from joining an online social network. Being in a network makes one a part of a virtual open communication space that is vulnerable to make one’s private life obvious in the public.
Privacy and security are intertwined. One whose privacy is invaded may tend to feel less secure. While individuals have their own sense of security, the security features of a social network may not necessarily meet all one’s requirement. Privacy breach is a security issue. This could lead to stalking, malicious or fraudulent transactions and even identity theft.
While social network developers have the responsibility to put in security devices in the network, the accountability of protecting one’s life and valuable information rest on the social network user. Social networks have functions to publish information from personal facts to the location one is at an instant. It is optional to place these information, and access to these can be limited only to those in one’s network.
However, there are features that identify the user to other users. To illustrate, an FB user’s homepage may be locked for other users, down only to one’s name and avatar. Personalizing one’s wall with one’s picture is one possible way to be identified by other users. The network provides another function in that page to allow for possible connection with that user. Here, the owner of the page has the right and the responsibility to give access to anyone outside his or her network.
With search engines built in the network, any user can find another user. This may take awhile depending on the information made available for the searcher. With millions of profiles in a social network, the searcher will have to be patient in browsing all those results or should be more clever in narrowing down the search terms. With this feature, privacy if that is not being able to be found in a social network is not possible.
Social networks are platforms that connect a user to another user or to multiple users, intantantaneously. Privacy, then, is one’s responsibility. A user may possibly send an invite for a friend to get access to one’s network. The owner then should be able to assess and make a decision whether to accept that person’s request or not. Without really doing some background check on that person, the network may become vulnerable to spams that come through bogus profiles.
One young user, at the age of 8, has in his profile a link that connects to gay porn site. This child does not seem to have any malice or sexual interest yet at his age. His father also has a social network account and is his friend in the same site. But, the father does not seem to be aware of that link in his son’s profile page. Has this child placed the link personally, or someone who had access to his account did for him while he was not aware of it at all?
Full privacy is not possible in social networks. That would be damn right anomalous. The only way to free one’s self from being exposed and vulnerable to other online social network users is not to join any social network at all. The next case then, is whether an account is totally deleted once a user opted to shut it down? Anything and every information people put about their selves can be accessed and used by some total stranger. The permission for that was granted through the social network once the user signed up for an account.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 33,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 12 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
* A reflective discourse originally presented by the blogger to Dr. R. Guioguio for the requirement in a post-graduate course on Philippine Communication Environment, University of the Philippines-Diliman, 2010. Permission for reprinting is granted as long as proper citation is observed, according to the principle of creative commons’ sharing of online resources.
Climate change is a major environmental problem that represents social and economic threats to everyone in the globe. Risks have become higher as the potential danger of natural disasters looms to almost unmanageable extent – longer periods of rain, harsher storms, prolonged dry spells, extreme heat and cold temperatures, more frequent hot days and nights, flash floods, forest fires, rising sea level, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and the warming global temperature are among the many signs that “mother earth” is now ringing a sick call to all her children.
The peril resulting from climate change is no way particular to creed, wealth, faith, age, gender, race or color. It spares no one. The ecology of all things in the world suggests that every creature will experience the impact of climate change.
Climate change is a global concern, but it has impact which is specific to communities and sectoral groups. The problem is too broad to manage for a sector, yet there are enormous possibilities for a sector to contribute to its resolution; at least for their own adaptation, to mitigate climate change impact and to sustain community-base development. The indigenous are communities of people who contributed the least to the problem of climate change, but they are not spared from its impact. Economically and socially marginalized, the indigenous far greatly suffer from the impact of climate change and to international mitigation measures.
What is the potential impact of climate change to the indigenous people? What are the existing and needed adaptation means to climate change specific to sustain survival and livelihood of the indigenous? How important is a communication framework in climate change impact mitigation for the indigenous people? These questions call for some reflective thinking.
Impact of Climate Change to the Indigenous People
Climate change has an impact in the culture, communities, resources, knowledge and the livelihood of people. For the indigenous people contemporary climate change poses great challenges, unlike with that of the climate change that their predecessors have overcome from since prehistory. The alarming impact of climate change is now experienced by these vulnerable people at a global scale, yet scientific data warns of what is worst to come. Officially, the National Commission on Indigenous People of the Philippines (2003) reports that 110 ethnolinguistic groups are to be found in the country and they number to 8,067,100:
Subsistence of the indigenous people is much dependent on the biodiversity and their environment. These make them more vulnerable in light of the impact of climate change in their habitats and to their cultural identity relative to: being dislocated because of the disruption of subsistence; facing threats to their lives, health and properties; declining and losing biodiversity and the confronting environmental forces that damage their crops; having inadequate knowledge about issues on climate change; and being challenged by their limited economic means and the lack of skills for alternative livelihood.
Those five concerns confront the already marginalized IP groups and make them even more vulnerable to the impact of climate change. The indigenous groups comprise a relatively small size of the Philippine population, like 10% or even lesser. The NCIPP 2003 data indicates a disparity in the IP population as compared to its 1998 estimation of the IP population which was around 12 to 15 million.
The issue of climate change has been around since the 1990s. How climate change contributed to this decline of IP population and how it impacts their lives have not been examined empirically. The issues of IP sector has long been a struggle for their rights to habitat and their cultural identity (Molintas, 2004).
“Vulnerability is the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes. Vulnerability is a function of the character, magnitude, and rate of climate change and variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity” (IPCC, 2007).
