Disclaimer: Our topic may not apply to those individuals below poverty. Most (if not all) of them don’t have their “self” to help themselves. Therefore, they should get help without assuming they’ll accept the subsidies to help themselves. Remember, they don’t have their “self” to help themselves. However, this topic is mostly applicable to those who still have their “self” to help themselves or something left that could resemble themselves, but for whatever reason, they don’t know or just didn’t choose to help themselves.
Case example: Monching’s Psychological Landscape (Part 2 of 2).
A simple laborer named Monching, who doesn’t own television and a smartphone fulfills his obligation working every day. During lunchtime, he goes to nearby carinderia (a.k.a. “turo-turo”: a local eatery selling, serving and viands with wooden benches. Wherein customers literally point what they want to eat from an array of cauldrons). While eating, he usually watches Philippine noontime TV shows where celebrities sing, dance, put up games and organize competitions, then handing out prizes maybe (unintentionally) providing false hopes that if someone does simple things (sometimes including stupid gestures), he/she gets to have money.
Everyone including the food server enjoys the show! – There’s so much laughter brought by celebrities throwing out jokes. There’s also sympathy and a bit of drama as well when the celebrity stars interview contestants; giving them few petty advice, help them through moral support then gives out cash prizes. It sure entertains Monching as this show doesn’t require him to think; watch-to-relax kind of show, see it as it is, and definitely relates to Filipino society – most likely the poor.
As he continues munching his lunch, he thought.
Dancers, singers, and other showbiz artists look gorgeous; they sure get paid well. Someone has to be talented and courageous enough to bring their skills to the audience. My daughter has the potential to be a good singer. – At this point, subconsciously, he starts to neglect the importance of education.
And life is undoubtedly more significant than he thought…
(End of case example)
Our attachment to our favorite entertainment noontime shows has something to do why Filipino political candidates sing, dance, share jokes (or whatever it is they might do to appear entertaining) during campaigning season. And similar to those celebrities handing out prizes, they provide giveaways too – it’s all enclosed in those envelopes they distribute.
Who doesn’t want to laugh? We are happy individuals in the first place. It shows how we deal with situations (including those serious ones), and it’s also the cause why memes are often trending for us. Whether it is because we’re initially apprehensive to look serious or we are unknowingly under the spell of that famous phrase we often hear in Filipino movies / TV drama series (teleseryes) that goes like this: “…..hindi na bale, basta’t ang importante masaya” (it doesn’t matter, what’s important is there’s happiness), laughing it out is our popular choice. Some even weigh laughing as equivalent to happiness.
It’s a show of course; it will do its purpose of making us entertained. Like what we discussed in Sensationalizing Poverty in the Philippines; how we let ourselves influenced by what we see and hear is our responsibility. Our noontime shows exist to entertain to keep itself in business and are apparently legal. Just like junk foods, they’re unhealthy, yet still, exist.
As we continue to indulge ourselves with these noontime shows, certain groups of our population are experiencing its disabling passive effects. The majors include:
Less aware when and how to take things seriously.
Every individual has their way of coping mechanisms, smiling or laughing in any phase of the situation could be one of them. And it often works! It adds to an individual’s resiliency fueling perseverance.
Would it be an imprudent option to laugh it out? It depends on an individual. It sure helps to figure out first whether there’s a denial of something. Laughter is the best medicine as they say, but it’s best felt after figuring out whether there is a problem or none.
Serious issues in-front of us, we’re just good at making fun of it – give it a day, and you’ll see memes out of it.
For others who don’t want to read further on serious contents because they already judged it as too complicated for them after skimming few sentences would sure be left behind. And they complain of what’s happening around them as if they have a good understanding of these certain issues being brought up. Then once they get serious, they pick up ideas, opinions, and concerns that are popular or something they can only understand which are often aligned with their views. What’s wrong with it? – It doesn’t provide them an incentive to think differently or see it from a different angle which would require some effort, thus help broaden their understanding.
In this case of being less aware when and how to take things seriously, the attempt of putting such effort was set aside because it wasn’t taken seriously in the first place. Worse, we even made fun of it.
Ironically, we can’t expect the rest of the world to take us seriously having this kind of behavior. Who knows, maybe they (the rest of the world) got some hot stuff hilarious jokes to share too, sure we’ll laugh at it anyway. Then we get distracted; or search for other funny scenes, and so the issue gets forgotten as if it was resolved.
Counterproductive, unnoticed.
