en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/2409111 Comments by pmm5189 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/19/what-americans-fear/#IDComment145151147 This video undoubtedly creates a high amount of fear in the eyes of Americans. It makes many of the Islam faith depicted seem like narrow minded with strict hatred to those who oppose their cause. This video is only on YouTube but I can’t imagine the impact if such propaganda was used on nationwide television broadcasts. If it were to reach Americans who are currently uninformed to the actions of such people on a wide scale or even exposed to such propaganda in a fearful light, we may see more rising up with opposing hatred against those Muslims. This video also plays into a select group of Muslims and certainly not all of them adhere to such violence. Going back to the point of broadcasting this message throughout America, an uprising of those within the states who practice Islam is all too possible. What would we do in the face of an Islam movement to bring death to America? It almost seems like war is unavoidable. What I find fascinating is the list of events that were considered to be Jihad attacks. The dates start in the eighties and it seems that much of the American movement against doesn’t begin until the late nineties. How do we find and stop such a terroristic group without subjecting ourselves to racial profiling? Is there a way to protect ourselves from such attacks and yet hold no prejudice against those who do not adhere to violent tendencies? When I watch a video like that I have fear for my own well-being and wonder if anything will be able to stop such a movement outside of mass murder. We are currently looking to protect ourselves from such threats but how far is too far in pursuing those with this set of ideals? My biggest concern is the stigma that those who are practicing Muslims carrying around each day. What happens when a friend or a neighbor sees a video such as this? How do we separate the terrorists from American citizens? Our lives are shaped by fear and hatred from one culture to the next, how do we protect ourselves without persecuting an entire culture? Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:07:44 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/19/what-americans-fear/#IDComment145151147 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/11/transgendered-complications/#IDComment142664250 This article reminded me of the section of our textbook that spoken of at least five possible genders from birth and maybe even more. This is a slightly different case of a woman choosing to give up her gender and become a man. It seems he has become a victim of our system that says you are either one gender or another and there is no flip-flopping. I think it is the right move on his part to take action against his employer for discriminating against him and his decision to be the person he wants to be. I wonder how the situation would be handled if a hired employee opened up to being a homosexual. Would that be grounds for termination as well? I think it would end in the same result of legal action being taken against the company to protect the privacy and individual rights of each person to live their life to the fullest what ever that may mean. A quote from the article tells it all, “They were judging me for who I am, not for the job I was being asked to do, and that’s wrong.” It is the same argument we have heard about gender since the nineteenth century through the crusades for women’s rights. It is no longer a viable option to judge a persons ability to do a job based on their gender. In this case, he did nothing wrong as an employee and if he was a male all of his life he would not have been fired. However, for some reason we can’t be accepting as a society. We have some sort of built up fear of non-traditional gendered people. I feel bad for this person not only because he was fired and is forced to now go through these legal preceding but because of his loss of privacy as an individual. He obviously was not trying to advertise the fact of his change before and now with so much media involvement, people can tend to treat him like a freak or animal. They want to know everything of the unknown and yet stay as far away from him as possible. Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:49:43 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/11/transgendered-complications/#IDComment142664250 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/03/women-and-war/#IDComment140800203 I like her interpretation of the two sides of war. War isn’t all about the front line operations of tactical insertions and the bombing of various points but the preservation of life on the home front. It is clear that this is service served by primarily women. What are we fighting for if our lives, our culture, and way of life are not the root of what we are protecting. Women are historically those who stay to take care of the family and raise the children. It wasn’t until World War Two that we really see women standing up to help with production of war materials and a focus of wartime propaganda. Such propaganda argues that women should, “Do Your Part,” in helping the soldiers over seas. However, I think that women have always done their part in fighting their side of the war. By trying to promote the peace of a greater humanity beyond racial or ethnic differences. This portrayal of war as a one sided fight on the front lines with trench guns and explosives is rooted in the heavily war saturated media we live in today’s society. War, violence, depression and fear are all we hear as we sit down for dinner with the family. We can’t live in a world with no women or without any hope for a better, peaceful life. The refusal to acknowledge such a side of war squanders the impact that can be made. What does war bring but more violence. As she described in the video, that mother who’s children saw unspeakable acts is most worried that they will live with hate in their hearts. How do we stop this hate? How do we promote peace in a society that seems to be promoting war? More over, can we promote women and given them the opportunity to have a more prominent role in what our society labels as war. Is it even possible to give women more rights in