The indigenous people comprise the minority of the Philippine population. Perhaps, they are the most vulnerable of all people to the impact of climate change. They belong to a culture – which social and economic subsistence are inextricably and directly linked to the natural environment. Climate change has a direct impact to the biodiversity of their lands and habitats. The Filipino IPs live in the hinterlands, hilltops, mountain tops, by the sea and lake waters and in small islands.
These structures in the ecosystem are vulnerable to climate change. Harsh storms can cause landslides, severe drought suck up the lake water, change in global temperature affects the biodiversity and even the marine life. Where they dwell are freshwater resources, so prone to vector-borne diseases. These impacts of climate change exacerbate the vulnerability of the indigenous people because they are the inhabitants of marginal ecosystems.
The indigenous people are direct descendants of nature and they have performed so well throughout history as stewards of the environment. Their communion with nature brought them resiliency and adaptive skills. Being residents of a marginal ecosystem, they do not have access to information and education that can equip them with adequate knowledge about the issues of climate change. Economically, they rely on their crops and livestock as for those groups which have advanced their agricultural skills. For those groups which still rely on hunting, the loss of biodiversity or its decline would have impact to their food security and livelihood.
The challenges of climate change are nothing old, that even science which claims to possess the knowledge of nature is baffled by the perplexing magnitude and potential impact of this environmental problem. It has become evident that climate change brought enormous concerns both to the contemporary postmodern world and to the indigenous people. The threats of economic development are becoming more evident in the changes in the world’s climate, leaving the IPs in more danger.
Climate Change Adaptation and Impact Mitigation
Like any group of people, the indigenous are trying to adapt to the impact of climate of change. The way the indigenous adapts to immediate environmental changes based on their culture, traditions and community decisions. To go on with their lives, adaptation is basic in this situation. Some IPs deal with the situation as a community, but others resort to push through with their individual choices by abandoning their culture.
Migration and relocation – There are direct links to connect the migration issues of several indigenous groups in the Philippines to social order and economic situations. Theoretically, in an environment where there is economic sufficiency and social order, people continue to thrive. Livelihood that relies on farming, fishing or hunting is affected by climate change which results to decline in crops, livestock and catches. Hence, it becomes an adaptation option for IPs to migrate or relocate to other areas.
Fajardo (2007) pointed to the loss of livelihood and mining development projects as some of the issues that push IPs to migrate or relocate, and described this diaspora to cause further impact on IPs’ affect. The movement of one community to other locations is a sign of migration and relocation. After the Pinatubo eruption, the Aetas of Zambales have decided to settle in other communities. However, IP members sometime resort to individual disenfranchisement or abandonment of their community.
Individualism and abandonment – Fajardo (2007) reported on the individual members of IPs forced by poverty to abandon their natural habitation, either as a family or as an individual as they relocate to other places in or outside the country. Since they settle in isolated marginal ecosystems, those community members who are not able to sustain their basic needs in their environment are left to take the option of moving out and integrating to urban areas.
Sporadically, some members of the indigenous community roam the streets of urban cities as beggars and mendicants. Whether their presence in these places is syndicated or not, it can still be understood, that the decision for them to abandon their community for some amount of money was still individual decision. Government efforts in the guise of development had displaced the indigenous from their own land (Molintas, 2004). Given this condition, some indigenous people have no other option but to abandon their culture in exchange for some amount, while others relocate and persist.
Resourcefulness to find alternative livelihood – The indigenous people, dwelling in the rainforest, are more often hunters and gatherers. However, the impact of climate change to the biodiversity of the forest would have an effect on their food subsistence. Most of these hunting and gathering forest people have gradually adapted to an agricultural economy and are becoming semi-sedintary (Macchi, 2008).
Resourcefulness is a must to find an alternative livelihood for their survival and subsistence. Change in climatic conditions allowed for some indigenous to adapt new or alternative techniques (Salick & Byg, 2007). With limited resources, i.e. food catch, crops and hunts, some indigenous resort to making crafts or gathering items from their natural environment to be sold in nearest market.
Traditional wisdom – The traditional knowledge of the indigenous people about the diversity of species, their habitats, behaviors, and their traditional ways of managing and protecting natural resources allow them to have a sustainable relationship with the environment upon which we all ultimately depend for our welfare and survival (Carino, n.d). Their exceptional culture demonstrates the harmonious relationship of the Ivatan people with their environment as a means of surviving and coping with these various ecological stresses (Uy & Shaw, 2000).
Indigenous knowledge about climate change is not parallel to what science has inquired about. There are cases that the indigenous people attribute the changes in climate to something else, like the “wind,” or to modernity and development, or a supernatural force because the land has been violated. This reflects the need for correcting misconceptions about climate change.
Resiliency and concession – in times of crises some IPs obtain food and other necessities from external sources (Salick & Byg, 2007). In this way, the IPs demonstrate resiliency by modes exchange with non-IPs. They do this by trading their surplus products, handicrafts, forest products, wage labor and other goods. “Indigenous peoples of the Philippines have preserved many of their own customary practices, traditions and livelihood and resource systems, showing great resilience against centuries of foreign domination and their exposures to lowland and market influences” (Rebuelta-Teh, 2004, p.87).
The Ivatans of the Batanes province are an illustration of indigenous resiliency, over harsh weather conditions, by applying traditional knowledge in their architectural landscape and in the sensitivity to weather patterns. The adaptation of the indigenous people does not mean to be all best practices that can help in mitigating the impact of climate change.
