The Institutional Life
Have you ever stopped and wondered how limited our freedom really is given how institutionalized our lives are?
It is true that everyone makes mistakes. The problem is when an institution makes a mistake, you have to live with it, learn how to forgive and forget. When you make a mistake, on the other hand, it's entirely your responsibility; you are still the one who gets to live with it, and it doesn't matter whether the society will forgive you, they will forget you.
We have jobs to earn our money; we have banks to store that money. We have houses to secure our lives; we need mortages to pay for the house. We need savings for the rainy days; we then learn to invest to make our savings grow, so that we can support ourselves when we are old and crippled. We pay for insurance to protect ourselves; we pray that the doctors and nurses know what they are doing because there is no insurance to guarantee that. We equip ourselves with knowledge at school; we get our degrees to better compete in the society still ill-prepared and under-informed. We rely on our government for the most important decisions on our lives and of our neighbors; we organize and put ourselves in danger to protest against unwanted decisions....
We pay everywhere we go to maintain our particular lifestyles. Yet with everything we pay for we get rules and restrictions that protects the businesses and institutions more than their patrons. What do we really get in the end? Perhaps more rules and restrictions that we can ever remember, which contrastingly drives the ignorance in consumers, resulting in situations where when something goes wrong the businesses will have something to fall back on, and we are simply left speechless. I have tried to read all the fine prints in every document I received. My eyes are wearing out knowing you just can't win.
It is true that everyone makes mistakes. The problem is when an institution makes a mistake, you have to live with it, learn how to forgive and forget. When you make a mistake, on the other hand, it's entirely your responsibility; you are still the one who gets to live with it, and it doesn't matter whether the society will forgive you, they will forget you.
We have jobs to earn our money; we have banks to store that money. We have houses to secure our lives; we need mortages to pay for the house. We need savings for the rainy days; we then learn to invest to make our savings grow, so that we can support ourselves when we are old and crippled. We pay for insurance to protect ourselves; we pray that the doctors and nurses know what they are doing because there is no insurance to guarantee that. We equip ourselves with knowledge at school; we get our degrees to better compete in the society still ill-prepared and under-informed. We rely on our government for the most important decisions on our lives and of our neighbors; we organize and put ourselves in danger to protest against unwanted decisions....
We pay everywhere we go to maintain our particular lifestyles. Yet with everything we pay for we get rules and restrictions that protects the businesses and institutions more than their patrons. What do we really get in the end? Perhaps more rules and restrictions that we can ever remember, which contrastingly drives the ignorance in consumers, resulting in situations where when something goes wrong the businesses will have something to fall back on, and we are simply left speechless. I have tried to read all the fine prints in every document I received. My eyes are wearing out knowing you just can't win.
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