Sometimes it blows my mind as to what people are capable of to the point that I more or less lose all faith that I have in humanity. Maybe I should stop reading the news; that could help since the biggest news also tends to involve some of humanity's stupider ideas. However, I would still have to interact with people, and I know the implications of trying to give that up. No, I would rather stay involved with the world and its happenings than go back to complete ignorance of it. This lack of belief in the world is probably best summed up by a little ditty that I came up with on one rainy day:
"Oh humanity, can't you see
God is crying down on thee.
To death you sail, for surely you'll fail
When comes the time to end this tale."
There are many good things hidden as bad, such as the uprisings in the Middle East. People (both civilians and not) are dying, but at the same time, it is because the people as a group decided to stand up for their rights. This is a positive. On the other hand, you have wars due to things such as arguing over religion or trying to force certain ideas and ways of living onto others who sometimes show that they clearly don't really want them.
Then there is the education system. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but America needs to get its act together. As someone who has been a teaching assistant and sometimes tutor for the past 3 years, I have seen students who I don't understand how they could have passed high school let alone scored high enough on standardized tests to make it into college. Maybe its just that I teach math and physics to students who aren't interested in it. I'm sure many of them are very good at their major subject but that's no excuse to not be able to do some of the most basic calculations. I should not have to have a university student that has to use their fingers to figure out 10+7 if I won't let them use a calculator. The same goes for those students who feel it necessary to multiply numbers by one or zero on their calculator. Now I know that there are people out there who struggle with numbers, and for more complex calculations I can understand using a calculator. But, seriously people, we need to pull ourselves together. Yet, it seems that everyday people are wondering why the world (or specifically the US) is in such a financial crisis. Maybe it's because the young population has no idea what numbers mean or how to do simple calculations.
Another thing that gets to me is the terrible spelling and grammar of the general public and even sometimes reporters and journalists. Yes, there will be typos and occasional mistakes, and I know that no one will be perfect with those things. Some of the rules that come in to play in "proper" grammar aren't really used, so I have no problem with people using those. It's more things such as mixing up "two" and "to" or using apostrophes to indicate the plural of a word as in "the dog's". More often than not I hear people just give the excuse of "Well, I've never been good at spelling/grammar. It's not really going to make any difference." Well to people like me at least, when half of the words in your writing are spelled incorrectly and I can hardly read it due to the terrible use a grammar, it does make a difference. And it's a huge difference. If I'm looking for an employee, I'd much rather have one who tries to be professional and cares enough to make their writing look good as opposed to one who seems to have quickly scraped together a barely readable paragraph that makes them look completely ignorant.
It seems to me that many problems come down to a few simple things: logic, reason, and the ability to think. With those three things, you can overcome many inabilities that you may naturally have. These are the things necessary for problem solving and most circumstances in life involve some sort of problem solving. However as important as they are, I don't feel like kids are ever taught these things. It's really a shame. This seems to be the biggest problem with the students that I have in intro physics. They are not very good at pulling relevant information from problems or being able to sort through it to figure out how to apply what they know about physics to solve the problem. It is basically an attempt to grab equations that might be relevant and hope that they are right. More often than not, the student has some idea of what they should be doing, but they struggle to see the patterns between similar questions if those questions are worded even slightly different. I have heard of professors doing an example for students and putting the same question on their homework, only changing the numbers, and the students struggle to solve it.
Too much of school, especially high school level, involves memorization. Sadly, schools these days are "teaching to the test" rather than teaching students how to think. This is why I believe students struggle so much in math, physics, and other subjects which rely heavily on problem solving rather than memorization. It's not until college that they are asked to do these things, and then they struggle to learn them. This is frustrating, especially to a student who is used to doing well in school. It is much harder to teach basic thinking skills to a college-aged student than it is to just start teaching and working on those skills as a child grows up. If we as a society want to continue to progress, then we did to give our kids the tools necessary to do so. This means teaching them how to use logic and reason and how to think things through and use their creativity to solve problems.
Maybe a world of people who are better able to think and to look at things a bit objectively, at least sometimes, would be a better place. Maybe it wouldn't be any different because these things won't eliminate the other problems that people face, that of greed and power. I don't know that we will ever be able to rid ourselves of those things. Partly, it is ingrained in our minds because, to some extent, those things are (or were) necessary for survival. And partly, there will probably remain people who allow those things to take control of their thoughts. This is also true because we need people like this to help keep things running; however, it is a fine balance because those who let power and greed get the best of them due more harm than good. It is often said that "those who are best suited to power never seek it." This is true because, in the sense "power" is used here, those who are best suited are those who will not let it go to their head, but those are the people who do not want it in the first place.
And so it is that society will continue to be its own worst enemy. We'll continue to fight ourselves because there aren't enough people who are willing to sit and think things through and then put themselves in a position to really make a difference. I could go on and on about the pitfalls of society, but I believe that I've written enough for tonight.
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