The other day I received an email from director of our radio station saying that I got my first “prisoner’s letter”. Knowing that in the radio station people are always creative and fond of teasing and joking, I thought it was a joke. Or maybe it was a warning? Did they have the term “prisoner’s letter” meaning “warning”? Those were my best estimates of what the letter was talking about.
However, the next day, Amy told me that the “prisoner’s letter” was just a letter from a prisoner who listened to our show in the prison and later wrote to us. The moment I heard of this, I felt so flattered by his letter. I felt that I could make myself heard by people. This might not seem a big deal for any of my American peers, but to me, it is a really big thing.
Mr. Prisoner said something funny and cute to both Amy and I. I felt that I had a new friend, although we might not have chance meeting each other. The media connected us together in terms of our show. I felt relieved when people recognized what I did. In that case, I felt I was alive. It might sound weird, but that was how I felt when I was silenced.
Coming all the way from China to the US, I lost my past social network. Often times I felt I was silenced by the lack of connection with people in the States. All I knew was that I had to start a new life which included making friends, studying a brand-new major, and last but not least, making myself heard by people in the States. One of my idols on television is Winfrey Oprah, especially before she becomes so famous that people love talking about her weight loss. I admired her capability to make herself heard and understood by such a great audience that she could change people’s opinions on a variety of issues.
I felt powerful when I was a teacher since I could motivate my students to study hard. I helped them build up a good goal and go for it. To me, that was a medium to communicate my values and beliefs with my audiences---the students. Right now, I find a new medium---radio station, which belongs to practical mass media, that I can express what I think about life and music to the audience.
Under some circumstance when you “gain” something (not necessarily materialistic) from the media, you will really prefer the media. In my case, I would spend more time for the show and try to improve. That might be another application of Uses-and-Gratification Theory. ^_^
11/11/08
Media and the Audiences
Based on the several theories in the Effects Tradition, whether it is a limited-effects theory or a meta-effects one, the theories of media effects have undergone a dramatic change, as the book said---“a curious evolution”.
If you scrutinize the process of the development, you will find that the media change as the audiences become “smarter”. The era of “seeing is believing” ended up with the emergence of mass media. The media changed the way of people’s perception of the world, making their world bigger than they physically had access to. People dared to think more than they used to, and since they saw more of the other side of the world, they became capable of thinking wisely. Thus, they started questioning what they watched and listened from the television, other media as well.
While the audiences became critical and “hard to please”, the media adjusted to accommodate the needs of the audiences, which in return, provided a larger margin of profits to the media owners. People opened their minds, and they continued to rely on the media to keep informed of what happened every day. Therefore, the media were able to flourish into a “mass” one.
I found it interesting that the media catered to the demands of the mass audiences while at the same time the audiences reinforced their reliance on the media and promoted changes to the media. So, rather than referring the media effects to as an evolution, I would like to call it an “inter-evolution” between the media and the audiences since they developed together and interacted with each other to make things really happen.
Education occurred when the media contents were exposed to new audiences. Knowing how the media worked, the audiences became skillful in picking the undesirable contents out and utilized public opinion to block those from the media. In that case, both the media and the audiences “learned”. So did the culture.
Before the media came into existence, the culture was confined to territorial limitations. Culture was static and set. However, the media made the culture diverse. Thanks to the wide accessibility of the mass media, pop culture in China is largely copied from the American one. People from different parts of world communicate effectively without many obstacles. We all watched Sesame Street when we were young. The power of media is ubiquitous. The audiences and the media are going to work in the same way as they did in the previous hundred years. We will see more diverse segments of audience as well as a rising number of media created to satiate the overwhelming needs.
If you scrutinize the process of the development, you will find that the media change as the audiences become “smarter”. The era of “seeing is believing” ended up with the emergence of mass media. The media changed the way of people’s perception of the world, making their world bigger than they physically had access to. People dared to think more than they used to, and since they saw more of the other side of the world, they became capable of thinking wisely. Thus, they started questioning what they watched and listened from the television, other media as well.