The rate of growth in net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a critical issue in the Philippines, and therefore managing the country’s natural resources wisely to protect their supply and quality and to maintain their diversity is critical for sustained economic growth (USAID, 2008). Since, they are marginalized economically and live in a marginal ecosystem, pressed with land rights issues; they are thinly focused on fulfilling their role as stewards of the environment. Somehow, their mindset is too politicized to pay attention to the issue of climate change, while they crumble to find food.
Climate Change Communication
“While Climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole, the report indicates that it is the poor – a constituency with no responsibility for the ecological debt that the world is running up – who face the most immediate and most severe human costs in climate change” Malayang (2008).
In his view, Manalang may not represent the academe nor the university where he is the president. This opinion is highly political. Yet it is true, it does not encourage communitarian effort to mitigate the impact of climate change. Instead, such views prevent public participation, reducing the issue of climate change as a political struggle and a diplomatic feat.
This is the very same view that leaders or representatives of IP organizations declare, voicing out that the IPs have not left footprints that adversely affected climate change, yet they suffer from international pressures to reforest their lands with trees not even endemic to their environment. They say that the development f renewable energy resources and planting crops that can be used for making bio-diesel displace them from their land. Such views are critical to a communitarian effort on climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Science and the public do not speak the same language about climate change. This knowledge or information gap is a result of the differences between the ways scientist and non-scientist inquire and communicate about environmental problems. Chalecki believes that “If impact assessments were more closely related to issues of public interest, the links between individual behavior and global changes in the environment might become more apparent, and public frustration over environmental issues might be transformed into environmentally responsible actions” (2000, A2-15). In this concern, communication has a role to bridge the gap in knowledge, to translate scientific information into useful knowledge, and to reach the public who will act on the problem.
Human-induced climate change is a product of the cumulative impacts of billions of people going about their daily lives; and the challenges that go by this point to the scale of the issue requiring unprecedented cooperation, while there may be a sense of helplessness for the individuals faced with other important and competing issues (Andrey & Mortsch, 2000). Communicating the climate change issue requires the imparting of information to fulfill three expectations: 1) to raise awareness; 2) to confer understanding; and 3) to motivate action (CCCC, 2000). Communication is essential to facilitate the delivery of climate change communication, reinforce adaptation skills and address mitigation issues.
Climate change communication must be sector-specific, yet still focusing on three key concepts – impact, adaptation and mitigation. It is audience-centered, so it must be contextualized within cultural boundaries of a community or sector. It is not ambitious and it cannot stop global warming. It is neither a panacea to prevailing environmental problems. It has a pivotal role to turn things around particularly in the aspect of correcting wrong perceptions, changing attitudes, creating public awareness, processing knowledge, transforming behavior, developing skills, integrating technology and instituting new practices. It is a vital social action to coordinate individuals and group into cooperative eco-sensitive actions.
Communication Framework to Address the Challenges of Climate Change and Development
Figure 1 illustrates a framework for communicating climate change to the indigenous. It considers a cultural framework in organizing an active network of community members by using the available indigenous cost-efficient resources, integrating knowledge-management strategies, skills development and technology integration. The framework emphasizes social justice in helping IPs adapt and mitigate the impact of climate change while integrating it with a community and sectoral development perspectives.
References
Andrey, J., & Mortsch, L. (2000). Communicating About Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities, WP 1-11. In Climate Change Communication Conference. Proceedings of an international conference. June 22-24, 2000. Ontario, Canada.
Chalecky, E. (2000). Same Planet, Different Worlds: The Climate Change Information Gap. A2 15-22. In Climate Change Communication
Conference. Proceedings of an international conference. June 22-24, 2000. Ontario, Canada.
Climate Change Communication Conference (2000). Message from the organizing committee. In Climate Change Communication Conference. Proceedings of an international conference. June 22-24, 2000. Ontario, Canada.
Macchi, M. (2008). Indigenous and traditional peoples and climate change. Issues paper. IUCN.
Malayang, B.S. III. (2008) Quoted in Mitigation and Adaptation recommended to address effects of climate change on human development. Retrieved on March 4, 2010 from http://www.undp.org.ph/?link=news&news_id=128&fa=
Molintas, J.M. (2004). The Philippine indigenous peoples’ struggle for land and life: Challenging legal texts. Arizona Journal of International & Comparative Law 21(1), 269-306.
National Commission on Indigenous People (2003). IP group profiles. Retrieved on March 1, 2010 from http://www.ncip.gov.ph/ethno.php
Rebuelta-Teh, A. (2004). Philippines: Governance and local empowerment in the environment and natural resources sector. Background papers, pp. 85- 92.
Salick, J. & Byg, A. (2007). Indigenous peoples and climate change. Oxford: Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
USAID-Philippines (May, 2008). Global climate change.
Uy, R. & Shaw, R. (2000). Shaped by the winds and typhoon: The indigenous knowledge of the Ivatans, in Batanes Island,
Philippines. In Indigenous Knowledge for Disaster Risk Reduction: Good practices and lessons learned from experiences in Asia-Pacific Region, pp.59-62. UN-International Strategy Disaster Reduction.
Spelling errors, problems in choice of words, ineffective styles, wrong use of punctuations, poor coordination of ideas, subject-agreement problems, wrong use of verb tenses… the list of evident problematic language use is a taxonomy of both human inadequacy in the use of langauge and the issues of language curriculum perspectives. There are three dominant concepts in English language instruction that are applied in the teaching of English as Second Language, English as Foreign Language or English to Speakers of Other Languages: prescriptive, restrictive and generative paradigms.