countries that give them so few around the world? Some traditions are set so deep in stone that it takes many years of tides washing over them to erase their original meaning. It is possible in the future, but we have to start with ourselves. Thu, 7 Apr 2011 18:50:29 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/03/women-and-war/#IDComment140800203 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/24/religion-in-the-future/#IDComment138901008 Religion has been a long time foe of science and technology and I think an argument can be made that if religion doesn’t adapt their ways, modernization could become the majority and slowly push religion out of certain areas. It is obviously hard to compare the United States to lesser developed countries that may have more stake in religion for longer periods of time but America and other world powers may find themselves in a society where faith in religion is a minority. The biggest question regarding the survival of religion in the future is each particular religion’s ability to adapt. Religions such as Catholicism, Judaism, and Hinduism are based in ancient texts and rituals that even today seem outdated. Can they find a way to live with their old traditions in futuristic world? Catholicism is an example of reforming over time, as it becomes a challenge to find a mass conducted in full Latin outside of Italy. It has adapted its practices to modern language and interpretation. Many Christian sects are much more modernized because they have taken the outdated portions of Catholicism and brought Christianity into a modern setting. Can this theoretically happen again in the future as modern Christianity today becomes outdated? Can the core beliefs behind new practices stay true to the faith? Another point that I would like to explore is the idea that it may be the death of old religion but it seems to bring life to a new religion. Scientology is an example of a religion that has grown in a modern age to give faith to those in a nontraditional sense. Who knows what kind of religion could rise from cult status and become a religion of the future? Maybe we will all be worshipping a giant robot or have a circuit board hanging from our necklaces to show our faith. It seems crazy now but when you think about it, it’s not much better than wearing X’s with a dead guy nailed to it. I think that religion will never truly die but it will adapt over time to more modern criteria and possibly our tradition old world religions will die out over time as those values aren’t cemented as heavily in our future generations. Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:32:55 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/24/religion-in-the-future/#IDComment138901008 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/19/changing-the-way-we-think-about-education/#IDComment137305195 This video makes a convincing argument that plays on the idea of our traditional education system. I enjoyed the visual of kids going through public education like a factory and being sorted into those who can be considered academic and those fit for non-academic work. This system really plays into the idea of the rich, upper classes people controlling how things are done and ensuring that it stays that way. A child from a rich family is most often required or even forced into a high education out of high school to continue the family estate later even if this child does not want to learn. This matters very little in the scheme of academic schooling because if the child does refuse to do the work in college, the parents are the ones in control paying for them to go to these high priced schools and ensuring that they pass not matter what the student does. A person of the lower class who has a child that does not want to go to college most of the time will not. They will begin work in a blue-collar job and accept their place in the world as a nonacademic person. But what about those lower class students that are academic and want to go to college, they are given no choice. The school system is sorting kids not into academic or nonacademic but which ones have wealth or power to be somebody in this world and which people will be forever lower class. That lower class child with the desire to learn has no money or opportunity to learn at a higher level even though he/she may be an academic minded person compared to a wealthy person who is not as academic. This is tragic and we ask ourselves, why is this going on? Just as we discussed in class, I think it relates to a majority of people being a passive nature. Those lower class people don’t have to accept their place and feel as though they can’t make a difference but they do. I believe we have to completely remanufacture our education system to bring it into a modern age to promote learning and not the regurgitation of facts and knowledge. My only concern is how are we ever going to make that change when the people in power like the system just the way it is because it favors them. When are the grass roots going to stand up? Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:57:13 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/19/changing-the-way-we-think-about-education/#IDComment137305195 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/15/lgbt-families-theres-a-lot-of-fear-out-there/#IDComment135672004 As we discussed family in class earlier this week, the functions of a family were laid out on the table. If I remember correctly, the same sex couples depicted in what we watched in class were able to provide everything a normal couple would. They had food, shelter, love and supported growth. The only thing they could do was reproduce on their own. With modern science this is no longer become a vital issue as we seen in both the video in class and this video clip. So what is the core difference? Well I don’t mean to quote myself but I wrote it purposefully the way others would say it, “everything a normal couple would.” They are in some way not normal. Is there something wrong with them? No, yet we say it in this way. As the young man said in this clip, same sex couples are being treated as second-class citizens. All of this just because they are different then straight couples. The one man from the movie in class put it very nicely in comparing the gay and