Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Connection: The Talk of the Town and Conflict Resolution Class

Ignorance. Controversy. Judgment. Radical views- All words that are all too familiar in society today.

In Humanities class last week, as a tribute to 9/11, we read a compilation of articles that were written within the first week of the terrorist attacks on America. We were to analyze the articles and search for inconsistencies with what we know are facts today. I realized that people had much more radical views on the attacks and were not as willing to question what they knew. Most of the articles had the same theme of fear for the strongest country in the world. If we were going to be attacked like this, what other catastrophes could happen? The authors all made blanket assumptions about what happened on 9/11creating controversy within our class. Were these people just in shock because it had all just happened a week ago? Or are
Americans just arrogant in general, never asking enough questions to get the facts and assuming we are right?

The last question is one of the main topics that we discuss in my 'Conflict Resolution in the Modern World' class. Although America is the home of the free and the brave, there are many people here that neither feel freedom nor bravery when they are ridiculed for being different. From articles and media stunts related to what we read and talked about in humanities, immigrants from other countries (specifically the middle east) now feel threatened. In Conflict Resolution we talk about the causes of conflicts such as what we like to call the 'fallout from the 9/11 attacks' (basically the ridicule that middle easterners now see because of what happened that day). Most of my class agrees this ridicule was caused by people not knowing and not wanting to find out the facts of why what happened that day happened. I am not trying to justify the attacks, just protect completely innocent people that do not deserve to be treated as they are. When world conflict occurs and people get scared, they immediately turn to their 'judgment' side. Proof is in the articles that we read in English. There are nine different articles written by nine different authors all having different radical judgments about what happened without knowing the facts.

One of my favorite sayings is, "you never know what a person is going through before you take a walk in their shoes". From both of the issues I talked about, I have realized that it seems to be human nature to make judgment before thinking about how the other side must feel.

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