BUILDING A BRIGHT FUTURE TROUGH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IS PATHETIC MOVEMENT

By

Dhava Ananda Syahriandri

1175030071

Diaz Airil Frisandipa

1175030073

When first getting to know language, humans use images to communicate. The discovery of images in
caves that are thought to be tens of thousands of years old indicates how ancient humans
communicated. For example an image found in a cave in East Kalimantan. The images of animals and
some humans with simple shapes are estimated to be 40 thousand years old. The image is a sign to be
conveyed to others. Why don't they use words? Anthropologists suspect, at the time, that words had
not yet been born. The birth of words coincided with the evolution of human cognition. Human
cognition is related to intelligence genes. The more developed the individual human organism, the
more developed his cognition. That's where humans then create language in the form of words, which
are then arranged into sentences, and all the rules that are agreed upon among their communities.
Charles Darwin in his theory of evolution said, with the development of individual organisms, the
development of language through human intelligence is directly proportional to the development of
culture. Culture is formed because it responds to the increasingly complex needs of modern humans. In
line with Darwin, Edward Burnett Tylor, the anthropologist who pioneered the definition of culture, said
that culture emerged and evolved through cognition. Thus, the evolution of culture moves with
language.

IF we talk about literature, of course we will think about thick books written by an author or writer using
poetic style—romantic-dramatic and containing a moral message in it. As an art that uses language as its
medium (Danziger & Johnson, 1961), literature often portrays social and cultural phenomena that occur
around us. That is, literature stores a certain type of knowledge that enriches the reader's insight about
something in a certain range of contexts. Why are literary works created throughout the history of
human life? The simple answer is because literature is needed by humans. In addition to entertaining by
presenting the beauty and meaning of life, literature also functions to store historical memories and
other knowledge because in every certain historical periodization, literature is always there.
There is something oddity and itchy to talk that the idea language and literature can walk by side and do
something in such a team work to build man utopia or so many tag lines about brighter future is going to
be real and now is near in education environment or some of head major which said the same thing
about future, language, and literature. As a joke I could attack that the field of abstract can not be
simply like one plus one is two. Thus, language plus literature is not bright future as the meta narrative
which advertised.

The ultimate odd thing is actually very basic and easy to realize in state of consciousness is that the idea
of a future exists, but it is a big no, and no one can build it even language and literature, a shake that is
useless to celebrate.

Why is that so ?

In facts for those who live always want to build brighter and happier future for the sake of it, but
unfortunate the future is apathetic void of no aura to anyone, a land of the unknown. Moreover, the
oddity of the idea which existed in such a reality in this time is born from a systematic doubt. This doubt
is the fact that human life is shaped by contradictions fighting each other in every phase of the past and
the present, not the future. Contradictions can arise and have an impact only when they have space and
time, as well as from the human ability as an experienced being who has a personality. As Geyer argues
“Human beings can be described as (personality) systems in continuous interaction with their
environment. This implies that they need to select information from their environment, which should be
relevant for reacting to or acting upon it, and indeed produce information for their environment.
Information is being used here in the broadest possible sense of anything indicating any change in any
aspect of the system's environment, but with the proviso that it be considered relevant by the system:
information is, therefore, a relational concept, as is information-processing. In this broad sense it
includes emotions, non-verbal signals and the like.” (Geyer, 1972). The human effort to provide
information in the form of relevant information in life is proof that the relationship between space, time
and humans who experience it never touches the future.

Departing from this, the building space can never be built, let alone given a clear identity, the space of
interaction to get the information is unavailable to turn the wheel of contradictions in life, let alone
build and illuminate life itself. The idea and following statement on the shake of ‘Bright Future’ in this
competition is simply a narrative fear to fight, but it is not an enemy or threat, but only needs to accept
that the future does not exist and there is no need to spend time looking for and creating. The "bright"
dictum is nothing but a form of alienation on the identities that have been mentioned, we trick our self
to think it real, to find meaning in meaningless, the mind keeps playing it disturbingly, disgustingly. It is
not a hero’s action, it is ignorance caused by a lack of critical thinking. Also perhaps human has been the
measure of all things and the maker of all meanings- an autonomous, inherently human was able to
transform the experience to knowledge for its empowerment, no longer blind to the present based by
language. Language as the result from this statement arise as substitution where language lies as human
product and objective structure, figuration of fact, a taste that human influences language because it
has empirical evidence to be understood in signification. But this is language negation itself, language is
precisely give us a picture of a world but not how it does, we act in space of language seems like
everything is hidden, but everything is open. To find meaning of word we do not look into ourselves, yet
look at the uses of the word in our way of life. For instance, as the analogy of ‘very pleasant pineapple’
from Ludwig Wittgenstein, is that nothing in our self to catch up meaning of how this ‘very pleasant’
must be, but how the way daily social order does around.

