Wal-Mart

       Every currency has two faces. I have read many article about this particular subject, I came up with this conclusion; we must accept the side effect of every new evolution. This is multidimensional aspect; it is not about local TV manufacturing plant in Ohio and South China boomtown of Shenzhen or Chastity Ferguson and Kelly Gray in Las Vegas, it is about in what part Wal-Mart might be good or bad to our society. Let us examine some evidence together;

     Wal-Mart brings low quality products from China and dumps it into the market in cheap price that attract attention of the consumers. In return local businesses and companies in the United States shut down because they were not able to sell their products. Another point is unethical work environment of Wal-Mart providers in China and in the U.S. had brought a lot of attention. In your text book there is a story of a woman named Li who gets paid $65 a month to work for 55 hours a week. Also I would like to invite you to watch this movie to see unethical work environment here in the U.S. Please click the link below;

                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_k1VHJLI0w&feature=related

          I strongly believe there another side of Wal-Mart too. 3,600 stores cross the country with millions of employee. I don’t believe those employees are from China or from another country. Wal-Mart serves 100 millions customers every day, it collects billions of dollars from tax payers which goes back to pay the salary of other citizens. For the purpose of this class I went to local Wal-Mart to examine one thing, how many of product they show is from the U.S. Not all the products they have are from China, there are other products are local and help those local manufactures to sell their products.

Let us go back to the initial question; is Wal-Mart good for American society?

     To answer that question we must look in to the case from varies angels and see all its detentions. I think the good sides of Wal-Mart exceed the bad part of it and for many reasons. First, Wal-Mart might kill some local jobs, but also provides more. Second, Wal-Mart pays higher rate of salary than other jobs do. Third, Wal-Mart makes life continue more smoothly because it helps people to save money. That’s my humble opinion and I am not saying I am correct.

There is a very good debate on Wal-Mart I would like to share it with my classmate, please click on the link below;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4clILPy2So&feature=relmfu  

Second Shift

Second shift is generally referred to the tasks that supposedly designated or belong to women after work hours.  Well, this topic is very controversy if we talk about the United State.  According what I see on the ground, today there is no job designated only for either one  and the check list that comes with this assignment both man and woman share responsibility to make the family run smoothly. However, there are some certain jobs that require muscle power such as cutting grass, man is expected to take care of those kind of chores while woman take care of some chores that require smooth touch such as finding a Christmas cards.

In the past, however, our society was male dominated society and woman use to work side by side with man after long work-hours, there were more chores was waiting for him at home. That era is over, for now in many cases man takes care of many chores at home like doing laundry and packing lunch back for kids even doing babysitting.  Matter of fact if I talk about myself, I cook more than my fiancé cooks, and I clean the house more than she cleans the house, above all, I work and she not. In many cases, I have friends whom are retired and the wife work, they do everything in the house and the wife makes money for the family. The notion second shift is not the way has been described and there is little of exaggeration.

In the Middle East and other man dominated countries that notion is more pervasive. Women usually have all hard chores and man take the one is less boring. I remember when I grew up my mother was contributing in family earning also she was taking care of most of the home chores; cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, washing cloth, and many other things. This practice is still going on in many mail dominated countries and the main reason behind that is lack of proper education and custom and tradition.

Brief History of Religion

To better understanding religion and belief system, history is a great resource. With my humble general knowledge and satisfactory English language, I write this brief about history of religion. I hope you like it. Also, the link below provides a lot of knowledge about the same subject.

Many years ago, before the era of hunting and gathering, human were thought to make since about the unpredictable thing that occurred around them. Some were believed the fire might be that power because it eats and burns everything around itself, some thought women who gives the birth and bring a new person and new life, and some thought it might be some kind of animals because they live for long time and they are powerful every group and according it is surrounding environment chose one to worshiped and made it God. Human approached those figures to ask for blessing and victory, but there were no low-kind roles that had been generated by those Gods.

 After the era of hunting and gathering, human were engaged in many conflicts over food and water sources. Human needed role and regulation to organize them, Hammurabi in the Babylonian empire was the first who devised the first set of written lows to be followed. Many followed Hammurabi’s steps and generated lows for their society to follow, although some of those low creators claimed deity but they were dying or overthrew by power of other human beings. Years after humanity found itself with many Gods and shapes that control their life. One God for travels other for wars another for good harvest and many of others for anything else.     

