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Sunday, July 8, 2007
1:41 AM
In the context of Singapore’s multi-racial society, where there is cultural and religious pluralism, I think that both Singer’s view of freedom of expression and Szilagy’s view of social responsibility are in their own means applicable in Singapore’s context. Adopting both methods would prove a success in handling the fragile racial and religious harmony that we currently have.
Singer feels that freedom of expression is essential to any democracy and therefore should not be limited. He expressed, “freedom to say what everyone else believes to be false, and even what many people find offensive….Without that freedom, human progress will always runs up against a basic roadblock.” Indeed, to all four of our major or minor ethnic groups, be it Chinese, Malays, Indians or Eurasians, freedom of expression is a form of equalitarianism, where people are allowed to speak of their minds and thoughts. If we were not allowed to speak up, and merely following out government leaders blindly, the country as a whole will be obstructed from reaching greater heights.
On the other hand, Szilagy rhetorically asked, “What is more important for the democratic advancement of a society – to ensure the freedom of expression of all its citizens (within the limits marked by law) or to protect the collective interests of society?” Undeniably, this is true to a certain extent that if there was too much emphasis on the freedom of expression, the interests of society would be largely neglected.
However, if both these views are taken into account and used measurably, such that freedom of expression is granted to minorities or majorities, but they should themselves be responsible for what they say. If what they are going to express might be a threat to the interests of others, then they should not be granted the right for freedom of speech, since they are undeserving of it.
Hence, in conclusion, having the right to express your thoughts must work hand in hand with social responsibility for what you are going to say. Only in this way can Singapore succeed if she was to adopt any of the methods.
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Tuesday, April 24, 2007
7:58 PM
"Prejudice is a disease we can never get rid of." Discuss.
I agree with the statement. [1]Prejudice is a preconceived opinion or feeling, often unfavourable. It is compared to a form of disease as the latter is harmful, depraved, and morbid condition, as of the mind or society.
Prejudice takes in many forms, such as racial discrimination and gender discrimination. It is often difficult to eradicate as it is constantly present in everyday life, such as the problem of racial discrimination or homosexuality discrimination. Preconceived opinion formed in the mind are often undetected if the person does not voice it or portray it out.
[2]Devah Pager, a sociologist at Northwestern University, studied employers' treatment of job applicants in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. One example of racial discrimination, as focused upon by the sociologist, is that whites without a criminal record were most likely to be invited back (34%) and blacks with a criminal record were the least likely (5%). The study found that only 14% of blacks without a criminal record were called back for an interview—less than the 17% of whites that did have a criminal record.
However, this study was only done in a city and not world wide. But we cannot eliminate the fact that prejudice, in the form of racial discrimination, still exists sub-consciously, such as the example given above. Hence, in conclusion, even if we cannot eradicate prejudice completely, we should still make an effort to make sure we do not make unnecessary preconceived opinions.
[1] http://dictionary.reference.com
[2] http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_archive
09172003
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Friday, April 20, 2007
10:34 PM
“YouTube has no ethics, it's been created for the sole purpose of entertainment and money.” Do you agree?
Founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, Youtube was acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion. From the http://dictionary.com, ethics is a branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions. Yes, i do agree that Youtube has no ethics and that it was created for the sole purpose of entertainment and money, but there are circumstance where there are exceptions. Thus, there is no right or wrong, it is just what we perceived it to be with our knowledge and beliefs.
Youtube provides a venue for video sharing among friends, families and between people internationally. It promotes online video viewing rather than through mediums such as the television. You can look for a particular video by conveniently searching and downloading. For example, typing in words in the search bar would enable many successful matching results of what you want as people place tags -- key descriptions of their uploads in their videos. Many people upload videos like drama series, MTVs, etc onto Youtube. There is often very little uploading of educational or informative materials done by Youtube directors. Hence, it is deemed as a source of entertainment mainly to a large extent.
However, it is not true to say that Youtube has no ethics. There is no right nor wrong to a certain extent with the action of uploading of videos to be shared among other people as it is solely for the motive of entertainment, and not other delinquent ulterior motives as such. This is also evident with the fact that there are examples of videos that are utilize as a propaganda to discourage and stop racism. Thus, if we were to comment that Youtube has no ethics, it is partly wrong as solid exceptional case like this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OobDdCzjP_E do exist.
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Thursday, March 22, 2007
6:24 PM
My name is Tai Khui Bing but I would like to have an English name but its too late to make up one now because most of my friends call me by my initials which is tkb. It may sound weird but I am used to it already. I am finding it hard to type formally because I think I sound like a robot. i have another personal blog you can visit at http://s-chylerr.blogspot.com. The URLs are quite similar to each other because I am lazy to think of another name for this gp blog. I was in PDG 30/07 too previously, and coincidentally my orientation group was 30 too(: I think I sound really weird and I am not use to typing in full structured sentences. I love basketball and have been playing it for many many years. This year will be my eighth but I am not very good at it and am still trying to improve by training hard. Trainings are tiring and often the following day I would appear very tired and sleepy. Please pardon me if I ever doze off in class because I am really tired(:
