Week 9: Why Do We Choose to Suffer?

    The podcast that was linked to this week's topic, 'why do we choose to suffer?', was an interview with Kim Mills and Dr. Paul Bloom. They talk about why people choose to go through situations that cause them to suffer and if people grow or learn from these traumatic experiences. 

    Before listening to the podcast, the question posed in the title really caught my attention because it seems absurd at first but then once I started thinking about it more I started to see what causes us to suffer in life. I went on to think some people like eating really spicy food, but that causes them pain and why do people choose to raise kids when it's only bringing on more responsibility and hardships. I'd like to believe that people grow and learn from these non-ideal situations, but that's if it occurs out of your control. But I think people choose to go with situations that come with pain and suffering to feel something, like a little escape from reality or a change of pace. It also gives our lives purpose because we feel accomplished/triumphant after completing a hardship.

    At one point in the podcast Dr. Bloom says, "People who do good but enjoy it and gain something from it, we don't think they're as good people. We like our people who do good to suffer." I can understand what Dr. Bloom was talking about because in the end, it's kind of like a reward earned through hard work. Or you know that all the struggle and suffering that you had to endure for that short period of time; it'll be worth it because the end goal or the reward is achieved. When one sacrifices something in order for another person to benefit, it just gives the action so much more meaning. My personal experience with this concept is practicing extra hard for basketball, suffering with all the running and conditioning, and waking up early to work out but it was all worth it in the end because we won the championship.

    Sometimes suffering is not in our control/not many people choose to suffer. But when we experience illness, poverty, or the death of a loved one sometime in our lives; it shapes the person that we are. Dr. Bloom may have mentioned how he doesn't believe that people grow from these experiences. But I think that these situations that cause so much suffering or hardships make you a better person and you learn/grow from it.

Group 2 (week 8)- Climate Change and Environment

    So climate change is long-term shifts in temperature and weather patterns that are usually caused by human activity. Some of the things humans do to contribute to climate change are by generating power through fossil fuels, manufacturing goods, and cutting down forests. There are way more activities that humans do to harm the earth but these are the main ones and a lot of it has the same outcome, it generates a lot of carbon dioxide emissions released into the atmosphere. The plants on the earth could only take so much, but a lot of it could have been taken in by the forests being cut down by construction companies. Natural earth stuff like the temperature of distinct ocean currents change, wind and air masses heat up while air pressure lowers, global temperature rises, sea level rises, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises. Then this causes a lot of problems for humans, and it's just an endless back and forth of humans hurting the earth while the earth poses major problems for humans to live with.

    Going forward I hope people realize and try to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions being released into the atmosphere and protect wildlife/plant life by not destroying ecosystems/deforestation. It also keeps animals alive and well because we would not want them to become extinct. Some possible solutions are to save energy at home, walk, bike, take public transportation, eat more vegetables, think about really going out somewhere, throw away less food, reduce, reuse, repair, and recycle. 

Impacts of Climate Change

    The first article, "Impacts of Climate Change", discusses different effects of climate change on different ecosystems throughout the world. It tells us how it could make the earth worse than it currently is and how the ecosystems and all living things are forced to adapt to these drastic changes. In the article, it says, "Global average temperature has increased about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2016. Changes of one or two degrees in the average temperature of the planet can cause potentially dangerous shifts in climate and weather." I feel like all of us living in San Francisco noticed that there were some major changes in the temperature. Recently it has been either really gloomy and cold or really sunny and warm. Usually, San Francisco is not like that, so I feel like a lot of people were also getting sick from the sudden weather changes even though it was nice having warm weather in San Francisco for a change. But if places where it's supposed to be cold, aren't cold that's a problem because what if that same thing is happening out in the artic. We need those glaciers to not melt. 

