>Those were the words of Julian Assange of Wikilinks.
“It is not a technology that favours freedom of speech,” he said. “It is not a technology that favours human rights. Rather it is a technology that can be used to set up a totalitarian spying regime, the likes of which we have never seen.”
What do you think?
>The following section is quoted from an article by Joan Raymond: “High school can be hell, filled with cruel cliques bent on tormenting their peers. But the queen bees at top of their social heap aren’t the most abusive against their classmates, according to a study published in the February issue of the American Sociological Review. The most popular kids in school — the top 2 percent of a school’s social hierarchy — are actually the least aggressive, along with those at the bottom. It’s the teens just slightly down from the pinnacle of popularity that give their peers a hard time. Researchers from the University of California, Davis, found that adolescents in the top 98th percentile of the school’s social pecking order have an average aggression rate that is 40 percent greater than kids at the top. They also have an aggression rate that is about 30 percent greater than kids at the bottom of the popularity pack. “The more kids crave popularity, the more aggressive they are,” says co-author of the study, Robert Faris, assistant professor of sociology at UC Davis.”
(http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41463106/ns/today-parenting/)
I have often thought that there is an underplayed link between aggression between individual people, and aggression between groups, of whatever size. And if you’re going to look at the causes of aggression and conflict then playground bullying is as good a place as any to start.
The question of what playground bullying can teach us about the causes of conflict is a big one. But the above quote, if applied to wider scale conflicts, would also be very suggestive. Do you think we can extrapolate from such ideas and draw parrallels with inter and intra state conflicts?
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>There seems to be a split between those who believe that the prime purpose of education is to prepare students for employment and those who believe it’s supposed to prepare students for life. What do you think?
>These were the words spoken by Malcom X in 1964. The whole quote was:
“America is just as much a colonial power as England ever was. America is just as much a colonial power as France ever was. In fact America is more so a colonial power than they, because she’s a hypocritical colonial power. What do you call second class citizenship? Why, that’s colonisation. Second class citizenship is nothing but twentieth century slavery.”
Was he right to say such things in 1964? Would he be right today?
>If you’re at all interested in the things on thebigqs then you’re sure to have been labelled a geek in some point in your life. So if we are geeks then what do we have in common? What are geeks? What’s the opposite to being a geek? And why is that opposite commonly seen as being preferrable?
>Etienne de Durand of the French Institute of International Relations said in this last week that cooperation between the UK and France in defence was about “being sex buddies rather than marriage.” I just picked this example because it was to hand, yet there’s a vast amount of modern literature that uses words like “fuck buddies” (the more common term).
My question to you is do you see this kind of liberalisation of speech continuing, and perhaps as something that people are more likely to read in even academic works in the future? Or does seeing such vocabulary on an academic site make you squirm? Is there a right and wrong to discuss here or not? Is it simply a product of the times?
>Is humility always good, or not? We’ve heard of the ‘greats’ of history, humbly refusing awards and/or praise. Take the following example of Einstein speaking to the Chicago Decalogue Society in 1954:
“Ladies and gentlemen: You are assembled today to devote your attention to the problem of human rights. You have decided to offer me an award on this occasion. When I learned about it, I was somewhat depressed by your decision. For in how unfortunate a state must a community find itself if it cannot produce a more suitable candidate upon whom to confer such a distinction?”
Now you may argue that this wasn’t humility, for he really didn’t do that much related to human rights. But nevertheless he was humbly refusing an award he could easily have embraced.
What would you have done? Is it the case that there is a time and a place for humility? Are these people just trying to call more attention to themselves? Does humility serve the humble, or just the rest of us?
>Marianne Williamson once wrote “our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.’ We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.”
Now I’m aware that Williamson’s argument was not exactly in line with the question but it raises some interesting points. Do we fear our strengths as much as, or perhaps even more than our weaknesses? Does “our playing small” not serve the world? Should we all be more active? Or is it acceptable for someone to turn down an evening of volunteering when they know they’d be doing nothing otherwise? Is it acceptable for someone to work their entire lives on the minimum wage when they have the potential to do so much more?
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I know this picture has little relevance but I couldn’t resist putting it up. You’ve got to give credit to a good advert once in a while.
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