Thus, language and all meaning are inside the focus on social perspective and of linguistic analysis, in the
ways of everyday communication takes place. So from here, language sublimes as instrument upon
reality where all have no total determination, it cannot represent the world as a whole, there is no single
degree of accuracy let alone and immediate, shortly take a sides. Following Wittgenstein declare in Paul
Sheeman that all things are just “language games” (Sheman, 2004) or in radical version that human act
and though like they are shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of
man.

The attack upon there is no future has become very simple that, the sake of world is require language as
the tool for meaning. Future which mentioned as void, land of the unknown to anyone is limit of nothing
because it has no language. The limit of our world is the limit of our language. Why we still do not accept
the fact of limit and nothing in this world?

Making literature as a ride, for example, is tantamount to a dead end. In addition to “being a social
document that provides space for humans to express the life they experience” (Faruk, 2014), it is a
space for creativity that is based on imagination, or Terry Egelton prefers the term "even in literal 'work
of untrue' it also has evaluative terms of visionary and inventive" (Nurrachman, 2019). Literary
imagination confirms that literature has the attitude of being able to find and have views. Therefore, this
power can break down everything that has not been decomposed in human life from past and now,
then build alternative schemes or open up unelected paths. For example, the phenomenon of popular
literature, especially in the form of films with the sci-fi genre with the theme of cybernetic, dystopian
discourse, technocracy, artificial intelligence which is considered to be the future is actually a reflective
form of probability that cannot be explained, Alienated by the fact of real life where those all are not
selected to be, the discovery of views in these literary works is the attitude of morality about
fundamental life that meets such themes which already existed and mutated in dialectical room. Even in
material point of view, this is only the manifestation freedom representation trough the beauty which is
a property of thing; inherited naturally, thus still aesthetic of literary works which give such an effect of
imagination is only defamiliarization of an objective property of things which only existed in current and
aged in past.

So that literature actually only builds from the past to the present, with attitudes and opportunities that
represent anything and an arena for the struggle for meaning. Rolland Barthes in Paul Sherman states "is
the ideal for every construction of world; it is unreal time of cosmogonies, myth, history and novels. . .
The world is not unexplained since it told like a story ” (Geyer, 1972). Thus, the relationships that exist in
literature can only be used to build by addressing the past and the progress of the day which is alienated
by the current chosen path of life, but is wrapped as if it emerged from the future and the greatness of
literature makes it feel new. In fact, it is the discovery of a view of creative work based on imagination.
Dense, literature with facts and imagination provides space for the paths of life from the past and
present to be given space, saved from alienation from the chosen life.

In conclusion, building a glorious future will only be in vain, let alone sacrificing language and literature
as building materials. Language will become closed because there is no social arena, literature will be
sterile because facts and imagination are not fulfilled to give birth to views and discoveries, humans
should realize and accept nothing like the future. We as humans should respect by building attitudes to
the past and present, not the future, looking for meaning that is open to every door of life. Rescuing
unselected meanings to be rebuilt from the past and present in dialectical way. for it is better to be lost
in a state than in nothing. So it would not be odd if the theme was "Building Bright Past and Today
through Language and Literature", this will not be in vain.
References

Hakim,Nurman. (2020). MASA DEPAN BAHASA. https://majalah.tempo.co/read/bahasa/159393/masa-

depan-bahasa.

Faruk. (2014). Pengantar Soiologi Sastra. Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar.

Geyer, F. (1972). Individual Alienation and Information Processing: a System Theoritical

Conceptualization. Uberty, 191.

Nurrachman, D. (2019). Critical Theory " Contemporary Theory on Culture, Art, Language,

and Literature". Bandung: Pustaka Aura Semesta.

Sheman, P. (2004). Post Modernism and Philosophy. The Cambridge Companion to Post

Modernism, 22.