We Are Wimps

Without inequality and competition our society would be a bland one. Creativity stems from people wanting to out do each other, craving to be seen as the person who beat the others. Unfortunately the way that this society is teaching their children, I think that might cease to exist in the future. Parents are spending too much time teaching their children to play nice and “share”, when they should be teaching them to enjoy the friendly competition every once in awhile. When I say “share” I mean sharing the winnings which is a stupid idea if you ask me, what’s the point of winning then? Currently I’d say we are a generation of wimps. It is a sad direction that our country is headed in.

The Debate

My parents have always taught me to stick with what I believe in no matter what others say, I need to "stay true to myself". At my middle school I was always the outsider or at least thats it felt like. I wanted to fit in, but it was hard as things were always testing my patience. One time during lunch, I sat down a bit late and much to my surprise my friends were in a heated debate. Usually they were talking about surfing or some new video game that had just came out, so this was a strange occurrence. I tried not to get involved with whatever they were talking about because it seemed pretty intense and I felt like eating not getting angry. I had a voracious appetite because I hadn't eaten much that day. As I was about to tear into my sandwich, something caught my ear. 

"Being gay should be outlawed bro, it's so f*cking gay that the Obama hasn't done that yet. He's such a bad president," one says to another.

At this point, they had come to some sort of agreement on whatever they were talking about before and had continue onto this subject. Of course, in the current state that I was in, being starving and tired from class, I was ready to snap at anything. So this particular sentence really made me mad, because I just didn't agree with anything they had just said. 

I retorted with something along the lines of, "how would you like it if the Government banned you from going to the beach because they didn't like surfers? Oh I know, you wouldn't. Why do you say such hateful things about a group of people that just want to be happy?" 

Some of what I said after that didn't make sense because I was hungry, but eventually I stormed off to eat my lunch elsewhere.

Cheers.

Quote Analysis

The media is no different from any other company in that they want to make money. The way that they make their money is by scaring the masses into reading or watching what they are producing. They will run a story and then hope that people watch it, and, depending on the response, they will keep doing follow up stories until no one cares anymore. This is then repeated for eternity. The response that the majority has will then try and relieve their anxieties by voting on laws  that in theory could prevent whatever the news was warning them about. The result is government money being spent on the wrong things like on the prison systems and not on the education systems. So yes, I do agree with George Gerbner, a fear-based media is a major problem and it is affecting the well being of the people of America. I don't think it will ever end until the media ends. This cycle will keep repeating itself.

Blog #2: A picture worth 1000 words

The story here is that two people are helplessly stuck at the top of wind turbine as it burns around them. They have no way to go down, except to jump. These two people, much like the Falling Man, have their fate in their hands. When I first saw this image, I was not sure what to think. I didn't know how to emotionally respond with this image. I couldn't help but think about if I was up there, what would I do. Would I choose to sit idly by as my world burns away with a slim chance of escape, or jump and seal my fate. I thought about the irony of this image, how this wind turbine was built to create electricity from a reliable clean source, catches fire and pollutes the air with the very smoke it is trying to prevent. It shows how invasive humans are, and when we try to fix what we have wronged, things like this happen. Proving to us that we shouldn't try and control nature, but, rather, accept our fate as not the masters of our domain.

Anyways, those were my two cents on the topic.