en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/2487767 Comments by Camilo42O http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/19/what-americans-fear/#IDComment145269705 When I watch this video I find myself feeling extremely angry and mildly scared. Of course people in the US don’t want to see their country being attacked. But this video is using specific situations to make a (false) statement about an entire religion and ethnicity group. The creators of this video are using fear tactics to create animosity towards Muslims in general. They’re not separating the average Muslim from the extremist. But when I see quotes like “Jihad’s goal is death to America”, there is definitely some one-sided thinking here. I don’t know a lot about Islam, but I know enough to realize that America’s death is not the goal of jihad. And even with my limited knowledge, it frustrates me to see people make false claims to the general public, knowing that someone will accept this as true. I believe people in the Middle East are not all bad people but just like everything else are influence by someone and because of that it can become dangerous. The whole belief in Islam I believe is if you die serving your god you will reach their heaven. Someone in power took this idea and influences their people that destroying Americans as part of god mission. After I still believe terrorism will never end because one country will always hate other country and someone will take it to extreme measure. So the idea of Americans being afraid I completely agree cause even after this war is over, if it will ever end terrorism will still exist. But this is all from my perspective, the perspective of a young American student, and as Sam has made clear through his class discussions it is not the only one. I hate to say it, but the fact of the matter is that we are not the perfect country that everyone makes us to be. We tend to stick our nose in places that will benefit us in the best way possible. And I can almost certainly guarantee that if any other country came to United Sates and started messing around with our civilians and land, we would not have any of it and probably start a nuclear holocaust. So am I still angered and concerned? Yes of course I am, but I also understand why people feel that way about the United States. Sat, 23 Apr 2011 02:07:04 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/19/what-americans-fear/#IDComment145269705 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/11/the-cost-of-empire-soc-001-blog/#IDComment143274559 Nearly every citizen in the United States and pretty much every knowledgeable person in the world know that the United States likes to get involved in any international dispute it can. Whether the problem is in the Middle East, South America, the Caribbean islands, or any other place for that matter if there is a valuable resource to the United States in that place you can almost guarantee that the United States is going to be involved. This is a fact that most people know, but the facts most people do not know is that the United States plans to spend six hundred and sixty three billion dollars on the military this year, and that the we have over seven hundred bases spread throughout one hundred and thirty countries worldwide. The issue pressing our military budget is that of the presence of bases all around the world. It is important to have U.S. representatives in all countries but often times these bases are wasting money. Bases help with transporting equipment and troops, but they could be too costly for their intended meaning. Additionally, the people in these occupied countries do not like the U.S. soldiers being there. I doubt that our soldiers would do any individual harm to the inhabitants, but it is understandable that people would not want a foreign military base in their backyard. Apparently, U.S. leaders are considering moving out of these countries to avoid a civilian uprising against the bases. Americans have a need to be protected and the current media and government only want the peoples’ attention and approval so the administrators tell the people anything in order to sound credible. As pointed out in class, no one wants to view themselves as the aggressor, you always want to be seen as the side that is defending or is protecting yourself. I feel that the title of this video is interesting and provocative because it doesn’t make the USA seem as innocent as we would like. The title “The Cost of an Empire” implies that we have gone out and conquered these lands and we are maintaining them for our own good Sat, 16 Apr 2011 01:48:19 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/11/the-cost-of-empire-soc-001-blog/#IDComment143274559 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/07/war-vets-and-ptsd/#IDComment141134712 From the invasion of Afghanistan until last summer, the U.S. military had lost 761 soldiers in combat there. But a higher number in the service — 817 — had taken their own lives over the same period. This stat is beyond staggering, the fact that we are in a war where the objective is supposed to be to save American lives, and we are instead losing the lives of the very people protecting us. Throughout history soldiers have come back from war acting differently, whether it was World War One, World War Two, or the Vietnam War there is something that changes within a soldier’s personality before he is sent off to war and after he comes back. Only recently has the problem been coined post-traumatic stress disorder by people in the medical field. In the military this mental issue is seen as a weakness and a sign of not being man enough for the army, so for many years the military believed that it was in the best interests of the soldiers to send them back out to war in order to get used to the unimaginable images soldiers must see on a daily bases. The problem is worsened by the