Journal 2~Home

Starting with my online course on First Year Composition 2.0. Apprehensive but excited to do it, and as always hope to see its successful execution. The course overview gives fantastic guidelines, and what we can accomplish upon completion of the course. Thankful to Dr. Karen Head of Georgia Tech to bring it all together and to us, a large online community, under the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) program.
Assignment
 Write your personal benchmark statement in the box below. Before you click "Submit," copy and paste your statement into a document and save it to your computer or to a flash drive.
MY PERSONAL BENCHMARK STATEMENT
I would like to be perceived as a thinking, feeling human being, who is eager to gain knowledge, and who wants to improve her communication skills. I understand that knowledge once gained, reasonably enough, in a particular subject, must be absorbed, and assimilated, and then taken to reach out to those who would want to know. Its a large community out there, and no man is an island. We share, we learn and we grow.

Major Assignment 1: Personal Philosophy Essay

Compose a 400-500 word personal philosophy essay in which you lead your audience to recognize and understand why a specific belief is important to you. Before you begin, review the modules and slides from week two. Imagine that you are writing to another person enrolled in this course, someone who doesn’t realize that you hold this particular belief or that you hold it so strongly.
This essay is not fiction; instead, it is a way to share your belief about one aspect of your life. For example, you might write about one of the roles you play in your life, an important value you hold, a significant relationship you’ve had, a position you take on an issue, a personal goal, and so on.

Spilling the beans-“Live and let live”

Jessica Lall, a model who was working as a celebrity barmaid at a crowded socialite party, was shot dead at around 2am, in front of a dozen witnesses, by a young man, who was the son of an influential Member of Parliament. Reason of the murder was purely because she refused to serve drinks to him and his friends, as the bar had just closed and no more drinks were being offered for the day. They were getting ready to leave. Her refusal brought about this blinding rage, where he could not reason out, and encountering refusals was rare for him.. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jessica_Lal)

Now what do we call this behavior?? It’s an attitude problem, obviously, a highly intolerant deed on display. In the fast paced society of today, stressed with competitive lifestyles, it’s important for us to adhere to certain guidelines of performance, of morals; certain codes of conduct, where we can see each other with a humane eye. The case cited above demonstrates a breakdown of the very social ethics that our society stands on, tolerance. It is a democratic point of view, and naturally being sensitive to each other is practiced only in places that observe this thought process, a free minded autonomous society.

So what I am going to talk about today is also what I strongly believe in, my motto, to live and let live. Other than the extreme instance mentioned, there are many more that come to my mind whereby I hope to make my point clear. Take the simple case of career choices that children make these days. Parents go all out to make their children do what they feel is best for their kid, least realizing that they must care to listen to what their child wants to do. This is more prevalent in the Asian families. It’s a clash of ideas, and naturally it should be the elder who must let the child go all out to do what he or she wants to do. Let them follow their heart and they are sure to come up with amazing results.

Talking about live and let live, sexual preferences too must be considered as natural, and people must allow all to be incorporated in the mainstream. What is all the noise about? Why should the gay community feel that they are treated as secondary citizens? Who am I to judge whether the sexual inclinations of a person are right or wrong? Who has given me the power to be so judgmental?

We need to give each person their own space to live. All of us have the right to protect our own privacy, be it a celebrity or the not so famous people. Princess Diana had to pay it with her life. The world was so obsessed with her and her activities, that letting her be, letting her live the way she wanted to, was just so out of the question. It was that ill fated day when she was running away from the fanatical glare of the paparazzi, when the accident happened, and she along with her boyfriend did not live to see another sunrise.

The right to freedom of expression and opinion is also mentioned by the United Nations. The right to freedom of expression is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 19 of the ICCPR states that "[e]veryone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice". Article 19 goes on to say that the exercise of these rights carries "special duties and responsibilities" and may "therefore be subject to certain restrictions" when necessary "[f]or respect of the rights or reputation of others" or "[f]or the protection of national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or morals".^{[1][2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech)}

So I say we should take it easy, enjoy life, it’s a short life given, and like the Beatles sang “Life is very short and there’s no time, for fussing and fighting my friends..”

Ian Flemings book “Live and let die” strangely keeps coming to my mind, while I write this. A couple of James Bond movies took some ideas from the book. But what has that got to do with my motto. This I suppose is what that young man did, let the young bartender die, only because he was refused a drink, when the bar was closed. Sad, ain’t it ?