Friday, 28 October 2016

Emotion

Emotion is powerful: it can control many things. It can raise billions of dollars, or kill a person, or create amazing masterpieces depending on who and what kind of emotion was used.

Emotion can either be individual or social. It can simply be what an individual person feel, or can be shared among a group of people. Emotion can become more powerful when shared by more people. The more the people share the common emotion, the bigger change it can provoke.

Pity is one of the most significant and most humane emotions humans can feel. In a human's mind, there lays a hill of pity. When one walks by that hill, s/he would feel a strong sense of pity in his/her mind about something. Hence, when the one goes down the hill, s/he would perform a kind action that can improve whatever s/he felt sorry for, usually someone in harsh situation such as a beggar.

There is one example in South Korea, where the citizens are very emotional,
when the emotion was powerful enough to raise two hundred thousand dollars, to help a patient diagnosed with neurofibroma. Neurofibroma is a very rare disease that deforms the patient's face and body.


Her target fund was only thirty thousand dollars at first. However, as her tragedy was introduced to the public via TV programs and social media, more people who felt pitiful for her gathered and raised money for her. They were sharing the common pity towards this lady, and they've managed to work a miracle.

Such disease, rare and hardly curable disease which did not enable her a normal social life, created only a pure sense of pity to help her. However, some other tragedies not only evoke pity but also fury. The sinking of MV Sewol was one of those. Only 172 out of total 476 passengers were rescued. The captain, who should be responsible to save as many passengers as possible, escaped from the ferry the very first. The ferry, old and broken, was carrying more passengers than its capacity, in only purpose of earning more money. Most of the passengers were young high school students, aged only 17, heading for a school trip. The incompetent president, who should have mobilised and directed maritime police officers to save the passengers, did not appear for 7 hours when all those hundreds of people were dying. It is recently revealed that she was in a hair salon getting her hair done, doing nothing for such accident while people were sinking in the cold sea. This made the whole citizens in Korea furious, and there were yellow ribbons hung everywhere and a myriad of protest. Now, two years from then, there is an ongoing protest in Korea that is one of the biggest in the entire history, to impeach the president. 

Friday, 14 October 2016

Reason

What are reasons needed for? Why do people tend to have reasons behind their actions? Reasons validate, or justify, certain things. It moreover convinces others to understand things that are usually not plausible.

For example, Jean Valjean stole a loaf of bread. Stealing is a crime, one of the things that are prohibited to do in order to maintain peace within the society. However, Jean Valjean had a nephew who was starving and close to death, and he had no money whatsoever to give him any food or medicine. His stealing was due to his harsh situation, and was from a noble reason, to save a life. Some people, after the reason revealed, would be convinced and say Jean Valjean’s theft was reasonable. However, others, who stand with Javert, would say theft is never allowed under any circumstances. They would argue that Jean Valjean could have chosen other ways to save his nephew, such as working hard to earn money and legitimately buy the bread, or even begging to the bakery owner. But still, those alternatives would not have been as immediate and practical solutions to solve the problem, though they are considered ‘moral’. For Jean Valjean, what was more important was saving his dying nephew, than such cliché like moral.