7:28 am, March 21, 2009
· Filed under Life, Online, Society, philosophy, religion, youtube · Tagged africa, complex thinking, darfur, genocide, global problems, Hank Green, HP Alliance, imagining the other complexly, john green, killing, nerdfighters, rwanda, vlogbrothers, world, youtube comments
Today I was having a blast on Spring Break (ha! Not really…) and browsing through Youtube, because that’s what I do. Still featured on there was John Green’s video on the Rwandan Genocide and the HP Alliance’s idea from Rwanda to have real people light candles and show that they care for their problems, which are all of our problems. It was a funny, yet serious video about how to help stop a problem.
Then I scrolled down to see the comments, and to my horror, people had posted comments not only against HPA’s initiative, but against stopping, preventing, or helping deal with genocide in Africa. There were mainly three categories of diversion from John and most people’s philosophy on this:
- Who cares about Africa? They’re poor and miserable and different from us. We should take care of ourselves first; for we are the only people that matter, and it’s their problem not ours. They should deal with it themelves, not mooch off of our charity.
Ok maybe they weren’t that articulate or intentionally harsh, but that’s pretty much their idea. And I’ll elaborate with example 3.
- Sure, the travesty in Rwanda and Darfur are abominations of mankind, and we should certainly make an earnest effort to prevent it from happening, and help restore the country(-ies), but lighting candles won’t help that. Maybe you should put links or show how we can donate and actually take action for this cause?
And this is certainly a valid argument, and I like that people are thinking compexly about this. I for one apparently love to be proven wrong (even indirectly like this), and I’m glad I can broaden my view on the matter. But it’s an act to show people that we care and are going to help – that they have support, and that it’s not their problem, it’s the world’s problem.
There’s a great value in a small thing – especially when a community collectively responds – that has a great effect on people. It may not be objective or scientifically provable, but it’s there. People in Rwanda will actually see us showing our support. Of course we have to take political action, but it starts somewhere small, and if we want the Big Guys to notice, we gotta make noise!I definitely think that we should really be taking action in donations and awareness would help a lot.
- Then there’s this:
What can I say? It’s hard to believe people can be so selfish and animalistic, caring only for themselves ans seeing the world with such warped values. I’m all for diversity of opinions, which is essential to social (and any) progress, but people have to think complexly about these problems…
I mean that’s just not right. I really don’t have a problem with religion, as long as it’s well thought out, criticized, and thought about deeper than stuff like the Bible and God. And that’s not even the problem here; it’s that people can be so stupid and barbaric in simple thinking, that they completely isolete themselves emotionally from the world, and refuse to care about the world.It’s people like this that really scare me, and make me fear for the future….
5:33 pm, March 15, 2009
· Filed under Books & Literature, Society · Tagged chemistry, comedy, irony, literature, saitre, sarcasm
Satire is pretty much when you take some flaw in human beings, possibly as a society, and expose it through wit and ridicule; for example, one could say that in Harry Potter, the Ministry of Magic is a satrical representation of the governments and bureaucracies of today’s big world powers, in that it is an exaggeration of how our governments deal with issues such as genocide, war, social injustice – all that jazz. Of course, the way Rowling attacks the Ministry isn’t usually as humorous or lighthearted as most satire, but it is still a comically hopeless representation of it.
And the thing is, ignoring creative intent, one could see everything as satire – TV shows, books, poems, maybe even religions! Like, is Twilight satire? It shows these terrible values and ghastly characteristics of people, and seems to advocate them. It shows these shallow, two-dimensional people, and terrible choices and decisions, and yet all of it leads to a supposedly happy ending. BUT if you look at it as satire, you could say that it’s just saying that people are shallow and pathetic like that, and eventually get the kind of ending they expect – one that is empty and worthless in the long run.
But it’s not.
One problem with satire is that often, especially with more complex issues, is that satire can be hard to identify. Who knows if something (like Twilight) is poking fun, or serious? Admittedly in most professional (not Twilight) books you can usually tell what the author is supporting, but it can still get confusing. And worse, if it’s given straightforward that something is satire, it takes away from the expereince somewhat. It’s like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: if you know something is satire, you don’t get that doubt about society and all (like when I was reading 1984 and Brave New World I could not tell how much of it was actually bad things about society until I did some research); you need to judge something without knowing its intent to be able to truly appreciate satire, in my opinion. That was a confusing sentence…
Overall, satire = good. I’d give it 5/5
I have to admit, I didn’t use Facebook much before, but I like the new user interface. It makes stuff like notes and photos more prominent. And yeah, it’s becoming more like twitter, but so what? It makes it more interactive, somehow; although I don’t want people to update their Fb status as much as they tweet… Oh, and I love the youtube updates (and other feeds).
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7:28 am, March 21, 2009 · Filed under Life, Online, Society, philosophy, religion, youtube · Tagged africa, complex thinking, darfur, genocide, global problems, Hank Green, HP Alliance, imagining the other complexly, john green, killing, nerdfighters, rwanda, vlogbrothers, world, youtube comments
Today I was having a blast on Spring Break (ha! Not really…) and browsing through Youtube, because that’s what I do. Still featured on there was John Green’s video on the Rwandan Genocide and the HP Alliance’s idea from Rwanda to have real people light candles and show that they care for their problems, which are all of our problems. It was a funny, yet serious video about how to help stop a problem.
Then I scrolled down to see the comments, and to my horror, people had posted comments not only against HPA’s initiative, but against stopping, preventing, or helping deal with genocide in Africa. There were mainly three categories of diversion from John and most people’s philosophy on this:
Ok maybe they weren’t that articulate or intentionally harsh, but that’s pretty much their idea. And I’ll elaborate with example 3.
And this is certainly a valid argument, and I like that people are thinking compexly about this. I for one apparently love to be proven wrong (even indirectly like this), and I’m glad I can broaden my view on the matter. But it’s an act to show people that we care and are going to help – that they have support, and that it’s not their problem, it’s the world’s problem.
There’s a great value in a small thing – especially when a community collectively responds – that has a great effect on people. It may not be objective or scientifically provable, but it’s there. People in Rwanda will actually see us showing our support. Of course we have to take political action, but it starts somewhere small, and if we want the Big Guys to notice, we gotta make noise!I definitely think that we should really be taking action in donations and awareness would help a lot.
What can I say? It’s hard to believe people can be so selfish and animalistic, caring only for themselves ans seeing the world with such warped values. I’m all for diversity of opinions, which is essential to social (and any) progress, but people have to think complexly about these problems…
I mean that’s just not right. I really don’t have a problem with religion, as long as it’s well thought out, criticized, and thought about deeper than stuff like the Bible and God. And that’s not even the problem here; it’s that people can be so stupid and barbaric in simple thinking, that they completely isolete themselves emotionally from the world, and refuse to care about the world.It’s people like this that really scare me, and make me fear for the future….
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