manpower challenges faced by the service, because new research suggests that repeated combat deployments seem to be driving the suicide surge. The United States army is one of the largest in the world, without question, but in order to fix this epidemic almost it needs to get larger. Post-traumatic stress disorder is not something you can get over within a day or two, it takes weeks to months to get over (maybe even years), so for soldiers who suffer from this mental disorder there is lots of time that needs to pass and lots of counseling needs to be done in order for them to recover fully. That means that the time spent at home between deployments, for soldiers, is vital to the recovery and needs to be expanded which means that there would be less soldiers in the battle field and more at home. This is why the military either needs to expand or lessen the amount of troops it sends overseas. Regardless of actions taken outside of the battle front, the only way this issue is going to be overcome is if the mentality on the battle front changes. Sat, 9 Apr 2011 01:25:43 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/07/war-vets-and-ptsd/#IDComment141134712 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/23/managing-crowds/#IDComment139253021 Having just attended a concert where performers like Travis Barker Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, and Rick Ross took the audience captive for more or less four hours, crowd control is a topic that resonates clearly in my head. The Bryce Jordan Center was packed to the brim with tens of thousands of students and fans who paid to see each performer take their turn entertaining the crowd with their music. No matter who the performer was, they had complete control of the audience which was evident if you witnessed any part of Wednesday’s concert. Throughout the concert each and every one of the artists who took the stage had something for the audience to proclaim Sat, 2 Apr 2011 01:28:58 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/23/managing-crowds/#IDComment139253021 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/24/religion-in-the-future/#IDComment137601499 Religion is always a sensitive subject to discuss, whether you are Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, or Hindu there are always going to be skeptics of religion constantly questioning your faith. Religion is solely and fundamentally based on faith, that’s it. Because religions were founded such a long time ago all the stories of Jesus and Moses were just that, stories. There was no written documentation at that time so people either shrugged off the stories of people preaching their ideas or they had faith that what these prophets had to say was the truth. I personally was raised a Roman Catholic and as a child church played a large part in my education and maturation as a person and as a man. Whether it was my religious education classes, which I attended twice a week, or actually going to mass Sunday mornings with my family, the Roman Catholic religion helped shape many of the morals I stand by today as well as providing me with the incentive to do good and forgive in life. As my life progressed religion lost its importance in my life and was placed in the back seat behind things like my education and social life. This is not to say that I lost or stopped having faith in the Roman Catholic religion or that I don’t associate myself as a part of the religion but as I grew older religious practices lost their role in my life. So when I read religion is pushing towards extinction in countries such as Canada, Ireland, Australia, and Czech Republic it does not surprise me too much. In modern nations it is becoming increasingly popular not to be affiliated to a specific religion, and basic sociology tells us that people will tend to follow the majority. Even though it does not surprise me that religion is losing its popularity, the fact of the matter still upsets me because religion influenced my life. The fact that religion will one day no longer exist in these countries means that eventually children will not be learning about religions at all and will be deprived of information that could be helpful to man y of them. Sat, 26 Mar 2011 00:26:23 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/24/religion-in-the-future/#IDComment137601499 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/15/lgbt-families-theres-a-lot-of-fear-out-there/#IDComment135945589 As I watched Zach Wahls speak in front of, what seemed to be, some sort of government body I could not help but think to myself how anyone could feel that gay and lesbian couples are unfit to raise a child or to have a family. How couldn’t you feel that way? Look at the kid before you, Zach Wahls, he seems like a proper, well spoken, educated individual, not a person that most people if not all people would associate with improper parenting or a dysfunctional family. What really surprises me is that in our society gays and lesbians are not considered to be any less capable in the work place or any other social setting yet when it comes to parenting their capabilities come into question. When applying for a job you are never asked if you are straight or gay because your sexual orientation has nothing to do with your intellectual capacity and your ability to do work. As Zach Wahls correctly stated, being a family has nothing to do with whether you are raised by gay or straight parents and has everything to do with the love and care exhibited to each other. Like we talked about in class, the gay and lesbian families meet all of the same requirements and duties as other families. So I do not see what the big deal is. If the parents are in love and together and want to have a child, let them! They should be allowed to enjoy the same privileges as everyone else; they are not any less of a citizen just because they are gay and surely are capable of raising children properly. Those kids should not be denied a good home just because a possible parent is gay. That is crazy. All families go through the same type of good times and hard times. It does not matter if they are gay, straight, or even single parents. People should stop being so scared of this and just accept it. I think that a lot of families and a lot of kids will benefit and have better lives, if only everyone would stop discriminating and just allow these people the same opportunities as everyone else. Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:44:48 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/15/lgbt-families-theres-a-lot-of-fear-out-there/#IDComment135945589 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/13/whats-the-sociological-message-here/#IDComment130689715 Valentine ’s Day or as I like to call it single awareness day is the one day of the year where people are encouraged to date people and have a partner. It is a day that we as Americans are supposed to spend with the one person in the world that we cannot live without. Yet the majority of the people out there are not with the person they love the most in the world, in fact most people aren’t with anyone at all, they are completely single. But there is some good news and bad news for singles, the good news is that the people in relationships are not probably with their true soul mates and the bad news is that there is not as many fish in the sea as you may have thought. First let us start with the people who are with their true loves, in a world with almost seven billion people that you can find the one person in the world that is perfect for you in every way. Like the song says “if I did not have you, I would probably have someone else,” which has extreme validity to it because it is hard to believe that out of the seven billion people in the world you happened to meet your female counterpart without having met even a fraction of the people available. Now let us talk about how there may not be as many possible partners for you as you may think. Each person in the world has a “type” that they are commonly attracted to in the opposite sex. This makes sense because as you grow up and mature you are, for the most part, with the same type of people. For me the girls I grew up with were almost all white and the girls that you see in movies for the most part are white, so in my case I am probably more likely to marry a white woman. It depends on the culture that you are raised in, for example if I were raised in the Middle East I would have a different probability of marrying a white woman because I was raised to think Middle Eastern women are the best. So as Tim Minchin says “if I didn’t have you, someone else would do.” Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:38:09 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/13/whats-the-sociological-message-here/#IDComment130689715 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2010/04/04/this-is-totally-off-the-hook/#IDComment128702289 As most people who watched this video, my first reaction was shock. I could not believe that someone thought of a game where the objective was to actually rape a woman in the game; I thought who in their right mind would play this game? How could the Japanese government allow a game to be distributed that promoted rape? Then I thought well don’t you have to ask the question how the United States government allows games to be distributed that promote murder and the numerous other crimes that games these days include. Yet is it truly fair to compare a shooting game with a raping game (that just sounds weird)? Let us take games like the Grand Theft Auto series or the Assassin’s Creed series where the objective is to commit robbery, grand theft auto, or murder (with some minor differences between the two). These two games both include simulations of various crimes that at some points are pretty violent but the type of crime that is simulated in these American games is very different than the crimes simulated in the Japanese raping game. This game, called Rapelay, brings with its’ violence another aspect to it, sex and adding sex to the picture adds a whole different dimension of problems. When people shoot and kill figures in the virtual world they do not get aroused, or at least we hope they do not, on the contrary the Japanese game Rapelay was created on the notion that people would buy it because it was sexually arousing. This is a serious problem for our society because being sexually aroused is obviously a good feeling and by associating these feeling with rape, even if it is simulated, could cause players to actually attempt rape in order to recreate these feelings. I know that it is just a simulation and again you could compare it to one of the hundreds of shooting games that are out on the market now but this is different unlike shooting games this crime can be committed without a gun. Because rape can be so easily committed even if one person gets the urge to rape someone from this game, it is one too many. Fri, 18 Feb 2011 01:12:43 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2010/04/04/this-is-totally-off-the-hook/#IDComment128702289 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/04/the-not-so-invisible-structure-that-shapes-us/#IDComment127202032 As soon as I read the title of this article, Why more Americans don’t travel abroad, I immediately thought to myself what a sociological question. This CNN article states that only thirty percent of Americans have passports while in nations like Canada and the United Kingdom sixty and seventy-five percent of their citizens have passports. So this poses the question why is it that people from other countries are traveling more than Americans? Yes, everyone has the same “freedom “to travel wherever and whenever they please, so is it that Americans just chose not to travel more than