"Americans" - Ted Rall, Universal Press Syndicate
Showing posts with label social. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Monday, October 5, 2015
Criminal Minds, S1E13 (quote 2)
Got this explanation from Yahoo answers:
This is a mis-translation of Confucius teaching & he meant something quite different from what it seems in the English translation. Confucius was not encouraging people to let go of the hatred, rather he reminds people the importance of revenge as it is part of the significance of one's dignity, & he was encouraging people to "dig two graves" because he believes that dignity is more important than one's own life.
My take on this quote is that when a person takes revenge (or plan to), he/she comes down to the same level as that other person, & hence, both suffer in the process of revenge. Better would be to "take the high road" & leave it to karma.
This is a mis-translation of Confucius teaching & he meant something quite different from what it seems in the English translation. Confucius was not encouraging people to let go of the hatred, rather he reminds people the importance of revenge as it is part of the significance of one's dignity, & he was encouraging people to "dig two graves" because he believes that dignity is more important than one's own life.
My take on this quote is that when a person takes revenge (or plan to), he/she comes down to the same level as that other person, & hence, both suffer in the process of revenge. Better would be to "take the high road" & leave it to karma.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Era of loneliness? More than 66% of British adults are lonely
Ironically, "social media" has made the developed world (where social media is used the most) a lonely place.
What I disagree with the most in the article is the generalization that younger people who use social media the most are the most lonely. Now, admittedly, I don't know what is the definition of "using social media the most." I use social media often, even though, I am not lonely, & I dislike talking to people, other than my family, because I find most people morons.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More than two thirds of adults in the UK feel lonely as social interaction appears to be on the decline. Younger people who use social media & technology daily experience the most loneliness, a study has found.
A nationwide study conducted by The Big Lunch found that 68% of adults in the UK say they feel lonely either often, always or sometimes. This is most acute among 18 to 34 year olds, with 83% of this age group experiencing loneliness.
More than a third (38%) said they now have less interaction with people they know than they did 5 years ago, while a quarter (27%) only interact socially with others once a week or less.
The research also found that adults in Britain spend only 4% of their time – around one hour a day – engaging in social interaction &, in a typical week, interact with only 6 friends, family members or neighbors, either in face-to-face conversations, a phone call or chatting online.
On average, women spend 15 minutes longer interacting socially each day than men.
Dr. Rebecca Harris, a psychologist at the University of Bolton, said: “The findings show that we’re spending less time having social interaction than we used to, we have fewer friends than we’d like & we’re finding it harder to make new friends. This decline in social contact could be contributing to the rise of loneliness in the UK.”
“Loneliness is far more complicated than people imagine. It’s often seen as a one dimensional state, either ‘lonely’ or ‘not lonely’ & that just isn’t the case,” she added. “It can be a temporary state, but when prolonged, it’s a serious issue.”
While social interactions are declining, many also find it harder to make new friends. A third (33%) admitted they now find it harder to make new friends than they did 10 years ago.
The majority of UK adults have a small number of close friends. One in 10 even said they do not know how to start friendships any more. More than 40% of 18 to 34 year olds wish they had more friends, while 15% say they are “too scared” to talk to people they don’t know.
Young people feel lonelier than the elderly, the study suggests. Around half (48%) of people aged 55 and over say they never feel lonely. In comparison, 16% of 18 to 34 year olds said they always feel lonely.
Commenting on the research, Dame Esther Rantzen DBE, Founder of ChildLine & The Silver Line, said: “Loneliness has become an epidemic in the UK. This survey highlights how loneliness affects both young people & the older generation, while other research shows that it can contribute to depression & other serious risks to health.”
What I disagree with the most in the article is the generalization that younger people who use social media the most are the most lonely. Now, admittedly, I don't know what is the definition of "using social media the most." I use social media often, even though, I am not lonely, & I dislike talking to people, other than my family, because I find most people morons.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More than two thirds of adults in the UK feel lonely as social interaction appears to be on the decline. Younger people who use social media & technology daily experience the most loneliness, a study has found.
