"Dark side" of Individuality

America has long been known as an individualistic society where the spirit of self-reliance is deemed as the indispensable part of our personalities. While people are putting excessive effort on emphasizing this individuality, few have looked for a potential downside of it. 

The movie Little Miss Sunshine establishes roles with strong personality by granting them strong sense of individuality. Dwayne, the son of the Hoover family, is a maverick. He takes a vow of silence until he reaches his goal of being a pilot, and avoid any interaction with other family members for that people barely care about each other but themselves. Such alienation from his family gradually diminishes Dwayne sensitivity as a teenager and establishes a sense of numbness usually managed by grown-ups, a mask that symbols frustration toward his family. However, their long journey to California, is the way that leads to the reconciliation of the broken relationships among the family. During the trip, each of the family member encounter obstacles that constrains them from making their way to California, but the collective effort of the whole family eventually conquers the difficulties. 

Ironically, we strive be independent and avoid any reliance on others, then wonder where that sense of unity has gone. People sometimes forget to embrace other’s differences, listen to their voice and feel their feelings while they pursuit the idea of individuality. 

Invisible in the Society

People with different thinking pattern will be easily excluded from the majority or by oneself. Because people always believe that their believes and thoughts are always correct. Therefore, people who hold different opinion are excluded from them. In the Little Miss Sunshine, all the members in the family hold different thoughts and believes, and they don’t support with each other’s idea and eve sometimes against it, which cause the disfunction of the family. However, on the road trip to the Little Miss Sunshine competition, they learn to understand each other and respect each other’s ideas and believes. Also, at the end, Olive’s appearance and performance are totally different from social expectation, her family still support her. Every kind of idea and believe in the society needs to be respect. Although people thinks that it is not appropriate or hard to accept, they still need to be respect. Not only people who hold different idea has been marginalized in the society, people who is different from the majority is isolated from the society. There is a quote in the invisible man that “ Light is the truth and truths the light”. The invisible people are living in the dark and deserving society which could put some attention on them. They deserve light that could light them up in the dark. The light could be a newspaper to a post online that could draw public attention to them. Each of person in this world is an individual. They could be similar but they cannot be identical. Therefore, there will be mire than million kind of thought and belief. We cannot force everyone think in the same way. it is not necessary to accept every kind of thoughts, but we cannot deny those thoughts different from us. We can disagree but we cannot ignore their thought and believes.

Hope in Alienation

What it is hope? What can hope bring to us? For normal people, hope might be just a part of their life, that can make their life more interesting and push them forward. However, for people who been alienated by the society, hope is the only thing that they can have, and been able to hold on. They fight for their dreams, base on the tiny hope that they have and without the help from the society. They might be invisible, but their hope light them up until one day the society can finally start to notice them.

In the story Invisible Man, the invisible man lights up a lots of light bulbs in his room, and believes that “the truth is the light and light is the truth”. Yes, light is the basic of everything, and even the invisible man needs it and loves it. Without the light, the shadow does not exist, and there will no meaning for invisible man. It not only represents the warm, but also the hope inside the invisible man that wishes the fair chance for color people that as same as the white people. The invisible man uses his own way to “punish” people who does not respect the alienation people, cases like racial invisibility. He has a deep understanding and connections with all the things that happening around him, like the music that he is hearing, he makes the connection with music, and questions if that is possible to make a music also invisible. To be invisible does not mean to be left out by the society, but to use another way to experience the reality world with a different identity position. As the light still following the invisible man, he is living for himself and using his “superpower” to make his life as meaningful as possible with his lights, which is the symbol of the hope, to makes himself become visible and important for the society.

Technicians

The article published by CNN mentioned that “….Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.” The quote makes me think of technicians, those people who control the AI. I cannot say all, but I would say many of those A.I. technicians are alienated either by themselves or by the society in some way. 

People have certain stereotypes toward those technicians. For example, when I was a little, I’m an introverted child; I enjoy stay alone with my puzzles. Then some of my parents’ friends said I would be suitable to be a technician or writer. Because of the social expectation, more and more introverted people choose to study engineering, mathematics and many different types of sciences.

