Why do we live according to customs in order to keep things in order? Order is not maintained by rules or guidelines, but by the man holding the gun. A system has been set up by our government, to stop us from doing the things we would instinctually do, and why? To maintain order, an elusive destination with which we are so out of touch that we no longer know it’s meaning. American troupes walked in to Afghanistan to maintain order. Hitler shipped Jewish women and children off to concentration camps to maintain order. The town folk in The Lottery stoned people to death each year to maintain the order of a good harvest. How far will we go to achieve order, how far will we go before we realize we have waltzed over the fine line of “erring on the side of caution” and into the oblivion that is overreaction? Do we need to have a thousand and one laws to determine what is and is not safe?
Life is a gift, a gift meant to be enjoyed. The customs, the laws, are they all necessary? If love of all things guides your steps, what harm can you cause? And if Hatred is the demon on your shoulder, have you ever wondered who put it there? A law tempts even the strongest of wills to break it, but a freedom encourages a man to do what is right in the eyes of his people. So why not live in caves, cease to work and live that way for the rest of forever? If this is what shall bring us peace and quiet then we shall and must do it. Take up the torch; hold it high, it’s time that we realized there is more to life than technology and society. It’s time that we realized that in order to obtain order, one must first leave it behind.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Questions, Questions, Questions.
Are there any things in our society now that should be questioned? I believe the correct answer would be: yes. It's always a good idea to question the things you do. Question everything, don't every just blindly follow something without ever wondering why. Everything in this world should be constantly questioned. That leads to innovation, that leads to enlightenment, but more importantly that's what makes it so fun. The world would be a dull place if no one ever questioned anything, if no one ever thought "what if..." if no one wondered "why did I...". That kind of world is about as fun and vibrant as stale bread.
It disgusts me that there are still people that don't question anything and live without ever wondering about the way they're doing things or about the things around them. They never wonder about things and simply go with the flow. That's not living, that's merely existing. By questioning things we can get information about things, amend mistakes that we have or have made, and more importantly it will change our moral compass. Whether you're a die hard environmentalist or a corporate business person you should always question everything that you do and sometimes question the things other people do. Because when you start to wonder, that's when things start to change, that's when things get interesting, and that's when you change the world. While it is true that sometimes you can't think just feel, it is not true that you should not question things. Because the world we know is wholly perceived from our physical five senses and nothing else. So everything is made up of what we think and know. So if you don't question things you'll only ever get to bask in the glory of a small part of this flawed yet flawless world.
It disgusts me that there are still people that don't question anything and live without ever wondering about the way they're doing things or about the things around them. They never wonder about things and simply go with the flow. That's not living, that's merely existing. By questioning things we can get information about things, amend mistakes that we have or have made, and more importantly it will change our moral compass. Whether you're a die hard environmentalist or a corporate business person you should always question everything that you do and sometimes question the things other people do. Because when you start to wonder, that's when things start to change, that's when things get interesting, and that's when you change the world. While it is true that sometimes you can't think just feel, it is not true that you should not question things. Because the world we know is wholly perceived from our physical five senses and nothing else. So everything is made up of what we think and know. So if you don't question things you'll only ever get to bask in the glory of a small part of this flawed yet flawless world.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
One Point for Adults!
The previous discourses have been on the proponents of the role of young people. However I would like to refute and point out the insignificance of young people in today's society.
Who influenced the youth population? Who announced war in Vietnam and Iraq or initiated the Manhattan project? The answer is adults. Adults built our society and founded laws to suppress the world of sins. One might ask why children and teenagers are so limited? There are two reasons: Dependency and naivety. Young people are here to learn from adults and are dependent on the guidance of elders. The youth are among the most impressionable of the general population. "Young folks" are gullible and lack the fundamental training of rational thought. That is why "young folks" are forced by law to attend school and receive this education in order to change the world of tomorrow when they reach adulthood, in which they are less credulous and attained rational thinking (creative thinking is perfectly rational). The future is the world of today's youth but the roles and actions are done by tomorrow's adults.