most other countries? The only explainable difference between is that they are brought up in a different societal situation where travel abroad in America is not encouraged. This is not to say that Americans are going around saying “Do not travel to different countries,” but it is a difference in how children are raised. In the United States travel abroad has never been popular, but almost every parent makes the trip to go see the Grand Canyon with their child as opposed to a child in England who goes to see the Eifel Tower. In this scenario the American child, who is now a parent will then take his or her children to go see the Grand Canyon instead of the pyramids in Egypt because as a child he didn’t travel abroad so to make it seem normal they put their children in the same situation. And this cycle continues and will continue through generations of Americans until travel abroad becomes popular. This is not to say that that is the only factor that affects Americans’ lack of travel abroad, in my opinion ignorance and work are also two major contributing factors as well. Americans are and have been obsessed with obtaining the American Dream that all they do is work in order to achieve it. Most Americans are so imbedded in their work and providing for the house that they forget about leisure time and relaxation, things that are necessary for human beings. Another huge factor is ignorance, sorry but Americans know absolutely nothing when it comes to other countries and people fear what they don’t know. Almost all of my mother’s side of the family lives in Colombia and I often go visit them, and when I get back I always hear the same things no matter where I am: did you see any drug lords? Do you feel safe when your there? Of course I feel safe, like the article said that kind of stuff hasn’t been going on for twenty years so why wouldn’t I. Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:57:00 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/04/the-not-so-invisible-structure-that-shapes-us/#IDComment127202032 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/30/conformity-rules-the-day/#IDComment126058306 As I first watched this video I started to laugh and I thought to myself look at these people, what idiots. Even though they were all standing in one direction when the actors first entered the elevator, the candid stars all were pressured into facing directions in the elevator that ordinarily most would consider abnormal. After my initial reaction I asked myself what I would do if I was in the same situation. And I couldn’t answer that question because on one hand after being in this class I understand that people conform to believe that it’s weird not to be like everyone else and I would most likely be aware of the fact that the “invisible” strings were tugging on my shirt and try to change it. On the other hand I would definitely feel uncomfortable in that situation where I was the only one facing the other way on the elevator. Let’s be honest who wouldn’t feel awkward in that situation? No one likes to feel like they are alone in doing something. This is the same reason why people who are abused as children are more likely to be an abuser as well, so they feel like they aren’t the only people who went through it. But in reality how can you blame someone for doing what everyone else is doing? After all people aren’t stupid, in fact they’re rational so how can you blame someone, like the people in the elevators, for conforming. Perhaps the reason that everyone is doing something or wearing something is because it’s the best way to do something or the best clothing that you can buy. So in the case of the people in the elevator maybe they thought that the actors knew something that they didn’t know. For example maybe the actors knew that once the doors opened that someone was going to come a spray everyone with paint so they turned their backs to the door. Yes, the candid stars have the freedom to stand whichever way they want to, but maybe standing the way that everyone else is standing is the best way. Sat, 5 Feb 2011 02:51:43 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/30/conformity-rules-the-day/#IDComment126058306 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/15/what-does-it-mean-to-be-free/#IDComment124205059 Like many people in the class reading a letter from an inmate is not common practice for me. To be brutally honest for the most part I thought, well their in prison who really cares what they have to say. But wow am I holding my tongue now, after reading this I have a new found respect for what some men incarcerated have to overcome and how drastically a life can change with a single poor decision. As I was reading this letter I thought to myself "Aren't I lucky to be living in a country where, for the most part, I can do whatever I feel like doing," even inmates still maintain their freedoms while imprisoned. We all live in a country where we think we are the "most free" nation in the world and although I have no argument to that point because here prisoners have more rights than citizens in some countries but how free are we? Yes, we can wake up in the morning and brush our teeth (or not) and inmates can make the decisions that they want to at whatever point they chose, but really the decision that put those inmates in their very position was probably influenced by factors that were out of their control. So i pose the question again how free are we really? Thu, 27 Jan 2011 23:15:26 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/15/what-does-it-mean-to-be-free/#IDComment124205059 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9cd%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment124149732 Soc 001 Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:49:09 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9cd%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment124149732