"Life has never been better." (Excerpt)

With the swift industrialization and the forth bringing of the dawn of sophisticated mechanism, technology has indeed propelled mankind to great heights in terms of accessibility and luxury. It also reinforces the dominance homo sapiens have on earth.

However, while the material realms prosper, the quality of one’s life is still vacillating. The key to answering this question lies in our definition of the term “better”. Better in the terms of accessibility and technology? Better in the meaning of one’s life? The rapidness of life, whether it being healthy or unhealthy, better when it’s faster or better when it’s slower? All of these serve as different points and aspects of life itself.

For instance, many often absent-mindedly fused both the meanings of “standard of living” and “quality of life” together, having thought that they mean the same thing. Such a confusion has lead to many individuals mistaking that they having an abundance of materials is equivalent to that they are happy and contented with life, some even refer to the “The more, the merrier” theory and go all out when it comes to making money and to satisfy their undying hunger for money and goods. This is totally wrong. Life means more than just material needs. What about the unscrupulous ways?

More and more people use it to fulfill their wish for more money. Do they now even care? What about the bonds of friendship and love which gives your life and even more interesting touch and meaning? Are this all washed down the drain? Are the moral values and the consciences one has in himself being all forgotten? Have we really forgotten who we really are? We are humans that can “feel” unlike some scientific robots where they don’t have a heart.

However, from the mentality people give today, it is obvious that most of us have only a purposely in life, and that is to make more and more money to satisfy their material needs. They live not for their country, not for their family, not for their friends but for themselves. Where is the true meaning of life? From a geography textbook, statistics show that the standard of living in the world has improved. However, the quality of life is declining. I agree that life have “never”, I mean, “never” been better.

While resting at a personal point of view is too subjective and insignificant, I would touch on a more broader and general view of how the lives of people metamorphoses in the direction of time.

[Written by Eugene Tang, Edited by Gabriel]

“LIFE HAS NEVER BEEN BETTER.” DO YOU AGREE WITH THIS ASSESSMENT OF THE LIVES OF PEOPLE TODAY?

LINE OF ARGUMENT

Indeed, life has never been better for people today when it comes to education, mass media, crime and punishment and the society. However, we must take into consideration that this is not true when people’s lives are not as much better in today compared to the past.


THESIS

Though life has never been better for people today, there are certain aspects when people’s lives are not better today.

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Over the years, have our lives changed for the better? How do we define a better life? Loads of laughter, money or what? From my point of view, life is better when our needs and wants are satisfied. These needs and wants could come in the form of monetary or spiritual. Indeed, life has changed for the better throughout the years in terms of education, mass media, crime and punishment and the society. Having these ‘wants and needs’ as part of an integral in our lives, let’s look from another point of view. Has each individual’s life in every part of the world led a better life today than the past?

Education is the primary factor that constitutes to a better life. For Singapore, the young generation is blessed. Why is that so? With the emphasis of compulsory education, all Singaporean children have to attend their education up to Primary Six so as to ensure that they have at least a common core of knowledge and skills for further education and training. The government’s plan to prepare them for future employment has built a pathway of a comfortable life for Singaporeans to live in future unlike poorly developed countries such as Africa.

In Africa, most of the young population is deprived of this chance mainly due to their poor family background and also the very minimal number of schools available. As this problem continues to exist for decades, most Africans remain illiterate that hinders the development of Africa. With the help of UNICEF, volunteers are offering help to built more schools and even to the extent of teaching the locals. However, the most hectic problem faced by this project is UNICEF as a world voluntary organization gathers its resources from voluntary organizations which impede the progress of it. The welfare of the African children thus becomes “bumpy” – the fortunate ones shall receive help only.

Another worth mentioning point which shapes the people’s better life is the mass media. We are faced with a myriad of choices regarding the kinds of media we consume. For instance, the rising of new media such as 3G and TV Mobile has given each consumer more choices to choose what will benefit their lives. Nevertheless, these sources of media are costly for consumers to use and consumers find them redundant. As a result, such media sources are unpopular among the masses and become a burden to the market.

However, there is a more convenient and cheaper source of media – the Internet. As the mass media develops rapidly, liberalism has become more common and even “commercialised”. Weblogs carry improper language which can consist of obscenities, vulgarities or even broken languages. The public gets exposed to such information presented in front of them and the uncensored message conveyed brainwashes their mind. Slimming advertisements portray the curvy ideal shape of a woman and movies showing characters using foul and informal language – what do they imply? Key moral values will soon evolve into a state of ambiguousness where they are too poorly defined that they do not exist in its original form. Eventually, life will turned out to be less meaningful than what it was supposed to be.