A nationwide study conducted by The Big Lunch found that 68% of adults in the UK say they feel lonely either often, always or sometimes. This is most acute among 18 to 34 year olds, with 83% of this age group experiencing loneliness.
More than a third (38%) said they now have less interaction with people they know than they did 5 years ago, while a quarter (27%) only interact socially with others once a week or less.
The research also found that adults in Britain spend only 4% of their time – around one hour a day – engaging in social interaction &, in a typical week, interact with only 6 friends, family members or neighbors, either in face-to-face conversations, a phone call or chatting online.
On average, women spend 15 minutes longer interacting socially each day than men.
Dr. Rebecca Harris, a psychologist at the University of Bolton, said: “The findings show that we’re spending less time having social interaction than we used to, we have fewer friends than we’d like & we’re finding it harder to make new friends. This decline in social contact could be contributing to the rise of loneliness in the UK.”
“Loneliness is far more complicated than people imagine. It’s often seen as a one dimensional state, either ‘lonely’ or ‘not lonely’ & that just isn’t the case,” she added. “It can be a temporary state, but when prolonged, it’s a serious issue.”
While social interactions are declining, many also find it harder to make new friends. A third (33%) admitted they now find it harder to make new friends than they did 10 years ago.
The majority of UK adults have a small number of close friends. One in 10 even said they do not know how to start friendships any more. More than 40% of 18 to 34 year olds wish they had more friends, while 15% say they are “too scared” to talk to people they don’t know.
Young people feel lonelier than the elderly, the study suggests. Around half (48%) of people aged 55 and over say they never feel lonely. In comparison, 16% of 18 to 34 year olds said they always feel lonely.
Commenting on the research, Dame Esther Rantzen DBE, Founder of ChildLine & The Silver Line, said: “Loneliness has become an epidemic in the UK. This survey highlights how loneliness affects both young people & the older generation, while other research shows that it can contribute to depression & other serious risks to health.”
Monday, June 22, 2015
In Mumbai, the wealthy elite's willingness to show off has reached new extremes
A great opinion piece. Although, its focus is Mumbai & the rising social inequality there, this rising social inequality is visible in almost every metropolitan city, from Los Angeles to New York to Rio de Janeiro to Lagos to Johannesburg to Dubai to London to Moscow to Beijing to Kuala Lumpur to Sydney.
Politicians & governments are only interested in how much money they can stuff in their "pockets" (i.e. bank accounts) from companies, industries, & lobbyists. They will sprinkle some money on a few projects in the development, & even then those projects need to be highly visible for elections & public.
Western countries have already gone through this large & increasing divide between the 99% & 1% of the country (remember Occupy Movements around the world about 5 years ago?) but talks of recession ending & new economic growths have only helped fuel the divide now. Western governments didn't bring any new legislation to resolve this divide. All of the countries, both developed & fast developing ones, are turning back to the medieval times.
According to a report from New York's Coalition for the Homeless, 60,000 people are sleeping in city shelters every night – almost double the amount since 2004. Let that sink in for a minute. Homeless people in NYC have DOUBLED in the past 10 years ... & there's no end to it.
Recession didn't even dent the increasing wealth of the business & political elites. While their wealth increased several folds between 2007 & 2014, the middle class is not only getting wiped out from society, the poor are barely hanging on to life.
This is all happening, & will definitely keep happening, in the so-called seemingly equal, fair, developed countries of the West. So what & how can one expect something better from developing countries like China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Russia, Vietnam, Pakistan etc.?
BUT, what rich are not seeing, by getting blinded by their fast rising tower of wealth, that you can only push the poor down to a limit. The numbers of poor are fast increasing in the urban cities all over the world. Those human beings will try to fight back for their survival when the survival of them & their families is severely threatened.
