12/2/2009
Going into this class, I really did not know what to expect. I assumed that it would be a great deal of looking at maps and talking about the different cultures of the world. Well I guess that is what I get for assuming. While we have talked about these subjects to an extent, we have focused more about world happenings. I am sad to say that the majority of these happenings are very negative.
Before taking this class, I was deffinately aware that the United States and the rest of the world was going into the crapper. However, I had no idea of how fast it was really going to take place. The United States' education and innovation has been going down steadily in recent years, but I had no idea that we were ranked 40th in innovation. This is quite startling to me, considering that not too long ago we started the space program.
We have had two speakers in our class (Coach Morris and Dr. Pillay). The first speaker was Coach Morris, he talked about globilization and how soccer explains it. He talked a great length about how the protestanst and the catholics will riot agains each other at soccer games and yell racial slurs to each other. This was very shocking to me. However, the most disturbing subjects that we have discussed in class came from our next speaker (Dr. Pillay). He discussed with us the topic of HIV/AIDS and what the drug companies are doing to treat this disease. When Dr. Pillay told us that the drug companies have made a single drug that has taken the place of five other drugs, that was astonishing to me. It also led us to the realization that if the drug companies have had the knowledge to come up with this, why have they not been able to come up with a cure rather than just a treatment. What it comes down to is the fact that they are making too much money off of the drugs, and it is more profitable for them to keep making treatments rather than making a cure. The fact that sickened me the most was an Africa myth that says, that if you have HIV/AIDS and you have sex with a young female this will cure you. This is one of the sickest things that I have ever heard. For one thing you are exposing the young female to the disease at a very young age, let alone the mental damage that you are causing the female.
In the article "Walls", it talked about walls like the Berlin Wall that was torn down in 1989. It also talked about the irony of other similar walls being constucted all over the world. This time, however, instead of trying to keep people in they are trying to keep people out.
Taking this class makes me wonder where we as the United States, supposedly the land of opportunity, will be in the next few years. We did not get in the kind of trouble that we are currently in over night. It took a great deal of laziness and "lethargy" as Dr. Sherer put it, to get in the mess that we are in today. Dr. Pillay told us that when President Obama spoke with China, he said that they should be buying more from the United States. China said, "Okay, what do you have to offer?". That is shockingly true when you stop to think about it. The U.S. has decided that it is better to have products built for us, by someone else, rather than making it ourselves. This has been an increasing problem. When the two biggest beer breweries in the U.S. are now owned by foreign countries, it makes me believe that in the very near future we won't be able to buy anything that was made entirely in the U.S.
We are not even a week into taking this class and I am more aware of how far the world is in the crapper now than I have ever been. No matter how dirty something gets, it can always be cleaned. This is something that we need to understand. The world will certainly not be cleansed over night. However, with hard work and dedication, we can turn this around if we would only work at it. "Work", it seems to have become a foreign concept.
Posted at 10:04 PM by Riley Watkins