Media in Culture Deterioration
The reason we admire everything that is foreign is because we are not very familiar with the richness of our culture. Do we respect our culture and our products? Do the foreign media dictate our life styles, values and practices? Is there a tendency in us to be easily polluted by exotic, superficial expressions of foreign cultures and lose sight of the positive values they hail like polite manners (po/opo), discipline, nobility of work, respect for humans and environment, gender equality, cleanliness, sharing of goods, etc?
Does this cultural invasion through the media affect our social relationships? Today there is a growing trend towards nuclear families, careerism for both genders, free mixing, moral permissiveness, growing rate of abortion, instant-remote controlled happiness, loss of meaning in life and consequent despair. (Please refer to ECCLESIA IN ASIA, the portion on the Youth). Human beings are becoming isolated entities with no time for each other, although the world is shrinking into a global village. The real danger is that without discarding our many built-in superstitions and unhealthy social structures, like the family, we absorb only superficial elements of the Western culture. In fact, their view of man, society and God are different and in this patch up, aren’t we in danger of losing our own identity? Are we also losing our sense of God? Our sense of sinfulness? Guilt?
