Civic Action

What forms a successful community? Great leaders? Strict rules? Harsh punishments? Well, according to Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne, it is the democratic ruling system and the teamwork from all the members of a community. Ranging from personal responsible citizens to participatory citizens to last, justice-oriented citizens. All of them play different roles in their society and if they all engage properly, we might have ourselves a perfect society.

First are the personal responsible citizens. They are the cores of a smooth-running society. These citizens make up most of the community’s populations. So what are their tasks? Well, quite simple actually. First of all, and it is actually the easiest one, act responsibly in his/her community. He or she needs to be employed, need to pay their taxes, need to obey the law and even do things like recycle and give bloods to their society. An example of them will be the foot soldiers in an army. Without these educated, philanthropically aware citizens, no community could function properly.

Second are the participatory citizens. They don’t make up more of the population like the first kind of citizen, but their tasks are as important as the first citizens. They are the leader, organizer, commander, chairman, manager…etc of our community. We all know the importance of leaders. He/she has the ability to make things more effective. Having just the first type of citizens, the personal responsible citizens, will be helpful, but not as effective. Lets use a scenario to see the big picture. There’s a flood that destroyed a village. Most people over there are starving and shelter less, so personal responsible citizens started gathering foods and tents for those citizens. BUT, they don’t have proper equipments to get to the village, no safe rout and most of all; don’t have a clear understanding of the situation. Even though their effort will save lives, but it won’t be effective. So there is when participatory citizens comes in. They will first understand the situation and then organize a safe rout for the food and shelter transportation. With their help, the rescue will be far more effective and more lives will be saved.

Last group are the justice-oriented citizens. They are the most educated of all. They go into the core of a problem. When 1^st and 2^nd type citizens solve the problem, they think of ways to prevent the problem from the beginning. They question our system for any possible holes in it, which makes it near perfect. They are pretty much like the critics in some ways. But instead of destroying their target’s self-esteem, they improve their target.

So how could Hsinchu international school adopt this kind of system? First, democratic system. By far, most of the voices from 70~80% of the school are not heard. The idea of SRC is great IF the SRC are actually collecting comments from the rest of the school body. After all, if they want to represent the students’ voices, they should actually ask the students what they think, right? Second of all, we need more love for our school. Higher spirit in a way, almost like patriotism, but toward our school. If we love our school, it is easier for our to give back to the school. So instead of abusing our rights to go to 7-11, we should use it wisely, and even clean up our trash after we finish eating or drinking whatever we got from 7-11. Also, community services are great ways for us to contribute back to our society. Like the personal responsible citizens, we need to encourage students to give more. But most of all, we need a leader. Having no principle can cause many problems. Students looses faith, parents looses faith and even the teachers looses their faith. If all those things are fized, I believe HIS will become a far better school then now.

O God! Look At that those Fe-Men

Sexism has been around for many many centuries. In most culture (Nearly ALL culture) women are being treated with less respects and rights. Even in today's society, women are still being suppressed by dominant men. But while all these sexism is going on, surprisingly, cross dressing culture is also growing. Some schools picked a day in the year to cross dress, and for my school, it is today. But is cross dressing a healthy thing to do? Is making yourself look like the opposite gender a good thing to do? In my opinion, it is very rewarding and didactic. Putting aside the fact that this day brings a lot of joys, it also made you really look at the opposite sex. You started imitating their way of words, gesture and even behavior. And even when we are not aware of these subtle things, we are growing more conscious over the opposite gender, which made us more cautious over the other sex.

Another thing that shouldn't be overlooked is which sex is going to have more trouble cross dressing. Once again, only my opinion, Male. In our society, girls have been wearing so called "guy cloth" for awhile. Jeans and shirt or polo are commonly seen worn by girls. But why aren't there any men wearing girl cloth in ordinary like? It is our culture that hindered us from doing that. Males are brought up thinking one day they are going to be the CEO or manager of a huge corporation and leader of his family. It made them think they are more superior over women, especially their wives. With this in the societies' mind, male automatically block all of their feminine side. So it is very hard for us guys to dress up like females because no one wants to blur this gender binary.