It has been a dominant perspective to teach English with emphasis on the grammatical aspect of the language. This traditional approach has had a rich history in the Western educational paradigm. That students were instructed grammar in order to master the language. The rigid rules of language, its syntax, semantics, diction, and other aspects were like transferred to students through remote memorization and practice into writing. Here, students should be able to demonstrate mastery of the rules evident in their use of the language in speech and writing, and measured through their recall of the rules. The prescriptive paradigm of language teaching and learning emphasizes on the consistency of adherence to the rules in the use of language. Thus, the prescriptive paradigm addresses the need for learning the rules of language and applying them in various communication situations.
The other paradigm emphasises a communicative approach to language teaching and learning. This implies that language is a tool for communication, and communication seeks understanding. When there is understanding between communicating agents, language does not matter much anymore. Because language is generative, changes take place in various contexts. Hence, with a generative paradigm on language teaching, learning is contextualized by exposing students into communicative actions, whole language approaches so students will learn, value and use of language more effectively to achieve understanding.
Both the generative and prescriptive paradigms on language teaching can work interdependently. While it is true that language is generative, it is not static or fixed, in the time continuum and within spatial bounds, language use will be vary. But, even communication theories suggest that there are rules in the discourse processes and there are principles in it. One tension point is using a specific ground or criteria for comparison in use of language. There are englishes and not just English in the world.
Between British and Americans who are native speakers of the language are great differences. Compare these native white speakers to other English-speaking countries in Canada and Australia, differences are still noticeable. Moreso, with those of the African English speaking countries. World Englishes vary and change, and so generative. Thus, there is no one drop rule or prescription of language teaching. Critically, keeping an eye to evaluate one country’s use of English to either of British or that of the American’s is hegemonic.
When students could identify the parts of speech, identify the errors, identify the pattern of the sentence, identify the kinds of sentences and identify whatever should be memorized about language, that is teaching which is paralleled to students’ learning of the language. Paper and pencil tests answerable through multiple choices and fill in the blanks should measure language learning. This perspective can be construed as a restrictive paradigm. It results from the idolatrous tendency of language scholars to mimic language that is not native to other speakers of the language. Instead, of understanding a geopolotical system’s use of English and improve it from there, the generative value of language is degenerated to be a form of deficiency.
Such identification of inequity stereotypes non-native English speakers, and so those who find the mimicking convention way too difficult would just give up on increasing their level of proficiency. While others who show just a little mastery, though still imperfect tend to push the less fluent or struggling learner to the side, and so the latter ignores the value of learning the lingua franca, because they feel more confident to be understand when they don’t use the language at all.
Language is generative, there are historical and anthropological evidences to that. Shakespearan or Victorian English are obsolete in the context of modern day conversation, except for extracting meaning from classical literary texts. There are languages that have been extinguished from the tounges of the people. There are new words being coined and used, and they don’t even follow the orthodoxies of language convention. Should we then stick to the rules of language style from centuries past? How does such intention restrict the process of generating understanding on the generative development of human language?
Prescriptive approach to language teaching, still applies, but such conventions are now being questioned. Whose conventions are these anyway? Whose people are using this language convention? Whose culture and time are they representing? The distance of space and time where those conventions were collected as corpus of language use may not be so proximal after all to the present generation of learners. The gorge to be bridged will really be too wide and greatly impossible to help learners acquire a “perfectly modelled” proficiency as prescribed.
While language is generative, the epistemology of language must also be generative. Prescriptions of language usage need reexamination. But, such effort of examination must be grounded and adapted in contemporary context. The world now with its many englishes dwells in communication network, and the basic rule of this networked world is “understanding”. With this frame of thinking, who is not understanding? Is it the one learned of prescribed conventions or the one learned through the experiences of the generative language?
To illustrate this, one student who is very skillful in the use of computers could submit an original written work that is almost flawless of errors. But, the same student when writing with his hand, without the computer could express the same thoughts as he understood them and what was understood by the reader, enormously gross of spelling errors, punctuation errors and sentence structure errors. While tools are there, they must be used to where they can work best for a learner. The prescribed language conventions are also tools, but they also need upgrading and retuning.
In the illustration, the student’s problem is caused by several factors. The student has dyslexia. The student has spent most of his development years reading texts through the computer screen. The paper and the pen are strange and fragile tools for his fingers so agile clicking on the keyboard. Typing for this student is more of a breeze while his penmanship is hardly legible in its ‘crookedness’. The same student was taught to maximize technology with the many other assignments he had before, yet he is placed in foreignly inconvenient situation of working on paper and pencils without the tool he knows best.
The tool that the student knows has all the function keys to check his spelling errors, to look up the meaning of a word, to find a synonym or antonym for a word, to tell him of the sentence errors and options to correct them. Most of these are what teachers learned from the conventions of prescriptive language approaches have never encountered in their lives. Yet, the same teachers love to read the prints. The students create the prints and they can do that exceedingly well with the tools they grew up with. But, teachers will insist, they have to know and practice language withouth technology.
Again, the conventions of language is but just human technology. The time is here, where the reality of a paperless world is in the picture. But, many particularly those in the field of teaching are afraid to withdraw from. The directions for 21st century education must hold true in teaching the students new skills sets. They grew up with the technology, they know how to use it, and they are eager to discover more of it because it works productively for them. However, the tools that are available are restrictively used in language teaching. Language use is different from language in use, teaching language that used to be may not necessarily adapt to the language in use today.