Who influenced the youth population? Who announced war in Vietnam and Iraq or initiated the Manhattan project? The answer is adults. Adults built our society and founded laws to suppress the world of sins. One might ask why children and teenagers are so limited? There are two reasons: Dependency and naivety. Young people are here to learn from adults and are dependent on the guidance of elders. The youth are among the most impressionable of the general population. "Young folks" are gullible and lack the fundamental training of rational thought. That is why "young folks" are forced by law to attend school and receive this education in order to change the world of tomorrow when they reach adulthood, in which they are less credulous and attained rational thinking (creative thinking is perfectly rational). The future is the world of today's youth but the roles and actions are done by tomorrow's adults.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Reply to the First Blog Question
Young folks in our society are the ones who bring changes to it. It can be in the form of scientific discovery or something as unimportant as a way to speak. Influence of the younger generation is often vital to a society's survival as a society without dynamics is well, one that lacks constant vigilance to the fore coming disasters of the world we are in. Every rule is made to be broken and every law is made to be shattered. Old customs are always subjected to changes whether it is necessary or not. Some changes are so dramatic that the entire culture is washed clean of its existence.
Certain traits are often preserved in each generation of change due to its importance to the society. For example, the stoning of the lottery winner from The Lottery is something that we have in our society but just in a slightly mutated version. It is called hazing. The purpose of hazing is not to punish someone for their bad luck, but to connect people together. "Only hardship can allow sweet fruits to be harvested." Serfs said that 600 years ago and they have sour and rotten apples. Anything that one fought for and won, is valued more than its actual value.
Lincoln said that "give (him) freedom or give (him) death" after he won the presidential seat and abolished slavery. However, the Africans right now in Africa will happily trade freedom for some food that they have to struggle to get a few crumbs of. Hazing allows people to value each other more, and to be grateful of the society as whole more. Some of the customs such as hazing were so strongly supported that so far, very few of them are abolished. Even most of those who survived through the hazing process supports it. I had once read a documentary about hazing a while back. In it, a father sent 3 of his loving sons to a freezing chamber and you don't want to know the rest of the story. In the end, one of them ended up in hospital for a surgery. The father actually cried and said that "it was necessary."
It is not to say that hazing is something that we should keep, but it is one of the few ancient methods that hold us together even today. Camp Squamish is actually, in my opinion that is, a minor version of hazing. We all have a miserable experience which binds us together since we complain together and trust each other more. In a more precise way of speaking, hazing is not all that bad.
I agree that no society is perfect and therefore all parts of our society are subjected to constant re-evaluation. For example, Kennedy won the national debate against Bush about invading Iraq, but he still lost the presidential seat because he did not support the war.
Regardless of the how absurd and bizarre is the nature of politics, Bush is able to win with 90% support which means that less than 10% support Kennedy even though the general public agree that Kennedy is far more logical than Bush. This proves that our society does not really value logic as much as emotion or perhaps even belief. Our society are filled with flaws as almost anything else in this world. Therefore, all of our society are subjected to change and every change must be debatable as no one side can be completely right or wrong. As each generation is to replace the worn out cover and brings forth change, the change itself can be questioned but only no right answer can be given.
By : Jisong
Certain traits are often preserved in each generation of change due to its importance to the society. For example, the stoning of the lottery winner from The Lottery is something that we have in our society but just in a slightly mutated version. It is called hazing. The purpose of hazing is not to punish someone for their bad luck, but to connect people together. "Only hardship can allow sweet fruits to be harvested." Serfs said that 600 years ago and they have sour and rotten apples. Anything that one fought for and won, is valued more than its actual value.