Let’s assume there is an intelligent student, who just graduate from an engineering college. Then he starts to build robots for living. He wants to make the best robots in the world. Why? Because he wants the world to see him. This is his own way of showing his values. He does not care what would the robot do in the future. What he cares most is he wants to be the one who changes the world. This example is just a personal assumption. I just want to make my point that one of the reason why some of those technicians are keep working hard regardless of AI threats might be this.

So I hope the society could pay more attention to those people who study and develop AI. There should not be any social stereotype toward any jobs.

The other side of alienation

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

   Conformity is the disguise for ignorance. Like what T. S. Eliot described in the Hollow man, people now have a natural inclination to give up their individuality and join the crowd. They repeat the action of others; they live a meaningless life. When they communicate, there is no mind to mind connection. They look united but their hearts are alienated. 

   In the dust of our planet is a philosophical book about nihilism. However, it didn’t become popular until a model wore a clothe with the cover of the book. Then it became a trend and people started to follow it. However, they didn’t really understand the idea behind the cover. They are like the hollowed men, murmuring the same words with their dry throats. 

   The reason that causes these phenomenons is that people are afraid of alienation. The more they fear, the more they try to conform, the more they are alienated from one another. In a way, technology helps to solve this problem. Instead of talking face to face, people communicate online. There is a buffer zone in front of them so they care less about the appropriate things they should say. Technology provides people a shortcut to one another’s mind. 

   Alienation is not something that people should be afraid of, it is something that people experience. To be left alone and think about what matters to them, is what people should be doing. Not repeating others’ steps, or becoming a hollowed shell. 

Overcome their Alienation

      In the movie Little Miss Sunshine, the characters in the family are all really different and each one of them have their own understanding and their opinions but when they have problems with something no one in the family will reach out to help them instead they will make up something and even try to scold them. They are all self-centered and not willing to listen and understand others. Even not accepting others opinions. However, they had a road trip to California and throughout their trip, there are a lot of weird things happened that require the whole family to work together and overcome their alienation. The last scene when the whole family went up to the stage and dance with olive at the little miss sunshine contest really brings the family together and finally giving courage to everyone to reach out and realize that they shouldn’t be apart from each other and their action really makes a different to olive. Just like the poem from TS Elliot, The Hollow Man, the poem is set during the depression after the WW1 when people are still finding their daily routine and try to get over the fear and also get over with poverty. These people work really hard to find themselves. Just like the characters in the movie trying to find themselves and know what is the point for them to be in this house. It’s a long process that people have to get through but they will feel the joy and excitement when they finally found their way of living and in the movie, the family work together to help olive to overcome her obstacle. Helping others not only make others happy but also making yourselves happy. 

The Dangers of Technology

    As the expansion of technology progresses, I predict that our social interactions shall decrease drastically because of both our curiosity and our obsession with artificial intelligence. It was mentioned in class that throughout history children made an object entertaining simply through their imagination and their perception of it, but new devices have been introduced to our youngest generation, and this new technology communicates information to the child rather than the child projecting their desires and imagination on the object. If technology continues to be produced at this exponential rate, we will have programs that we can manipulate to create our desired friend, family, or spouse which will in turn cause us to become antisocial and neglect to socialize and interact with each other because their faults will be heightened when compared to our “perfect” friend that is made up of digital codes and wiring. This phenomena of becoming antisocial due to technology was mentioned in Bowling Alone. Unfortunately, there is a positive correlation between depression and lack of socialization which will become more and more relevant as we spend an increasing amount of time with artificial intelligence and a decreasing amount of time with other people. As a result of the lack of socializing, jobs that are at places such as clubs, the movies, and community centers will become nonexistent, therefore, increasing the unemployed population as well as depression. In conclusion, our mental health is at risk every time that we we discover or invent a new program, every time that we spend another hour watching television, and every time that we are not sharing company with another person.