Prompted Blog Post 2, Jan 30th.

Today is an age which the sense of value is in chaos, and being unable to tell right from wrong. Because of fast technology development, people’s relationship with society is more and more closer and complicated, so people need some reasonable code of conduct, especially a code of ethics. In China, we have old, traditional ethics which we call it the “Five Cardinal Relationships” between ruler and subject(loyalty), father and son(filial piety), husband and wife(love and toleration), between brothers, sisters(love and respect), and between friends(friendly kindness), which was focusing on the interaction relationship between people close by, instead of relationship with society. So, old Chinese somehow ignored the widely social groups, which is why some people say Chinese are lack of Public Ethical Spirit or Civism, and people don’t usually care much about cases like public good and public welfare. In western culture, some Christian advocate the ethical idea of Sixth Cardinal Relationship which is the Relationship between Group and Individual, to make up the loophole of Chinese Five Ethics.

More or less, the main and currently urgent social ethics include the Increasing differences between rich and poor, Social equality and justice, Sustainable development and environment conflict, and many hard, challenging, complicated problem. And all of them are usually related to the problem of entire social structure. It is usually way beyond national border and become an International problem. Like the environmental pollution could affect other countries by air, river and ocean, and the best example is Chernobyl and Europe. Economical or political turmoil could cause the international refugee. Look around, this kind of thing happens everyday in middle east, Africa, and ancient Russia, China. So, the social ethics must be dealt with international vision.

About rich and poor, there are many reasons to cause it from happen which mainly include the Individual specific factor, and Social factor. Individual may include the education background, laziness, and alcohol, narcotic drug taking and so on. But the most important is social factor which is the economic, political institution and social structure and so on. Today people want to avoid rich-poor difference problem, will not only need to start from person, but also from the aspect of society. For American people and Christians, there are three main ways to deal with social poor. First, to live in a simple and unadorned life. Second, generous to volunteer to contribute. Third, take good care of the poor and provide them chance.

About the second, righteousness, social equality and justice. This kind of problem appear in every society, no matter big or small, the despotic one or democratic one, capitalism or socialism. This is because of the hidden evil in human nature, humanity. In western culture about classical ethics which is Bible, prophets seriously denounce the inequality and un-justice in ancient Israel, and god also punished it to make it broken apart. But basically Bible doesn’t support the idea of using Revolution or Taking over ruler’s power to solve inequality and un-justice, because the new one who is in power after revolution will soon overuse privileges like the front ones. Lord Acton has a specific good word in his work “Freedom and Power” which is “Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupt absolutely!” So, for both western and Chinese people look on three sides. First, defend the basic human right, which is specific that as everyone is born equally theoretically, so everyone should have some natural, basic right. Second, spread the spirit of fairness and justice. Third, build the safe and complete legal institution, and this is extremely important rather than find a wise leader as leader might be punished by law because of some selfish reasons. And in my home country China, the spirit of believing law might take another 100 years to build. 

Open Blog Posts 2, Jan. 29th

Chinese Marriage Crisis and Historical, Social Cause 

As I am an International student from China, in these over 20 years I have read and heard much news about Chinese marriage situation, which makes me more familiar with it than American marriage. So, I would love to talk about how Chinese marriage situation especially crisis, is affected by historical concept and social life.

For over 3000 years, the ideology of Chinese Feudal Society has affected people’s living style, including China’s current social institution. Chinese women were emancipated after the establishment of People’s Republic Government, but the truly liberation was during these 30 years’ period of fast economic development. But as the form of state institution directly influence people’s live, women diversify their social position in this economic tide. Many women step into the upper stratum because of their own ability and family background, and many marry men of rich and get a wealthy life because of their own “capital”. And the others normal women, they marry into different families as they don’t have obvious and strong enough prerequisite. The last group which is sad and terrible, they fall and become some men’s modern sex slave. Different from China, the western women has been emancipated after middle age, and liberated after 19 century. As there are differences between two living styles and political modes, western women shared a total different social position than China.

