Of Our Hopeless Society and Generations today

Yesterday I had a very insightful lunch-talk with my good friend and artist Argie regarding the status of the our current society. Here is the excerpt of our conversation.

• Argie: Man, our society now is hopeless.
• Jan2x: How can you say that?
• Argie: Look man, ten years ago, I was already here in Manila, people are not like this! You can still talked to them, greet them. You can still go to many places without fear.
• Jan2x: So you mean you aren't keen of progress?
• Argie: This is not an issue of progress, man. I don't have anything against progress, but I'd rather choose simplicity.
• Jan2x: But you know what, humanity is more humane now compared to the Middle Ages. We don't cut anymore heads nowadays.
• Argie: But that is what makes this society sick. We are full of pretenders. Why don't we go back to our primordial state? Let's unleash our animal instinct.
• Jan2x: But why will you do that? Do you want to go back to being a stone man?
• Argie: It's not really going back to being a stone man but rather going back to our culture. For example in the Middle East, some of them don't mind cutting the heads of another person because it's their culture. The problem with our country is that we have lost our culture a long time ago.

Silence... changed topic.

• Jan2x: You know what, I read that generations today don't travel as much as we do in the past.
• Argie: Yes man, when I was young I used to go to a lot of places.
• Jan2x: Yeah, today parents are afraid that their children will be exposed to reality, be exposed to certain diseases, that's why they keep a very watchful eye on them afraid that they might wander off the streets.

End of lunch...

After that, I happened to remember a conversation I had with my fellow colleague. He said that Philippine society today is really hopeless. We are corrupt to the very core. He wished all the inhabitants in this country will disappear and new Filipinos will be born.

I say tough luck with that. But he did have a point. What do you think? Are we really that screwed?