WP3: Humbleness, Solicitude, and Independence
I want to write this article to my adolescent peers who will be applying for graduate school, internship, and jobs soon. Most of you will likely succeed and receive offers from different colleges or companies, but I want to bring up the importance of humbleness and social solicitude. We as college students and future talents ought to take the responsibility of caring for our society. Moreover, you should carefully consider choices of future career planning. Understanding intentionality and inter-subjectivity help you construct self-awareness, thereby allowing you to pursue independent jobs and live a fulfilled but relaxing life. At this age, we have abundant time to discover self-directed values, so I want to deliver my ideas through my personal experiences and sociological knowledge.
My previous two projects (The Education of Inclusiveness and From Childhood to Adulthood) have demonstrated how my childhood experiences shaped my inclusive identity. In primary school, because my family just moved to the provincial capital, we were poor outsiders whilst I performed badly in school. Since then, I have tried to use grandstanding to draw others’ attention and become a “popular” student because I had no other talents. In middle school, I abandoned my inappropriate behaviors and utilized my unique experiences in proper areas such as being the class monitor. Precisely, once being poor made me understand ordinary people’s life, thus I have always respected those who earn a decent living through hardworking, as well as cultivating a strong skill to communicate and befriend people. Finally, in high school, I befriended the security guy, the shopkeepers, and the cleaning ladies. Meantime, my basketball activities promoted the campus more inclusive while I raised approximately $9,000 funds for the prom.
Holding such unique respect for ordinary people, I majored in Sociology and hope to promote social progress by focusing on grassroots. Last year, learning Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I realized a decent life with sufficient income was the most essential for the working class, therefore, I sincerely cared about their lives, business, and families (Maslow 1943: 3). Moreover, beyond the basic needs, esteem was indispensable as well. For me, grassroots were never strangers who simply served me in a restaurant, but people with invaluable worldly experiences that I could learn from. Hence, I was grateful for their services and admired their accomplishments; it was my respect that made the difference.
As I learn more about sociology, Durkheim’s moral theory inspired me the most to care for others. He believes people follow the invisible moral regulations, such as honesty and integrity, to integrate as a society and thereafter maintain social coherence. Using an analogy, Durkheim believes society is an animal with various organs working under a mechanism. When the mechanism is broken, societal pathology appears, namely anomie, which means people’s mental affairs of normlessness and disintegration from social standards (Durkheim 1984: 5). For those who have never learned such knowledge, they lack the theoretical initiative to take movements; however, after learning this theory, I need to take the responsibility of propagating this conception and demonstrating it through real actions.
To overcome anomie, Durkheim suggests promoting widespread social norms and cultivating organicity that combines individualism and social integration. For the former, Durkheim believes that more moral guidance essentially brings higher freedom to people because of “Homo Duplex”, a concept that discloses human beings’ natural and moral components. Moral regulations restrict people’s natural desires, such as greed and lust, hence are the sources of life meaning and directing people’s actions (Durkheim and Lukes 1982: 264). Personally, I find this concept extremely suitable for today’s society since the “natural components” have swallowed many people and deprived them of basic morality to pursue fame and wealth, which urges me to emphasize the significance of the “moral components”.
For the latter, Durkheim proposes “the cult of the individual” in modern societies that he describes as “something eternal in religion which is destined to survive all the particular symbols in which religious thought has successively enveloped itself” (Durkheim 1964: 427). Here, Durkheim means a new civil religion that roots in moral individualism, believing every rational individual is born to be a sacred object, hence we should respect each other through daily rituals such as “thanks”, “sorry”, and “excuse me”. Honesty, not saying such words will not make big differences to our society, but they DO promote social coherence and morality. To me, Durkheim equally treats every person and perfectly echoes my persistent respect for others, thus I have determined to more deeply embrace others and solidify our society.
In short, based on my previous experiences, sociological perspectives have enlightened me to more humbly embrace other people, propagate moral guidance, and sustain social well-being. As college students, don’t you think we all should contribute to our society like this?
During my freshman year, I believed such a standpoint was my most valuable characteristic and I endeavored my best to fulfill it. However, my actions paused when I received the transfer admission letter from USC. Deep inside, I firmly believed I did not belong to the relatively higher class, such as USC or other privileged colleges, because of my mother’s oppressive education and my inferiority complex. Therefore, I could not control become arrogant when entering USC.
