As the election draws closer, I start to notice the things that I feel are just not right. One of these problems is selfishness. Now, I know this is not your average “crime, poverty, economy” answer, but it is an issue that I feel needs to strongly be addressed. With the decrease in resources, this problem is quickly becoming a growing epidemic. People who don’t have it want help, and people that have the resources aren’t willing to share, for fear they will live outside their comfort zone. I think that people don’t realize just how far a small favor can go. I know this sounds a lot like the movie “Pay it Forward”, but that movie really did have a good point. Attempting to be a good person to a few people can prove to be a dramatic impact on the world. If people took the time to look past their own situations, it would teach lessons of compassion and humility, something mankind could use a large dose of these days.
Another big problem I see facing the world is lack of knowledge. People of the world have gotten lazy. With the invention of television and internet comes a wealth of knowledge, but also an opportunity to be the laziest person that you can be. When information is presented, most individuals just absorb it, not stopping to think, “Could there be another side to this story?” or “Did what he or she just said really make sense with what the current situation?” I know this problem well because I used to be one of these people. I used to read lots of information on the internet, and watch lots of television, but it would stop there. I would take for face value whatever these individuals presented in front of me. This has got to stop if our world is going to get any better. We must realize that though a reporter’s job is to inform the public, they are ultimately getting paid for what makes a good story. They often do not report the whole story, and miss critical details that could give the audience a skewed vision of an important situation. I learned from a fellow member in my summer program (followed by a cool demonstration involving a dollar and the masons) that you should take anything that you hear with a grain of salt. With the things that you find most important, you should take it upon yourself to find out the correct information, and make determinations about situations based on your own findings.
The third largest problem I see facing the world today is the lack of unity. It seems that the only time the world really unites is every four years during the Olympics, and even then, we are competing against each other, silently wishing that China’s gymnast would break an ankle, or one of Jamaica’s sprinters would pull a hamstring. We are still behaving like our ancestors thousands of years ago, fighting wars to solve problems, yet we constantly tell our children that violence is not the answer. I know that the famous beauty pageant answer when asked what they would do to make the world a better place is, “I would create world peace,” but honestly that is what we need. All bickering countries need to get over their trivial issues, and come up with some kind of peaceful way to settle their differences. The world needs to unite so that people will unite, and be less discriminatory because of ignorance towards other people’s countries and heritage. But, that again, is another blog.
Though I see all of these problems need to be addressed, I am only one person. But, as long as I can affect at least one other person, I can begin the road to personal fulfillment. The problem that I feel I can do the most about is helping to increase the knowledge of my fellow homo sapiens. Prior to this class, I had already begun to think of ways I could increase the health awareness through holding forums and passing out literature. I do not want to hold boring forums that your high school made have made you sit through. I want to hold an interactive session that involves people from underserved communities, and enlightens them in ways they’ve never been enlightened before. I want the people involved in my seminars to not only leave more knowledgeable than when they came, but to use the tips I give them throughout their lives so that our underserved communities will become healthier, and the problems will become less prevalent.
Hopefully, my methods of informing people will become so great that I will have a great stele made describing how magnificent I was to the masses. That is exactly what the Merneptah Stele is. It is a stone slab engraved with a description of Merneptah’s military victories in the Near East and Africa. It was discovered by an archaeologist named Flinders Petrie at Thebes in 1896. It contains a hymn and a list of the Pharoah’s military victories. The Merneptah Stele pertains to this course because is the earliest reference, besides to the bible, to mention the nation of Israel. It states Israel as being important enough for Merneptah to mention as one of the places he conquered.
Like the Merneptah Stele, Babe Ruth had a couple of movies that documented his famous victories against the world of baseball. These movie clips were shown to prove the point that stories are told to fit the times and lives of the people that the story is being told to at that time. As the times change, slight variations are made to the story, but the ultimate theme of the story remains unchanged. This is something that must be kept in mind when reading the bible. The bible was written by scribes, and was constantly re-written until the printing press was invented. People took it upon themselves to change bits and pieces to make it more appealing to the people of the time. Therefore, everything in the bible should be taken contextually, not literally, in my opinion. This is one reason why some may say there is no such thing as “The Bible” . Another reason is because there are so many different versions and translations that there can not only be one Bible. The bible is simply an element of centrality that Christians can go to in a time of need, or to gain a closer understanding of their religion.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Week 02: 3 Big Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.