More details on this topic are soon to come. I'm currently writing a paper and started going into one of my oh-too-frequent day-dreaming sessions. So, I can't spend long describing this but I want to outline the idea so I don't forget it.
In my junior year of high school I had an amazing, although i'm pretty sure he didn't like me at all since he failed me on pretty much all of my essay quizzes, ethics teacher. Throughout the course we looked at some of the worlds most basic controversial issues (reminding you this is junior year of high school) like gay marriage, the death penalty, abortion, etc. He always said there was a fisher-price version of ethics and we should all avoid it. The fisher-price version is as it sounds... the baby version, the one sided vision of an issue. He challenged us to know every side of an issue regardless of whether we disagree. That, is something I think I do VERY well. Often I get frustrated with myself because on a bad day it seems like i'm opinion-less. When talking with my some of most intelligent and revered friends they have such distinct values which make me feel valueless. I digress, the point is I love dissecting an issue and find it easy to remain relatively unbiased. (I recognize it's impossible to be completely unbiased)
The second source of my inspiration is the Surfing for Change guy. I forget his name already... but I can look it up later. Basically this 23 year old college student came to my University to talk about civic engagement. He makes movies about issues and puts them on youtube with the idea that people don't read the newspaper as willingly as they will watch a youtube video. Our generation has a short attention-span. Yadayadayada we all understand this concept.
The third source of inspiration is the paper i'm writing about the Darfur 'genocide'. The United States has a very biased view of the issue. That can be noted in mere mentioning of it as the Darfur Genocide as opposed to the Darfur conflict. This issue is complex. People should know more than the "darfur is genocide. genocide is bad." viewpoint. I'm not going to get into why.. because that's the paper i'm supposed to be writing right now... whoops! However, I think people can handle the whole issue without it demoralizing the effectiveness of campaigns against it.
I think it would be cool to start a series of videos on international issues that explain the fisher price version of an issue and then delve deeper into the more complicated & political sides. There really needs to be more of a respect and understanding of politics and how it affects all issues.
Alright... so, this will be a summer project. Back to my depressing paper which is surprisingly fun to write. I guess that's how I know i'm in the right major.
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