Our class did a little experiment :]
With around 8 boys dressed as girls and 4 girls dressed as boys, we went to the nearest 7-11 to see other people's expressions. First I found out, we are the center of attention. No one, and i mean absolutely no one walk pass us without staring at us for at least 5 min. (except me, they are ogling at me.) Then we saw a senior citizen, around 70 years old, and she was PISSED at our "behavior". She looked at us as if she was going to beat the living **** out of us until we are normal again. So what I got out of this little trip to 7-11 was:
- Our society is still not use to boys dressing up like girls and walk like girls.
- Elder people are more conservative about this kind of cross dressing culture.
- One lollipop and one bottle of milktea.

Innovation

I just finished reading this article about creating innovation for the kids. It basically listed nine ways that the educational system should change into. And here, I am going to give my feelings on these changes.

1: Spur greater parental participation:
Parents are one of the most important characters in any child's life. With these parents participating in their child's education, it is fair enough to say that it will give positive booms. Because parents only wants the best for their kids. They will ask for fairer things for their children. They will also provide the kids a sense of protection knowing their parents are participating in their educational life.

2: Make school smaller:
I could give personal examples for this one. I've been studying in small schools for most of my life. And I found out that knowing everyone in my school really made me think to them as families, and I don't want to disappoint them. There are stronger school spirit and more bonding between teachers and students. These kind of bonding also made me work harder. However, when I am in larger school, I loose that kind of feeling. I stopped pushing myself because I know only a few people will see my achievement.

3: Utilize community service to foster civic engagement.
I really enjoy community services. It is like a spiritual break which you get to really understand your neighborhood or surrounding and do something about it. It allows the students to interact more with the community and build up their philanthropic will. I believe this is more important than any other points.

5: Fund extracurricular activities.
This is very critical. Extra curriculum are where kids find their interest in certain things. Kids learn how to play instruments in after school music class, learn to play sport in sport clubs...etc. This also build up teamwork spirit, leardership abilities and even social skills. We need to increase these kind of activities for our kids, not decrease the fund. These funds are great investments for the kids to do well in their future life.

6: Model a high school on a community.
Students are the core of a school. Faculties are not the main character, students are. And since their are the main character, they should get more camera time. There should be more students taking on harder jobs like teaching other kids. In HIS, we have a period after school called peer tutoring. This is a time when the elder kids can share their knowledge to the younger kids. It is beneficial to both the younger kids and the older kids. Also, students should have more power over school decisions. A lot of the time, faculties are making decisions that they think is beneficial, but when it comes to the core, some of those decisions are not at all beneficial to the children. Only they know what they want, teachers can only imagine what they want.

7: Create opportunities for meaningful youth contribution.
Internship. HIS integrate internship with normal school time. On wednesday, most of the Seniors will go to their internship learning what could possibly be their future jobs. This is a great example of using student's like wisely. Sometime, kids are learning things that are meaningless to them. For example, do artist need biology? Also, having kids doing meaningful things to the community, like after school community services is also a great way to teach kids to be philanthropic.

Changing education could mean so much in the future. We need a better educational system to boost our youth's future!

An inclass essay on Globalization

Globalization has been around the world for centuries. Some said , the Silk Road was the first form of globalization, some said the Romans started it, and of course there are more assumptions. Many historians, economist and scientists have been arguing about the start of globalization, but they never have reached a consensus. However, what we know today, in the 21st century are the effects of globalization. So, for the purpose of this essay, I am going to set the beginning of globalization in the 1980s, the beginning of multinational corporation’s dissemination. Of cause, there are more forms of globalization, but this (corporation) is definitely the major one. So in this essay, I am going to discuss some of the effects of globalization.

Globalization has many effects and forms. As stated earlier, this essay focuses only on multinational corporations. So, what are some positive effects? One of the greatest contributions globalization has brought is the spread of information. With the help of globalization, especially corporations, more knowledge is being shared. There are better satellite systems and information, more available telephony and even internet. Languages are also more globalized. After the spreading of globalization, English has become one of the most common languages. 75% of the world’s mail telexes are in English. 60% of the world’s radio program are in English. 90% of the internet traffic uses English. Also, more people have global views. Westerners are more familiar with eastern culture while the East is also getting used to western traditions. In many ways, we are forming a global village. And because of this, more interaction between countries have started. There are more world games like Olympic, Soccer World Cup (FIFA), and Rugby World Cup (RWC). Most importantly, international agreements are being formed. The copy right laws for example are regulated because of globalization.