While the audiences became critical and “hard to please”, the media adjusted to accommodate the needs of the audiences, which in return, provided a larger margin of profits to the media owners. People opened their minds, and they continued to rely on the media to keep informed of what happened every day. Therefore, the media were able to flourish into a “mass” one.
I found it interesting that the media catered to the demands of the mass audiences while at the same time the audiences reinforced their reliance on the media and promoted changes to the media. So, rather than referring the media effects to as an evolution, I would like to call it an “inter-evolution” between the media and the audiences since they developed together and interacted with each other to make things really happen.
Education occurred when the media contents were exposed to new audiences. Knowing how the media worked, the audiences became skillful in picking the undesirable contents out and utilized public opinion to block those from the media. In that case, both the media and the audiences “learned”. So did the culture.
Before the media came into existence, the culture was confined to territorial limitations. Culture was static and set. However, the media made the culture diverse. Thanks to the wide accessibility of the mass media, pop culture in China is largely copied from the American one. People from different parts of world communicate effectively without many obstacles. We all watched Sesame Street when we were young. The power of media is ubiquitous. The audiences and the media are going to work in the same way as they did in the previous hundred years. We will see more diverse segments of audience as well as a rising number of media created to satiate the overwhelming needs.
11/10/08
What Is Theory
Theory is ubiquitous. It builds a solid foundation for any field of study. A theory is not a guess, hunch, hypothesis, or speculation. It is much more full-blown (Hawking, 1996). However, a theory comes from nowhere but a guess and is a successful one until failing the untiring tests and studies.
A guess is the impetus of a theory. Human history begins with guesses. Human ancestors happened to cook on fire and they guessed they might make the coincidence happen again. The outcome of the guess is that humans use fire to warm the cold and light the dark. As the inquiry process of a theory shows, researchers ask questions, that is, they make guess as the first step. Then the guess combines with evidence from observation, and in length construct answers that evolves into a theory. The process is not linear. Theories may evoke the examination of the question again; they may generate new ideas to collect data (Littlejohn and Foss, 2005).
Starting a guess is essential but not adequate for a theory. A theory reflects the shared understanding of one specific phenomenon. It may not necessarily be identical and different opinions are the essence of theorizing. Theory should be seen as a statement or argument in favor of a particular approach (Littlejohn and Foss, 2005). Instead of being the answer to a phenomenon or approach, theory intrigues researchers to explore the unknowns and eventually uncover the myth.
Theories, as the central factor of both quantitative and qualitative researches, respond to the researches and develop from them. When Lustig noted that all theory should be judged by some aspect of utility (as cited in Keyton, 2006, p.32), the criterion is set as the effectiveness of a theory. A theory remains of no value unless it is successfully applied to the realistic world and makes a change. Take the Magic Bullet theory as an example, the main idea of the theory is that mass media penetrate the audience’s mind and spontaneously create influence. Thus, mass media manipulate the people via media messages. The advertisers utilized the principle to people to engage their feelings in the advertisements and then become a loyal consumer. Although the situation is never that simple anymore, the theory was a success and attracted much interest of the researchers and advertisers.
Epilogue
A theory is a wish that perfection exists. Throughout the human history, people sought for a panacea to salvage all lives and now a theory to uncover all the unknowns. It’s not always a piece of cake to change the complex world into a piece of cake.
Many such theories serve only a small proportion of people called experts instead of the entire population. Theories are too logical for the majority to figure out. If they are only for experts, it’s a waste of time and money to keep making them. Also, as theories happen all along, experts are inclined to get lost in the wood of theories. Thus, they lose their primary goal of putting theories into practice and improving life instead of the reputation of any academic institution.
Reference:
Hawking, Stephen (1996). “The Illustrated A Brief History of Time” (Updated and expanded ed.). New York: Bantam Books, p. 15.
Littlejohn and Foss (2005). “Theories of Human Communication” (Ninth ed.). Belmont: Thomson West, p.6.
Keyton, Joann (2006). “Communication Research: Asking Questions, Finding Answers” (Second ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill, p.32.
