Thursday, April 8, 2010

Week 12 Day Two

Blog Post 4 was today's assignment. Here are the directions:



Answer BOTH questions.
1. Martin Luther King in his essay, Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos? that we mount a peace initiative. Outline your plan to transform the nuclear arms race into a peace race. Research peace intiatives to support your argument. Be sure and cite your source.
2. Martin Luther King in his essay World House talks about "bridging the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress." Explain the two realms he speaks about (p.598)and suggest how we, as a nation, can balance our scientific and technological abundance with living a moral and spiritual life.
NOTE: include a graphic (with citation if you don't use a royalty free one) and/or YouTube video with your post.
 
I noticed that the students  have been making dramatic improvement in the quality of their posts, incorporating sources, great insights, and attending to the grammar and mechanics. The one thing I have had to remind them of is to cite their sources and, in particular, their graphics.
 
Here is the featured blog post of the week from McKenzee is reflects deeply on everything and always rises to the challenge.
 
1. The question for this topic is hard to answer, I see peace not exactly the same as the book described. In today’s society even in the past, we try to create a peaceful world. History in books and movies describe peaceful as a world such as Utopia, the beautiful, the impossible. This world has not and will not ever exist. With today’s technology and new creations I don’t think the world will ever get rid of the nuclear demons they have created. I think America as well as the other nations are too busy competing with one another about the future that they forget to focus on the present. Well, news flash the present determines the future. Instead of focusing on disarming the nuclear weapons we should focus on other things, a tactic that America has been using is the threat of nuclear retaliation in the event of conflict, instead of actually enforcing it. This defense has helped keep governments throughout the world in check. Although there are many smaller conflicts around the world, we have not seen anything approaching a “World War” in over fifty years. i believe that the U.S. strategy on nuclear weapons has helped to promote this limited warfare into smaller regional scrimmages that are going on today. It is only the threat of these weapons that we can maintain a strong defense to keep as peaceful of a world as possible. The sinful nature of man is in direct contradiction to peaceful existence. For over two thousand years man has been at war with itself, and to think the elimination of nuclear weapons will create an Utopia of peace is fool -hardy.




http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/missile-defense/history/reagan_on-strategic-defense-iniative.htm



2. We are making advances in science to the point that we have to ask ourselves, “Is this morally correct, even though we have the power to do something should we do it?” In Martin Luther King’s essay he explains that there is two ways in which everyone lives, internally and externally. The internal deals with morality and separating what right and what’s wrong. External deals with the materialistic and scientific progress. He explains that we are living too much of an external life that we are losing our internal life. We are losing our morality. This is hard to create a balance and has always been an issue. Stem cell research is just one example of many topics that relate to internal and external decisions. I think the only way we can create a balance of each is to have meetings of debates. Let the debates point of the pro and cons to each and if it passes, set certain rules and regulations for each advance taken. I think we should have a “watch dog” group specially assigned to each scientific or technological advance to make sure each is not exceeding to interfere with morality.



7 comments:

  1. I feel like that world peace is something that people contiually talk about all of the time and how it would make the world a better place. But in fact I do not believe that half of the people that say actually physically try to do someting about it. I think this assignment made the class think a little more about ways and different options of promoting world peace.

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  2. Yes, it certainly makes one reflect on how one person can make a difference in achieving peace in the world.

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  3. The video on stem cell research is HILLARIOUS, oh my goodness. I couldn't stop laughing to save my life. It is so true, and puts a whole new spin on the "controversial topic". My question is, why can't this be a commercial, so everyone can see the stupidity in arguing about something that is so simple to handle, just use the embryo's for stem cell research. I am going to put this video on my facebook page, and share it with as many of my friends as I can.

    This is great! :)

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  4. As much as I would like to feel safe and secure in my own home and know that there was a gun there for self defense purposes, I honestly don't think we need guns. If no one had guns than no one would need a gun for self defense. A lot of people might say that they wouldn't feel safe without a gun but I think that more people would feel safer knowing that no one owned a gun. I'm not sure if or how it would ever be possible to confiscate every gun but we could start arresting people that were caught with having a gun. Maybe knowing that consequence more people would give up their guns.

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  5. Both of the videos were hilarious and they both conveyed their message really well. I believe that there should be world peace within the United States. Americans do not know who to live in a society without weapons. I would only choose to carry a weapon if i lived in a neighborhood that required me to own one.

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  6. I’m so glad that my video and blog spoke to people; I really had a lot to say about the topic of world peace, as well as the Stem Cell research. I thought the blog question really tested people to think about how they personally feel about their own safety as well as the countries. I think this made students make a double take about the history that going on around them and pushes them to get more involved. Great topic to discuss!

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