Globalization also helps reshape the economy of many countries. Because corporations are starting to build their factories abroad, they give those countries, especially third world countries more job opportunities. As a result, the standard life style in third world countries increase. They have better health care because of the technologies brought in by other countries, more money because they are employed and therefore, a better life style. Mr. Joseph Stiglitz said in his speech, "China has brought several hundred millions of people out of poverty". Chinese managed globalization exceptionally well. Also with the spreading of the companies, more goods are being spread across the globe. Now, we can have a wide range of choice when we go shopping. And this, according to statistics, makes more consumers want to shop.

Another great contribution from globalization is the competition it creates among the corporations. Because of the forming of this “global market” more companies are forced to compete with each other. In today’s world, out of all the 100 biggest companies, 51 of them are multinational corporations. The founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates said, “This is a very exciting time in the world of information. It’s not just that the personal computer has come along as a great tool. The whole pace of business is moving faster. Globalization is forcing companies to do things in new ways.” Globalization has brought an end to many monopolies in the world. Now, even diaper companies have to compete with each other. As a result, more cheaper products with better quality are being produced.

Enough said about the good things brought by globalization, now for its downside. With the spreading of corporation, their business’s size increased dramatically. These corporations have become so rich, they have forgotten the purpose of their companies. Instead of concentrating on their products, they focus solely on profits. These high power CEOs started thinking of more ways to make money, so they started exploiting their workers. In China, McDonald's workers are getting less then 50 cents per hour. They have limited health care, and a lot of them cannot join the unions. For pharmaceutical companies, they only make drugs that treat illness found in modernized wealthier communities. Because they are pharmaceutical companies’ primary consumers. From 1975~1997, 1233 drugs were created, only 13 of them are for tropical diseases. The reason why there are only 13 of them is because pharmaceutical companies know those third world country people won't be able to afford the drugs, and the companies won't be able to make money from them. They even test drugs on people of the third world. The pharmaceutical company, Pfizer was accused of treating their third world country clients with untested drugs. And they got away by that saying their “clients” are illiterate, so they cannot sign a contract. Instead, these clients gave verbal permission, which could never be proven to be true or false in a court of law.

An example of how powerful these corporations become can be seen in the power they have to change regulations. In Papua New Guinea, mining companies forced the governments to stop performing health tests on its citizens that live around the mining site. In Peru, the mining companies forced the government to make a new law, that is “No one is allowed to sue international mining companies.” Sometime, even governments themselves are guilty. In New York, all of the manholes are made in India. They hired Shakti Industry in Haora to make their manholes with a very low price. Most of the workers were working with nearly no protection, in extreme heat and low pay. They received less then one dollar an hour when they could make over 25 dollars per hour in the US.

Lastly, if the government could not handle globalization well, their economy will actually decline, or even crash. Mexico for example is having trouble handling globalization. They have been working for American companies for many years, but the gap between the two countries is still constantly increasing. This is because these workers are being badly exploited. They get low pay, and are forced to work overtime. Since the country does not have many job opportunities, those workers have to stay in the factories. Governments are also forced to borrow money from banks. And of cause, if they borrow, they need to pay the interest. Some countries are even losing money constantly. Jimmy Carter said “Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing…you are talking about the internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn’t affect two-third of the people of the world.” Globalization is too focused on rich companies. Actually, some of the international trade rules are made to favor companies. Especially first world companies.

So, in conclusion, Globalization has many effects. Kofi Annan, the Nobel peace prize winner and former head of the United Nations said “It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity.” There will always be globalization. It is impossible to prevent. The problem is to make it fair for all. Corporations cannot be as powerful as they are today. Globalization needs more regulations and we need to keep an eye on them. Globalization could work, and it could bring balance to the world. The problem is how to make it work.

