December 15, 2008 at 12:56 AM

Good job, Paul. A surprisingly analytical mind for your age . I like how you incorporate ideas and arguments into your essay. And you are right.... Sometimes I think...Human is the most selfish being on the surface of the earth...Or ..is he? Aren't we animals with high intelligence and conscience ?Aren't we guided by the ancestral instinct of conservation? Like animals protecting their teritoires , we went to war from the earliest times to settle our boundaries. Like males of so many species ,men have killed each other ( literaly or only relational speaking) for women, and , of course, since human is more complex than most animals , women would kill each other as well for men. Just like in the wildest jungle, the strongest will survive .But what has consciense done to us? Killing and "jungle law" do exist in animal's world , but that world is a balanced one. Our world is a world that is constantly in contradiction with itself, for one we think , and one we say , and one we wish , but one we do..We are advocates of good and mercy but in the mean time we do so much harm...To ourselves , to each other , to the planet . What animal would kill for pleasure? What animal would destroy its own habitat ?What animals would trade the fundamental need of sex for the fundamenal need for food (which translated in human terms=money )? We admit publicly that violince and hatred are bad , but in the mean time we promote these all over the place in mass media. And , perhaps not surprinsingly , most of the times, the most popular tv programs are the ones that contain this kind of material.we keep denying the animal part in ourselves , but in the mean time we bring it to the surface , and not in just any form, but in the form of the wildest beast. What has conscience done to us? Or , better said, what have we done with conscience? We are always able to choose , but why so often this right to choose given by thought is manifested in its rather negative aspect , than its positive one? And if something can be done , than why don't we do something about it? That's why I like classical music;becaue it is not infested with any of these malicious things . Classical music usually brings to the light the other side of human , the great one , the kind and superior one.The one that is suppose to prove that we evolved from a primitive , wild stage to a more refined one. Like Shinichi Suzuki said , if we would nurture our children with more noble music , than our society would be a different kind of society. You need never apologize for speaking your heart. More often it's silence that conspires to lead a society in the wrong direction. I liked your response, but I don't like the question. There's too much polarized either/or thinking and discourse in the media already. People who survived either of the World Wars in Europe might disagree that today's wars are worse. And as a woman, I can't help but think of the changes that have made my current life possible--I mean, we're not even 100 years out from when I wouldn't have been able to vote, or go to college. I agree with you, something has to be done. But something has always had to be done. Larisa, thank you for sharing your view and comments on this. Laurie, those are two of the greatest sentences I've heard in a long time. Karen, thank you for showing me what someone with an interesting view thinks. I was going to include some things about how women are still somewhat treated unfairly but then my essay would have had another few hundred words. And that's what was hard with showing my view, and the opposition. Especially if I would have used a subject like female rights. The arguement in my opinion would be that it's gotten better, but still exists widely. Which does not change into a persuasive essay very well. And I don't think that any war is more horrible than another. If you look at the people who are killed, each death is going to affect some one on such a deep personal level. A death could be a child losing a parent or a parent losing a child. It will always be something different, yet the same. Paul, thanks for putting your essay up here. I enjoyed reading it! You pose a good argument and write much better than I ever could when I was your age. A suggestion to make your argument stronger: Your central thesis is that the world is changing for the worst, because of hate and discrimination, and how these lead to conflict. In your essay you have supplied good evidence of this and have argued it well, and on its own it stands up as an argument. But, to keep in mind: you haven't shown how this is different from the way things were in the past, and thus not completely supporting that things have changed for the worst. Hate, discrimination, and violence resulting from those two things have been around forever and forever. In fact, one could argue that the world is improving because of the increased awareness of and attempts to eradicate hate and prejudice in comparison to the past (also for example improvement in woman's rights, etc. like Karen suggested). To solidify your argument you would need to show how the hate and violence today is worse than earlier, ie. through comparisons of then/now, showing escalation of conflict, maybe something about today's technology and ease of killing, etc. But all in all, a good essay! If you write any more, will you also post them up here? Thank you so much for telling me what I need to fix and ways to do so! It is very helpful. Being able to see the faults in my writing and how to fix it is something that I really need to work on and you've just helped me in that. And yes, if it's ok with Laurie and everyone else, I'll post up more essays in the future if you'd like. I can not be more original than the others in my comments so GOOD JOB! You should send this to Obama... so that he has an idea of what is doing the young generation that is too often seen as "a buch of lazies with no heart" lol Great! Anne-Marie I think that is a beautiflly written essay, mirroring a lot of the hatred and discrimination that exist today. However, the topic assigned was whether these things are getting worse. That would be hard to say because hatred, fear, anger, aggressivity, etc. have always been around. Your essay would be stronger if you would explain why you think that things are changing for the worst. Access to weapons and to international news reports, as well as violence shown so widely on TV and video games, may make us more "violence-friendly." I am sure that there are many more reasons. I agree with Laurie. Silence gives consent. I like one of the slogans used by the Friends (Quakers): War is not the answer. Understanding and compassion can be very powerful at blocking violence. As you can tell by the discussion about your blog, your thinking is very mature. Thanks for posting your essay. Anne Marie, I started reading Obama's book The Audacity of Hope recently, and the Introduction put me very much in mind of Paul's essay here and some of the responses. I think Obama would be very sympathetic to these ideas. One of the additional themes of that book, at least in my interpretation, is that in order to move forward, we need to get away from simplistic polarized formulations like "is it better or worse?" I think it is to Paul's credit that he was able to make such an interesting essay out of a not-so-great assignment question. This entry has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.