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#COVID 19

Lecture 3

N.B. Our Main Premise is:

“There is a need to adapt and assimilate in order for us to survive”

Reasons for this are the following

1. We need to adapt to our immediate environment for our sanity

We need to familiarize ourselves with our normative structures like family, peers, groups, community, or
society at large

We need to embrace them in order to maintain our own psychological well-being (this becomes
questionable later in our discussion)

Thus, I need to accept/embrace/familiarize with those rules and policies implemented by my own family
(as a child), my own group of friends (as we grow older), my community (as a member of a particular clan,
tribe, or community), my company (as an employee/rank-and-file), my own religious community, etc.

I need also to adapt to the role bestowed upon me by society at large: I may simultaneously act as a father,
or mother, brother or sister, friend, as entrepreneur, as spiritual counsellor, as teacher, student, as helper, etc
– there are as many roles we can possibly act concurrently within our own community

All of these – we need to embrace – in order for us to become at least sane in our lives.

Thus we need to follow the dictates of our own tradition, culture, and heritage, for us to maintain our
mental well-being.

Without them, we become isolated, or separated which brings tremendous powerlessness and helplessness,
and unbearable anxiety

We are social animals – we need to be related with our fellows. We need to systematize our lives in order
for us to survive mentally….

We need to have our own set of friends to understand our own deepest struggles and joys in life…we need
to share our thoughts, aspirations, passions, desires, wishes, and even our sexual fantasies……

2. We need to assimilate the material conveniences offered by the world

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Marx says in German Ideology

We must begin by stating the first premise of all human existence and,
therefore, of all history, the premise, namely, that men must be in a position
to live in order to be able to "make history". But life involves before
everything else eating and drinking, housing, clothing and various other
things. . . The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy
these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an
historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as
thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to
sustain human life.

“his human relations to the world-seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting,

touching, thinking, observing, feeling, desiring, acting, loving-in short, all the
organs of his individuality are the active expression of human reality.”

Thus, we eat, drink, rest, and even procreate in order to survive

Seeing, hearing, smelling tasting, touching, thinking, observing, desiring, acting, loving are all human
realities we use to assimilate our lives with the material conveniences our society could offer

We eat! This is a fact of life.

But what we eat is found in the world – in our immediate environment/society

We Drink, and rest

But what we drink is again instituted by our environment

We procreate too

How we engage in sexual affairs, when and where to do it, is a matter coming from our society.

Thus, assimilation is a real. It is a matter of fact that we must to in order to survive.

I need to eat; I need to drink, but where, and how? We go to the market (Palengke) and buy our needs…for a more
convenient way, we go to the malls – we eat in Pancake House, Jollibee, McDonalds, have some coffee in Starbuko,
in the carinderia of aling Masing…etc….

In other words, what Marx is telling us is WE ARE THE ONES MAKING OUR OWN NARRATIVES,
CREATING OUR OWN VALUES, and GIVING MEANING TO WHATEVER WE DO

WE DO THESE BECAUSE WE WANT TO BE MORE HUMANE, MORE SELF-AFFIRMING BEINGS

We interact, we communicate, we engage in the HERE AND NOW OF HUMAN AFFAIRS

We interact, communicate, we engage with the world since there is a need towards “self-cultivation in the process of
endowing the things of nature with use and meaning.”
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Examples

I need my friends, my family; I need to communicate with them

I need to eat too, drink with my friends, and procreate my own inner desires and feelings

I need to engage myself with rules, policies, and paradigms for self-affirmations

Within my family, I enjoy that breezy afternoon sipping my favorite tea, struggle in buying our essential needs
during the lock down period

With my friends, I laugh till heaven’s drop over bottles of yakult…and Chuckie choco drinks!!! (kaya ganito katawan ko
siguro hahahaha)

I play the guitar, the piano, listen to Spotify, and play with my dogs too….drink coffee, tea,

In other words, lahat ng mga eto ay nangyayari sa here and now of human affairs

Hindi eto nangyayari sa ibang dimension...wala tayo sa langit….wala tayo sa ibang planeta…andito tayo sa
mundong eto…eto nay un, eto nay un mundo!!!!

Before we can talk of God, angels, spirits, and paradise, we have to deal first and foremost the here and the now of
life- our passions, desires, wishes, fantasies, our concrete struggle in order to make both ends meet,,,,,

Saan lahat nangyayari mga eto??? – dito!!!!..., dito sa mundong ginagalawan natin – particularly, all of these
happens within our specific here and now

Psycho-philosophically speaking, adaptation and assimilation refer to our own concrete existence as human beings =
this is me, this is my life (remember Bon Jovi singing)

It's my life, it's now or never

I ain't gonna live forever

I just want to live while I'm alive

Thus, Marx asserts again in Economic and Philosophical Manuscript of 1844

“To say that man is a corporeal, living, real, sensuous, objective being with natural
powers means that he has real, sensuous objects as the object of his being and of his vital
expression, or that he can only express his life in real, sensuous objects.”

We need to actively participate in creating our world i.e. we become somebody who is responsible for his own
actions, and thereby creating his own individuality.

In other words, the deepest meaning we could give to our lives is the meaning that we create in adapting and
assimilating the immediate environment that we have……
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Question

Is there something we missed here?

Is adapting and assimilating destructive after all?

When I eat, drink, rest, engage in fb, twitter, IG, tik-tok, YouTube, recreate along Ayala Malls, SM, Robinson, buy
my necessities there, relax in Coffee Bean, Starbucks, or Seattle’s….absorb myself again in the workplace, earning
thousands of pesos, giving my children their needs and wants, paying religiously those mind wrecking bills,
struggling to recompense those infinite amortization, etc….

Am I missing something?????

Is this all there is? Is this the real telos that we all envision?

Is this the project of modernity which philosopher’s argued hundreds of years ago?

Or….to use Charles Taylor’s comment…have we missed something in the horizon of life?

What do you think?