straight ways of having a child. The straight couple only has to fuck while the gay couple has to jump through a million hoops and page through hundreds of legal documents so someone can tell you that you are fit to raise a child. I am lead to believe that this perseverance of gay couples to go through these actions shows their further commitment to that child. We have seen so many times straight couples having children when they are not ready for the obligation or lack the parenting skills to do so but they get that baby because they are straight. Maybe there should be some laws giving background checks to expecting straight couples. But these kids who have no family foundation through their straight parents are the ones adopted into gay families. People treat gay couples like a disease and think that if they raise a child it will be gay as well, which is most of the time not the case. We need more people like the young man in this video to step up and show the world that a change needs to be made and that their assumptions are wrong. Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:49:19 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/15/lgbt-families-theres-a-lot-of-fear-out-there/#IDComment135672004 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/28/the-lottery-as-a-blessing-or-a-curse/#IDComment132013085 As said by many people many times before, winning the lottery can be a blessing and a curse at the same time. One part of this article that intrigued me was the statistic that life satisfaction rises with household income to the point of 75,000$ per year and then levels off. If we regard this as true, then supposedly we could cut off the escalating winnings of the lottery and cap it at 75,000$. This practice has been instated in the past with winnings that are given out in smaller amounts each year. This lower winning total can also be a way of redistributing the wealth from the lottery. So much money does not need to go to one single person. If the prize money were decreased, it would also be possible to ensure that a higher percentage of people would win the lottery in a given year. The government would make less money from the takes taken from winning contestants but I believe the higher percentage chance of winning would encourage more people to buy into the lottery system. It baffles me to think that people would try to steal or even murder a recent lottery winner walking down the street for their large sum of money. This is a display of severe desperation. As we discussed before, the majority of those who play the lottery are those who consider themselves lower class. Some people view the lottery as a form of income and the only way to make it out of their situation and completely change their life. In our day-to-day lives, we can take for granted what others don’t have and we inherently think the same about those who are higher social class than ourselves. From a physical and mental standpoint we are the exact same before and after we win the lottery but our social situation we live in is extremely different. The set of priorities and goals that we may have had in a lower economic situation are completely different in a situation of higher wealth. As stated in the article, those who have a future plan for the years to come do the best. This keeps their situation the same by keeping consistent goals to put their money toward. The people who experience the curse get the money and immediate spend it on material instant gratification. Thu, 3 Mar 2011 03:27:30 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/28/the-lottery-as-a-blessing-or-a-curse/#IDComment132013085 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/21/stranger-kidnapping/#IDComment129962520 It is as though our society has gone crazy with paranoia. We have developed into a world that is so saturated by these negative images; it makes such occurrences seem regular. Our news media can’t take all the blame. We as a public are insecure about our lives and the idea of the unknown. This is traceable through history as people become more and more afraid of even their own neighbors. It dates all the way back to the original Red Scare and Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy was most influential in the 1950’s as more mainstream media like radio and television began to flourish. This new saturated media source that they could turn on at anytime and hear these constant warnings about Communism and to lock your doors. The message that this carries goes through the decades as subjects change. The news and media agencies have found that these kinds of stories grab peoples’ attention. Our parents and parent’s parents pass this fear down to us by telling us, “Don’t trust strangers” or “Never talk to strangers.” When we hear a story come on the news of abduction or a kidnapping, our ears immediately perk up. The news channels do care about protecting people by releasing these stories and how to prevent you from being in one of these situations but moreover it is about ratings to the television companies. If centering their stories in fear increases their audience by half, then they are going to jump on every negative story that crops up. They aren’t trying to completely scare us into staying in our homes and watching the news all day (although that would boost their ratings too). Is there a way to break away from this overbearing idea that everyone is out to get us? Not as long as we continue to see stories like these every night on the news. It is getting easier for news stations to find such stories in a modern world where information has a much larger scale. We can hear about an incident that maybe in another state or around the world and have it hold the same impact as a local story. I found it interesting that the mother in the clip told her child that there are people out there that are bad. She is making her own newscast to her child and using such vague terms to heighten the unknown factor. Just saying people could mean any number of people and any particular person. These statements have little weight on there own and just require some critical thinking. If we were to expand on the statement and point out that this incident has a lower than one percent chance of happening to you, then we would see people coming back to there senses about the world we live in. Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:37:33 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/21/stranger-kidnapping/#IDComment129962520 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/15/social-structure-shapes-free-will/#IDComment128633868 It is seems as though most people would see this and turn in disgust. However if you truly listen to what they have to say and their reasons for practicing such lifestyles it becomes very clear. As stated in the clip, it is very typical to see this behavior emerge from the concerns of the families’ farms and assets being protected. What I found most interesting was the idea that this serves as a much-needed form of birth control in that area. These places are very small and crowded and have very little farmland to preserve for the family as it is. If each man were to take a wife, birth rates would sky rocket. You see the opposite happen in places that practice the idea of men should have more than one wife. This increases the amount of offspring the male can have and boosts the population. These practices are natural ways of boosting and restricting the population. As mentioned by Sam, the situation facing China seems as though they could point their society in this direction to compensate for the unbalanced ratio of men to women. What I find interesting about China possibly adopting this practice is the fact that China is more connected to the modern world. This idea of one wife is not the common marriage practice in China but this Himalayan society has been doing it for years. This practice is deeply ingrained in their culture. Can a comparatively more modern country like China adopt such policies after having different views for hundreds of years? Many parts of China are still agriculturally based and not as industrialized but will this new marriage format be able to last in an increasingly modern and western society. The video stated that these practices might only last two or three more generations as they move into the modern technological world. Is it possible for areas of China, mainly agricultural based areas, carry this policy to amend their birth control problem as they move closer and closer toward industrialization? How much longer will these families exist in a world that is discounting them as a peculiar culture? Only time will tell how deeply these practices are imbedded in their way of life. Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:31:32 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/15/social-structure-shapes-free-will/#IDComment128633868 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/06/empathy-might-be-our-natural-drive/#IDComment127186068 I think the fact that empathy drives us is a brilliant point. All we want to do is feel included or alike to our peers. We want to agree and feel the same things as everyone else. And I do believe that it is possible to unite the entire world under one common link. Why is it not possible to think of all humans as humans? I’m convinced that one day when we get off this planet or find another alien species, it will highly raise the likelihood of seeing all other humans as brothers. We will be come a race of humans, earth born beings. This is the same principle as the common ties of religion or nation just raised to the level of our entire planet. If this message got out to larger numbers of people I believe it would make little difference. We are so cemented in the common ways of our life. Every person would hesitate to make such a change toward empathy because his or her peers are not changing because everyone is waiting for someone else to stand out. Once again everyone wants to assimilate and be apart of the larger crowd. Each person in that crowd may think it is a good idea to focus on empathy over aggression but none will change while it remains the minority. This is a classic example of the Asch Experiment. I would like to think that after seeing this video I would change my ways and try to live with a common tie to all men but I am inclined to think that I will continue to act the way as I always have. This is an uphill battle and the idea captures us for a time but after a failed attempt to lead this conflicting lifestyle we most often fall back to our habitual routine. This line of behavior is safe to us as humans and feels good as it makes us fit in. At what point can we change put aside our selfish motives and truly gain an empathetic perspective to all humans. What would an empathetic world look like? These are questions that I hope someday we find the answer to. Thu, 10 Feb 2011 20:44:55 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/06/empathy-might-be-our-natural-drive/#IDComment127186068 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/27/americans-gone-wild/#IDComment125295338 In a situation like this, it is easy for the school and the local police to get out of hand with dealing a gun problem such as this. They have hundreds of other parents that go to that school and expect a safe environment for their children to learn in. That is why a no tolerance policy must be instated to show this kind of behavior will not be tolerated. The parent that hears about a child bringing a gun to their child’s school expects there to be consequences. Did the kid need to be arrested and taken to the police station? No. There are lines that need to be drawn. The kid didn’t know what he did wrong which is why there needs to be consequences to prevent any future infractions by him or any other children observing the incident. The person who needs to be disciplined is the stepfather who had the weapon in an open area. It would be interesting to look at some research and see the impact of kids learning about guns at different ages. Are children who are taught about guns at an early age more likely to own, use, or occupy a profession that utilizes the use of guns? Maybe the stepfather was introduced to real guns at an early age and that could have been one of the social factors that lead him to be less concerned with gun safety. This is just another case in sociology where it is tricky to decide who deserves the blame considering none of us are truly responsible for our actions. Regardless, the public schools need to hold a very strict no tolerance policy with weapons to