On the one hand, my mother’s aggressively strong way of education stemmed from the traditional Chinese culture of modesty and indoctrination education. To begin with, traditional Chinese cultures encourage humility and low profile because the disclosure of distinguished strength makes others envy and slander behind. This phenomenon originates from the conventional centralization of state power where the leaderships mostly concerned with the regimes’ stability while ignoring individual capacities (Shen 2006: 3). Gradually, bureaucracy was prioritized over personal skills, and those who revealed outstanding skills would either make their superior worry about job replacements or provoke others’ jealousy. Over time, people conceal their abilities and stay low-key.
Similarly, since the centralism leadership mainly worries regime stabilization, they utilized a system of indoctrination education to domesticate civilians’ minds. In this way, people become reciting machines to study the “prescribed” contents. According to Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
“One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the preserver’s consciousness. Thus, the behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.” (Freire 2014: 47)
As a result of the “modest” culture and “banking” education, my mother was just like any other conventional parents who oppressively educate their children to recite (not understand) numerous contents and seek high scores. In this way, I had to passively recite the “hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity” both in school and at home without pursuing my interests and ideas (Freire 2014: 71). For example, in primary school, when I usually failed in exams, my mother kept querying why I did not study harder as if I never tried. When I sometimes scored high through diligent “work”, she rarely praised me but kept raising the standards and asked me to be low-key. Over time, such education became increasingly oppressive for me. Eventually, I complied with the oppressed identity. Although I firmly believed my mom deeply loves me, “as an act of freedom, [love] must not serve as a pretext for manipulation” (Freire 2014: 90).
On the other hand, due to my once poor and outsider experience, my inferiority complex also conflicted with the Trojan identity. According to Alfred Adler, the founder of individual psychology, the inferiority complex refers to when a person lacks self-respect and cannot repair their feelings of inferiority. A common symbol is “persons are always striving to find a situation in which they excel” (Alder 2013: 74). Meantime, Alder also points out that primary inferiority is the infant’s “original and normal feeling” which generates positive motivation; however, this may cause the secondary inferiority that produces overwhelming pressure on the adults (Stein and Edwards 2002: 23). From this theory, I realize that my childhood’s primary inferiority had evolved to the second phase that kept driving me to “excel”, such as through grandstanding, being the class monitor, or raising funds. Suddenly, becoming a student of USC deeply triggered my pride in being a so-called “good student”. At the moment, my years of oppression had burst. I felt arrogant as well as lost.
Specifically, entering USC not only inflated me but also drove me to consciously pursue a higher social status. I started to ignore ordinary people and lose my most valuable standpoint. Ironically, I began to show arrogance in front of others, especially those who I considered low-educated. Meanwhile, I admired the Ivy students and desired to be one of them to win people’s praise. Deep inside, though I no longer felt inferior, I STILL desired others’ recognition. Actually, I still felt inferior and fragile.
However, as I tried to become the top 1%, I forgot to look backward at the 99%. One day, a taxi did not stop when I was crossing the crosswalk, so I could not control swearing at the driver. In the past, I would so discriminate against such behavior but I actually grew up to be what I hate. Since then, I felt increasingly anxious and repentant for my action because I knew I was lost. Hence, I went to dissect and share my thoughts with my girlfriend and we nailed the problem: when the ambition to be successful completely occupied me, it beclouded my respect for ordinary people. If every elite ignores common civilians, who are the fundamental building blocks of our society, how can moral social norms be established to preserve social coherence? If the shortest board of a bucket is not protected, how can it contain more water?
No, I could not let it be, because it was MY responsibility to embrace others and progress our society. Eventually, through days of self-reflection, I reconciled with myself and returned to the caring self but with a more critical mindset. To my peers, I assume you may meet similar problems. Don’t worry; it is human nature we are delighted for the accomplishments, but remember to be HUMBLE and EMBRACE grassroots. Elite egoism will make you no different from exploiters because the higher social status empowers you to exploit the working class but also the opportunity to help them. I believe you can easily SPEAK out the moral decision between the two, but please also fulfill it through ACTIONS.
What is more, when I was chatting with my father regarding my future career, he as a phenomenology philosopher used Edmund Husserl’s Intentionality theory recommending me to pursue a truly independent job, and his words also inspired me on the inferiority complex.