This will become the scene from the French Revolution, except it won't be happening only France, but all over the world. Are governments & politicians ready for this Revolution? Can the rich business & political elite handle the onslaught of poor on them?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Christmas 2007, I found a nightclub in London selling the most expensive cocktail in the world. I was reporting a piece on the gulf between the super-rich & the rest of society – and here was a liquid metaphor.
Hand the barman at Movida £35,000 & he would mix up a shot of Louis XII cognac, some Cristal Rose, a few flakes of edible gold leaf & at the bottom of the glass a diamond ring. During both mixing & drinking two security guards would keep watch.
Running around Mumbai for the past few days has sometimes felt like travelling back in time to that credit-crunch Christmas. Not because I think a banking crash is just around the corner, but because of the size of that gulf between those right at the top of this city & everyone else.
On Thursday afternoon, an events organiser for Mumbai’s wealthiest told me stories of children’s birthday parties in which a Bollywood celebrity was hired at huge expense to sing & dance – for a group of eight-year-olds. Of crores of rupees (hundreds of thousands of pounds) being spent on wedding dancers alone. She herself would rank among the city’s elite. For her two-year-old’s birthday, a swimming trip & family lunch was planned & yet friends would ask, “Aren’t you doing anything to celebrate?”
As India’s commercial capital, Mumbai has long been home to some of the richest people on the subcontinent. But in all my travels back & forth to India, I’ve noticed across big cities over the past decade or so a much greater willingness by the wealthy to show off. In Mumbai, that has reached extremes. On our first day here, the cabbie showed us Nariman Point, the Hanging Gardens, the Taj & the Gateway of India – then drove us over to Antilia, reportedly the most expensive home in the world. Owned by Mukesh Ambani, it is worth an estimated $1bn, is 27-storeys high & has 3 helipads.
However extreme, Antilia is hardly anomalous. A half hour away from where I am writing this, a new residential estate is up for sale, offering seaview flats alongside access to private jets & yachts. The black & gold billboards read: For Kings. For Queens. For Royalty.
The bit of this that really reminds me of London before The Fall is the way those enjoying this lifestyle assume that everyone else is getting a bit of it, too. I am thinking here of the property developer who is now in New York for 5 days’ shopping – his second trip there in 2 months. Just before he left, he told me that he regularly took 10 holidays a year – but then went on to talk about how his cook had also been to South Africa. Except, it turned out, his servant had gone there for work.
In the 90s, as the second great wave of globalisation got under way, policymakers thought they knew who the winners & losers would be. On the debit side were the blue-collar & manufacturing-workers of the west, whose jobs were going to move east. But that was all worth it, we were assured, as long as people in developing countries got richer. But what a visit to Mumbai shows you is the vast inequality in how those riches have been spread around. You see it in the physical infrastructure: all those new flyovers sprouting up around the city to enable the chauffeur driven classes to get about more easily, even while the commuter trains are still bursting; the crowded, chaotic public hospitals that get by while gleaming new private hospitals open up.
Unlike in Britain or America, the middle classes in urban India are still far better off than they were 10-15 years ago. But in Mumbai, you see how they also struggle to pay for their English-medium schools & non-government doctors. I am thinking here of a family I met last night who were adamant that that they were middle class & yet were also open about how much they were struggling to afford even the basics for their children.
At the end of our chat, the party planner began angsting out loud about what kind of society Mumbai was becoming. “At the top, we’re creating a generation of brats. If they have iPads & birthday extravaganzas now, what will they demand when they’re teens? And at the bottom, can you imagine how much resentment they must be carrying?”
Politicians & governments are only interested in how much money they can stuff in their "pockets" (i.e. bank accounts) from companies, industries, & lobbyists. They will sprinkle some money on a few projects in the development, & even then those projects need to be highly visible for elections & public.
Western countries have already gone through this large & increasing divide between the 99% & 1% of the country (remember Occupy Movements around the world about 5 years ago?) but talks of recession ending & new economic growths have only helped fuel the divide now. Western governments didn't bring any new legislation to resolve this divide. All of the countries, both developed & fast developing ones, are turning back to the medieval times.
