what can we do to stop people from harming othes? (revised)

What can we do to stop people from harming others? This seems impossible. How can we control what others do? Do we need to control them to stop them? Why do the do it? What is it?

Harm is defined in the dictionary as physical or mental damage. For me, to be able to think of something do to prevent people from harming others, we have to know why do we ourselves hurt. So I asked my self, why I harm others. For me, if I ever need to harm others, it is because of survival. To prevent others from harming me in anyway. Survival of the fittest, as they say. A sort of last resort. I would do it to protect myself. So to harm is to survive. Answering this question makes it more and harder to think of a way to prevent others from hurting other people.

I realized that someone actually thought of a way to do this. Religion. If we all believed on a good God, who loves us and would protect us, there won’t be a need to harm other people. But this again is faulty. I then realized that there were instances in the past where religion brought pain. Wars even! But maybe in the first place, religion was not the best way to handle God. And this is why people still hurt others. How to handle God is another matter all together, which I think wont and shouldn’t be handled in this blog.

So what do we do now? Maybe heaven is the only place, if it exists, is where harm is not happening. All we can do is pray.

As I think about this topic, finding hope to solve, if solving would be the right term, even is a far shot to what can be attained. But humans are remarkable on how we can find ways even in the most hopeless cases. There are actually acts to prevent harm, even in the most specific things. I saw this site: http://www.ihra.net/ which deals with lessening the harm done by people who take drugs. Specific. But harm is still not eliminated. I also found another site which prevents as much harm that could be inflicted to children in the school context: http://thearcsf1.blogspot.com/2010/01/call-to-prevent-harm-to-children.html. Specific, yet still deals with prevention.

Maybe stopping harm is a big dream altogether. But if you would look at it in another light, these simple acts of trying to stop harm is actually STOPPING harm. Meaning it is stopping harm in the action sense. This action may not terminate harm altogether NOW, but who are we to say that harm wont stop. It may stop at infinity, by these small simple and specific actions.

But then, need we handle “harm” in a very general way. Maybe we can handle harm in the simplest way. Thinking of this, I thought of how our discipline office prevent harm. It is funny how students look at the DO’s office. Some of them look at it as if it is the enemy of fun. Some look at it as the police and would even want to be part of it. It is said in the DO’s overview webpage that they the Discipline Office (DO) is responsible for promoting student discipline, for ensuring the safety and welfare of the students, and for maintaining peace, order and cleanliness in the University. It seeks to prevent, rather than correct, unseemly student behaviour (dlsu website http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/offices/sps/do/). The student handbook is their set of laws and this is how they would prevent harm. A set of laws can prevent harm they can also be harmful. They can be legal but not legitimate. Being legal is following the laws and being legitimate is justifying and action to be situational-ly correct, well at least in my understanding. An example of which is pleading for self-defense in the act of killing which is against the law. This way the law can at least provide a fighting chance in preventing harm to people from other people. But the thing is, this is still subject to human judgement and biases. People will still decide on this and how can we prevent these people from harming anyone? What if the are corrupt and have personal interests in mind and not fairness? This issue is currently the baseline thought of Filipinos when it comes to the Philippines law. Well at least this is what I commonly hear from people I talk with whom have had been wronged by someone but does not want to do something about it because they lack faith in the government.

So how do we handle this? A biased government not able to function its purpose, as how these people would think. It is good that the Philippines allow globalization, because through globalization, laws from other countries or even international laws can be implemented. Meaning outside influence can help people think better of the government. Examples from people from different countries might give the filipino a new perspective in doing part in preventing harm to other people and themselves.

why does politics turn to violence?

One of the Ten Commandments is “thou shall not kill.” I wonder how people thought how serious this commandment is to be able to justify doing it. It is a commandment from God and yet people who claim to believe in God is able to justify doing it by using an argument that came from human cognition. I wonder how they were able to sleep at night where they disobeyed a God because a human told them to. Well maybe humans are innately evil or at least more susceptible to perform aggressive tasks just like what Milgram’s experiment showed. If so, then maybe what one would commonly hear from people that people in power are alligators, capable only of caring for themselves and shedding a tear here and now to greater DEMONstrate how selfish they really are. Well, maybe they are just unique that way. All are motives are selfish anyway. Or is it?