Humanity needed a powerful, divine, and absolute God who cannot be defeated or died over the time. According to Karen Armstrong’s book “the History of God,” Judaism was the first monotheistic religion in the history.  The monotheistic never been replaced, but had went some modification years after through Christianity and Islam. The purpose of religion in all different stages of life was only reform and obedience.  However, with revelation humanity and progress of human thoughts, religion was not able to satisfy people’s need and people did not see themselves any more as subject of obedient.

In 18^th century, the age of Enlightenment in Europe reduced the burden of religion on people for the first time in the history.  During the French revolution the journalist Jean-Paul Marat used the word “democratic” in one of articles. Political parties appeared on the surface after that to (replace or work side by side) religion.

Unfortunately my knowledge is not adequate to say political parties to replace or to work side by side religion to serve human’s need. In many discussions seating with people with PHDs, I asked that question to get the correct answer, but everyone gave me his or her opinion with no evidence. So I don’t know if it was to replace the religion or to work with religion.    

Class mate, Professor: this link below will provide a lot of information about the history of God. It is one and half hour documentary and it is great thing for your own use.

 http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/a-history-of-god

Secular World

         Secularization is the movement that encourages the society to adopt ideas based on scientific-approved factors not based on spiritual factors.  According to the book, secularization is evaluated according to three dimensions; the membership of the church, the influence of the church on the state, and religiosity. All these are good dimensions to relay on to look into new secular world. However, I can add one more dimension to show that secularization is pervasive and religion is heading to diminishing.  A close look into religion today and compared with 18^th century’s religion there are many modification and facilitation. For instance in the Catholic faith man and woman were not allowed to sleep on one bed only for making child, it was considered to be sin. Now, the same faith has changed it is approach and allow, what considered to be sin, happen with church’s approval.  One might ask, why church has changed it is approach? The answer is simple, to keep people under the flag of religion!!!!

          Secularization is very obvious in industrialized countries. However, because the religion had penetrated deep into society in early ages, the effect of religion will remain for longer time. Look at our dollar bills; you will see the “in one God we trust”. This is small sentence does not mean that we have spiritual system in the country, but it is only remnants of history no more. Secularization is more obvious and advance very quickly more than another area.

         The movement of secularization is slower in Middle East and Islamic countries than we seen in the industrialized countries and the other part of the world. The reason behind that is because religion in Middle East plays the role of weapon, and it has been used by many religious groups to reach their goal. For instance, as we all might follow news there is a mass of change happening in the Middle East what they called “Arab Spring.” All revelations happening at this moment in Arab Spring, religion has the upper hand and it is the motive that pushes people to fight against their governments.     

Race and Ethncity

Racism, prejudice, discrimination…………… terrifying words, I don’t want to read those words, I don’t want see those words, because I don’t want to remember.

I would like to introduce myself; the only person survived from my family. All my family, with no exception, is gazed by brutal regime with intention to wipe out my ethnicity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewSX0gNlpow     

It might be hard for me to word my personal reflection, because simply I cannot compare Japanese American situation with my situation. As it is stated in “The Japanese American Legacy Project”, many people in the country as well as government official were against that decision, but unfortunately there were some people with a stat of power were able to effect the central power in the country and put 120,000 innocent people in detention with no charge against them.

I already mention that, all different kind of social problems exist inside every society and in all levels and classes. Government official can be deviant, poor, reach, gay, or anti-group. United States is big community and consist of all kind social classes, and our government is part of that community also has all different level and social class.  

  

Gender Inequality

I worked for a unit in the United States Marin Corps in 2004-2005 as linguist and culture advisor in Iraq, called “Recon Force” and our administrator was a female captain. She was very active and hard worker, but many personal in the unit looked at her presence in that unit as an unusual, and they gave her hard time. I had conversation with many of those personal to ask them the reason behind their behavior toward that captain, the response was “this unit is aggressive unit for special tasks and women has no place at this unit.”

Gender inequality refers to the deference between individuals due to their gender. Gender composes both socially through social interactions as well as biologically through hormonal differences. Gender inequality stems, mostly, from social role in the society.

 During hunting and gathering era, men went out for hunting and women stayed home to take care of anything else in the house. The men task was always associated with kind of risks because of the dangerous animals that might confront, but the women jobs were safer because they were away from dangerous risks. Another task was dedicated to men was protecting it is house if there were attack from outsiders by fighting outsiders. The women were upbringing kids more gently because they were attached to the kids more than men.

