Is our world so good?

[sang]

So this is kinda branching off from the a lot of the student's views and notions about the "the doll house" play. So as we often compare the social aspects of that time to modern day, we look down upon the mid 19th century society because of the wrong treatment of women and that how the ought to be as equal as men are. Modern days, where women's rights did get much better, racism isn't so blatant and socially accepted (which is good!), we think that the world is so much better now..

At a shallow look, the world may look better now than it was before.. but is it really?

No. I think that the Earth and its peoples will always have problems of their century or during their era to suit them. Starting from the late 20th century, we've had nuclear problems where we had the arms race with the Soviet Union during the cold war, now days, I feel as though we are still on the suspicious lookout for each other, not as obvious as before. Also, the other modern issues, "human trafficking" the social discrimination to Indonesians working in Saudi Arabia or any other foreign places, and some of the oppression that Sageda mentioned in her Article. Needless to say, the world has gotten better, it's just that these problems in my opinion will always be around.

[sageda]

I think the only reason our world seems so better is that we're better at concealing our horrible nature. We just took old issues and replaced them with new ones. We think racism/sexism has decreased. True to a certain extent, but mostly just harder to see because it's institutionalized and internalized. I don't think it's fair that we look down on those societies. Yes, they were horrible but we have our own problems too and it's not right that we look at them and feel satisfied in where we are now. We still have a long way to go.

[yerin0727]

I think that the world has gotten much better in the aspect of gender discrimination. I really could not understand why women had to receive such treatments from men and of how they had much fewer rights than men did. Now, I think that the world has gotten much fair in the treatment of men and women. However, not everything has gotten better since the 19th century. For instance, our technology has gotten much better in that nowadays, even little kids own a smart phone, leading to more students with addiction to games. This obviously would not have happened in the 19th century, and so technology wise, the world has not gotten a better place to live.

[sujeonggg]

Yeah. The world may seem so better now than it was before, and we enjoy more advantages of it too. Having and carrying smarphones everywhere, googling, socializing, using facebook at everywhere at anytime; but we couldn't even imagine these only a few years ago. So, by looking at these kinds of advances we are definitely living in such a better world. But, as you said, there are also more and more serious, bizarre problems come out these days as well. I think it's because people start to take advantage of better environment, like using those supposedly beneficial smartphones for voice phishing or fraud. So I believe, people should learn how to be thankful/grateful as our homeroom, and shouldn't turn out the world bad anymore.

[minjaeyang]

Although there are problems with the world today, the world is a lot better than it used to be. This is because there was a development in technology. First, transportation became better. For instance in the past, people had to walk all day just to meet a friend. However today, all you need is an airplane. Second, communication is easier. We do not have to write long letters any more. If we have anything to say, we can now write e-mails. For these reasons, our world is better than it used to be.

[alexkoo]

I do not think we can say it is better or worse. There are so many benefits people got from the technological development. Some people above mentioned that people abuse technology such as voice pishing or etc. However, I think without technological development, there are so many things humans cannot do. For example, If we did not have advanced technology, we would not have cures or skills that can save millions of people. If we did not have airplane, we would have to travel though the ocean, which takes too much time.

[delmanykkfs]

It is hard to say.... I sometimes think that it is good to have technology like Iphone or smart phone... As a person, i really enjoy having them around me. But i think we can say our world is bad beacuse there are many crimes too. People should not abuse technology that is originally made to have better or easier life. I think it is very difficult for people to say if world we are living in is good or bad. It depends on people's perspective.

[jessicashim2013]

I do not think the world had gotten better. It did get better in the equality and technology parts, however I see too many people suffering from mental illness. While watching the news yesterday, I saw the accident in Connecticut. I wondered what was going on with that man who shot his mother's class students. He probably had some problems and he didn't know how to express it..
I feel bad for him and of course people who died from the accident.
So my point is, the world can kind of slow down developing and look into those who are isolated. "Better world" would also mean a world where we can all be happy.

[julielu]

I think nationalism can never be solved. But nationalism is not always a bad thing though. I heard a news says that a Korean man was seriously beaten by a group of Australians in Australia. The Korean guy didn't do anything. Just because the Australians discriminated Chinese and thought the Korean guy was Chinese, they hit him. But this is kind of an individual event. The world seems will never be peace since some people have extreme national idea.

[Alam10kkfs]

The outside world is a scary place. Do you even think that our world is so good? no i dont think so. havent you ever hear or seen the slogan that says "make the world as a better place" that slogan is everywhere till now. Everyone above is mentioning about technology. yes, technology has gotten better but try to look at different perspective of it, i sometimes seen two or three people sitting together, not talking to each other and having a really nice warm conversation but busy typing with their cell phones, how ironic.

[cesar]

I agree with what most of the people here have said. I think what Julielu brought up really sums down a lot of the worlds social problems in a way. As humans. our society evolved with ideas such as racism,sexism, ageism and many more "isms". Its simply become part of a common trait that all cultures have. We were raised with the idea of an identity, we were raised with the idea that we are white,black,poor,rich, Muslim, christian, atheist and so on. We are all taught that we are part of a group and that we are unique, that out way of thinking and our way of solving problems is best, and anyone who dare say different should and will be discriminated. All cultures do this in one way or another and its how its going to stay if we want cultures to still be cultures.

There is this thing that is going on called globalization. Globalization is the idea of the world becoming more connected by things like transportation, communication, way of thinking and among other things. Some people say that in a few years there will be less difference in between cultures, that everyone will start behaving within a common global set of norms,morals and ethics. This will virtually take away the idea of discrimination since we will all be technically the same culturally. But at the same time it will take away what makes us different and unique.

This is very broad and many people have many different opinions on it and the only thing I am doing is saying what I think on the topic not that Globalization is this or can be this.

[joannekim]

To me, our current world really did not get better or worse. As old problems, like sexism and racism, start to get solved, new problems arise as well. It is because humans are naturally imperfect, and our world is always changing with new innovations. And new advancements often have drawbacks. For example, Internet has allowed us to easily access to knowledge but also caused increase in plagiarism and online pornography. Transportation system also has become better, allowing us to interact with other people easily, but resulted in air pollution. Our world will never be perfect, but we should still try to solve problems.

[sang]

Just to make another relevant comment, there was recently (on dec 16th I think) a massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. This was a massacre that was quite notorious because more than 70% of the victims were kindergartners. The murderer wanted to kill his mother who worked at a school and this led to him infiltrating and attacking the whole school. This again shows the negative aspect of our world..

[kevin]

yea I don't think our world got better than before. In terms of technological development and human rights, I would say that it got better and a bit fair. If Nora were in today's society, she would have enjoyed more freedom and rights as a woman. But other than that, yea our world is becoming more corrupted as a society.

[jessicak016]

Now you talk about it, I also think that our society today has as many problems as the societies in the past. The only difference is that we are dealing with different kind of problems that might have not existed in the past, such, as you mentioned, nuclear problems, especially the nuclear crisis in Fukushima after the earthquake. This problem, of course, did not exist during 19th century.
Therefore, even though we do not have that many obvious problems in discriminations of race and gender, more new problems are created as the time pass. And as you said, we should not look down at the societies from the past.