A guess is the impetus of a theory. Human history begins with guesses. Human ancestors happened to cook on fire and they guessed they might make the coincidence happen again. The outcome of the guess is that humans use fire to warm the cold and light the dark. As the inquiry process of a theory shows, researchers ask questions, that is, they make guess as the first step. Then the guess combines with evidence from observation, and in length construct answers that evolves into a theory. The process is not linear. Theories may evoke the examination of the question again; they may generate new ideas to collect data (Littlejohn and Foss, 2005).
Starting a guess is essential but not adequate for a theory. A theory reflects the shared understanding of one specific phenomenon. It may not necessarily be identical and different opinions are the essence of theorizing. Theory should be seen as a statement or argument in favor of a particular approach (Littlejohn and Foss, 2005). Instead of being the answer to a phenomenon or approach, theory intrigues researchers to explore the unknowns and eventually uncover the myth.
Theories, as the central factor of both quantitative and qualitative researches, respond to the researches and develop from them. When Lustig noted that all theory should be judged by some aspect of utility (as cited in Keyton, 2006, p.32), the criterion is set as the effectiveness of a theory. A theory remains of no value unless it is successfully applied to the realistic world and makes a change. Take the Magic Bullet theory as an example, the main idea of the theory is that mass media penetrate the audience’s mind and spontaneously create influence. Thus, mass media manipulate the people via media messages. The advertisers utilized the principle to people to engage their feelings in the advertisements and then become a loyal consumer. Although the situation is never that simple anymore, the theory was a success and attracted much interest of the researchers and advertisers.
Epilogue
A theory is a wish that perfection exists. Throughout the human history, people sought for a panacea to salvage all lives and now a theory to uncover all the unknowns. It’s not always a piece of cake to change the complex world into a piece of cake.
Many such theories serve only a small proportion of people called experts instead of the entire population. Theories are too logical for the majority to figure out. If they are only for experts, it’s a waste of time and money to keep making them. Also, as theories happen all along, experts are inclined to get lost in the wood of theories. Thus, they lose their primary goal of putting theories into practice and improving life instead of the reputation of any academic institution.
Reference:
Hawking, Stephen (1996). “The Illustrated A Brief History of Time” (Updated and expanded ed.). New York: Bantam Books, p. 15.
Littlejohn and Foss (2005). “Theories of Human Communication” (Ninth ed.). Belmont: Thomson West, p.6.
Keyton, Joann (2006). “Communication Research: Asking Questions, Finding Answers” (Second ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill, p.32.
Nachtwey Wakes the World with Black and White Photographs
Photographers go to the extreme edges of human experience to show people what’s going on. They believe your opinions and your influence matter. They aim their pictures at your best instincts: generosity, a sense of right and wrong, the ability and the willingness to identify with others, the refusal to accept the unacceptable.
I have been a witness and these photos are my testimony.
---James Nachtwey
I don’t want to say how good and striking those photographs are and I don’t even want to say they are any sort of arts. That’s life, not any presentation of stylish arts.
I just want to say something about the developing countries from a perspective of people coming from one of the developing countries.
It’s hard to believe or even to imagine such tragedies could happen in the seemingly flawless world. We have spent so much time considering how we are going to use our salary that we overlook there are people like us suffering in another corner of the world. Jack Nachtwey had spent his salary on his trip to several developing countries. He documented how people there suffer from XDR-TB epidemic. Black and white pictures are indeed powerful. The communication channel is unique. Unlike language, picture is more straightforward and stimulating. Better than any color, black and white displays the bloody truth and calls for the deepest compassion from people.
In those pictures we can see the desire for surviving and hopelessness for it at the same time. You can see people struggling between trying and giving in. Developing countries become powerless when they are faced with such life-threatening issues. Take SARS as an example. China had tried its best to control the situation while it received all the blame and suspicion from other counties and institutions. It’s true that developing countries lack effective measures to protect the people but it’s also notable that developing countries are not the one to blame but to be helped. Or else why we need any international organization like UN and WHO?
I might be a little too extreme on this issue though. My intention is to arouse people’s attention that when you help people in developing countries, don’t think you’re helping people from developing countries, rather, you’re helping your friends. We are sharing the same habitat.