According to a report from New York's Coalition for the Homeless, 60,000 people are sleeping in city shelters every night – almost double the amount since 2004. Let that sink in for a minute. Homeless people in NYC have DOUBLED in the past 10 years ... & there's no end to it.
Recession didn't even dent the increasing wealth of the business & political elites. While their wealth increased several folds between 2007 & 2014, the middle class is not only getting wiped out from society, the poor are barely hanging on to life.
This is all happening, & will definitely keep happening, in the so-called seemingly equal, fair, developed countries of the West. So what & how can one expect something better from developing countries like China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Russia, Vietnam, Pakistan etc.?
BUT, what rich are not seeing, by getting blinded by their fast rising tower of wealth, that you can only push the poor down to a limit. The numbers of poor are fast increasing in the urban cities all over the world. Those human beings will try to fight back for their survival when the survival of them & their families is severely threatened.
This will become the scene from the French Revolution, except it won't be happening only France, but all over the world. Are governments & politicians ready for this Revolution? Can the rich business & political elite handle the onslaught of poor on them?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Christmas 2007, I found a nightclub in London selling the most expensive cocktail in the world. I was reporting a piece on the gulf between the super-rich & the rest of society – and here was a liquid metaphor.
Hand the barman at Movida £35,000 & he would mix up a shot of Louis XII cognac, some Cristal Rose, a few flakes of edible gold leaf & at the bottom of the glass a diamond ring. During both mixing & drinking two security guards would keep watch.
Running around Mumbai for the past few days has sometimes felt like travelling back in time to that credit-crunch Christmas. Not because I think a banking crash is just around the corner, but because of the size of that gulf between those right at the top of this city & everyone else.
On Thursday afternoon, an events organiser for Mumbai’s wealthiest told me stories of children’s birthday parties in which a Bollywood celebrity was hired at huge expense to sing & dance – for a group of eight-year-olds. Of crores of rupees (hundreds of thousands of pounds) being spent on wedding dancers alone. She herself would rank among the city’s elite. For her two-year-old’s birthday, a swimming trip & family lunch was planned & yet friends would ask, “Aren’t you doing anything to celebrate?”
As India’s commercial capital, Mumbai has long been home to some of the richest people on the subcontinent. But in all my travels back & forth to India, I’ve noticed across big cities over the past decade or so a much greater willingness by the wealthy to show off. In Mumbai, that has reached extremes. On our first day here, the cabbie showed us Nariman Point, the Hanging Gardens, the Taj & the Gateway of India – then drove us over to Antilia, reportedly the most expensive home in the world. Owned by Mukesh Ambani, it is worth an estimated $1bn, is 27-storeys high & has 3 helipads.
However extreme, Antilia is hardly anomalous. A half hour away from where I am writing this, a new residential estate is up for sale, offering seaview flats alongside access to private jets & yachts. The black & gold billboards read: For Kings. For Queens. For Royalty.
The bit of this that really reminds me of London before The Fall is the way those enjoying this lifestyle assume that everyone else is getting a bit of it, too. I am thinking here of the property developer who is now in New York for 5 days’ shopping – his second trip there in 2 months. Just before he left, he told me that he regularly took 10 holidays a year – but then went on to talk about how his cook had also been to South Africa. Except, it turned out, his servant had gone there for work.
In the 90s, as the second great wave of globalisation got under way, policymakers thought they knew who the winners & losers would be. On the debit side were the blue-collar & manufacturing-workers of the west, whose jobs were going to move east. But that was all worth it, we were assured, as long as people in developing countries got richer. But what a visit to Mumbai shows you is the vast inequality in how those riches have been spread around. You see it in the physical infrastructure: all those new flyovers sprouting up around the city to enable the chauffeur driven classes to get about more easily, even while the commuter trains are still bursting; the crowded, chaotic public hospitals that get by while gleaming new private hospitals open up.
