4.2Mviews
What’s Wrong With Today’s Society Captured In 58 Though-Provoking Illustrations By Al Margen
4.2Mviews
We all know that nothing is perfect. Our modern society included. Many things are problematic and troubling, and even though we notice them, we are not too fast to work on fixing pressing social issues.
Al Margen, an illustrator from Buenos Aires, Argentina, creates depressing drawings pinpointing the world problems of our times. He creates dark drawings that are sometimes louder than words and are extremely thought-provoking. The author himself is very critical about his works and talks about them in a really artistic manner: "They are children of boredom, nonconformity or anger. <...> They are the representation of discarded ideas. They are the garbage of the subconscious. But they are more visceral and sincere than other sad drawings because they have no obligation to please. <...> Because they were born only by an impulse and nothing more. Because they were born to annoy because they show the problems with society."
Take a look at some of his satirical works on social problems below and let us know which one was your favorite.
More info: Facebook
This post may include affiliate links.
I love this one. I teach 7th grade science and this is one of the biggest things I'm trying to figure out how to fix in my class. When I want students to really think, they get so frustrated. They just want to know the minimum requirements to pass. So it's a big mental shift to go from doing enough to pass the test, to actually understanding concepts and applying them to your every day life. It's hard to get them to think strategically and use processing skills that are valuable in science class, but will REALLY be useful in life. Instead of just making them memorize a bunch of crap that they'll forget the second they get the report card.
I think this illustration shows a different perspective than yours, more in the lines along "formal education suffocates creativity". Which is I believe is more like you say, creativity can only go as far as the person wants, I am thankful for school actually with out it there would be more idiots in the world. A person capable of critical thinking should be able to take only what they need.
Load More Replies...
it reminds me the song "we don't need no education" meaning that education kills our power to think.. i don't know what to say
Do you mean "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd? If so then I agree, the message is definitely similar.
Load More Replies...
I liked a lot of these. However, this one seems to present a message that is absolutely not true. In stark contrast to what this illustration implies, it tends to be people who lack a formal education that feel that formal education "stops thinking" or that it "squelches creativity;" and it couldn't be further from the truth. I'd have to agree with Socrates when he said that education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel. Nearly every significant medical and technological breakthrough over the last several hundred years has been discovered and developed by men with advanced chemical engineering, civil and structural engineering, and Science based degrees. To say that education simply breaks a person's "light bulb" only to cover it with a graduation cap is ridiculous, and I feel truly sorry for anyone that lacks so much formal education that they actually believe this to be true.
Actually, today's university "education" has become "endoctrination" where only one type of thought is allowed.
Load More Replies...
That's what I'm saying for kids. Not for mines but for those I want to hire as cheap, uneducated labour in the future!
Very subjective..depends on many things. School and university (judging by the hat) have a tremendous difference imo. While most modern schools try to conform their students into "mindless working hands", the right choice of university can expand your mind more than anything you ever imagined :D. In my student years I was one of the worst students of the whole school, bad grades, "rebellious attitude", basically I was labeled a bad seed; probably because i wasn't so manageable as the other kids i guess. A few years later, and after some ridiculous jobs, I realized how this life of servitude just isn't for me. I enrolled in a graphic design university which taught me so many-many things, I finally experienced a thirst for knowledge, a spark light up inside of me and I knew...that was it. Now I'm working with a friend as a free-lancing duo and i couldn't be happier and fulfilled....all thanks to a second class university that was able to show me the true bliss of education!
It really saddens me to see so many people blame education for this soul sucking situation we got in our schools. It's the system, not the subject.
Load More Replies...
Too bad we do not live where we are free to challenge bad ideas that people promote in college but can not defend. You could be graded down if you don't go with the flow. Perception is not reality and yet it is not only taught as such, but those who question that ideology are called names like we are still in elementary school. ...sad
I see this & it's like whoever is over school curriculum forbids creativity, doesn't allow for individual thought & indoctrinates them with whatever they see fit!!! Most liberal colleges are that way & elementary, middle & high schools are following in their footsteps!!!
"Imagination is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited." Albert Einstein
I find this a highly pessimistic view of education especially as the assumption here is, there are no ideas or creativity in the first place (non lit lightbulb). I am fortunate to teach students music in a university and I receive stunning composition portfolios all the time. I know pre undergraduate thinking can be somewhat prescriptive in students but once on the path to critical thinking and reflection, the results become remarkably good (should they choose to). I wish I could have been as 'sorted' as some of the 21 year olds I witness on graduation day!