I appreciate what James Nachtwey has done. It’s a fantastic job which requires contribution and courage. Waking the world is not simple work, and calling for action is even harder. Tell someone there’s a serious disease like this in the world. It is a big deal.
I have been a witness and these photos are my testimony.
---James Nachtwey
I don’t want to say how good and striking those photographs are and I don’t even want to say they are any sort of arts. That’s life, not any presentation of stylish arts.
I just want to say something about the developing countries from a perspective of people coming from one of the developing countries.
It’s hard to believe or even to imagine such tragedies could happen in the seemingly flawless world. We have spent so much time considering how we are going to use our salary that we overlook there are people like us suffering in another corner of the world. Jack Nachtwey had spent his salary on his trip to several developing countries. He documented how people there suffer from XDR-TB epidemic. Black and white pictures are indeed powerful. The communication channel is unique. Unlike language, picture is more straightforward and stimulating. Better than any color, black and white displays the bloody truth and calls for the deepest compassion from people.
In those pictures we can see the desire for surviving and hopelessness for it at the same time. You can see people struggling between trying and giving in. Developing countries become powerless when they are faced with such life-threatening issues. Take SARS as an example. China had tried its best to control the situation while it received all the blame and suspicion from other counties and institutions. It’s true that developing countries lack effective measures to protect the people but it’s also notable that developing countries are not the one to blame but to be helped. Or else why we need any international organization like UN and WHO?
I might be a little too extreme on this issue though. My intention is to arouse people’s attention that when you help people in developing countries, don’t think you’re helping people from developing countries, rather, you’re helping your friends. We are sharing the same habitat.
I appreciate what James Nachtwey has done. It’s a fantastic job which requires contribution and courage. Waking the world is not simple work, and calling for action is even harder. Tell someone there’s a serious disease like this in the world. It is a big deal.
10/22/08
How Does Media Perspective Affect the Audience’s Interpretation of a Message?
This famous picture on the left called ‘The Unknown Rebel’ was taken on June 5, 1989 by Jeff Widener, a former Associate Press photojournalist. It depicted an unknown student attempting to halt the PLA's advancing tanks near Tian’anmen Square.
I felt astonished the first time I saw this picture. I didn't believe what people said about 'the tragedy happening in 1989', but I couldn't deny an authentic historical documentation. I felt like years of ‘education’ about the Communist Party in China just collapsed in front of it. Over the last seventeen years, the younger Chinese generation is not aware of what happened. The event is not in our school books, and the teachers are not allowed to talk about it either.
The photography reached worldwide audiences overnight. It became the headline of hundreds of mass media around the world. In April 1998, Time ranked this ‘Tank Man’ as top 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
At the same time, media in Taiwan marked him as a hero of democracy movement. Rumors went away that he lived in Taiwan after the protest. He was described by the media as a ‘brave, enthusiastic’ man who ‘loved his country and spared no effort to accomplish the reform’.
Books and repertoires are another good way to arouse the attention of the mass audience. Timothy Brook, professor of Chinese history in University of British Columbia published his book called Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement. He once said in an interview, “the media silence imposed on Tiananmen was huge. Chinese in China don't know this image. They don't see this image. [The government] made a couple of propaganda videos in the summer of 1989; to sell [the Tiananmen] events in a certain way to the Chinese people, and those videos have clips showing very carefully selected events.”
I would like to mention what Prof. Brook had addressed that video clips shown in China were carefully selected events. This selection of media coverage reminded me of the perspective of viewing things. People can take into account all the factors to determine what is right and wrong; or they can choose or be exposed to only some of them to go for a conclusion. I don’t want to make a guess on this complex event happening in my home country, but I do want to say that different perspectives can make things look completely different, which means media have power on how to present the truth.
10/12/08
7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People By Henrik Edberg
With a twist to the common list of habits that are useful to establish, here are 7 habits that you do best to avoid.
Just like finding habits that can be useful for you it’s important to find habits that are holding you back. Most of these 7 habits can easily become such a normal, everyday part of life that you hardly notice it (or how it’s affecting you). I’ve dabbled with all of them quite a bit. Not surprisingly I didn’t get much of the important stuff done. I´d also like to add that these are just 7 broad habits you can establish to become highly ineffective in most parts of your life. I pretty sure there are several more.
