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