Blog 9

The world is facing many problems today. Overpopulation, food shortages, species extinction, deforestation, etc. The list goes on. Makes me wonder about the future of our planet, as well as ourselves. As sadly, there is no real solution for many of these problems as of today. The world population is at 7 billion people, with nearly one billion classified as living in "chronic starvation". In the future things are simply predicted to get worse. As the global population increases, our food supplies dwindle. Food scarcity is already causing global prices of food to rise, the supply just cannot meet the demand anymore. We bought ourselves some time with the green revolution of the 1950s, but now it seems that that time is running out.

We have over-fished the oceans causing 90% of all large fish to be gone from them. We have polluted both the air and water, and it is estimated that due to the ensuing ocean acidification the ocean may eventually be uninhabitable by anything but microbes. So we can either use our sophisticated technology to rapidly exterminate all fish from the earth-- thus compounding our food shortage-- or we can poison them by turning their water into acid. At the same time as this can be happening, we can be confidant that the starving people across Asia and Africa will become ever more desperate as rainfall patterns change and dry areas become even more desiccated then they were before. To compound all of this, we are facing a massive die off of species.

According to Jean-Christophe Vié, Deputy Head of IUCN’s Species Programme this is a serious problem as well. “Think of fisheries without fishes, logging without trees, tourism without coral reefs or other wildlife, crops without pollinators,” says Vié. “Imagine the damage to our economies and societies if they were lost. All the plants and animals that make up Earth’s amazing wildlife have a specific role and contribute to essentials like food, medicine, oxygen, pure water, crop pollination, carbon storage and soil fertilization. Economies are utterly dependent on species diversity. We need them all, in large numbers. We quite literally cannot afford to lose them.

Well I guess all of this means that the world is going to need to make some changes in the following years, as we can't afford to think of this task as a simple doddle.

Vocab:
Desiccated: Dehydrated
Doddle: An easy task

Differences

Sometimes I wonder about the world today. I wonder how so many of our problems seems to come from our stereotyping of other peoples differences. Whether it's race, religion, wealth, culture, or simple ideology everywhere I look there seems to be judging and stereotyping going on. I'd say this kind of pigeonholing was the silent elephant in the room, but it actually seems more like a tyrannosaurus. Whether or not people openly shout slurs on the street doesn't really reflect how judgmental or bias a given place is. It simply reflects that most of them want to avoid the "bigot" or "jerk" label which might be put upon them by those outside their own group if their prejudices were out in the open.

And is it better this way, that everyone should simply shut up and pretend there is no issue? Some people seem to believe so. Instead of confronting the various stereotypes with facts and smashing them down, many in our society employ a "shutup everything is fine" kind of approach. The main idea seems to be that if we don't acknowledge stereotypes, then they magically disappear. Then we wonder why despite how "progressed" we become there is still fragmenting and infighting going on in our society. Or maybe I should not say "we", maybe I should just say "I". Since while most people seem to think of "progression" when it comes to stereotyping as being a racial thing, I am looking at the big picture. Racism is not the root of this way of thinking, it is just a symptom of a bigger problem.

The problem is that some people just seem to have a natural tendency to form themselves into some kind of caste system. They group up with others who they perceive as being "worthy" of hanging around them, then lump anyone who does not fit into that category of people as being inferior and having no value. Often this category of "worthy" people is defined in a way that based on purely superficial traits. Looking a certain way. Talking a certain way. Thinking a certain way. Why people have such a need to categorize themselves in this way is anyones guess. Maybe people have a need to look down on others so they feel superior. Maybe it's just a form of tribalism. Who really knows, but this is a problem I believe that must be addressed by our educational system.

I was in a class just earlier today when I noticed a few symptoms of this problem. I'm not really sure what it is about this class, but it seems to have attracted a more elitist audience then other classes I can remember. Yet I would describe my classmates from this class as having a certain kind of conventional intelligence. They seem confidant and are effective communicators, maybe even slightly charismatic. But at the same time they are arrogant.