1. Not showing up.
Maybe you’ve heard this quote by Woody Allen:
“Eighty percent of success is showing up”
One of the biggest and simplest thing you can do to ensure more success in your life – whether it be in your social life, your career or with your health – is simply to show up more. If you want to improve your health then one of the most important and effective things you can do is just to show up at the gym every time you should be there.
The weather might be bad, you might not feel like going and you find yourself having all these other things you just must do. If you still go, if you show up at the gym when motivation is low you will improve a whole lot faster than if you just stayed at home relaxing on the sofa.
I think this applies to most areas of life. If you write or paint more, each day perhaps, you will improve quickly. If you get out more you can meet more new friends. If you go on more dates you chances of meeting someone special increases. Just showing up more can really make a big difference. Not showing up will not get you anywhere.
2. Procrastinating half the day. To keep it short, my 3 favourite ways to get out of a procrastinating state are:
- Swallow that frog. What´s this means is simply to do the hardest and most important task of the day first thing in the morning. A good start in the morning lifts your spirits and creates a positive momentum for the rest of the day. That often creates a pretty productive day.
- How do you eat an elephant? Don´t try to take it all in one big bite. It becomes overwhelming which leads to procrastination. Split a task into small actionable steps. Then just focus on the first step and nothing else. Just do that one until it’s done. Then move on to the next step.
- The Get around to It Paraliminal. I find this guided mediation to be very useful. After 20 minutes of mostly just lying on my bed and listening I’m far more productive for a few days. I don´t feel the urge to sink into that procrastinating state or the need to find out what’s new over at one or five of my favourite websites.
3. When actually doing something, doing something that isn’t the most important thing right now.
One of the easiest habits to get stuck in, besides procrastinating, is to keep yourself busy with unimportant tasks.
To be effective you probably need some kind of time management-system. It might be something really simple, like using the 80/20-rule at the beginning of each day. The 80/20 rule, or the Pareto Principle as it´s also known, says that you´ll get 80 percent of your results from only 20 percent of your tasks and activities. So you need to focus most of your energy on those few important tasks to be effective.
When you have prioritized using this rule just write down the top 3 most important things you need to do that day. Then, from the top, start doing them. Even if you just get one of the things done, you have still done the most important thing you could do today. You may perhaps prefer some other system, such as GTD. But however you organise your work it’s still of highest priority to find the most important tasks so you don’t spend days, weeks or months doing busywork that isn’t that essential anyway. Just getting things done faster isn’t that useful if the things you get done are unimportant to you.
4. Thinking too much.
And thereby seldom taking action. Paralysis by analysis can waste years of your life. There is nothing wrong with thinking before you do something. Do some research, make a plan, explore potential upsides and problems.
But compulsively thinking and thinking and thinking is just another way to waste your time. You don’t have to examine everything from every angle before you try it. And you can’t wait for the perfect time to do something. That time never comes. And if you keep thinking you’ll just dig yourself down deeper and deeper and taking action will become more and more difficult. Instead you just need to stop thinking. Shut of your mind – it just helps you up to a point – and go do whatever you need to do.
5. Seeing the negative and downsides in just about anything.
When you see everything from a negative perspective you quickly punch a hole in your own motivation. You find faults everywhere and problems where there are really none. You cling to details. If you want to find a reason to not do something then that’s no problem. From a negative viewpoint you can find ten reasons every time.
And so very little gets done, you whine to anyone who wants to hear – and many who don’t – about how crappy your job, life and boss is. Which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as you create the life that is appropriate considering how think and see your world.
A solution is to realise the limits of a negative perspective. And that your perspective isn’t some kind of 100% true picture of the world. Then try other perspectives. For instance, trying to establish a habit of seeing things in a more positive and optimistic light can be quite useful. In that vein, you may want to try the Positivity Challenge. It´s not easy, but if you do the challenge and try to only think positive thoughts for 7 days it can give you an insight in how much your perspective and beliefs changes how you interpret your world. And what results you get.
