Mirror, Mirror
For a social act to occur, a basic mechanism in the social process should take place in the form of gesture. Mead, who popularized this thought, defined gesture as movement that acts as a specific stimulus for a sender to elicit a socially appropriate response to a receiver (Ritzer, 2011). The “significant” gestures as he posits, those that require thought on the part of the actor before a reaction, is the ability that distinguishes humans.
As I ponder through this definition and analysis, I am taken back to a certain “conversation of gestures” situation that happened during a night out on a late quarantine period. After a long day of volunteer work, I was invited over for a couple of drinking rounds together with the two local youth leaders of our municipality — both are my friends and to whom I shall focus my discussion. To provide a background, one of them is the son of the mayor and the other is an ex-officio member of the Sangguniang Bayan. Both sharing an aspiration to run for public office in 2022, discloses that their involvement in the recent “volunteer work” works as a façade of a public impression that disguises and orchestrates a campaign in two-years’ time. On a serious note, we were talking about political principles and both of them seem to agree on the notion of “fighting fire with fire”, claiming that in order for them to reach the level of authority by which they can create a positive impact to the current system, they are in favor of going with the ebb of traditional politics and are willing to take trapo measures as necessary. Meaning they are willing to tolerate local homophobia as of the moment, or approve the municipality’s 9M-worth of loan for a water dredger/excavator in the midst of the pandemic.
Displeased with the claims of my socio-political circle, out of my sobriety I argued the necessity of “challenging the system”. I took this angle to present that in these pressing times we need leaders who can democratically bring our claims to a platform of change — no matter how large or small their authority is. With my angry verbal rebuke that must have worked better than my contorted body language together with some facts I spiced on them regarding social institutions shaping individual’s identity, these two friends of mine had internalized the conversation of gestures and constituted a “thinking” to occur. The following week, they already have some major physical transformations (dyed hair, piercing, and tattoos) which suggests their way of “challenging the system”. What interests me most is aside from this interpretation, they were now able to take a stand and be vocal with certain local issues than they were before. Specifically, one of them told me that they realized the necessity to break away from the toxic norms of traditional politics. Though I am not sure if this initiative is still coming from an extensive desire to public impression or out my “gesture”, it nevertheless engaged them into reflecting — which made this event memorable for me.
Reference:
Ritzer, G. (2011). Sociological Theory. 8th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. From https://www.aca-demia.edu/33077856/_George_Ritzer_Sociological_Theory_8th_Edition_BookFi_org_