These physical-grounded tasks gave men upper hand in other aspects of the life, which made women think they are in the protection of the men and they obligated to follow men’s orders. There is two important points I would like to mention; first the physical capability of men is always admired by women even if it makes men have upper hand. If the men are more powerful physically, the women feel safer. Second, the desire for independency makes people to eliminate the need of others and women were always, in the past, felt that they need men’s presence and men took pride of that.

With evolutions of life, women start to involve in every aspect of life, this involvement was challenging for men whom are about to lose upper hand positions. Men continued to fight back to bring back that position by making assumptions about women; men are better drivers, men are smarter, women are good in certain jobs, and many others. Gender inequality come to surface more at this point by not letting women having certain jobs “stay in your lane.”

There are many things in current day are men’s favor; for example names in the United States and other countries are man oriented. When someone talks about, for example, babysitter, or nurse women’s image come to our mind, but when we talk about commander or solder image of men come to our mind. In many occasions women were able to play many rolls that were dedicated for men throughout history, such as the French defense minister Michele Alliot-Marie 2002-2007. However, the gender inequality will continue but it will be different according to careers, cultures, and countries.   

Poverty

Today I would like to address a problem we’ve all heard of before; an enduring problem that have been with us for as long as I can remember. According to the United Nations, poverty in our world still exists and it continues to be a devastating problem. You may wonder exactly who these people are, because we are living in a secure environment away from poverty. But there are other countries, such as Africa, where people are engaging hardships with poverty.

However, poverty is not in Africa alone, it is everywhere. To name a few places, it is in India, China, North Korea, Northern Ireland, Puerto Rico, and even in the United States of America. It is an alarming fact that poverty is all over the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and great deal closer to our homes in the Americas than most people might know. It is shocking how in our so-called modern society, there are millions of families living with less than 10,000 dollars in annual income. When faced with this reality, it is clear that we have a great challenge ahead of us. We the people must act upon this problem to help our neighbors who are in dire need. We are hard working, determined, caring people who will eliminate poverty from our society if we put off our selfishness aside and decide to act upon this problem.

I strongly believe that poverty is not all bout theories such as market-oriented, state-centered, or other theories. Those theories might be part of the problem but not the only factor behind poverty of some countries. For instance country such as Qatar whose population does not exceed 1 million and oil pop up in every spot around the country while countries in Horn of Africa not only does not have oil, drought constantly hit their lands,  kills all kind of harvests and people cannot find drinking water from themselves. There are no theory can work to straight up the economy of those country.

All theories that we learned from this chapter have it is advantages and disadvantages, but when we come to which theory is good for certain country, we have to consider many other things such as geography, weather, belief system, and people. I had posted two pictures on the discussion form, but I would like to post it here too. One picture is about life style in Arabian and the other is the image of African kid trying to wake his dead mother.

Today I would like to address a problem we’ve all heard of before; an enduring problem that have been with us for as long as I can remember. According to the United Nations, poverty in our world still exists and it continues to be a devastating problem. You may wonder exactly who these people are, because we are living in a secure environment away from poverty. But there are other countries, such as Africa, where people are engaging hardships with poverty.

However, poverty is not in Africa alone, it is everywhere. To name a few places, it is in India, China, North Korea, Northern Ireland, Puerto Rico, and even in the United States of America. It is an alarming fact that poverty is all over the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and great deal closer to our homes in the Americas than most people might know. It is shocking how in our so-called modern society, there are millions of families living with less than 10,000 dollars in annual income. When faced with this reality, it is clear that we have a great challenge ahead of us. We the people must act upon this problem to help our neighbors who are in dire need. We are hard working, determined, caring people who will eliminate poverty from our society if we put off our selfishness aside and decide to act upon this problem.

I strongly believe that poverty is not all bout theories such as market-oriented, state-centered, or other theories. Those theories might be part of the problem but not the only factor behind poverty of some countries. For instance country such as Qatar whose population does not exceed 1 million and oil pop up in every spot around the country while countries in Horn of Africa not only does not have oil, drought constantly hit their lands,  kills all kind of harvests and people cannot find drinking water from themselves. There are no theory can work to straight up the economy of those country.

All theories that we learned from this chapter have it is advantages and disadvantages, but when we come to which theory is good for certain country, we have to consider many other things such as geography, weather, belief system, and people. I had posted two pictures on the discussion form, but I would like to post it here too. One picture is about life style in Arabian and the other is the image of African kid trying to wake his dead mother.