Unlike in Britain or America, the middle classes in urban India are still far better off than they were 10-15 years ago. But in Mumbai, you see how they also struggle to pay for their English-medium schools & non-government doctors. I am thinking here of a family I met last night who were adamant that that they were middle class & yet were also open about how much they were struggling to afford even the basics for their children.
At the end of our chat, the party planner began angsting out loud about what kind of society Mumbai was becoming. “At the top, we’re creating a generation of brats. If they have iPads & birthday extravaganzas now, what will they demand when they’re teens? And at the bottom, can you imagine how much resentment they must be carrying?”
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Criminal Minds, S1E7 (quote)
I don't completely agree with this statement that you have to be cunning with cunning people, but then, I also understand that yes, you have to lower yourself to their standards when you are dealing with them, because otherwise, you will be taken advantage of. I guess, one just have pick & choose the moment when to lower one's standards & when not to ... sort of we all need to pick & choose our battles.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
"Life in the Billionaire Bubble" - Jen Sorensen
"Life in the Billionaire Bubble" - Jen Sorensen, US
Friday, April 3, 2015
Cloud Atlas (Quote # 11)
A great line for those people who are always told that their work is not changing anything in the society & what they are doing is all useless effort & waste of time.
Opposite for: "Go big or go home."
Opposite for: "Go big or go home."
Monday, March 30, 2015
The Lone Ranger (Quote 2)
When blood is spilled unjustly, either by governments, radicalized groups, or both; rivers do run red, then !!!
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Canada's race problem is worse than America's
Another great op-ed on racism in Canada. I posted my opinions & thoughts on another article on racism in Canada. I did include immigrants in that blog, & this op-ed does too, but nothing will change in Canada, until we all firmly believe & accept that there is racial discrimination in Canada, & it is only going to get worse as the economy worsens further.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the recently released Social Progress Index, Canada is ranked 2nd amongst all nations for its tolerance & inclusion.
Unfortunately, the truth is we have a far worse race problem than the US. We just can’t see it very easily.
Terry Glavin, recently writing in the Ottawa Citizen, mocked the idea that the US could learn from Canada’s example when it comes to racial harmony. To illustrate his point, he compared the conditions of the African-American community to Canada’s First Nations. If you judge a society by how it treats its most disadvantaged, Glavin found us wanting. ... By almost every measurable indicator, the Aboriginal population in Canada is treated worse & lives with more hardship than the African-American population. All these facts tell us one thing: Canada has a race problem, too.
How are we not choking on these numbers? For a country so self-satisfied with its image of progressive tolerance, how is this not a national crisis? Why are governments not falling on this issue?
Possibly it is because our Fergusons are hidden deep in the bush, accessible only by chartered float plane: 49% of First Nations members live on remote reserves. ... Fewer than 40,000 live in Toronto, not even 1% of the total population of the Greater Toronto Area. Our racial problems are literally over the horizon, out of sight & out of mind.
If we don’t have a race problem then what do we blame? ... Us? For not paying attention. For believing our own hype about inclusion. ... For not acknowledging Canada has a race problem.
We do & it is bad. And it is not just with the Aboriginal peoples. For new immigrants & the black community the numbers are not as stark, but they tell a depressingly similar story.
If we want to fix this, the first step is to admit something is wrong. Start by saying it to yourself, but say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the recently released Social Progress Index, Canada is ranked 2nd amongst all nations for its tolerance & inclusion.
Unfortunately, the truth is we have a far worse race problem than the US. We just can’t see it very easily.
Terry Glavin, recently writing in the Ottawa Citizen, mocked the idea that the US could learn from Canada’s example when it comes to racial harmony. To illustrate his point, he compared the conditions of the African-American community to Canada’s First Nations. If you judge a society by how it treats its most disadvantaged, Glavin found us wanting. ... By almost every measurable indicator, the Aboriginal population in Canada is treated worse & lives with more hardship than the African-American population. All these facts tell us one thing: Canada has a race problem, too.
How are we not choking on these numbers? For a country so self-satisfied with its image of progressive tolerance, how is this not a national crisis? Why are governments not falling on this issue?