Online social networks, specifically Facebook, have provided people across the world free, accessible and interactive communication platform to present one’s self to others and get the attention of the many other people, and connect even disenterested parties into hyperreal communities. Trending now are calls for reunion, homecoming, assemblies and other gathering of sorts. Here is man’s conquer of the virtual world, extending his territories with technology and so extending his identity.
This phenomenon was made easier when Facebook introduced its group application. Although, prior to this `official’ pages were already in. Here, anyone can open an account, invite and add friends, and do the same stuffs an individual can do in his wall. The group application allows any user to link with other groups, add friends, chat, post multimedia and other documents. Any member of a group can add anyone, unless the moderator kicks someone out. The power here is shared by the moderator to every other members of the group.
Facebook, as a social network, has just become a platform for group interaction and socialization. This manifest in how people are using the tool to connect with a number of people as long they are in the group’s site. Facebook has stepped up from one-to-many networking site to a many-to-many networking site with the introduction of the group application. In this manner, control or moderation is less attended and power is redistributed and shared by all members. Such is what Jurgen Habermas theoritically describes as an ideal speech situation in the public sphere.
The said technology for group interactions is not new. The earlier versions of the chatroom like that of the MIRC served the same function. But because of the vulnerability of the platform to be intruded by viruses, it slowly got out of the picture. Well, Facebook has to take responsibility for that as well. The hyperreal communities have become more evidently active nowadays. The term hyperreal, according to Baudrillard is the meshing of the virtual and real, so intricately intertwined that the boundaries become gray and the distinction between the real and virtual becomes more ambiguous over time.
Because of the convinience, benefits and advantages of using technology in reaching people and getting them to the discourse process, openly and freely, people have taken the liberty to ‘join’ and be a part of the hyperreal communities. Here, they get updates and they get to interact with a lot of people, even those they do not know or have never had physical contact with. To them, they are in social interaction, just the same as that of the real experience of social interaction. Likewise, they bring their experiences in the virtual world to the real world, or vice versa.
Hyperreal communities are social groups of individuals connected through an information communication network, bound by a common interest, purpose, situation, experiences or identities. The motivation of the members to be in the network are likely to be shared to keep the network active. Performative communication through display and attention keep the line of social exchange alive. Messages posted on the group’s wall or chatroom have to appeal to the various interests and sensibilities of the members or else, communication becomes static.
Because rules and roles are undefined in these communities, unless the moderator establishes so with the agreement of other members, some unexpressed expectations can lead to conflict. This entropy can start from two individuals and then other members will be affected emotionally and psychology. Then, there will be regroupings in support of the parties in conflict. There will also be arbiters and peacemakers. In worst situations, members who do not conform to the ambiguous ‘norm’ will be unfriended or removed from the group. But, due to the vulnerability of technology, the deviant who was casted out can join the group with another identity to shatter the group dynamics again.
The connection established in the virtual community has strong links to the interest of the physical social world. Connection, that is. But the purpose will vary. For socieities that have high collective values, connection in either of the two worlds are esential to one’s esteem and the group’s esteem. The value of unity, cammaraderie, or fraternalization are significant to be projected in the members of the group. When these are violated, group members may lose interest to sustain membership. Distancing and withdrawal are still easy options. Being silent is manifestation of such, when participation in the exchange is construed as engagement and interest.
In the meshing of worlds in the hyperreal communities, the identities of individual members are transcended to cut across the two world. Hence, actions or one’s communicative behavior in the virtual world represents the identities of individuals in the phyisical world. In their exposure to the virtual world, their identities are transformed as well and they bring such back in the physical world. Assuming one opens a group for a clan, based on one’s surname, members who joined the group will feel proud to notice how the imagined and reconstructed ‘clan’ has increased.
New patterns of relationships are developed. In the Philippines, when the natives were given surnames, it was more likely that surnames will be repetitive. So, one can be surprised that there is another family or clan with the same surname from other islands. But with this mere identification, the family is reconstructed. Stories will be told, people will speak in different languages, and there will be no physical semblance at all shared by all those people. This reconstruction of the ‘clan’ goes beyond paternal or ethnic lineage. Even if stories told dont’ match with stories lived, the fantasy in the virtual world can keep the members together, in a while.
It is interesting to inquire on why people open groups and seek connection. Have the people been so tired in their physical world? Have they been so disconnected that they are pushed and pulled to utilized online technology to create virtual connections? How much of these virtual connections live to their purpose of building communities? How long will they be there and how are members affected by these hyperreal communities?
Fun, fun, fun. It is awesome at first to see someone planking, lying facedown with a stiff body on something and taking the risk a step higher. This phenomenon is a new craze among younger people, and those amused would also like to try – for fun’s sake and the thrill of the experience. As to why they do what they do is an interesting inquiry. Nevertheless, looking at this behavior in an outsider’s point of view leads to consider some basic insights of our communicative social behavior.
Planking as an action sends a message to the observer, as it is a form of self-expression approved by its audience. Approval comes in the form of amazement, amusement and excitement to the spectacle. Unlike the previous form planking in earlier societies of Haiti where it is used as a social punitive act for the deviant, plankers today deviate from what has been done by another planker. They take the risk higher as a spectacle to get audience attention.
