When we make choice(Blog 6)

Currently, I face a problem on how to make a choice to my major based on interest and desire. Even though I am interested in mechanical engineering, after attending the conference held by the panel several days ago, I become increasingly confused by what my interest and desire is.

Then I ask my friends and seniors about how they choose their majors. To my surprise, most of them do not know their interest and desire either. Furthermore, the priority of common's consider is the begin salary of the major. Now that that they want to make money but not to learn the science and engineering, how about the university only open the social and economy course. Educator may rebut me that the prime function of university is to nurture undergraduates' skills and way of thinking but not let all of us become scientist. Since their motivation is not to make some improvement on the technology; how could they contribute to their majors? Now that they are so pragmatic, why not open more economy and social course?

To evaluate whether what our choice is worthwhile not, let us focus on our motivation first. To begin with, let me category the type of motivation for you. First, the most common motivation is to gain money, power and status. It is hard to judge whether this motivation is right or not. But after referring to human's history, it is not hard to find that they are three important elements of human tragedy. For instance, Eugénie Grandet, the Wars of the Roses and plagiarism in thesis. It seems people require a nice excuse to elevate what they want to gain in to an art form. Second, the other motivation that control human's social activities is belief. All things related to religion seem so sacred that people even can sacrifice for it. Religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the universe.(from Wikipedia)But incidents related to religion becomes not so holy, such as Holy War, a group of people pillage and slaughter other group of people with despite there is a long distance. It is no doubt to say this action is not holy anymore. The meaning of religion is positive and gives motivation to the adherent. Even though, some people use religion to gain what they want in an immoral way such as pope Urban the Second. Religion also becomes a tool of the politician sometimes such as the death of the Joan of Arc. Martin Luther has said, “Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense and understanding”. It seems like a more confusing expression of religion. It covered the skin of the religion lest that the nature of religion is detect. Besides, this motivation does not play a role in our decision.

It is pathetic to see that our motivation to make a major choice is based on the first factor that I mentioned: money power and status. What I want to say is that it is even pathetic that we focus on what we need but not what we want. Human without ideal is like a fresh wandering on the road. It is not only our lamentableness but also the lamentableness of the society.