Category Archives: Sociology

Life is plugged in today

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LIFE IS PLUGGED IN TODAY

Today, children are being robbed of their childhood by science. Playing together used to
be the way children discovered themselves and explore the world around them through their own perception, imagination, and individual as well as group contacts and
interactions. They would argue with friends, draw lots, chase each other,
sometimes laughing, sometimes tumbling, bumping and bumbling around. They
talked, fought, and resolved their conflicts face-to-face. This helped them to
be connected with each other, with their parents, siblings, and friends. Life
was not only physically active and immediate, but also was spiritually
connected, in which every interaction was direct: body to body and soul to
soul.

Modern technology has changed all that was a charm in life. Adults, as well as kids
now contact on face book, twitter, and text messages. Information, learning,
knowledge, and life experiences, all come to everyone pre-managed,
scientifically prepared, readymade, and above all filtered through digital devices. Today even before the babies can walk they are exposed to screen media, and our children are plugged in 7 to 8 hours daily, relating to each other differently–without any
physical or spiritual contact. Teen-agers woo each other by text; be-friend or
break up on twitter, tease and taunt, cheat and deceive each other–in some
extreme case commit criminal acts or get depressed to the point of
suicide– all being performed in cyberspace. Whereas the consequences of such a hyper-wired life style is physical crippling, social isolation, intellectual introversion,
imaginational stagnation, it is dangerously emotional decadence and spiritual
dissipation. The new generation is depriving itself of direct intellectual
investigation, interpersonal social skills, emotional bonds, spiritual quest,
and morality as a virtue, that the older generation learned through common
interaction. Today, before all of us is a big question: Is modern science
tyrannously changing our course of evolution? Is science taking over the
divinely designed or the naturally evolved man and arbitrarily shaping him
as an emotionless and spiritless figure servant to technology’s
sovereignty?

Mirza Ashraf

How do we reconcile the perception of Buddhism as a philosophy of peace with the ugly reality of Buddhist-led pogroms?

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A Worth reading article by Malik kenan, who supports right to offend in a plural society , fierce advocate of freedom of speech and staunch supporter of human rights. ( F.Sheikh)

Excerpts;

There is perhaps no religion that Western liberals find more amenable than Buddhism. Politicians fawn over the Dalai Lama, celebrities seek out Buddhist meditation, many scientists and philosophers insist that Buddhism has much to teach us about human nature and human psychology. Even many of the so-called New Atheists have fallen for Buddhism’s allure, albeit as a philosophy rather than as a faith. For most of its Western sympathisers, Buddhism is a deeply humanist outlook, less a religion than a philosophy, a way of life to create peace and harmony.

Myanmar’s Rohingya have a different view of Buddhism. The Rohingya are Muslims who live mostly in Rakhine, in the north west of the country, bordering Bangladesh. Early Muslim settlements date back to the 7th century. Today, in a nation that is 90 per cent Buddhist, there are some 8 million Muslims of which probably a quarter are Rohingya. Many feel they are fighting for their very existence.

The military junta that came to power in Myanmar in 1962 (or Burma as it was then) has, over the past half century, sought to build popular support for its rule by fomenting hatred against minority groups. The Rohingya have been stripped of citizenship and officially declared foreigners in their native land. Restriction have been placed on the Rohingya owning land, travelling outside their villages, receiving an education and having children.

The recent successes of the democracy movement has paradoxically only worsened the problems of the Rohingya. The junta, still clinging to power, has sharpened its anti-Rohingya rhetoric in an attempt to bolster its position. The democracy movement has refused to support the Rohingya for fear of alienating its largely Buddhist constituency. The leader of the democracy movement, the Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has been shamefully silent. When asked to condemn violence against the Rohingya, the furthest she has been willing to go is to condemn violence in general. Many members of her National League for Democracy are openly involved in extremist anti-Rohingya organizations.

http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/buddhist-pogroms-and-religious-conflict/

 

Muslims, Homosexuality & Homophobia By Mehdi Hassan

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As a Muslim, I struggle with the idea of homosexuality – but I oppose homophobia.

I’ve made homophobic remarks in the past, writes Mehdi Hasan, but now I’ve grown up — and reconciled my Islamic beliefs with my attitude to gay rights.

