I believe that being respected for your differences whether it's the way you view things, who you trust and accept, or even the way you dress. All these things are taken as something very precious to another person so it should also be accepted as being precious in your eyes to. Respect, tolerance and love are the main components of being human. When you are treated with hate, abhor, and no respect you are not being treated the way a human ought to be treated. We all have free will. Freedom of speech, thought and the ability to govern our own selves. There are still people in many areas around the world who are not treated as human beings but more like objects. Although there is no longer any place in the world that enforces the right to have property over another person, the abolishment of slavery does not mean it ceases to exist. There are mostly children and women who are sold into marriage or servitude to others. I recently read an article in The National Geographic of how girls of my age were being sold by their own families to men of fifty years old who were known as rapists, abusers and barbaric men. Yet, these girls were still forced to be their future wives. This is an example of how lucky some of are to be able to have free will even though others are not fortunate enough to have the ability to be treated with the greatness of being human.
Friday, September 30, 2011
I was stumped when I first heard of this writing prompt that Mr.Sutherland had given us...
What does it mean to be human?
I'm human...
Is that an explanation?
No, it's not a complex enough answer I'm guessing. To be human means to have an intuition between knowing whats right and whats wrong. Some follow these intuitions and others go ahead and stomp all over them. We as humans know whats wrong, as we grow and mature we observe others to learn the wrongdoings or the good deeds they do. We were not created as automatons programmed for a preset course. Instead we are endowed with free will. Humans have the option of making an unwise choice. Throughout the centuries, from the time of Greek philosopher Socrates to the twentieth century, there have been so many debates regarding just what goodness and the standard of right and wrong might be. Some believed right and wrong were determined by the popular opinion of different people. Others said right and wrong was focused on the individuals right to choose for them self, their actions should be entirely up to them and in what they stand up for and believe in. We should not allow the opinion of other people's minds to determine our standards. Popular opinion is a very unreliable guide. For example, if you had lived in a society where the majority of people thought it was acceptable to kill, would that make it right? No, it wouldn't. That proves that the popularity of something does not make it right. We have treacherous hearts with the ability to identify what is right but with the tendency to follow what is wrong. How do we have the moral strength? Since actions are motivated by the heart, we must have love doing good for others. By choosing the right course we could demonstrate our love, gratitude, appreciation and compliance. Bringing happiness to ourselves and to others.
Us humans have conditioned ourselves to relate pain with vulnerability, unhappiness with coldness, abandonment with unworthiness, difference with plague as if it were contagious to be unique. As if these feelings were to be feared because of the unemotional people in this world. People who force smiles on to their poker faces. People who come off as strong and confident individuals, but end up going home and crying... I bet you didn't know she was just really good at lying. People who go through out the day smiling, and talking, acting as if everything were okay. But in reality felt like they were carrying a heavy weight of unhappiness on their shoulders. People who spit out lies to cover up their problems. We are humans. We are not made of plastic, we have love and life boiling in our blood. We are meant to feel and show emotion. We are intricate and amazing beings. We should never hide the feelings we have been blessed with, if we do... What's left to show?
I strongly believe that humans who walk this earth today, are afraid to show how they really feel and take great hardship in considering whats right because of the great pressure to be perfect. Everyone has someone they try to make a good impression on. So we act differently and are afraid to show our real selves to others who are believed to be above us. Or there are others who stay distant from the humans of this world because of the frightfulness of being humiliated due to their beliefs and opinions. This point also comes to mind that others don't follow their intuition of good, and rebel against their own conscience and make fun of others for no apparent reason. Such as being made fun of for liking someone of the same sex. That is their decision not yours, let them be. Humans should have an open mind and respect an individuals tastes because we all have some type of strong belief. Our beliefs sometimes clash with other people beliefs, causing an array of emotions. Sometimes these emotions are branches of hate or pain. Humans, are not all the same, and most definitely do not think in the same fashion. We will never agree upon a decision, nor have the same personality or morals. Some humans learn how to build a tolerance, or accept. While others just learn to hate. This is why we have so many problems in our world today. The nonacceptance of others will always be a problem, causing no real peace.
I believe that being respected for your differences whether it's the way you view things, who you trust and accept, or even the way you dress. All these things are taken as something very precious to another person so it should also be accepted as being precious in your eyes to. Respect, tolerance and love are the main components of being human. When you are treated with hate, abhor, and no respect you are not being treated the way a human ought to be treated. We all have free will. Freedom of speech, thought and the ability to govern our own selves. There are still people in many areas around the world who are not treated as human beings but more like objects. Although there is no longer any place in the world that enforces the right to have property over another person, the abolishment of slavery does not mean it ceases to exist. There are mostly children and women who are sold into marriage or servitude to others. I recently read an article in The National Geographic of how girls of my age were being sold by their own families to men of fifty years old who were known as rapists, abusers and barbaric men. Yet, these girls were still forced to be their future wives. This is an example of how lucky some of are to be able to have free will even though others are not fortunate enough to have the ability to be treated with the greatness of being human.
I believe that being respected for your differences whether it's the way you view things, who you trust and accept, or even the way you dress. All these things are taken as something very precious to another person so it should also be accepted as being precious in your eyes to. Respect, tolerance and love are the main components of being human. When you are treated with hate, abhor, and no respect you are not being treated the way a human ought to be treated. We all have free will. Freedom of speech, thought and the ability to govern our own selves. There are still people in many areas around the world who are not treated as human beings but more like objects. Although there is no longer any place in the world that enforces the right to have property over another person, the abolishment of slavery does not mean it ceases to exist. There are mostly children and women who are sold into marriage or servitude to others. I recently read an article in The National Geographic of how girls of my age were being sold by their own families to men of fifty years old who were known as rapists, abusers and barbaric men. Yet, these girls were still forced to be their future wives. This is an example of how lucky some of are to be able to have free will even though others are not fortunate enough to have the ability to be treated with the greatness of being human.
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This is great! I especially like the beginning of your second paragraph.
ReplyDeleteI've read this twice now and there's a lot I like about it. For one thing, the tone of the writing is very compassionate and open-hearted...There are also some interesting topics you include about whether or not people show emotions (truly a strange part of being human), how people interact with each other in social contexts, some of our different kinds of diversity, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut I am not sure the focus ever really came together fully. The thesis statement suggests that you're going to make your argument based on our "intuition of right and wrong," or what we might call our sense of morals. That's fine...and you address that in the first paragraph. But subsequent paragraphs drift away from this core idea without being very clear on where they're going. So for a lot of it, I was struggling to figure out what your OVERALL message was, because the message of the individual paragraphs kept changing. Make sense?