Understanding Climate Change

    In the second article, "Understanding Climate Change", scientists from NASA share with us their climate change research in the lab while focusing on cold regions, water circulation between sea, air, and land, greenhouse gas emissions and absorption, and ecosystems around the world. Their research focuses on the world's ice and how all the land ice on earth is melting, meaning that sea levels would rise. As I mentioned before, it would not be good if meant to be cold places started to become warm. It would harm wildlife, throw off the ecosystem, and it would affect humans living near the water. We literally live right next to the bay, so we would be the first ones to go if sea levels continue to rise. 

    Movies like 'Don't Look Up'. 'The Day After Tomorrow', and 'Wall-E' make up these scenarios or another version of how life would be living on the earth and still continuing the path of contributing to climate change and environmental harm. In the movie, 'Don't Look Up'. we learn that scientists have been warning us for years about climate change and that our world is in danger but barely anybody in our society cares about it because we tend to ignore anything that threatens our lives. Leaders in our society like the government and rich people place their own interests above those of the people who have trusted them to lead so they have no interest in helping the climate change cause. Another great example is 'Wall-E', and we saw how the earth could turn out to be if we don't reduce, reuse, and recycle our things. If we're not helping the earth, we're not helping ourselves. We get so fixated and dependent on technology and that's what the movie show. Movies like these show us simulations or made-up scenarios so we would want to do something to prevent them from becoming a reality. 

Week 8: Prison- Compassion Trauma Circle

    This week's topic is the prison compassion trauma circle. It's an experiment done with inmates of a prison and they're asked a series of questions that had to deal with the first 18 years of their life, basically their childhood, and they took a step forward if they answered yes/experienced the questions. Fritzi Horstman is the founder of the Compassion Prison Project and she explained later on in the video that she probably shared the exact same experiences as the other inmates. Horstman said, "I was abused as a young girl. I was beaten by my mother. I was verbally abused by my mother. I was sexually abused by another man. My father was an alcoholic. My mother was a rageaholic. I've driven drunk. I've sold drugs. I was a juvenile delinquent. Probably my story's similar to most of your stories in here. I'm white and I'm female, and nothing happened to me. So I got a get out of jail free card and so I'm here now because I see myself in every one of you." When Horstman mentioned that she was a white female and avoided jail so easily it clearly shows that the justice system has a bias and that if you are especially white, it gives you that privilege. Out of the group she was talking to after the circle experiment, most of the inmates were people of color. This small group that Horstman was personally talking to were reflecting on their personal experiences and the questions asked during the circle experiment. Out of their discussion one of the inmates admitted to not taking a step forward when he should have for one of the questions and he felt guilty or he was a coward for not having the courage to admit that the question did happen in his life. He felt guilty that he was not up a step forward with his 'friends and brothers'.

    I feel like this social experiment with the prisoners was a good eye opener for not only the audience watching this experiment be done, but also for the inmates themselves who participated in it because they realize that they're not alone/the only ones who experienced childhood trauma. Research shows that a lot of inmates share the common problem of having mental illnesses that most likely stems from childhood trauma. In my opinion, I feel like how a person is, how they act, and their decision making comes mainly from their childhood experiences and the environment they were raised in. 

    My preconceptions on inmates are usually very cautious when around them because I don't know what they're serving time for even when there could be a possibility that they were wrongfully accused or their charge wasn't even serious. But I don't want to automatically assume things because if I were in their shoes, I wouldn't wanna be automatically judged because of stereotypes. I bet that the inmates who are trying to change their life are tired of being turned away immediately for their past actions and serving time in prison. I feel like people end up incarcerated because they're caught selling drugs or stealing something because they have no money or their close to poverty. They can't afford the essential resources that they need to live so they try to make/earn money in extreme ways that could get them caught and put into jail.

Week 7: Race and Identity

    This week's topic is race and identity. Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. In my opinion, I think that race is limiting because society has deemed the white race superior to people of color; so that's why they made the term white privilege. White privilege is the inherent advantages possessed by a white person on the basis of their race in a society characterized by racial inequality and injustice. This has created a lot of biases, so this is why race can't be emancipating. Race defines our identity by giving a person cultural values, beliefs, and principles. I think that the concept of race is just a myth because we are all just human beings; the only difference is physical characteristics. I feel like my outsides don't reflect who we are on the inside because not all race's fit the stereotypes and biases that come with judging someone based solely on their race. A good example of this is the model minority. 

