Religion and History

1. THB religion would be abolished in a certain time in the future.
2. THW enhance annual church meetings in KMLA.
3. THS gay marriage.

  Somewhat different from what we logically think, religion interferes our lives seriously. Religion creates our primary perception towards this world, and implements basic moral beliefs that we obey without any doubt; it is also religion which makes us relieved when we are down. Religion is now a part of our lives, and a part of society that we live in. Meanwhile, since society is a portrayal of the people's patterns of living, it is needed to examine the overall flow of the history to figure out the exact meaning of religion in our lives.

  Let's go back first to the old primitive days, which would have possibly created the concept of religion. In those days, people hunted, ate, and then hunted; they were living extremely boring lives.This boring and old-fashioned lives did not fit for evolving human brain capacity, and the people in those days would had started to feel uncomfortable with these facts. Moreover, they would had started to be curious about mysterious nature that surrounds them. Thus, religion would had emerged as a result of humans' demand for high-standard spiritual activity; activity of creation, worshipping, and getting rid of curiosity. These goals, which are to perceive high standards of life and find out what the world really is, are said to be primary objectives of religion.

  However, there was a time that religion is used as a tool by the authority to control the society and oppress freedom. The Middle Age, or "The Dark Age" as some people argue, forced people to be good tools of god, and awkwardly highlighted religion just as it was the primary purpose of human being to born. This was a complete violation of the original intention of religion itself. The people were painful, and the authority was happy.

  And we are living in this modern society. The religion of this world would be most aptly explained as a mixture of the two figures of religion in the old worlds. The people appreciates the greatness of god and follows the basic standards that religion provides, but they also uses the religion as a purpose of self-relief, which accords to the main purpose of religion. Whatever religion shows to be in this society, religion is a precious thing for human being, and would not cease to exist till the life of the species does.

"30 days in jail"

  The Television program "30 days" is a program that gives a random person a chance to be in an extremely unique situation for 30 days. For this period of one month, it sometimes make a person work in a mine; eat fast-food(which becames origin for the movie "supersized me"), or even live in a gay village. This, I believe, is quite meaningful from the aspect that it is designed to provide us a chance to observe series of new and fresh experiences by letting a random person take them instead; i.e., it gives us a series of second-hand experiences which would lead to our sharper insights and open minds.

  Taking into account the positive impact of this very TV show, what I want to suggest as a theme for the program is being in prison for 30 days. In prison, a person is segregated from the mainstream society. He becomes far from the modern communication technology, and there are almost no way to entertain himself unless he is able to successively play with his bed and the prison wall. Thus, both entertainment and communication is strictly forbidden in jail automatically.

  People say that philosophy emerges where there is nothing to play with but a person's own brain. This argument is true, since the only way to get out from this boring situation is to continue to think about everything surrounds oneself. Thus, it would be quite a good experience for a busy person in modern society, because it gives him a chance to actively think about the world he's living in. This would bring quite a big impact on not only the guest of the program, but also every single person watching the television; it would approach them to what the world is.

Ideal Education for Us

   Since the days of enlightenment, the importance of public education has always been highlighted as a tool for increase in overall knowledge of citizens. And this policy, even if not welcomed in early times, is working well as a basic sturture for every nation. New education policies of the government are always subjects to debate in Korea, and the majority of mothers in this very nation is trying hard to provide their children more chance for being integrated in this system well.

   However, there is something weird in this mechanism; something strange, something unstable. The government's education policy always calls confusion as well as negative side effects, and parents' efforts toward better education often result to serious social problems. These problems result from the incongruity of this policy to the overwhelming ideology of the society; since the former is derived from equity-related and somewhat socialistic concept, while the latter is capitalism itself. This causes the former to fit the format of the latter; makes people to require capitalistic competition in the equal education curriculum; results in increasing demand on private education which would provide higher standards of learning. There the paradox emerges.

   The loss of creativity is one of these series of symptoms. Creativity is enhanced in education when accepting the existence of difference and specialties of every single students in the curriculum. Because the capitalist education bases on the evaluation in standardized basis for equal chances of competition, it seems impossible to expect creativity under the current education system.

   The solution is change in education; the education that would provide students diverse standards that would enhance creativity of students. If every single students receive credit for not only studying, but drawing freely, dancing enthusiastically and playing the guitar arduously, it would be perfect for them to be creative artists as well as open-minded leaders in this very society.


-Motions-

1. THW enforce regular exams in school courses to the students.

2. THB education makes people dumb.

3. THB debate sessions in education curricula are necessary.

Michael Moore's newspaper, and teen's participation on politics

  In the article posted on his own website, Michael Moore, a renowned filmmaker as well as author, points out that teenagers are not participating actively enough in politics to make the change that they really want for this world according to the pressure of adults, and thus argues that the adults including himself should grant the participation of teens on political events as well as the debate on the political issues. And of course, I agree to the basic concept of his argument; doubtlessly everyone including teenagers should engage themselves in political activity in order for the improvement of "real" democracy.

  However, what we should focus on is the loophole of this suggestion. As a lot of us call the teenage lifetime as a time starting to think, teenagers actively construct their own views and develop their unique perceptions towards our world. But this also means that they don't have solid views to this world; their thoughts are like a fluid, flowing around from an argument to another, and from affirmative to negative. Thus, teenagers' conceptions are highly vulnerable to ideas if they were suggested so strongly that the teens are not even able to argue against them. And if this "grants of participation" such as Moore's is intentionally used for this purpose to brainwash teens, his alternative stated for this status quo is no more valid.

  So I suggest an another alternative to both make status quo improved and minimize the negative side effects or loopholes, which is education. The current education on politics is too solid and boring to expect teens to learn about the real politics. Hence, it is needed to make politics education more life-related and active to stimulate teens' natural procedure of learning basic concept of politics and constructing their views towards the world. Since the problem of the status quo was that students are not ready to be democratic when they should be, the alternative would definitely lessen this problem as well as prevent loopholes of brainwashing coming from the policy of Moore's.



Debate motions---

1. THB: Adults can interfere in students' political activity.

2. THW: Enhance teens to participate in demonstrations.

3. THB: Political experience in teenage years would make them more mature democratically.

"Story of stuff", the impression and criticism

  In general, the video clip "Story of stuff" was fairly impressive and also shocking enough for me to question the sustainability of current economic system. It gave quite reasonable explanations about several problems in linear mechanism from production to disposal, and attractive alternatives to deal with those. Also, I was quite personally satisfied with the clip, since the ideas that were presented in which were similar to my personal thoughts about the relationship between the world economy and the ecosystem. For instance, the explanation of corporations' tactics in order to make us consecutively consume and discard products was directly same to what I thought looking at the fashion trends of every single year.

  However, I got a little dissatisfied with the statistics used on the material. Even though the video excelled at explaining the core of the problem of this system, the statistics from which the explanation got persuasive were usually manipulated and, sometimes, even faked. What Lee Doren's rebuttal video have done, although it was not persuasive enough and a bit old-fashioned, was attacking the details and statistics of the video clip, which was quite effective in degrading the significance of the clip.

//Motion for Debates//

1. THB ecosystem can coexist with material economy.

2. THW allow elementary school teachers to show materials that contain specific opinions.

3. THB the current level of financial aid is enough for less developed nations.