Posts

Reflection: Amazing Grace

            Sometime ago in the South Bronx, a robbery was made. The residents of the apartment called the police and reported the theft of a tv and a radio. After three hours, two policemen finally arrived with anxiety and dread blatantly displayed on their face. When the grandmother asked, the two officers replied that when the call was made, everyone at the station was afraid to go for they knew the location. Even though no one said it, the grandma knew the police thought the place as a death camp.             When people think of police, they think of the brave officer who will sacrifice his own life to protect his community. If this event took place in Canton, Toledo, or anywhere else, people would be upset and would say the cops had chosen the wrong profession. Yet there was no public outcry, the folks in the South Bronx had begrudgingly accepted this as reality. For a place synonymous with crime and violence, no one has seriously thought why people raise their children there
Post a Comment
Read more

Citizenship

            What is citizenship? If I was a dictionary, I would tell you that citizenship is simply being a citizen of a nation. But that is not very intriguing, nor is it worth more than a sentence to discuss. In my view, citizenship is when a person is citizen of a state and said citizen cares about the state he lives in, because if a citizen could care less if he was a citizen of what happens to the state then he might as well be a resident from mars.             One way to care about the state is to get involved in politics, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a politician or a lobbyist. This can be things as small as supporting organizations like meals-on-wheels or voting. While people like Paul Loeb, with his book Soul of a Citizen , may try to convince you that you must part of the organization and dedicate your life fighting “for the good of society,” I think the farthest one truly needs to go is to spread the message further. While there is good argument why one should do
Post a Comment
Read more

Chaotic Good?

          Chaos; a state of disorder, uncertainties, and of unexpected results. Often, chaos is negative as many people like order. However sometimes chaos is a good thing and necessary, even in the obvious form of burning buildings and explosions, though not very often. Where ever chaos exists, systems are rendered mostly useless, giving rise to revelations about those systems. Whether it’s, “hmmm, perhaps we should prepare in case the house does burn down,” or, “geez, maybe we should have treated our peasants better so this wouldn’t happen,” there can always be a point to be discovered in said chaos because chaos is almost always is a result of flaws within a system that allows for said chaos to happen or invites chaos.             As I said, chaos can be good. Technically, the marches Martin Luther lead resulted in chaos. Roads and building were blocked, police dogs barking, people screaming, that was all chaos. However, despite all terrors that occurred, it was necessary. Marti
Post a Comment
Read more

Democracy Reflection

What is democracy? While it is obvious that it is not a government where a dictator goes unchallenged as he does as he pleases on his throne of skulls, it also isn’t a government where the most powerful group dictates the law. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a democracy is “ a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.” Obviously, this holds many benefits as even the poorest can still influence the law and even destroy bad laws. However, there are some flaws with the system that make it difficult to run efficiently, at least without giving someone the cold shoulder.             The first flaw is that, technically, majority rules means that you can ignore a minority. Even worse, that minority can be silenced and denied rights if the system is corrupted. This was the case with the apartheid in southern Africa. Since black
Post a Comment
Read more