There then comes crime and punishment. How does this influence people’s lives to be better? With the aid of science and technology such as DNA technology that tracks down crime origins and computer databases keeping records of past offenders, crime rates have been low and maintained consistently. Stringent laws are also imposed to maintain law and order in the society. Such systematic control of the security in the country ensures that the lives of the people are well assured.

Ironically, such technological innovations do not help to suppress “hardcore” crimes. Drug smugglers and animal traffickers continue to be more rampant in their activities where smugglers smuggle more types of banned drugs with increased quantities whereas the latter inhumanely immolate protected animals in exchange for countless money to be earned. The desire that these criminals are satisfied becomes a jailbird for law enforcers. Simply put, these crimes are the “faults” of the law enforcers – they fail to minimize such crimes from happening. Even though the law penalties behind these crimes are too heavy for them to pay, such crimes remain to be on the rise. Regardless of its paramount power law holds, how exactly can the innocent lives are protected from these evildoers?

There comes the last part – the society. Prejudice and discrimination have been very common throughout the years in most countries. For Singapore, she is able to overcome this predicament that any other country could do. The 1964 racial riots strained ties between the Chinese and Malays but was kept under control by the police successfully. With the importance of racial harmony, she prospers well as a multi-racial country.

However on the long run, discrimination can pose a threat to the country and even internationally. A very classic example of racial conflict would be the discrimination against the Blacks in the West where the Blacks are ostracized by the society when it comes to education, employment and housing. The Whites receive priority and better treatments even though some states may have more Blacks than Whites. Till now, such discrimination continues to exist with conflicts happening. In addition to that, Asians are also blacklisted where they are seen to be inferior and weaklings to the Whites. A more extreme case could be a religious conflict in Northern Ireland since the 19th century. Protestants forming the majority were seen to be enemies of the Catholics and both parties broke out in riots frequently. Regardless of any form of discrimination, they disrupt not only the people’s lives, but also the country. What is more threatening is that the conflicts may even create disturbance to other countries.

Through various aspects discussed earlier on, we realize the importance of achieving a common identity where most people should really have a better life than the past. Though life in the past was arduous, it is undeniable that life can be still improved further despite its higher standard of living today. Having education as the main key, it provides them with a better life ahead upon securing a job that feeds them. As can be seen, life can’t be said that it has never been better for people today from national and even global levels. Ultimately, the crux to having a better life lies on the whole where every aforementioned factor cannot be isolated. Only then can life has never been better.

[GP June Holidays Research Paper]

My Theory Of Discrimination (Discrimination Against Women)

Many centuries ago, women were seen to be inferior in terms of physical fitness and education level compared to men. As this discrimination continues to develop over the years across many countries, it becomes a more controversial issue on not only how women’s rights are to be protected, but also the improvement in women’s status in the modern society. As such, this deep rooted problem has resulted in differences that are difficult to reach to a consensus among all the parties involved. In a nutshell, how has this discrimination affected women, for example, education and employment? Has such discrimination affected women to have a share in the society?

In the early 1930s of German under Hitler’s rule, discrimination against women was very distinctive. German girls under the age of twenty one were to undergo training in preparation for motherhood whereas the boys were preparing for military warfare. In addition, workforces were discouraged from employing women that were to cater to men’s needs. This has shown Germany’s stand of seeing women as the weak gender and placing such importance on men over women in the past not only occurred in her, but also in a developing nation like Islamabad in Pakistan.

Today, most of these females are deprived of having the same education level with males. For example, Asma who is a thirteen year old Islamabad girl is in grade four while other boys of her same age are in grades eight. Not only that, most other girls like Asma are also in a same situation as her and they also have to prepare for motherhood just like past German girls. The evident “benefits” given to the females are too superficial that women assume they are fulfilling the tasks of what women should accomplish instead of striving for what they want.

In the developed cities like America, statistics show that men have a higher probability of earning PhDs than women. Though there is a flexibility of the increase in number of female graduates applying for PhDs, this flexibility is limited where there has to be more males than females by a fixed percentage. Such discrimination of women in the education system still continues to exist, but at a small impact compared to the previous case studies.

To tackle such discrimination isn’t neither an overnight’s work nor effortless. Various governments should relax the restrictions placed on women’s admission to schools and universities where men and women of the same age should be at the same education level. Not only the government, the mass media and education have the most influencing power where they should promote gender equalities on how such can be done. To allow these measures to be successful on the long run can be time consuming and labourious but how well can it really eliminate the problem of discrimination against women is still an unknown.

Bibliography

µ IRINnews, Focus on gender differences in education (2003)
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=36188

µ APSNewsOnline, The Back Page (2000)
http://schwinger.harvard.edu/~georgi/women/backpage.htm

µ Nigel Kelly, Paul Shuter (2003), The Rise of Nazism in Germany -
Social Control Through Education; Longman Publications

[GP Content Module 2006: Prejudice & Discrimination]