For a couple of months now, I have been working at a very unique school in central Bali called Green School. With the plethora of experiences that I have gained over the last few months, I feel that I should comment on one that happened to me today. I was teaching a class of nine and ten year olds when the over played ‘battle of the sexes’ debate was ignited. There was the usual, ‘Boys a better’, which was met with the, ‘No! girls are better’ retaliation. Then one young girl made the inference, ‘But if Boys were best, why would girls be here at all?’. And just when I thought the argument would spiral into classroom chaos, one ten year old boy made a comment that not only closed the discussion but instilled my faith in the worldview on the future generation. After much contemplation he perked up and said, ‘I used to think that boys were better, but now I think that boys and girls are about the same.’
something of interest.
I came across an interesting quote the other day, it was as followed:
Go to work, send your kids to school. Follow fashion, act normal. Walk on the pavement, watch T.V. Save for your old age, obey the law. Repeat after me: I am free.
Filed under society.
forgetful entertainment.
Having spent the last couple of months in apparent technological isolation, I returned to my parents residence in the pursuits of television inflicted vegetation. I embraced the role of a voyeur and sat before a flicking of lights and sounds. Yes, I watched E! entertainment television, the epitome of numbing nothingness.
What struck me however, was not how quickly time could speed up while actually doing nothing, but rather, regardless of how long I watched the channel, I was unable to recall what I had observed even ten minutes previous. I was told that I was watching ‘breaking news’ but in reality, to quote Shakespeare, I was being told a tale by an idiot ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’.
However, this type of television is the medium for the post-modern phenomena of ‘celebrity culture’, where media personalities take on the form of heros, villains and scape goats, to be either admired, hated or envied. We recognise them and we’re attached.
The reality behind this phenomena is that it dominates the media industry more than information does. An example of this trend was shown recently when all major news channels like CNN, NBC and Fox, were not reporting on current global issues like the financial crisis or Afghanistan, but rather covered live an human interest story about a boy suspected of flying away on a weather balloon. In turn illustrating that information television have began to tread the line with the entertainment television model. But it doesn’t stop there, we only need to look towards politics to see it again, as recently the US President has been criticised for embracing this medium in spreading his message, in turn being accused of being ‘over-exposed’ and attempting to take on a ‘cult’ form. His representatives argue that his is merely adapting to expectations of the modern audiance.
It is of my opinion that these expectations are the product of our post-modern desires to feel and seek self-recognition in characters, to escape the circumstances of our birth and current environment, and in turn to gain pleasure from it. Although entertainment television delivers such a sensation, we are in reality all chasing a rainbow, and the longer the chase, the more we are emotional numbed by the illusion, for the more we cling onto this false reality, the harder it is to forget or come to terms with our own normalcy.
Filed under society.
between two worlds.
Filed under society.
‘this century’s biggest killer’.
The greatest killer of last century isn’t war or disease as one may expect, instead is the persecution of people by governments. This revelation was made by R.J. Rummel in this 1986 article ‘War isn’t this century’s biggest killer‘, and over 20 years later, it is still believable.
‘Table 1 provides the relevant totals and classifies these by type of government (following Freedom House’s definitions) and war. By government killed is meant any direct or indirect killing by government officials, or government acquiescence in the killing by others, of more than 1,000 people, except execution for what are conventionally considered criminal acts (murder, rape, spying, treason, and the like).’
To get a better idea of this issue, is the example of the Vietnam War. The international community by the atrocities of war, with the ‘the overall number killed in the Vietnam War on all sides was about 1,216,000 people’. And it was through pressure from the international community and their “stop the killing” slogans that got the troops withdrawn. But, and here comes the double standard, the total number of deaths from the communist killings in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, that continued well after the soldiers had returned home, was twice the number of those who died in the Vietnam war, the the best estimate of deaths being ’2,270,000′. Not only this, but the rate of which people were killed is also shocking, in cambodia within ‘four years the government of this small nation of seven million alone killed 64 percent more people than died in the ten-year Vietnam War.’
the changing monsoon.
When growing up in Asia, one fosters a love and hate relationship with the monsoon. It comes and goes in full force, washing out sports events, drenching school uniforms and damaging umbrellas. Although noticeably in the last two years in particular, much to a sun lovers disgust, the monsoon has been early and irrationally irregular. When living in India I played witness to a lost harvest and later in the year, a sudden increase in slums that sprung from roadsides by the involuntary rural to urban immigrants. I hadn’t thought much of the premature monsoon until recently, when I began to complain to my newly adopted bapu about the unseasonal downpours. He answered with, “Before we knew the weather; now is very hard,” making me realise that climate change was in fact an issue that everyone was aware off, whether it be by learning of it or by ones own inference.
Filed under environment.
global warming is helping trade?
In the latest weekend edition of the International Herald Tribute there was an article rejoicing the opening of a new trade route that links the east and west, that is significantly shorter than the route that cuts through the Suez Canal. Instead, the route goes north from Rotterdam, around Russia, and then down to Japan. How has this been made possible? Because of Global Warming. The rise of temperature has melted away the ice that once blocked the mariners ‘dream’ passage. But should we really be celebrating the efficiency of this trading short cut, or shocking ourselves into action, with the reality of the rapid way out ice shelves are melting in front of our eyes. The question we need to ask ourselves is whose dream would be rather have, that of the efficient mariner or our future generations.
Filed under environment.