This Is Who You Are

    I think that giving a different perspective on race with the lightbulbs is a good way to look at race and why racism/discrimination is dumb. Prince Ea says, "Do you know what people and light bulbs have in common? We both express different colors, different shapes, and different sizes. We're manufactured in different places... We appear to be very different on the outside, but the thing about these lights is there is one current running through each bulb and in the same way there is singular energy running through each person on this planet. Doesn't matter what you look like, doesn't matter your race, gender, and nationality." I agree with the way he explains who we are because what we look like doesn't define who we are; it's our actions and personality, which come from the inside. 

The Myth of Race

    This video, it interviews multiple people talking about how race is a social construct/ a tangible idea. They talked about the origins of the term/idea of race and that race is biologically based and there's DNA evidence. In the video, one of the people interviewed says, "Humans have far less genetic variation than chimpanzees do, and yet, those chimpanzees look the same to me," Geography is a good factor as to why people have different skin tones. Slavery was based on these differences and it has divided society ever since.

Why Are People Racist?

    In this video, Onyeka Nubia talks about his own, and people close to him, experiences/encounters with racism. Onyeka says that the key to getting rid of racism is to be able to understand it so I guess you could see where he's coming from. Onyeka talks about his childhood growing up in Britain and how a lot of people around him would be really racist to him by calling him racial slurs. I think a lot of racism comes from people being ignorant because they're not educated enough about history and how to prevent it from repeating it again because they're not setting up good examples for future generations to grow up around. I feel like kids nowadays are growing up thinking that being racist or sexist is a form of comedy and this is really common within the gaming community. I believe that people should at least try to be more open-minded to being more educated.

Group 1 (week 7)- Media Influence and Social Media

    Social media is a big part of our daily lives, a part of our daily routine. When you're not busy doing work for a school or a job, you always gravitate to at least some of the biggest social media platforms: Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, or Twitter. We spend countless hours scrolling up and down an algorithm filled with posts that were interested in based on what we like or the accounts we follow. Of course, there are some positive and negative effects it has on our mental and physical health. We're able to connect to family and friends across the world, we're updated on their lives/what they're currently doing if they post a lot, and make connections with other people that have the same interest as you. But social media creates this negative effect it has on people, like unlocking new fears they didn't know they had. Some people get post anxiety because they're so self-conscious of what people will think when they post something on Instagram or post/repost something to put on their story. It may result in the user feeling left out, self-harm, or feeling insecure. I honestly think social media brings us together; I just think that we should only use it for a certain amount of time throughout the day or week altogether so we could take time/ give ourselves a break for ourselves to spend time with the people right in front of us and to appreciate what's going on around us.

    Now the movie that we watched during class had a very interesting take on social media. Like yes, it is the main part of her job, but the way she let it take over her life and how it was affecting her relationships was hard to watch. As a result, she was living her life based off of this major lie that's something she shouldn't lie about because a terrorist bombing attack is really traumatic for people to experience. I know that it wasn't her intention to do this and it was really unfortunate timing, but she was on social media so much because there wasn't anything going on in her life, she had no friends, and she didn't have recognition/ wasn't noticed at work. The only good she used her power/influence in social media was by advocating with her friend about gun violence and I guess starting a #imnotok movement, but that was still based off of her lie. 

Social Media's Growing Impact on Our Lives

    As I said before, social media is a big part of our lives and more kids are growing up with technology/media being one of the biggest influences in their lives. In the article, it cites, "a recent study by Jean Twenge, Ph.D., professor of psychology at San Diego State University, and colleagues found that, as a cohort, high school seniors heading to college in 2016 spent an "hour less a day engaging in in-person social interaction" - such as going to parties, movies, or riding in cars together - compared with high school seniors in the late 1980s." Personally, I would always make this comparison to how teenage life was like in the 80s and the 90s because I find myself wishing that if only I was born during those times, but then again I am grateful to be born around the early 2000s because we're the only generation that got to experience a little bit of what life was like when social media was just starting to become bigger, while also experiencing its rise in our society's culture. Nowadays I just think that if you do spend a lot of time on social media you're either addicted to scrolling through Instagram or TikTok or you might not have many friends to hang out with in person. There are also some cases where a person might have friends only online. But it really just depends on what your social life is like on and off social media or how much your parents are involved in phone usage because it depends on how strict they are with hangouts or dates.