And, in his 2011 book Reading the Quran, the British Muslim intellectual and writer Ziauddin Sardar argues that “there is abso­lutely no evidence that the Prophet punished anyone for homosexuality”. Sardar says “the demonisation of homosexuality in Muslim history is based largely on fabricated traditions and the unreconstituted prejudice harboured by most Muslim societies”. He highlights verse 31 of chapter 24 of the Quran, in which “we come across ‘men who have no sexual desire’ who can witness the ‘charms’ of women”. I must add here that Abdullah, Kugle and Sardar are in a tiny minority, as are the members of gay Muslim groups such as Imaan. Most mainstream Muslim scholars – even self-identified progressives and moderates such as Imam Hamza Yusuf in the United States and Professor Tariq Ramadan in the UK – consider homosexuality to be a grave sin. The Quran, after all, explicitly condemns the people of Lot for “approach[ing] males” (26:165) and for “lust[ing] on men in preference to women” (7:81), and describes marriage as an institution that is gender-based and procreative.

What about me? Where do I stand on this? For years I’ve been reluctant to answer questions on the subject. I was afraid of the “homophobe” tag. I didn’t want my gay friends and colleagues to look at me with horror, suspicion or disdain.

So let me be clear: yes, I’m a progressive who supports a secular society in which you don’t impose your faith on others – and in which the government, no matter how big or small, must always stay out of the bedroom. But I am also (to Richard Dawkins’s continuing disappointment) a believing Muslim. And, as a result, I really do struggle with this issue of homosexuality. As a supporter of secularism, I am willing to accept same-sex weddings in a state-sanctioned register office, on grounds of equity. As a believer in Islam, however, I insist that no mosque be forced to hold one against its wishes.

If you’re gay, that doesn’t mean I want to discriminate against you, belittle or bully you, abuse or offend you. Not at all. I don’t want to go back to the dark days of criminalisation and the imprisonment of gay men and women; of Section 28 and legalised discrimination. I’m disgusted by the violent repression and persecution of gay people across the Muslim-majority world.

I am writing this because I want to live in a society in which all minorities – Jews, Muslims, gay people and others – are protected from violence and abuse, from demonisation and discrimination. And because I want to apologise for any hurt or offence that I may have caused to my gay brothers and lesbian sisters.

And yes, whatever our differences – straight or gay, religious or atheist, male or female – we are all brothers and sisters. As the great Muslim leader of the 7th century and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, Ali ibn Abi Talib, once declared: “Remember that people are of two kinds; they are either your brothers in religion or your brothers in mankind.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/mehdi-hasan/2013/05/muslim-i-struggle-idea-homosexuality-i-oppose-homophobia

Mehdi Hasan is a contributing writer for the New Statesman and the political director of the Huffington Post UK,

 

 

 

“The Wretched of America” submitted by Dr. S. Akhtar Ehtisham

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America is the richest nation in history, yet it has the highest poverty rate in
the industrialized world with an unprecedented amount of Americans living in dire straights.
 Over 50 million citizens already living in poverty and need food stamps to eat,
and 50 percent of U.S. children will use food stamps to eat at some point in their
childhood. Approximately 20,000 people are added to this total every day. 1
         In 2009, one out of five U.S. households didn’t have enough money to buy food.
In households with children, this number rose to 24 percent, as the hunger rate among
U.S. citizens has now reached an all-time high. 2
         Bankruptcies continue to skyrocket. Health care bill related bankruptcies are
filed are from people who have health care insurance. 3 The U.S. has the most expensive
health care system in the world, people are forced to pay twice as much as other
countries and the overall care we get in return ranks 37th in the world. 4.
         In total, Americans have lost $5 trillion from their pensions and savings since the
economic crisis began and $13 trillion in the value of their homes. During the first full year
of the crisis, workers between the ages of 55 – 60, who have worked for 20 – 29 years,
lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. “Personal debt has risen from 65 percent
of income in 1980 to 125 percent today.” 5
         Over five million U.S. families have already lost their homes, in total 13 million U.S.
families are expected to lose their home by 2014, with 25 percent of current mortgages
underwater. Deutsche Bank has an even grimmer prediction: “The percentage of
‘underwater’ loans may rise to 48 percent, or 25 million homes.” 6
         Every day 10,000 U.S. homes enter foreclosure. Statistics show that an
increasing number of these people are not finding shelter elsewhere, there are now
over 3 million homeless Americans; the fastest-growing segment of the homeless
population is single parents with children. 7
          The One place more and more Americans are finding a home is in prison. With
a prison population of 2.3 million people, the U.S. now have more people incarcerated
than any other nation in the world — the per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens.
 In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000 and
Saudi Arabia has 45 per 100,000.
The prison industry is thriving and expecting major growth over the next few years.
A recent report from the Hartford Advocate titled “Incarceration Nation” revealed that
“a new prison opens every week somewhere in America.” 8.