6. Clinging to your own thoughts and being closed to outside influences.
It can be hard to admit that what you thought or believed was not the best alternative. So you cling to your thoughts harder and harder and keep your mind closed. This makes it hard to improve and for instance to become more effective. Even really considering the possibility that you can change your life can be difficult in this position.
One solution, obviously, is to open up more. To open up and learn from the mistakes of others, from your own mistakes and from other sources like books. This is easy to say though. It can, as almost anything, be harder to do. One suggestion I have is to, like I said about the previous habit, realise the limits of what you know and the way you going about things. And then just try something new.
Another tip is to read A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and especially look at the chapters about the Ego. If you stop identifying so much with your thoughts and your Ego, as Tolle prescribes, it becomes a whole a lot easier to let new ideas and thoughts come into your life. And to let go of old thoughts that aren’t useful to you anymore. On the other hand I’d like to add and counter-balance with these tips: don’t get stuck in reading, in just taking in new information either or you might become a self-help junkie. Use the new information, put what you have learned in to action and try it out.
7. Constantly on information overload.
With information overload I don’t just mean that you read a lot. I pretty much mean an overload in all input. If you just let all information flow into your mind it will be hard to think clearly. It’s just too much stimulation. A few more potential downsides to this habit are:
- Some of the input you receive will be negative. The media and your surroundings often put a negative spin on things for various reasons. If you aren´t selective in what input you want in your life then you’ll be dragged into this negativity too. This affects how you think, feel and act.
- It creates an urge to keep up with what’s happening but there are always ten more things happening so you can’t keep up. This makes life stressful.
- It becomes hard to make decisions and take action if your mind is constantly bombarded with information or trying to sort through it all. Personally I find that if I get too much information it leads to a sort of paralysis. Not much get´s done. Or you get stuck in habit #3 and keep busy, busy, busy at high speed with low priority activities.
To be able to focus, think more clearly and take action it´s useful to be more selective in what you let into your mind. When you work shut out as much distractions as possible. Shut off the phone, internet and shut the door. It is strange how much you can get done when you aren´t interrupted every fifth minute or have the opportunity to procrastinate by checking your RSS-feeds or favourite websites.
Now I´m not suggesting that you should stop reading all blogs or newspapers. But think about what you really want to read and what you read just read to fill your time. And have a look at other areas of input where the doors are wide-open.
For instance, you don´t have to let in all the negative emotions from your surroundings. If everyone else are procrastinating or are anxiously keeping themselves busy by doing low-priority tasks at warp speed it´s easy to be influenced by that mood. If you have a door, then it might be good idea to shut it and focus on doing more important things.
10/6/08
stop hurting our children
After the internet came into being in the end of 20th century, everything seems to be very ready to be entertained. While people are still in their agony of heart-broken truths, the media starts to make fun of trivia of those stories. Right after an Oprah show, some hacker edited some scenes and named it “Oprah vs. 9000 penises”, which had a hideous aim to attracting people’s attention. This video became the “most reviewed” on youtube.com and was followed by several other related entertaining videos. People busy with sharing trashy ideas neglected the true story.
In her show Winfrey Oprah called for a societal attention on pedophile pornography trading through the internet. Many children suffered while they even had no idea what molesting means. Masha was one of them. Adopted by a divorced father in Pennsylvania, Masha had a good wish of starting over a happy life. However, she would have never imagined what she was experiencing in the following five years. Her sick guardian treated her as prisoner and sex slave, which left Masha with unforgettable miserable memories.
This was just part of the story. A girl called Rachelle, the biological daughter of the sick pedophile, shared the same pain since she was five. Both girls were afraid of telling anyone about their tragedies. It is partly due to Rachelle’s silence that Masha experienced her five years of nightmare. Rachelle said she had been determined to “take the secret to grave”.
Internet becomes the medium with acquiescence of cruel crimes. Child sex abuse scenes are shot and traded on-line by pedophiles. While parents were glad to have a neighbor come by, they need to be aware that a nicely-behaving neighbor may be a monster threatening their naive kids.
