02-09-2021, Tuesday
Recently, I chatted with a very smart person about the relationship between the society and an individual.
He said: “Modern society has been constructed like a giant machine, and every part of the machine has lots of replacements who are waiting to be used.”
I replied: “This is very good. It ensures the giant machine of the society runs smoothly without worrying about missing any parts.”
“But society has made every individual to be replaced easily. Don’t you feel that you are nothing to the society?”
I laughed: “Oh, I thought smart people are irreplaceable and thus very important to the society.”
“Why do you laugh at it?”
I did not mean to put him down, so I expanded and shared my thought:
“I knew that big companies are designed this way, such as every employee is easily replaceable.
In the early growing stages of eBay in 2001, software developers were always extremely overworked, we worked 7 days a week in office at regular working hours and at home in the evening. One day while chatting with Grace, my colleague, about how over work made our life as working mothers much tougher, and about if we suddenly passed away, Grace commented: ‘We are replaceable workers to the company, but we are irreplaceable mothers to our kids.’ I still remember her insightful comments now.
However, society is too big for me to feel what you said.”
He replied: “The society is a big company.”
Then I thought a while. “Questioning a phenomenon makes you thinking more frequently.”
Comparing being a member of a company to being a member of a family: the first is always being replaceable, but the latter has more opportunities to be irreplaceable and essential. This is probably one of the reasons people wish to have a family, because we will have indispensable responsibility more in a family.
In this fast-changing modern society, I felt that family is still the cornerstone of a stable society and family is a good place for ordinary people to pursue their values in their life.