Instead of helping ourselves to be good at something, or at least feed ourselves with ways on how to improve ourselves becoming better individuals, we allow distractions consuming our spare time such as following gossips about our favorite artists and watching a bunch of humorous scenes happened in our favorite noontime shows (through online streaming. There are others who mimic those scenes or funny punch lines to share something on social media. Some even dedicate time to editing something and rephrasing before posting it, then gets distracted keeping track of who liked; who shared; plus read and respond to those comments.
So what? We just wanted to be happy right? Let’s try to observe ourselves. If our happiness (whatever definition each of us has) is mostly coming from media entertainment, that also means we are only watching happiness as it stimulates our senses (by responding through laughing, or at some point let’s say shedding some tears of joy). Meaning, we’re not really involved. It wasn’t us who made us happy, we just reacted on what we saw – which in most cases we found something funny, and we laughed. Laughing doesn’t present much value of happiness; it starts with getting involved.
ENGAGE, PARTICIPATE, and PURSUE – Simple words with a relentless web of reasonable interpretations, that’s why we have to keep it simple as we can. Thus, the cycle continues as long as we PURSUE.
An enriching way to view Happiness:
Those false hopes of becoming a showbiz artist.
This stems from those parents who fantasize their kids to become child stars someday, up to those teenagers and early adults who think they’ll survive skydiving without a parachute as long as they believe they can!
Having a belief that a career in showbiz is not as easy as by just being good at doing something. Without having credible ideas on how narrow the demands are, it’s easy for these individuals to shove the essence of education under their imaginary red carpet as they walk towards their dream limo. After all, the prosperity of a showbiz artist could attain looks promising than going to school and study “How to stay unemployed after graduation” – (sarcastically speaking).
Or wait a second, fame could be another factor too. Being famous for somewhat notably good brings confidence; a feeling of belongingness; a sense of being adored; the feeling of being extraordinary, a thought of expecting some sort of a particular treatment which includes plenty of smiles from most types of individuals or added service (with pleasure). For others, it’s a chance not to beg for respect.
Seriously, by just looking through our mobile devices for example, there are tons of ways to entertain ourselves such as a cat nibbling around, real-life short vids, stolen shots, memes, infomercials, music videos, you name it, it’s going to catch your attention. Given all these, it’s not surprising for those executives and producers to cut cost which puts pressure on those managers to be picky as well.
No education, no problem! Some of these people can sing with show bands, others can go solo through acoustic nights, while dancers can join with groups for competitions or entertainment. If they’re really passionate about it; fine, it’s a passion! Unfortunately, passion alone can not pull someone up in the world of entertainment. First is survival, ways on how to sustain one’s self if things don’t work as desired. Then finally, the critical thing to consider, is its relevance to the marketplace (i.e. what’s your niche, what can you do that others artists can’t, what makes you original, what does people want to see nowadays, what’s the size of the demand for people like you, and what difference would it make investing in you). Keep in mind; showbiz is a short-term for show business. – There’s always business behind.
As time flies of not hearing anything from a talent acquisition manager, the urge of earning a reasonable amount of money starts to kick-in. So they start looking for sources of living and end up doing a low-wage job where half of the time on a contractual basis, assuming they’re lucky enough to find one. Here’s the twist, “night recruiters” sees money from this group of individuals. Part of their standard operating procedure is to smile, motivate, offer a higher pay (depending on the risks involved), bluff, provide false promises, and persuade. But for the sake of our topic, let’s focus on aspiring showbiz artists.
Take for example our young women, as some of them aspire to have a career in showbiz (this includes modeling as well) while working with their day jobs, they’re deemed susceptible to the process of going underground (a.k.a. black market, underground economy, or shadow economy) depending on the influence they get from people around them ranging from their friends, friends of friends, up to the overall drunk customers’ demand. And eventually working in strip clubs might be next in line. Same goes for men, with a different type of customers obviously.
Apparently, it turns out as a choice; but whether this choice originated from an informed-decision or not, would remain debatable for a while. Because people at large are still affected by poverty, others claim that it’s working for them. They were able to buy livestock for their family to start a business with, able to finance having a concrete-made house, able to provide basic needs for their kids plus schooling, and most important of all, they were able to buy what they need to keep them going. Like the rest of us, they managed to be happy, somehow.
We laugh as long as it’s funny, and when we thought it’s not fun anymore, we hope or even pray that it’s not yet too late. If it turns out that it is not that bad, then we laugh again.
J. Letre