It’s triple fun for a planker to get some attention. First, plankers demonstrate a skill or a talent of being able to control their body into a stiff position on and over something that virtually defies gravity and phyisical force of balance. Secondly, plankers feel social approval through the appreciation and amusement of their audience at the time of their performance. Thirdly, plankers find more attention when their act is captured in pictures or videos and posted online. Planking, seemingly turns out to make at an instant a celebrity out of an ordinary individual.
According to sociologists, a craze characterizes a collective obsession, which is interchangeably referred to as a fad or fashion. Thus, we can understand planking is but temporal until it reached a saturation point that almost everyone has tried it and did not really get satisfied with at a latter time. In this craze, the involvement of other people is influenced by their perception to the act and their attitude towards doing such act. For the fun of it, many would try, and those who have tried planking, if they are gratified would continue for a certain period of time to better their feat. Online planking communities are even growing from the various parts of the world.
That is where obsession comes in a craze, it goes on until an alternative comes in to gratify that need for self-expression and attention. In one way or another, planking provides these young people to deviate from their routine. They may have gotten bored of their life in the virtual world, ultimately they find the gratification in going back to the real social connection by performance in the public sphere. Plankers most often do not this alone, they do it with some peers because of the risk and they do it publicly because they intend to be noticed.
Since it is immediately understood as form of a unique and amusing self-expression. Even authorities, like that of teachers in schools, do not really mind their students from doing it right there in their face. While planking does not really take much time, it is mostly unnoticed until the act is published in the Internet. There’s some risks in this craze,because they are taking the feat one step too far for their fatal death. Plankers should be aware of to put some limitation in their form of self expression. A young man from Australia plunged into his death planking on a balcony rail from the 7th floor.
Theoretically, planking is a craze resulting from the gratification through display and attention that one gets into. This daring phenomenon, in the context of our high tech-high touch world, shows how the younger generation desires to be liked more in the online world by performing in the real world social sphere. As planking is an Internet craze, most of the plankers got their interest to this phenomenon by appreciating it from the online media. Then they use the social world as platform for their performance simply to get the attention of the people in the virtual world.
Facing life problems does not mean turning our back on people who care for us because we don’t want them to suffer the pain we are going through. This is rather causing a new problem to us and to those in our relationship network. For all we know, the people around us are those whom we need the most in that trying difficult situation of our life.
No one in this world, in its history had lived a life problem-free. If there be, that is a corpse lying in a coffin with pushed smile and freshness in the face to effect an illusory mood of peace, eyes forever close in the reality of our troubled world. Another could be an individual alienated from his rational self, whose mind is beaten up that he could no longer differentiate the real from his hallucinations.
There are people who wallow in excruciating pain because they have problems, a lot of problems. They see the problems and feel the pain more than they see the solutions. They get more frustrated because those problems prevent them from going through their life course towards realizing their dreams. Worst, they think they can do it alone.
This world we live in is a crucible that puts our character to the grind. Problems test our character, decisions and actions. Shutting one’s self from the world to focus on the problem may resolve the conflict, but it could also lead to conflicts in relationships. Above problems, life goes on and we must keep on moving, with people who are more valuable than our problems, and anything else.
Problems may be hurting to the one facing it. But, the attitude of the problematic person is also hurting to people who value that persons suffering in pain because they do not want to share the burden. It is false justification to reason that it is to avoid others getting hurt. Apparently, the response is hurting enough to place no value on people who care, because it is destabilizing the relationship through detachment.
We can only bear pain so much. While we harbor pain and keep on seeing the many problems we have, we become blind to the solutions that others may offer. We become numb to how others feel for us. Because we want to be detached as we try to avoid spreading our sorrows, on the other end other souls are in sorrow. We may be able to see the array of possible solutions, but how do we counter check the feasibility of any of these alone with our high bias?
While the world has never ending problems to test every human being, the world has people for other people. Overcoming problems should be that exciting part of life, and it is best achieved with others. That is the basic function of our social nature, to live with others and for others which give back value to our very selves. Since, everyone has faced and solve one form of a problem and another, everyone has something to share as a solution. It is with people we find our value and succeed in life, not in anything else.
The fact is: effective solutions only come after the negative emotions are extracted from the situation. One can cry for catharsis, but it takes someone else to help you figure out better solutions and to tell you how you are doing or actually feeling about the problem. It is false to believe that one can solve a problem on his own. Consider the scholars who determine solutions to problems, consider the scientists consulting others in books or face-to-face, consider the ill who needs a doctor; all these tell that if you have a problem you need help.
Independence has limitations, but interdependence works out win-win solutions. Highly effective people work out solution through the creative power of collaboration or solving it with others. It is conceit and not kindness to shut our door from others who are concerned about us. Helping ourself can only go as far as we can manage, but when we cannot manage our emotions and our relationships because we feel we can solve our problems ourselves, people who care for us may lose interest in helping later on.
A life void of relationship is a life not worth living for. Happy people keep a healthy relationship with others whom they care for and from whom they find comfort. Our significance in this life is also based on how we affected others and how well we purposively lived for and with others. Problems are to be solved and they are not reasons to cut communication lines or just keep a one-way relationship towards the problematic person.
A life without a problem is not life at all. A life full of problems is the worst one could find himself, but it is also the most fruitful and memorable when overcome with others. A person living a problematic life, yet ignoring other’s presence in his life, is in a pathetic situation. All the more, that person needs empathy more than sympathy, but never apathy.
To deal with our many problems, we need to deal with our self, our thoughts, our decisions and emotions. This does not require we cut ties with people who care for us, because they can never be our problems lest they do not really care at all about our situation. There’s no need to worry much about problems, when we know there are people around us who could share them with us. Hakuna matata, yeh!