Possibly it is because our Fergusons are hidden deep in the bush, accessible only by chartered float plane: 49% of First Nations members live on remote reserves. ... Fewer than 40,000 live in Toronto, not even 1% of the total population of the Greater Toronto Area. Our racial problems are literally over the horizon, out of sight & out of mind.
If we don’t have a race problem then what do we blame? ... Us? For not paying attention. For believing our own hype about inclusion. ... For not acknowledging Canada has a race problem.
We do & it is bad. And it is not just with the Aboriginal peoples. For new immigrants & the black community the numbers are not as stark, but they tell a depressingly similar story.
If we want to fix this, the first step is to admit something is wrong. Start by saying it to yourself, but say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.”
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Class is something you are born with ...
Crappy movie, but loved this quote ...
Funny how people think that a brand name dress or shoes or living in a mansion or have powerful people in their network or driving expensive cars elevate them to a higher class in society. That class is like that chocolate egg, which is hollow from inside but covered in delicious chocolate ... but devoid of any nutrition.
Our world has become topsy-turvy now with low class people at the top, with the help of brand names in everything they own, & high class people at the bottom of the society.
On top of that, public itself has changed its perspective to hold these low-class people in high regard. General public doesn't hesitate from struggling in this world, to doing anything it can do, to emulate those low-class people (e.g. Kim Kardashian is the idol to several young girls or young women in universities, in Western & Eastern countries alike, pimping themselves out to "sugar daddies" to earn enough to buy brand name accessories).
People are ready & willing to do anything that will make them easy money, even selling oneself is not out of bounds, just so they can buy their way into the "high-class society".
Funny how people think that a brand name dress or shoes or living in a mansion or have powerful people in their network or driving expensive cars elevate them to a higher class in society. That class is like that chocolate egg, which is hollow from inside but covered in delicious chocolate ... but devoid of any nutrition.
Our world has become topsy-turvy now with low class people at the top, with the help of brand names in everything they own, & high class people at the bottom of the society.
On top of that, public itself has changed its perspective to hold these low-class people in high regard. General public doesn't hesitate from struggling in this world, to doing anything it can do, to emulate those low-class people (e.g. Kim Kardashian is the idol to several young girls or young women in universities, in Western & Eastern countries alike, pimping themselves out to "sugar daddies" to earn enough to buy brand name accessories).
People are ready & willing to do anything that will make them easy money, even selling oneself is not out of bounds, just so they can buy their way into the "high-class society".
 |
| IMDB RottenTomatoes Wikipedia |
Monday, January 26, 2015
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Alcoholism: Social & Personal (biological) Poison
I watched 2 movies in succession in the past week & coincidentally both on alcoholism.
One thing I don't understand how people all over the world (esp. in Western countries) willingly & happily ingest this poison (scientifically proven that alcohol is a poison). Besides being a biological poison for your own body, it's also a social poison where it creates problems (family breakdown, assaults, drunk driving deaths causing grief for another family too). But still, alcohol is the central to everything is done in the Western world, from professional (e.g. wine & cheese networking) to personal.
Frankly, it seems that people who don't drink are much more resilient & bold. They face problems without drowning themselves in booze. They don't wait for booze to lower their inhibitions to do something.
One thing I don't understand how people all over the world (esp. in Western countries) willingly & happily ingest this poison (scientifically proven that alcohol is a poison). Besides being a biological poison for your own body, it's also a social poison where it creates problems (family breakdown, assaults, drunk driving deaths causing grief for another family too). But still, alcohol is the central to everything is done in the Western world, from professional (e.g. wine & cheese networking) to personal.
Frankly, it seems that people who don't drink are much more resilient & bold. They face problems without drowning themselves in booze. They don't wait for booze to lower their inhibitions to do something.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Think Before You Act
 |
| Power of social media: an American kid is resurrected in Peshawar, Pakistan school attack. Problem: people sharing these images like zombies; Think before you Act. |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)