Lincoln said that "give (him) freedom or give (him) death" after he won the presidential seat and abolished slavery. However, the Africans right now in Africa will happily trade freedom for some food that they have to struggle to get a few crumbs of. Hazing allows people to value each other more, and to be grateful of the society as whole more. Some of the customs such as hazing were so strongly supported that so far, very few of them are abolished. Even most of those who survived through the hazing process supports it. I had once read a documentary about hazing a while back. In it, a father sent 3 of his loving sons to a freezing chamber and you don't want to know the rest of the story. In the end, one of them ended up in hospital for a surgery. The father actually cried and said that "it was necessary."
It is not to say that hazing is something that we should keep, but it is one of the few ancient methods that hold us together even today. Camp Squamish is actually, in my opinion that is, a minor version of hazing. We all have a miserable experience which binds us together since we complain together and trust each other more. In a more precise way of speaking, hazing is not all that bad.
I agree that no society is perfect and therefore all parts of our society are subjected to constant re-evaluation. For example, Kennedy won the national debate against Bush about invading Iraq, but he still lost the presidential seat because he did not support the war.
Regardless of the how absurd and bizarre is the nature of politics, Bush is able to win with 90% support which means that less than 10% support Kennedy even though the general public agree that Kennedy is far more logical than Bush. This proves that our society does not really value logic as much as emotion or perhaps even belief. Our society are filled with flaws as almost anything else in this world. Therefore, all of our society are subjected to change and every change must be debatable as no one side can be completely right or wrong. As each generation is to replace the worn out cover and brings forth change, the change itself can be questioned but only no right answer can be given.
By : Jisong
RE: First Blog Question
1) Our attitude towards violence should be modified. Today the average citizen has seen hours of violence on television by the time they reach adulthood. Compare that to what life was like a few decades ago when most people don't experience that amount of violence throughout their entire life. Perhaps our increasing exposure towards violence is responsible for the growing rate of conflict in the world (most notably the United States). We must also modify the way we treat certain commodities such as water. We treat water as if it is never ending and we pollute and waste it. But in the near future it may become a scarce commodity and we may experience serious shortages even in the developed world.
2) In a decade the youth today will be responsible for the world. If the lessons they learn now will affect how they run the world tomorrow then we must ensure that they learn the right ones. If we teach them the same lessons we learned then when they grow up they may find themselves with out of date information and advice that no longer applies. For example with the advent of global warming and the dwindling supplies of natural resources the behavior we exhibited in the past will only accelerate the speed at which our civilization is drawing to a close. Some may think that we can easily fix these problems and continue acting the way we did before but it's not as simple as it seems. To sum up the problem I will provide the following example. To increase our energy supply we must develop more sources of renewable energy. But to develop those sources will require the input of vast amounts of natural resources. To meet the demand we extract more resources but this in turn requires more energy creating a vicious cycle. Thus we must teach our youth different lessons such as conserving energy and recycling.
P.S. I like a bit of violence otherwise life is boring =)
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
How to post...
Here is what you should do:- Log in!
- Come to our class blog
- Create new post
- Write your heart out!
- Don't write your response as a comment... I can't easily find them that way.
- Don't post them on your blog (well you can, just do it on here too).
FIRST BLOG QUESTION!
After our great class discussion about Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" I thought it would be appropriate to continue our thoughts on here.
We didn't get to discuss this in class, but I want to look at one section of the text that may pertain to you:
"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, "that over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery."
Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live hat way for a while.
Comment on one, or all of the following:
What part of our society should be re-evaluated? Is there anything that we do that should be questioned? OR is it acceptable to live according to customs in order to keep things in order.
What is the significance of Old Man Warner bringing up the "young folks". What role do young people play in our society?
Due: Nov 20
We didn't get to discuss this in class, but I want to look at one section of the text that may pertain to you:
"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, "that over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery."
Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live hat way for a while.
Comment on one, or all of the following:
What part of our society should be re-evaluated? Is there anything that we do that should be questioned? OR is it acceptable to live according to customs in order to keep things in order.
What is the significance of Old Man Warner bringing up the "young folks". What role do young people play in our society?
Due: Nov 20
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)