In the end, Suburbia Ends.

We live in a convenient world today. We have the ability to get to places within minutes when olden day people might take days, the ability to transport things from other countries and even the ability to mass-produce things. All of these technology made our life much more convenient then before. But have you ever woke up in the morning with a sudden realization that these could all end? I know I haven’t. And I know millions of other people are still stuck with the mind set that everything is going to be the same year and year after. Unfortunately, we are as Al Gore said, in the age of consequence.

3 years ago, I live in Australia. As we all know, Australia is the biggest island in the world. However, its vast boundless land and the nation’s population are completely out of ratio. In result, many people have to travel longer distance to get milk or household appliances. In a country like that, cars are essential. Without car, they are just like paralyzed people. So Australians reply a lot on cars. But lets NOT forget the fact that cars run on gasoline. And gasoline is a non-renewable resource. But what end up happening is, we are so addicted to gasoline, we can’t live without it. So instead of seeing fewer cars, we see more pumpjacks and oilrigs in the countryside and ocean.

3 years later, I came back to Taiwan. Now, Taiwan and Australia are two totally different countries. Both have similar population, but Australia is much much much bigger then Taiwan. In result, Taiwan becomes a very compacted place. Instead of having a huge 1 floor shopping plaza, we have a huge 5 floor shopping centre. Instead of having to drive 30 min to get milks, we only talk 5 min. This should be clear; a more compacted city is more convenient. And this will, in result save more gasoline.

Now, analysts and scientist found out that the gas production has reached its climax point. Similar to a parabola, it is now dropping. No matter how much more pumpjacks or oilrigs we build, gas wont be as much before.

Other then the gas problem, we also have food problems. Related to what I mentioned earlier, we depend on transportation too much. With these planes and ships, we started dreaming about food from abroad. Westerners started craving for Eastern food while the East is craving for the West as well. And both Australia and Taiwan are guilty for this. In Taiwan, many rich people get imported foods from pricier supermarkets. They would have cheese from France, Steak from Australia and fruits from Japan when all of these are produced locally. In Australia, there are not as many food imports. But there are still a lot of other imports (clothing, appliances…etc). In result, food started going across countries. Of course all these conveying rely on gasoline.

What do you think will happen next? In the end, we will lose to Mother Nature. We failed to play the game as Mother Nature asked us to. We didn’t think about sustainability, we definitely have no idea how to utilize our will power, and we exploited the world. Just remember, we are in an age of consequences. Our actions harm only us, and the next generation. So, use more local products, and drive less. This mission is hard, and dull. So be strong, and may the force be with you.

100% Organic with a little pest-inside

Throughout our human history, people manipulate words to trick others into believing ideas or buying products. This is not something new, and we are all completely aware of this. When we hear or read something, we always ask ourselves whether this is believable or not. So, lets look at one of the most recent trend, organic products. A lot of the foods in supermarket have a special label on it indicating that it is organic. Now, like I said earlier, these labels could be phony. If a label indicates that it is free range, it might mean one thing, but if I didn’t tell you that, what does it mean?

First, Organic products make people think of lovely country side farms with vase boundless lands with animals running free and vegetables planted next to colorful flowers. Well, there are farms like that, and the meats from there have label that says free range. These animals run around the farm freely and eat non-pesticide grass. But these farms are not highly productive, and there are not many of those farms. Most of these farms are industrialized. The farmers are forced to work along side with chain markets so they could survive. And since they have to work with them, these farms are forced to give more products. In result, the animals are locked back into small tin blocks with less then an hour of sunlight’s every week. The only thing that is organic about these animals is the food they consume and their drug-free body. These meats only have organic label on it, no free range, but do you know that when you buy it? No, they hid the truth from you.

If you connect that with Enron, you can clearly see the connection. The industrialization of the organic industry is like Mark to Market accounting system. They both made up unreal images for their consumers/stockholders. Enron lies about their real income, and these farms hid the real image of these terrible farms.