Phenomenology perceives the world through its most superficial phenomenon of which intentionality is the fundamental epistemology. According to Husserl, intentionality is the “fundamental property of consciousness” and the “principal theme of phenomenology” (McIntyre and Smith 1989: 1). It refers to our most direct perceptions of objects and people, which is the basis of human interactions. For example, if a small transparent cube lies in the middle of the road, a chef may consider it an ice cube while a decoration worker probably thinks of a piece of glass. In other words, Husserl believes people’s backgrounds and experiences shape their way of understanding the external phenomenal, which contradicts Hegel’s or Kant’s approaches that attempt to discover the world’s ultimate internal core. When individuals perceive each other through such intentionality, inter-subjectivity appears because everyone has their subjective perceptions and one can never completely reach one another’s feelings (Husserl 1990: 48). Therefore, permanent gaps exist among different individuals and make us diverse. For those whose gaps are naturally smaller, they share higher resonances, intentionality, and unity.
“Unfortunately, many people live upon the bond with others but not with themselves,” my father said, “if you can be a scholar, you will live a truly independent life.” He meant that most people expect to resonate with others to justify and secure their existence, such as businessmen eagerly appealing to consumers to assure profits and politicians depending on votes to be promoted, and they will eventually exhaust themselves from maintaining the unity with others. “However, a scholar generates knowledge which to a large extent is objective and independent. Pursuing an academic career can offer you a peaceful and elegantly autonomous life.” My father’s words immediately filled my brain with wisdom. To me, I agree with him that being a scholar is self-valued because knowledge, unlike money or interpersonal relations, is permanent and cannot be taken away. Therefore, academic pursuit became my goal because I can live UPON and FOR myself. However, I also believe every individual has different pursuits, hence, you should construct personal worldviews to position your value and utilize your capacity to live independently rather than upon others.
At the same time, my father’s words also enlightened me on past experiences. No matter when I was attracting others through grandstanding, collecting funds for the prom, or studying hard to enter an Ivy school, it was indeed the desire of being recognized by OTHERS that drove me. Using Husserl’s words, I was trying to constructing bonds and achieve higher unity with ours to justify my existence and camouflage my inferiority complex, which inherently was not free and self-oriented. To live a genuinely autonomous life, I should know about my expertise and passion, establish an independent worldview, and then live FOR myself through the pursuit of a suitable occupation, so I will no longer live under the fear of being discriminated against.
To conclude, I want to again remind my peers of the importance of humbleness, solicitude, independence, and self-reflection. For the first two, you should carry on the responsibility of caring for our society’s most fundamental roles, the working class, especially when you are successful. As the educated from reputed colleges, we ought to be always modest to understand others from an equal perspective so we can better help them. For the third, intentionality and inter-subjectivity remind us of the formation of human interactions and interpersonal relations. Before expecting to build strong social networking, you should understand yourself throughout, discover your value, and pursue an autonomous job that barely depends on others. For the last, you should regularly self-reflect; without it, this whole passage would not exist. Personally, I have spent much time and effort talking to my parents and girlfriend, as well as reading abundant resources to analyze my personality. With the help of self-reflection, you will be able to find out problems at different phases and then establish a more complete self-value.
Word Count: 2443
References
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Durkheim, Emile. 1938. The Rules of Sociological Method. New York, The Free Press.
Durkheim, Emile and Steven Lukes (translated by W.D. Halls). 1982. The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Durkheim, Emile. 1984. The Division of Labour in Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Freire, Paulo. 2014. Pedagogy of the Oppressed Thirtieth-anniversary edition. New York: Bloomsbury.
Husserl, Edmund (translated by J. B. Brough). 1990. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Maslow, Abraham. 1943. “A theory of human motivation”. Psychological Review 50 (4): 370–96.
McIntyre, Ronald and David W. Smith. 1989. “Theory of Intentionality” in J. N. Mohanty and William R. McKenna, eds., Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook. Washington, D. C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America.
Shen, Ao. 2006. “Chinese political hierarchy and historical origins”. Review of History and Politics 17 (5): 3.
Stein, Henry and Martha E. Edwards. 2002. “Adlerian psychotherapy”. In Herson, M. and Sledge, M. H. (1st Ed.), Encyclopedia of Psychotherapy (Vol. 1, pp. 23–31). Netherlands: Elsevier Science.