Hermes Birkin, Louise Vitton, Lenovo, Mac Ipad, Pontiac, Ferrari, Chevrolet, Mercedes Benz, Lacoste are just some of the products with obvious subliminal advertising intent in having exposure in the Transformers 3 movie. To some movie goers and Transformers the other product brands may not be well so obvious more than the popular car brands and models that transform into Autobots.
Movie and television show inserts are a recent marketing strategy. From a time, movie and television show producers are more concerned of the quality of film or shows they create. Although, they seek advertisement to help finance the production, they are also careful in hiding or smudging brands or logos of commercial products that may incidently be needed in the production design as props.
But the airtime, attention span, and interest of the audience for mediated advertisement must be diminishing as a resource, if not getting more valuable. Airtime is expensive, advertisments during the intermission or prior to the beginning of a movie don’t bring direct income to the film production, it is the movie house that benefits from this. The audience particularly young people have lesser attention span, and they would rather sleep during the intermission and just open their eyes when the movie is on. Movie goers go to the cinema to watch a film, not the advertisements, so they would instead go inside the movie house just in time for the movie.
The movie audience are prime target of advertisement. If they have been grown clever or have lesser attention span, advertisers got to be more agressive in their strategic decision to insert advertisements by flashing their brand logos and product names within the scenes of the movie. CastAway is another vivid example of this strategy. That movie was like a Federal Express and Wilson film. Probably, the said strategy have signficant influence in the market consumption of those products and services. Hence, an increase in sale through increase of brand awareness.
The novel turned movie, The Devil Wears Prada, is another obvious illustration of this kind of advertising strategy, featuring of course Prada brand, other brands and even a coffee brand. One may argue, its nothing but incidental. Yet, the positioning of those brands in some frames or a scenes are obvious means of manipulating the audience subliminally through the power of visuals. A critical eye should be able to notice the panning of the camera and the transitions that puts those brands in focus.
Like in Transformers 3, the main actor is but wearing a simple white shirt, and prominent on that shirt is the Lacoste logo. The camera is tilted up, the chest of the main actor is in the center of the frame, and slowly zooms in to the shirt’s logo. Lenovo had several exposures, that monitor in the boardroom’s table contrasts that of the table. The white backside of the monitor is so visible with the logo, and most of the time when this is shown, the camera is also tilted up. The same with the exposure of the Mac product, the camera is also tilted up.
With those camera techniques, the eyes of the audience are pushed to focus on the product, rather than the facial expression or actions of the actors. It utilizes blocking to keep the audience eyes glued on a certain object while their ears listen to the dialogue. More obvious of this subliminal advetising strategy, is when the product brand becomes part of the script. In Transformers 3, of the intelligence division, a woman is pictured to be so powerful, dominant, strong and confident. She has everything she “needs”, and all with her assistant – bags.
In the movie, when the chief needed something from her bag, the assistant asked which one. Then the assistant showed LV bag, and two other bags. The chief said “the Hermes Berkin”. One could guess which is the sponsor of the movie, or which brought more money for the said subliminal exposure. Competitors do not buy the idea of having their products placed before another, rarely this happens or not at all. With visual and audible exposures, Hermis must have pegged in alot of money and chose to place it with LV, which in either way creates an image that it is unlike LV to be preferred and trusted more by a powerful woman.
Ferrari, Mercedez Benz, Chevrolet and Pontiac are various car brands. They all appearead in the Transformers 3 movie. Only two were represented best, but one brand stood out from the rest. Chevrolet, with a lot of visual exposure and several memorable audible exposures. Bumbly bee, the young man’s friend is there throughout the movie. Pontiac was just but an old neon light. Mercedez Benz was attacked as unfriendly and hostile to women, mean, evil and expensive, with “Soundwave” becoming a snare and revealed as a Decepticon, costing 200,000 US$ which is said to be unworthy in relationships.
There must have been advertisement inserts in the earlier Transformer’s movie, specific to Chevrolet. But, this year’s sequel had the most obvious ones. Apparently, such ads distracted me from really focusing on the movie. On this note, it has worked strategically offensive to my interest of appreciating a movie, because it made me wonder on how much these brands pegged in on the production of the film. Sorry for me, that I get to be so critical of this manipulative act to exploit on the visual and aural perceptiveness of the audience, that in the end I was not so satisfied as I was in the earlier movies.
This may sound new age, but it is not. Many of the great philosophers we know have taught of the same concept, and due to its practicality, logic and application, the value of such construct becomes ever more significant to the times. In a world that sees people as a sea of diversity, counting on the outstanding competetive value of the individual; it matters that a person knows himself and is in control of his self to find a niche and succeed.
Human identity, according to Rene Descartes is defined by the individidual ability to think. Existence or being is determined by that intellectual facility to reason and argue, to understand problems and define solutions. The Greek aphorism of knowing thyself, which Socrates alluded to the practice of self-examination, reverb in the modern and even into the post-modern constructs of understanding the human psyche and even the divine in the human being.
Even the religions of the world apply this construct of understanding one’s self for its emancipation and elevation into the eternal. Natural science explains the immesurable potential of the human mind as thinking machine to predetermine the actions of the human body, the behavior of the individual to himself and towards others in the society. Physiologically, the brain has neurological functions and affective roles to give an able individual the control over his body and so his life.