          Mass Unemployment
          The government unemployment rate is deceptive. It doesn’t count people who are
“involuntary part-time workers,” meaning workers who are working part-time but want
to find full-time work. It also doesn’t count “discouraged workers,” meaning long-term
unemployed people who have lost hope and don’t consistently look for work. As time
goes by, more and more people stop consistently looking for work and are discounted
           For instance, in January, 2010 1.1 million workers were eliminated from the
unemployment total because they were “officially” labeled discouraged workers.
So instead of the number rising, we will hear deceptive reports about unemployment
leveling off.
           On top of this, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently discovered that 824,000 job
losses were never accounted for due to a “modeling error” in their data. Even in their initial
January data there appears to be a huge understating, with the newest report saying the
economy lost 20,000 jobs. TrimTabs employment analysis, which has consistently
provided more accurate data, “estimated that the U.S. economy shed 104,000 jobs in
January, 2010″ 
          When you factor in all these uncounted workers — “involuntary part-time” and
“discouraged workers” — the unemployment rate rises from 9.7 percent to over 20 percent.
In total, we now have over 30 million U.S. citizens who are unemployed or underemployed.
The rarely cited “employment-participation” rate, which reveals the percentage of the
population that is currently in the workforce, has now fallen to 64 percent.
           Even based on the “official” unemployment rate, just to get back to the
unemployment level of 4.6 percent that we had in 2007, the U.S. needs to create over 
10 million new jobs. But just one day, January 27, several companies announced new
cuts of more than 60,000 jobs. 9.
           Millions of Americans are reaching a point where the unemployment benefits they
have been living on are coming to an end. Over six million are now unemployed for over
six months. A record 20 million Americans qualified for unemployment insurance benefits
last year (2009), causing 27 states to run out of funds, with seven more also expected to
go into the red within the next few months. In total, 40 state programs are expected to
go broke. 10.
           Most economists believe the unemployment rate will remain high for the
foreseeable future. 

            Working More for Less
            Due to the fact that we now have a record high six people for every one job 
opening, companies have been able to further increase the workload on their remaining
employees. They have been able to increase the amount of hours Americans are
working, reduce wages and drastically cut back on benefits. In the third quarter of 2009,
average worker productivity increased by an annualized rate of 9.5 percent, at the same
time unit labor cost decreased by 5.2 percent. This has led to record profits for many
companies. Of the 220 companies in the S&P 500 who have reported fourth-quarter
results thus far, 78 percent of them had “better-than-expected profits” with earnings
17 percent above expectations, “the highest for any quarter since Thomson Reuters
began tracking data.”
            According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national median wage was
only $32,390 per year in 2008, and median household income fell by 3.6 percent while
the unemployment rate was 5.8 percent. With the unemployment rate now at 10 percent,
median income has been falling at a 5 percent rate and is expected to continue its decline.
Not surprisingly, Americans’ job satisfaction level is now at an all-time low.
         There are at least 15 million workers who now live in poverty. $32,390 a year is
not going to get you far in today’s economy, and half of the country is making less than
that. This is why many Americans are now forced to work two jobs to provide for
their family to hopefully make ends meet.11.
          The mainstream news media never piece the figures together to show you the
whole devastating picture, and they rarely show you all the immense individual suffering
behind them. 
           Anyone who has had to put off medical care, or who couldn’t get medical care for
one of their family members due to financial circumstances, can tell you about the
psychological toll that is on top of the physical suffering. 12.
           There are now well over 150 million Americans who feel stress over these things 
on a consistent basis. Over 60 percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck.13.
Ref:
1. Mail Online April 2, 2013. www.dailymail.co.UK/
3. Tara Parker-Pope June a4, 2009 well.blogs.nytimes.com/…/medical bill cause more bankruptcies.
5. www.nytimes.com/…/business/…/recovering from a crash-to-make-a-sec… May 7, 2009.
6. www.bloomberg.com/apps/newsnews?pid=newsarchives and sid… August 5, 2009.
7. www.stormfront.org February 14, 2009.
8. www.nytimes,com/…/us/us-prison populatopon-decline-reflecting-new-appr… July 25, 2013; en-wikipedia-org-wiki-incarceration-in-the united_states.
9. Trim Tales Fearless Forecast: US Payrolls globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/…trim-tales-fearless-forecast-us-pa February 1, 2012.
12. www.huffingtonpost.com/…/us incomes-falling-as-optimism-reaches-10… October 20, 2011.
Dr. S. Akhtar Ehtisham