During the class today we were watching a video, and as part of the video the voice of a black man was describing the effect of hurricane Katrina. He was speaking in a rather informal manner, just like he was talking to someone out on the street. Some of my classmates thought this was funny and they laughed openly at his manner of speaking. Yet, if they had actually given the man a chance before they laughed they would have seen that he was not a stupid man and he made a few good points. Sadly I can't say I was terribly surprised by my classmates behavior. People just seem unable to control themselves when they see or hear something that sounds "stupid", and they just laugh. Whether it's flagrantly laughing at a fellow classmate for asking what they thought was an idiotic question, laughing at someone for talking in a certain manner, or just for not having the right "look", the central problem seems to me that they are not being accepting of diversity. No not diversity of race. Diversity of thought. Just because someone is not thinking in the same manner as you or does not grasp one thing as quickly as you, it does not make them "wrong". It just makes them different. Neither better nor worse.

However many people don't seem to have learned this lesson quite yet. I think it is about time for our educational system to rise to the challenge. Instead of a "accept this other person or else" mentality we need to really focus on convincing other people that differences don't mean inferiority. Convincing them, as opposed to beating them with the stick of social shame should they fail to comply. Because while we can silence the voicing of prejudices in public with that approach, we cannot destroy them. And we must destroy them, because if you look around to see who is laughing in my class you do not see some strange, backwards, freaks of nature. You see ordinary people, who simply do not know any better.

Vocab:
Pigeonhole:a specific (often simplistic) category
Flagrant: conspicuously and outrageously bad or reprehensible

Uninspired

I seemed to have a hard time finding a topic today. I attempted writing several blogs before this, but none of them have lived up to my standard of quality. They all ended up being saved as drafts. I also considered writing this blog about a philosophical topic to make it easy like I usually do, but given that I prefer to end my persuasive arguments only after I have supported them somewhat, a post like that could have easily ended up taking more time then I wanted to spend blogging today. So today I blogged about bees.

I was actually rather ignorant of bees until recently. In fact I would assume most US citizens are ignorant of bees. Think of a bee; yellow and black creature that lives in a hive right? Makes honey, has a queen of the colony, spends its days serving its community. Not so for all bees it turns out. In fact there are about 1,600 species of bees native to California alone, the yellow and black bees we are so familiar with were imported from Europe. Not a single one of the native bees makes honey or lives in a hive. In fact most of them don't even have stingers, for native bees only the females have stingers. Native bees also come in different colors, they can be green, red, black, and a myriad of various other colors. Their variety also extends to size and texture. Some are hirsute, some smooth. Some are large, some are remarkably diminutive. It's funny really how despite the fact we like to think of ourselves as relatively knowledgeable of life, we are so ignorant of little things like the countries own environmental history. Perhaps it is always fallacious to become arrogant or cocky when it comes to knowledge, considering how much of it is out there.

Vocab:

Diminutive: Very small.

Hirsute: Having or covered with hair.

Experts

I've noticed a disturbing tend in our society recently...it seems that we have almost deified the phrase "experts". Experts have gone from being normal people just like you or I who happened to be more knowledgeable in a certain area, to being these demi-god like beings who have no face or name, but whose word is law. It should come as no surprise really if you think about it. Where do people get most of their information? Why, the news of course. Does the news like to go into specific detail about which experts said what, the minute details of their experiment, or what others in their field have to say? Not always no. This can be important because minute details like how many participants were in the study or who funded it can help determine accuracy. It is not un heard of for organizations to attempt to set up their own studies in ways that skew their results one way or the other. But regardless, the media does not always cover the minute details. So the result is that we hear about what "experts" have said and what the "study says"--a study of course being one of the integral processes of the scientific method we prize so dearly, we give it considerable weight just because of that authoritativeness--but are not always informed as to who these experts are or any details of the study.

It's possible that overall this has caused us to be slightly more trusting of anything where an "expert" is said to be involved. If I start a sentence using a phrase such as "Experts have recently found" Or "recent studies suggest" I instantly become more credible. Even if I don't really elaborate at all as to who I'm talking about, go into detail about whether there is a consensus within the field regarding this information, or give any additional specifics at all. I believe that this is a fallacious way of looking at things, to be so overly accepting. Sure, maybe society groomed us to be trusting of these words and people, but that doesn't mean we have to stay that way. We as a society should demand more transparency before we take the word of others at face value.

Vocab:
Minute: characterized by painstaking care and detailed examination
Fallacious: based on an incorrect or misleading notion or information