Very few understand the value of a good mindset to effect a good life. Although, in common beliefs, many agree that a positive outlook in life results positively as well. Some others even look into the ancient oriental beliefs on the laws of karma . While others are mystified by the no-secret at all law of attraction. The writing on the wall is clear, “who you think you are is who you become”.
Should you call this a philosophy and hold it as a guiding principle in your life, then you are up in the making of the person you may have yet no idea at all. The big question mark in the JoHaRi window, that tells something that others and you don’t know about could get clearer to you by now, as you internalize and become more aware of the power of your mind to change you and your life. The said principle is not a mantra that you keep repeating to yourself, it is a life-changing process.
Stephen Covey teaches of life-changes and finding voice as a change of habit. Peter Senge posits the importance of vision and systems thinking. A vision, just like any dream is a product of the mind, the difference is that a vision is constructed consciously, while a dream dwells in the subconscious. You need to seize the vision first to cease from mere dreaming or wishing fantasy. That’s where you begin, according to Covey, with your end in mind. Then you need to face the challenge of changing the habit.
A change of habit needs a change of mindset. You are a habitual creature as you have rituals and territories. You like to dwell in your comfort zones, stick on the conventions, keep the status quo and drop the idea of change because it inconveniences you. Yet, in the most troublesome times when you are stressed, pressed and downcasted with problems, it gets to your nerves that you clamor for change. That is a crisis that could result to a turning point in your life. But then rarely do people notice this, and so you are not able to transform your self and live the life you ever wanted.
How do you see yourself, then? Who are you? What are you? What makes you who you are? What do you want in your life? If you see yourself a failure, then you become a failure and so you can never succeed. If you see yourself happy in where you are now, then you do not want to be in other place. If you think the meager thing you have is sucess, then what else will you look forward to? If you think, this world is your only home, then there is no other final destination for you.
When you face the mirror everyday, what do you see? You want to see the best in you, the best in your surface that your eyes could see. That is your body, the image that others you think others will probably see. But there is more to you that is unseen by your naked eye. Antoine Von De Exupiery tells this to kids: that the most important things or the most beautiful things in your life are not seen by the naked eye. But then, everything is relative, yet social interacting individuals have a set of agreed values to that relative thing.
You may argue that there are just things that one cannot change in one’s life. There must be many, and that is true. There are non-elective traits and characteristics you have in your personality or in your life that you did not even choose, yet you can change them. Electively, you can choose the way you want your life to be, the way your body to be, the way you want to act, the way you want to think about your self and the way you think about others, the way you want you want to live and even the way you want to die.
No one knows your thoughts, but you. No one understands your situation any better but you. No one can actually manipulate your thoughts lest you allow others to. Your change of mindset about yourself, about your abilities, about your decisions, about your past and everything else about you and your life, can yield to the changes in your totality, in your identity and personality. But, all these will require that you act on that thought.
Only upon knowing yourself then you can choose and act right on your way to the change you want to see in you. If you can not change your mindset, you can never realize that change in your life, neither can you be so influential to affect change in others.
In what other form do we come to know knowledge, except for language? Arts, numbers, objects, patterns: are they not systematic forms of expression that we identify to be signs for what they signify? Our understanding of reality are represented in signs which we also understand as language, for language is a signifier.
Everything in nature that we already know are supposed to have an equivalent in langauge, a term that refers to what it signifies. Sociologists and philosophers believe that social reality is constructed, and it is constructed through social interaction. In that event of human contact with other individuals, thoughts, ideas, meanings, experiences, perceptions are shared through language.
To participate in the construction and reconstruction of social realities, one needs to be equipped with the language and the communication skills to make use of the latter effectively. It is a necessity to know the terms to facilitate understanding of what the term refers to. What is known includes all that is we have about in our language. What we do not know of becomes understandable in a while through languaging.
If we are not so skilled to understand language, it axiomatic that we will have shortcomings in understanding the realities of both the conscious and even the unconscious mind. But, if we construe the reality that language speaks the mind and the very nature of a person, then we can be able to understand a person in his thoughts and feelings through his language.
What a person says in his language become a representation of himself. What is lacking in his language is probably not part of his realities yet. Absence of a thought is figured in what can not be verbalized or that which is not in one’s language system. It is a gap that needs to be filled.
Wittgenstein said that our world is limited by our language. Focault believes that language is power in which the many constructed realities in our world are built upon. Language is imminent, ubiquitous and essential to our very existence and the understanding of our selves.
But language is not the reality, only the representation of it. Yet, through it we understand realities. Of love, of peace, of war, of truth, of humanity, of self,of experiences of this world, and of all many other things we have abstracted and concretized, the object in which we understand them as knowledge is through language.
To be knowledgeable, one needs to muster the use of language and the understanding of its systems and structure. This cannot be foregone and taken for granted. One can never speak, read, write or think of any knowledge that is not part of his language system. All the more, he who does not understand the language does not understand the knowledge in it.
Our knowledge of the things we need to learn, our knowledge of life, and our knowledge of the realities around us, are there for our understanding. We can learn them in many ways, by reading, by listening, by watching, by sensing and experiencing them. We need the language facility to really make sense of those, but the more we enage with knowledge, our language likewise grows.
Billions of people have access to online social networks. Facebook, MySpace and Multiply are among the many social networking sites available for anyone with Internet access. Purposively, they are functional in many ways, but as a glass house of interconnected users, these platforms serve as space basically to see and be seen and to interact with people in a borderless and timeless spa.