To be honest, I feel very sorry for those farmers who are forced to industrialize their farms. They are just another victim of this capitalized world. For example, Earthbound, started off with 2 hard workingmen, and what happened. It is industrialized due to our culture. However, this doesn’t have connection to Enron. Enron is a business that is just way to greedy. They started small, but it is not their environment that forced them to expand, it is they. They forced themselves to expand. In the documentary film, Skillings said to his employees that what they achieved today is not enough. He said we could never get enough…

The Smartest man, The biggest Lie

Around a week ago, our global ethics class watched a very didactic documentary file called Enron: The smartest man in the room. Basically, it is talking about an corporation called Enron, and NOT to run business like them. Even though we all know that the philosophies of corporations are all just profits, Enron brought this to another level. But before all that, I’m going to briefly tell you what Enron is. According to little researches online, I found out that Enron is an energy company. In fact, Enron is one of the world’s largest energy companies. However, Enron’s greed took away it’s glory.

The CEO of Enron, Jeff Skilling is an extremely smart, and greedy man. He brought Enron to its climax with a special accounting called Mark to Market. Basically, it gave the owners the ability to hinder the company’s budgets and rewrite those values in anyways the company feels like it. Of cause Mark to Market is not as simple as this, but this is the most I can explain. So basically, Enron is lying to its stockholders about their investments and the profits they are getting. Basically, they are telling the world they are making millions off a project that haven’t even started. Some of their projects are even huge failures. Like when they went abroad to India, that project failed miserably. The power plane is left unfinished, all the money in that project is lost, but no one knows. Enron lied about that project, and people thought they did a great job in India. In respond to that, their stock went higher. For many people, even stockbrokers, they thought the price of a company’s stock represents how well the company is functioning. However Enron is actually loosing money this whole time. Their stock go rocket high while the business itself is falling day by day. If I would to use a metaphor for this, Enron will be like Taipei 101 without interiors. Enron is destined to collapse.

Enron is even connected to politics. Ken Lay, another key player in this corporation is very tightly connected to Bush Jr. I’m not entirely sure about the kind of connections they have, but from what the movie said, bush used a lot of helps from Ken, and in return, Enron is able to free themselves from some troubles. With these connections, Enron moved its target on California. They decided to run the state’s energy, and steal the energy from them. Basically, they shut off the state’s electricity so they can boost the stock price for them. A very complicated process, but they manage to pull it off.

Well, their lies didn’t last forever. After awhile, people started finding holes in their lies, and started fighting against them. Their Stock along with the company gone bankrupt in 24 days. All 20,000 of their employees went unemployed in a day. And of cause, all the leading heads, peoples like Jeff Skilling are sentenced to different times in jail. Even one of them committed suicide.

Jeff Skilling: Sentenced to 24 years and 4 month in Jail. Fined 45 million USD. Current status: Serving time!
Ken Lay: Died of heart attack before being sentenced to anything. Technically, he is not guilty of anything. Died on 5th of July 2006. 64 years old.

So, does any of that relate to my global ethics experience in my junior year? Yes. Referring back to a book we read, Ishmael, Enron is just like what the book is describing, a falling aircraft. The way Enron is trying to get rich is like how the aircraft is trying to accelerate while ignoring the law of aerodynamic and the direction they are going. The results of this falling aircraft is a sudden boom, and compare this with Enron, it is actually very similar.

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I’m thinking of a cool way to end this entry, like a sentence that will make the readers think a bit more, but I’m experiencing a serious brain dead at the moment. So, if you did took the time to read this blog entry, give me a sentence that I should use to end this entry.
My Blog Needs YOUR HELP *finger pointing at your face*

Hawken and McDonough

This is a little reflection after I watched Hawken and McDonough's book and TED talk. First of all, both of them are professionals on their topics. And in the end, there are a lot of informations which I cannot absorb in just a few days. But I will present my views and some of the connections they have in this blog.