try to prevent exceptions. As soon as you allow one exception, another one goes through, and before you know it the cracks in the dam have released the whole river. At my old high school they were talking about installing metal detectors at some of the entrances to try to prevent weapons from getting into the school. My high school is very large with almost a thousand students in each class. Having to get every student checked as they walk through the doors would take a large amount of time, security personnel to do it, and it would still be an imperfect system. Every student thinks it’s ridiculous when their lunch is confiscated because it has a butter knife in it but the fact of the matter is that it is the only way to allow no exceptions to the weapons policy. The minute one student sharpens a plastic utensil and uses it as a weapon; the school raises their policy to compensate. Wed, 2 Feb 2011 00:23:03 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/27/americans-gone-wild/#IDComment125295338 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/23/how-free-are-these-90-students/#IDComment124173213 When I watch this video, I can’t help but think of the story that lies behind these girls getting pregnant. As we have discussed before, no one is truly free from the millions of factors influence us in our lives. We call these the invisible strings that attach to each of us and make us more or less likely to be susceptible to certain behaviors. In this case, these girls are falling victim to these invisible influences and aren’t fully responsible for becoming pregnant. If research were done, maybe it would be found that these girls were raised by teenage mothers or in a similar situation. These girls could have come from families of parents who weren’t taught sexual education in school, experienced early loss of virginity, or teenage motherhood. Some of these girls could have had multiple circumstances like these in their past or in their parents past before they were even born making them much more likely to become one of these teenage mothers. All of these girls still have the free will to make that choice to say no to unprotected sex but they did not because essentially they were less free to make those decisions compared to other people who possibly don’t have those invisible strings wound so tightly around them. The other interesting thing I noticed in the video was the fact that they were putting large amounts of funding towards making education programs to promote abstinence and hopefully a lessened teen pregnancy rate. However if we use the same principle as before, these babies that these girls are having are already going to have the highest likelihood of ending up the same way as their mothers. The fact that an abstinence program is instated will add an invisible string for future generations influencing them against pregnancy. Even with that take account for, these new born babies will still have the highest likelihood of becoming teenage mothers themselves one day because their mothers were. The boys of these teenage mothers may have the same effects as well getting involved with sex in a much younger age because their parents were. The school can do everything they want to try to sway the influence away from early teen sex but the fact of the matter is they are fighting an up hill battle against our own human nature that none of us truly can comprehend. We can try to think we have free will to make our own decisions but it is the influences that push us towards certain choices and away from others that really takes away our freedom. Thu, 27 Jan 2011 20:09:43 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/23/how-free-are-these-90-students/#IDComment124173213 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/15/blog-1-freedom-and-toddlers-in-tiaras/#IDComment122363394 These pageants and even adult pageants are heavily shaped in the ideas of our modern culture. We are obsessed with this idea of beauty and being perfect. This case of little girls in pageants starts with the mother. The most common argument that these moms make and that was made in the video is that their child is having fun, smiling, and if they ever asked to stop it would be over. Basically saying that the mother is not controlling these girls and it is their decision. This I find to be nonsense. The mother can never force that child to be in these pageants but she is inadvertently conditioning that child from a young age to want that idea of beauty and to show it off. This is however not all on the plate of the mother; she is raising her child in our society in which she has been conditioned to our modern norms of beauty herself. She wants to be the model, the trophy wife possibly, the seductress, whatever you want to call it because in our modern media, we have these images of what beauty is plastered all over. Our media has become so saturated by these images that it is not a surprise that these children want to compete to be the best and put on these shows. They see it everywhere from television, movies, commercials, toys, fast food, and even their own mothers buying into the habit of taking the time to do many beauty practices such as make up, different hairstyles, and certain modern styles of clothing all rope in this younger generation of girls and condition them to have this desire to be beautiful. What little girl doesn’t at some point in their life play dress up with fake ball gowns or try on mommy’s makeup? We blame it on the parent because we have to pin this responsibility on someone but in reality these girls are being influenced by as many social factors as the mothers are. These “invisible stings” that cause us to do what we do and desire what we desire are all around us yet we are trained to try to point out causality or responsibility for our actions. Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:05:11 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/15/blog-1-freedom-and-toddlers-in-tiaras/#IDComment122363394 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9cm%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment121148034 soc 001 Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:17:51 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9cm%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment121148034