Most of these are ambiguous at best. Some just a bunch of crap. ESP. No. 4–parents arguing in front of their children is new somehow. Puhleeze. And education? Vastly overstated. You want to be creative? Learn to read and write. You want to be a climate change denier? Skip science class.
Mark Twain - 'I never allowed my schooling to interfere with my education'. You can 'teach' all you wnat, but people will only learn (or retain) what they want.
These are the people that voted for a higher minimum wage instead of getting higher wages. Minimum wage is just that minimum wage no matter how high that wage is. Crying shame the incompetence and ignorance run rampant.
This is why I'm leaving the classroom. I'm tired of pushing someone else's agenda!
An education where we are taught to learn and repeat stuff to gain a certificatation. Whatever happened to objective and free thinking.
Having read all the comments on all the pictures, I must say they are a fascinating insight into boredpanda's psyches!
Our. Education system takes free original thoughts and often replaces them with broken outdated thoughts
"We don't need no education...We don't need no mind control...No dark sarcasm in the classroom..."
No, not true. This picture is how the non-educated come to view education.
Although I don't agree with the thought behind this illustration, I respect the right to your opinion.
It's true if in school you learn only facts, bat not how to understand them.
Guess you've never had any good university's teachers then.
Load More Replies...
The artist is trying to point out what he sees as wrong with our society, so, this is saying the educational system tries to get at the ideas a person has, smash them, replace them with what they are teaching in order for them to be called educated.
I know how it feels to walk up dollar stairs and be met with a dick to the face
When the mind's defense mechanism is to drown the possibility of thoughts in music.
Peace does not always bring about freedom. And not hard to become a prisoner of peace. Bane said it best, victory has defeated you.
I think , socety tries to make you look mad if you have different opinions ...or ideas
It's hard to be a kid in a money-less family, when the parents won't change their lifestyles to the lesser amount of money they now have. You have to give up so much of yourself to try to make things better, as far as money goes, and it all goes down the drain anyway. It really, really sucks.
Look at that. He's only chained by his mind. His feet and arms are let free. And the chains leading to his mind are connected to negligible obstacles. It's the mind that's keeping you away from love...
Shackled to the internet. So true. So many people live their lives on the Net, they forget there's a life away from it.
I think it's more to do with stereotyping and how we view people based on a few arbitrary "defining" characteristics. Rich people are greedy, fat people only think about food, police officers are just out to stop people from having fun, and a beautiful woman is just a beautiful body. Flawed thinking.
The one think too much of the past, the other one is embarrassed by the future and the third one can't live the present day, so they all come here to take their "carpe diem" pils...
Turn off consumer mentality. We're supposed to care for the earth, not consume it.
With these drawings, as I believe most of us get what the artist is trying to say here, its clear that we really are in a dystopian society and we just don't see it because we don't want to see it. sigh...
Really? I see power stripping away dignity, strength, and freedom from helpless individuals & obliterating them
How about he who has help and access to better technology is going to produce more than one who's working with old technology on their own. It's about the inherent advantages in the class disparity that leads those who don't even see what they have as an advantage to think they're simply better, or that others are less: less clever, less creative, less able.
Love is blind. You will open the door to your heart and let them walk right in if you don't know the person and only go by appearances, and they could be hiding their intent to do you harm.
Her blood, sweat, and tears have gone down the drain as a college graduate.
Dude takes pills either for drug addiction or Rx and it alters his state of mind so that he is unable to write. Everything that comes from him goes to waste hence the trashcan
Finger nails have a nail bed, so the roses under the nail of the fingers with wedding rings are "a bed of roses". The barbed wire represents a prison you can't escape from. What they though was bliss when they got married turns out to be a life sentence. The man and woman are popping up from a toaster. They are done, dry. Their love has dried up. From her head is a spool of silk. A spring silkworm produces silk until it dies. There is a Chinese thought that likewise, giving one's thought to another person is like a spring silkworm producing silk until it dies. He has a banana on his head. There is a book called Mr. Bananahead at Home about Mr. Bananahead who tries hard to do all the chores on Mrs. Bananahead's list but can't get them right. So the symbolism on their heads means even though they both have tried to to please each other, in the end it is no good, if that is all they do. It is too consuming and they dry up as people.
The life of social media. Everyone posts looking for validation via likes. Only to find opposition from people close to them.
She is a prostitute. Her tongue holds powerful men in her prison. Bc with the ability to blackmail she has power over them with the words she speaks. The only one who pleases her is her drugs where she can find escape from what it is she does.