Come to think of it, politicians are actually smarter than what most people think. They actually were able to do things they want to do, without even doing it. They have people do it for them. People they fool and persuade into doing things that only a person with a twisted mind would do on their own. If these politicians want oil, they just tell their armies to attach the middle-east. If they want land for their people, they’ll just invade a neighbouring country. Or if they feel paranoid that they might be invaded next, they start a world war. Politicians make people do these stuff by using any means that they can use. They’ll use knowledge the wrong way to get their way. They know that people can be manipulated easily if this came from an authority (from an article by Bourke in Edkins’ book), so they use their authority. They would make people think that if they don’t kill their “enemy,” their enemy will kill them (from an article by Bourke in Edkins’ book). And how do they cover up? They would make it seem that they are against killing and “fight” against those people who find pleasure in killing whenever these politicians can.

In an article by Bourke, she mentioned about how technology dehumanizes violence, since through technology, violence can be done by people without having being there. People can remotely do violence with a push of a button.

There is this idea that I remember from one of my chemistry classes. That behaviour of chemicals would follow the path of least resistance. Where it is easiest, is the best way to go. Violence now is so easy and subtle that it is scarier than ever. There might come a time where violence would be the easiest way out and people will choose this path. maybe that is why politics turn to violence.

how can we end poverty? (can we?)

Being a psychology student in one of the countries most expensive schools, I would often think on how other people see me. My course’s purpose is basically to help people live a fuller life, in contrary to the common notion that we only handle ‘crazy’ people, and when I thought of how other people think of me being a student in one of the countries most expensive schools, I realized that I might actually be at a handicap. That who needs most help belongs to that population under the poverty line. But then I remembered what one of my major classes’ professors told his class. He said that the Filipino population that are under the poverty line are actually mentally healthier provided that they have a supportive neighbourhood who shares their status of poverty. But the thought that the people who needs help most would look at me and might not let me help them since they might think that I am working for my own benefit, bothers me since this would mean that I might not be as effective to help them. I want to help them change their lives, not to give band-aid help which is what politicians give to them most of the time.

But to end poverty, one needs power. A person of no influential power can only do so much as to perform what I call “damage-control” of poverty to people and not give long term help.

While thinking about how to end poverty, I realized that I do not even know what that means. To end poverty. What would that be? Everyone will be rich? Everyone will be satisfied with their living? Everyone will be secure? Ending poverty seems to be impossible. The article of Pasha in the book by Edkins, even said that ending poverty is impossible in the foreseeable future. That despite certain campaigns and movements by different groups of people to fight poverty, no notion is perfect and often these notions does not serve effective to everyone in the world who is labelled poor.

As I write this entry, I can overhear one of the politicians commercial. This politician claims that he was once poor and under the belt of poverty and that he knows how to help these people. He said that if he wants to be richer than he is, he would just remain as a businessman and not enter politics at all, to counter the accusations that are against him saying that he only entered politics to be richer. In my opinion, he really understands how is it to be poor. He takes advantage of this knowledge! The way his campaign is designed would attract these people who are suffering from poverty. He knows that at least 30 percent of his country’s population cannot but what is needed for survival (according to nscb.gov.ph) and this is only those that can not buy what is basic, how much more if we factor in those people who just manages to sustain their lives in the most bare way, where their lives are stagnant and is not improving. When I listen to the news, the issue of inflation would often scare me because I would think of people who can only manage to maintain a stagnant sustainable living. The costs of the common needs would increase, these people would not be sustainable anymore, and they would be under the belt of poverty. And this politician knows all about this. And yet with this knowledge, he still has exceptionally luxurious properties which he tries his best to hide. How can this person say things like he can help the poor when his way of life shouts the opposite. How can people actually trust such a being? And yet according to statistics mentioned in the news, more people are still voting for this politician and what I think is that most of these people are poor. How can poverty end with such things happening to this world?

Maybe ending poverty is just a dream and we can do is act and act and act until there is no more hope. But then having hope is what pushes us to act on this issue and without action, how can we end a problem? So maybe, the cure for poverty is hope. It may not seem effective, but because of hope, we developed initiative to act. We were able to think of possible solutions and maybe, in the future, one of these solutions, campaigns and movements might just end poverty. I truly hope so.