Pros and Cons of Social Media

    After going over the article, it talks about a lot of the points that I briefly went over with. The pros had a commonality of making life easier to communicate and carry out everyday responsibilities. But it did go more in-depth about the cons technology/social media brings. The cons mention how social media could create this facade, which is true because people only post the carefree, easygoing, and only "highlights" of their lives. Under cons, it mentions increased media usage, fear of missing out, self-image issues, and bullying/cyberbullying. The commonality of it all is how it's detrimental to a person's mental health. According to the article, "one out of four (25%) teens are bullied, while up to 43% have been bullied while online. Nine out of ten LGBTQ students experienced harassment at school and online. Biracial and multiracial youth are more likely to be victimized than youth who identify with a single race. Kids who are obese, gay, or have disabilities are more likely to be bullied than other children." Now knowing all these bullying statistics makes me have this fear of when it's my turn to raise a kid during this time in our society where social media is a scary thing to raise your kid with. 

Everyone's an Influencer. Now What?

    This article basically talks about how there are so many active users on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Youtube and their target audiences are mostly younger people so anyone has the potential of becoming an influencer with millions of followers because they have people to look up to because they've already done it. One viral video, post, or TikTok can change a person's life. In the article, they use the example, "Charli D'Amelio, who became the poster child of overnight celebrity when she burst onto the TikTok scene, gained 100 million followers in just over a year." Teens like her who start off as regular people attending high school is also what makes people relate to her in some ways and they want to see if they could be just like her because her life seems easier doing social media for a living and going to events where famous people attend. So in the future, a lot of younger people will try to be influencers as their job for the rest of their lives.

Week 6: Homosexuality and Evolution

     The topic of this week was homosexuality and evolution. The video of this week was a TED talk titled, "Homosexuality: It's about survival - not sex" with James O'Keefe. Basically, he talked about his own son's coming out story, how his son has made their family closer and stronger together, and how having 2 out of 25 people in the sexual minority is actually really beneficial for society. 

     I think that it's a natural reaction to have concerns for your children's safety especially when you know how that being a homosexual is one of the most common things people are bullied for. The initial thoughts as a parent of someone who is gay is going to immediately be concerned thoughts and all negative 'what ifs'. But I think that there's nothing to worry about if they have the courage to come out and proudly/unapologetically be who they truly are because all they want is support from the people that they love, especially from parents. That's what O'Keefe and his wife did. But then he went on to thinking that his son wouldn't have kids and that why hasn't homosexuality grown extint.

    I actually agree with O'Keefe's argument about homosexuality being a part of natural evolution. Nature, god, the universe, science, or whatever you belive in; knew that we needed some people to be a part of the sexual minority because there needed to be this neutral force on our society. There needed to be some kind of balance. We couldn't have overpowering masculinty running the world and I don't think the patriarchy would've allowed women running the whole thing, O'Keefe said, "If all males were gay, that would be a problem, but if all males were warriors, we'd always be at war."  O'Keefe also goes on to say, "Nature prescribes homosexuality at specific times and places, and endows these people with special triats to help the people around them flourish. What is against the order of nature is the ongoing persecution of the sexual minority, These are not confused or defective people that need to be cure, or punished, or ostracized. They need to be accepted, for who they are, and embraced. They make us better." I think that having this type of diversity in society is what makes our society kind of balanced because of all these unique personalities and traits that just compliment one another. Who cares about not reproducing in the future, there are other ways to have children. We should learn to embrace this diversity.