First, both of them are talking about the scarcity of resources. Even though they are on the same topic, the way they present their idea is totally different. Ignoring the fact that one of them wrote a book, and the other just had a speech, their content are quite different. Hawken is more...realistic. He pointed out the fact that no matter how much we save in our daily life, is it still not enough. Unless the corporations started working for the environment, there will never be a sustainable life. McDonough, in the other hand is more optimistic, and unreal in a way. He gave his audience "Hope". He educates us ways to save energy. For example, he talked about the green roof, which is something I'm highly interested in. He suggested the idea of planting vegetables on our roof, and from doing that, we are also giving our house one of the best installation ever. The topic of green roof really fascinates me. Since the beginning of last year, I started researching on green roof, and found many interesting facts on it. However, I don’t want to digress this topic, so I am not going to talk about my research on green roof.

Hawken also talked about something that I thought is very…interesting. He talked about how we should redesign some of the systems in our everyday life. By that, I mean hospital system. He said, during the process of going to the hospital, getting medicine…etc are using much more resources then we needed. I strongly agree with him. For example, I feel that all the paper advertisements are a form of waste resources. Why are we still reading paper advertisements when we have internet? Is it necessary to cut down that many acres of forest? Do you even read those advertisements? I guess it is very clear to you now; some of the “system” in our world is not really resource efficient.

I want to end my blog by one of the quote from Hawken. Sustainable businesses create objects of durability and long-term utility whose ultimate use or disposition will not be harmful to future generations. This will be my rule when I made it to the architecture business. I want to contribute to the world, do you?

Waste Not! Senior Projec!

After reading the 3rd chapter of the book “Natural Capitalism”, Waste Not, I feel the urge to tell you more about my passion in green architecture. This will later lead to my senior project and possibly my future job, but before that, let me first talk about this chapter.

Waste Not is basically a whole chapter talking about waste. It started with shocking facts about the amount of waste that is produced by Americans each year. After these shocking, disturbing and distasteful facts, the focus of the chapter slowly moved toward the economy side. It reminded me about my last year’s global environmental issue class. This class is also talking about waste and ecological footprints. I found out that the tremendous waste from any production can be reduced dramatically if the parts of the product is made locally. Without all the pollutions during the process of conveying the products, our earth will surely be a greener place. But for profit, companies decided to exploit this earth. In other words, these peoples are all capitalists. Extreme selfish capitalist.

Unexpectedly, this chapter started talked about the waste of “people”, which I thought was interesting. It talks about how many labors are wasting their talent just because they don’t have opportunities. It mentioned about drugs and other more complicated issues, but I think that will be digressive if the main point of this blog is the connection to my Senior project.

So! Senior project! First of all, I always get excited when I talk about this, so excuse me for adding too much exclamation marks! Well, even though I still don’t have a clear idea of what my senior project is going to be, I know it is going to be about Green architecture. And after a trip to the Lille forum, I’ve learned about how wasteful, and harmful a building can be. This is similar to what the chapter is about, the waste! Also, the combination of the shocking facts I found during my trip to France made me more aware of the production of buildings. It also made me more devoted into the study of green architecture. So, What is my senior project going to be? Green architecture and the design of a more sustainable life~!

Inquiry questions for my Senior Project.

Everyone have different senior project, and everyone have different inquiry questions. We've all put down a lot of thoughts and we all have good inquiry question. Now, I'm putting mine on this blog so people can give me suggestions. Please feel free to criticize it if you think it's crap.

Inquiry questions #1.
Can the design of a furniture change a person's personality?

I came up with this questions because I've realized that the world today is surrounded by designs. Weather it's creative designs or just simple designs, it's all designs. Sooner, a person's personality could be changed by the designs around them. For example, an outback person's personality would change if he move to big city. He's life tempo would be expected to faster, and he's living style would be expected to change as well. So I asked myself, does furniture also have a power to shape a person's personality?

Inquiry question#2
Why aren't people adapting green technologies?

Green technologies are known for saving money and planet in the same time. A energy efficient light bulb might cost more then a normal one, but in a longterm, it saves more money. But how come a lot of people still get normal light bulb? Is it because people don't know it? Is it because people are more interested in their short term income? Is it because people hate the idea of green technology?

This two are my inquiry question. As you can see, it's not fully developed. I will still make changes to it. But so far, this is what I've got. I will answer these questions while working on my senior project, which I don't know yet.

So~if you have anything you think you should add, please feel free to comment on my blog.