I’m sure as everyone has started the blog, I’ll go ahead and say it too: there are so many problems facing the world today that it is hard to narrow it down to just three. The three biggest problems I have chosen cover very broad range categories because I feel that the biggest problems in the world cannot be summed up to three specific things.

The first big problem in the world I believe would have to be the economy. In just the past year, I have watched as the United States and the world take a downward spiral in its current financial status. The value of the dollar is dissipating and we as part of the world community are hurting for that. But who is to blame? Where did it all begin? I certainly do not have any kind of financial economic expertise and really do not have an answer for that. All I can personally say from experience is that I probably would not be the owner of my own home today if I had waited a month or even a few months to purchase my house after December 2007. I know the mortgage crisis in America may not be a worldwide problem but it certainly has had an impact on the world community. People over the past year have lost their jobs, lost tons of retirement money, and savings. People are having a hard time keeping up with bills and are having to give up lives they have grown so accustomed to. I do believe that we as a society have become relaxed about money and have become a “throw away” society and we should be held accountable for that. We as people could easily make changes in our lives to help improve our own economic status. However, what about the big corporations? The government comes in and bails out companies that spend millions of dollars on stupid stuff (spa days for their employees, huge vacations for corporate executives, huge bonus checks, etc.). So what about the small business owners who are struggling to make this month’s bills? What about the hardworking middle class American trying to pay to educate their college student? The economy is in a bad way and there seems to be little to no communication between the “higher ups” in government and the people who make this country keep going.

The second big problem I see facing the world is that society has accepted a very relaxed set of morals in regards to the choices of youth. Although I am an only child, I am the oldest of all cousins on both sides of the family. My cousins range in age from 19 to age 5. Although I am no angel child that has acted in the moral way in every situation, I have noticed a significant difference in things that I once thought were so wrong being just washed under the rug. For example, my 17 year old cousin just had a baby girl in December. He called me one day and just said, “hey I’m having a baby.” I just about fell on the floor with the way he said it. He just acted like yesterday he was a kid playing basketball in the driveway and today he is going to be a father. His parents and my grandparents just basically said, “well it is not what we wanted to happen but it did.” That’s true in some respects but my goodness. I would have been grounded for practically that whole pregnancy or I would have been working my buns off to make sure that baby was as properly provided for as it could have been given my circumstances. Anyway, to get off this tangent and make a long story short, my cousin dropped out of school, did not get a job, and now is a father! Brilliant! In terms of a “relaxed set of morals” I think that teen pregnancy is one of the biggest problems that has come of this. I’m 21 in a serious relationship of four years with a very sound financial status and I’m so far from wanting or really being mentally ready to become a mother it is not even funny. I just think society has accepted the whole babies having babies as an ok thing and in turn teens and youth think it is ok and no big deal.  I also think that the way some youth are dressing is another example of relaxed set of morals. I was always into trendy clothes and my mom of course just let me get what I want. However, if I was walking out of that house with my skirt barely covering my buns, I was not only changing clothes but that skirt was going in the trash. All in all I think it does back to a lack of accountability. I think that accountability has drastically changed from years ago. What was once something that would have been looked down upon is now accepted with no problems.

The third biggest problem facing the world today is nutrition. I’m not just saying hunger or poverty but nutrition. In a huge population of the world, people are unhealthy and obese. In another huge population of the world, people are struggling to get a meal on the table. It seems rather ironic that people are overweight to the point of unhealthiness and people are hungry to the point of unhealthy malnutrition. I feel that a lot of this problem has to do with where you live and what you have access to. Of course in the United States we have countless routes of access to quick, fast, cheap fattening food. There are fast food restaurants around every corner. Also too, I know that a lot of times people say that eating healthy is expensive. I think this is certainly true to some extent but it is not a good enough excuse to be unhealthy. As far as malnutrition is concerned, I know poverty is a vicious cycle. How does one just pull themselves up out of poverty and start anew when that person doesn’t know what or when or where the next meal is coming from? All of these circumstances, problems, and issues related to obesity and malnutrition need and can be addressed.

Of all the aforementioned problems in the world, I believe that I can do the most about the nutrition issue. I have always had issues with my weight (Not that I have ever been malnourished but I’ve been big, little, round, skinny, etc) and am always trying to figure out ways that I can still enjoy food and life and not feel like I constantly have to be on a diet. Growing up in Louisiana of course does not help this. I have also tried to figure out ways that I can help, promote, or contribute to organizations that help with the malnourished of the world. Hopefully, I will explore and explain my plan to combine fixing malnutrition and unhealthy eating in my project. Also, I know this does not directly relate to my choice as a career (pharmacy) but maybe if people ate right and took control over their own health, pharmaceutical companies could spend more time and money on finding cures for things that are out of our control (aids, cancer, genetic diseases, etc.).

I fully understand the course’s plagiarism policy. As I have previously said, I think plagiarism is ridiculous and juvenile and will absolutely not participate in it. I think plagiarism along with skipping class regularly has to be the two biggest pet peeves I have!

Finally, there is no such thing as “the Bible” because the Bible was written and interpreted by many different people. The Bible also means different things to different people. There is not one single manuscript that just holds the entire text of the Bible. The Bible has many different textual witnesses. Also, different religions use different versions of the Bible. There is no one text that all Bibles were based off of.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 12:20 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.