In China, the basic reasons to cause Chinese style marriage and breakdown of families are old, degenerate marriage style, home concept and social status of women. More specially, there are Five main reasons to cause breakdown of Chinese families. First, the changes of family members’ home position, social position and income. This reason directly come from the concept and ideology of old Chinese feudal society, and current social institution itself, because Chinese society has historical conditions and origins of rapid changes of social status, position and income

Second, because of many factors like knowledge explosion, psychological maturity, social position, status and income, and interpersonal relationship, to cause the direct psychological changes. And the speed which husband and wife could adapt such changes is different.   

Third, the pace, tempo of modern life is increasing year by year which causing people’s desire, wish expand fast, expected value raise up, and concept of all aspect of comparison is augmented.

Fourth, modern people like to make their personality widely known, and try to emphasize own right or interest too much, but being inclined to avoid own duty and responsibility. This kind of dis-symmetry definitely cause crisis in modern marriage life.

Fifth, people’s incorrect, non-valid sense of worth of love, sense of consumption of sex, and harm of Venereal Disease directly cause the family crisis.

Open Blog Posts. Jan 26th

As I already told you my major and my favourite fields, there is so much I need to learn, but there's also much related knowledge coming to me everyday. Although some knowledge I already read and know way before I got into MSU, but professors will still teach and explain them in courses, and it is for me to learn it systematically.

For example, as it is quite important of youth and children's mental health. So, I am learning different factors to affect children and youth's individual character in SOC courses these days. There are two main factors which is environmental factor and social factor. And the social factor include the family environement, school environment, social practice, and other subjective factors.
Family environment and school environment here are quite easy to understand, but the social practice which influence children and youth are exactly talking about the mass media and propaganda, this just have close relationship with science communication . And the last is about self-education and self-regulation.

More and more knowledge will come, from future SOC courses and PLS(Political Science) courses. And I am looking forward to it.

Promopted Blog Posts Jan 26th

As my major is sociology and I am a Junior now, focusing anything related to sociology, history, psychology, military affairs, International conflict and diplomacy, would be the must important fields to attract my attention. Luckily, as this WRA110 is focusing on modern scientific communication, all fields I choose have close relationship of it, and they all take great advantages of it.

I used to choose physics as my first major because of huge Chinese job pressure, although I know I am never really good at it since youth. After 2 years's experience, I just find myself far away from being intelligent on biology, physics, chemistry and advanced math, especially when they are not in mother language Chinese. So I changed back to what I really like and interested since youth. For my current fields, the sensitive, direct and impolite people will directly ask me what kind of job I am looking for in future, especially the people in China. Although I know the most intelligence needed for this society is something related to engineering especially biology, chemistry, physics, mechanics and math, but it is also true that the career related to my major and fields is huge. In fact, the related jobs are widely across the whole world, all careers and all companies. I used to dream to work as an observer of my chosen fileds, or working in a Think Bank. I know it's a big challenge and it needs lots of knowledge and social experience, writing experience. But since these fields are my favourite and interested, and I am a hard-working student, and I have quite patience to read, learn and write, there's a deeper foundation than any others, and it would be much faster and earsier for me to succeed.

About other questions people will ask me, it would be what kinds of specific topics I will focus on? Like whether I would be professional on Middle-East or Asia area if my major is history, International politics or diplomacy. In another words, what is my direction while learning, reading and doing research? Well, I would say it has been too early to decide. This is a question even Graduate students hard to answer. Since I am still preparing my writing skills for future GRE exam, I would be too early to say it now, but my hardworking, patience, and deep foundation will pay off soon.

About the textbook, in fact I don't know, although I have read above one hundred of my chosen fields like magazines, encyclopaedia or monograph. Although some of them are quite famous, like "The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" from Edward Gibbon, or "The Roman History" from Titus Livius, or "The Prince" from Niccolo Machiavelli. Or some famous magazones like "Foreign Policy" from America, "Jane's Defence Weekly" from England, or "Kanwa Defense Review" from Canada. They are very useful, and they have very complete knowledge which have close relationship with entire human society and kistory. But, they are not fit for textbook. And the only textbook for my major Sociology now is just "Sociology, a global perspective" from Joan Ferrante. I just start to learn it this year, and it has no Chinese translation, so I can't decide whether it is useful or not. But I believe, with this textbook, and study under my professor's instruction, there's a bigger chance for my major to succeed.