All of a sudden, I felt that the world was like a bloody hell, where, instead of caring and helping others, people tortured their own group members and felt no guilt at all. Under most of the circumstances media are seen as advanced human communication tools. Ironically, humans invent media to test their own conducts. I don’t know how people develop their mercilessness. But I still remember clearly a song Declan once sang:
Tell me why, ’cause I don't understand
when so many need somebody
we don't give a helping hand
Tell me why…
I think I would prefer to be just like the little singer who has been confused by the world of chaos and quarrels and was tired of fairy tales. Why not let everyone witness the truth and face whatever has happened?
In her show Winfrey Oprah called for a societal attention on pedophile pornography trading through the internet. Many children suffered while they even had no idea what molesting means. Masha was one of them. Adopted by a divorced father in Pennsylvania, Masha had a good wish of starting over a happy life. However, she would have never imagined what she was experiencing in the following five years. Her sick guardian treated her as prisoner and sex slave, which left Masha with unforgettable miserable memories.
This was just part of the story. A girl called Rachelle, the biological daughter of the sick pedophile, shared the same pain since she was five. Both girls were afraid of telling anyone about their tragedies. It is partly due to Rachelle’s silence that Masha experienced her five years of nightmare. Rachelle said she had been determined to “take the secret to grave”.
Internet becomes the medium with acquiescence of cruel crimes. Child sex abuse scenes are shot and traded on-line by pedophiles. While parents were glad to have a neighbor come by, they need to be aware that a nicely-behaving neighbor may be a monster threatening their naive kids.
All of a sudden, I felt that the world was like a bloody hell, where, instead of caring and helping others, people tortured their own group members and felt no guilt at all. Under most of the circumstances media are seen as advanced human communication tools. Ironically, humans invent media to test their own conducts. I don’t know how people develop their mercilessness. But I still remember clearly a song Declan once sang:
Tell me why, ’cause I don't understand
when so many need somebody
we don't give a helping hand
Tell me why…
I think I would prefer to be just like the little singer who has been confused by the world of chaos and quarrels and was tired of fairy tales. Why not let everyone witness the truth and face whatever has happened?
different friendships
I like where I am right now. Friends from America and China are both nice to me here. I seem to have different file cabinets for each of them...It's like a cool filing process from which you know how to express yourself and when to listen to and how to react. I'm not trying to wear masks to treat people. It's only because they are different.
Yesterday when two from each file cabinets met and reminded me of the differences again. When they talked about going out and having fun, my American favorite one said to my Chinese friend that she should come with us. My Chinese friend was very happy about that and wished that she could have come. I understand that in America it's very common and natural to ask your friends to go to another friend's party or other occasion...but it's totally different in China if I'm not too far from China to remember what happens there. So when my Chinese friend (who is a very social and warm one) goes to her friends' parties or other activities, I'm never invited. That doesn't mean that we are not close. We are very close when we are at home. I think that's the difference. Americans like to mix their life into such a whole and consistent way that they connect everything while the Chinese always try to make a difference between their life, school, and work, name as many as you want, they're just isolated from the others.
That's like a untold but widely-known rule. So when I dated my ex-boyfriend since I was a sophomore, people told it's gonna be hard if both of you were from the same class, which I found later as true. School and personal life can be mixed and 'messy' together.
Interpersonal relationship is such an interesting stuff that you can easily say how but hardly able to explain why.
That's probably what life should be. Different.
Yesterday when two from each file cabinets met and reminded me of the differences again. When they talked about going out and having fun, my American favorite one said to my Chinese friend that she should come with us. My Chinese friend was very happy about that and wished that she could have come. I understand that in America it's very common and natural to ask your friends to go to another friend's party or other occasion...but it's totally different in China if I'm not too far from China to remember what happens there. So when my Chinese friend (who is a very social and warm one) goes to her friends' parties or other activities, I'm never invited. That doesn't mean that we are not close. We are very close when we are at home. I think that's the difference. Americans like to mix their life into such a whole and consistent way that they connect everything while the Chinese always try to make a difference between their life, school, and work, name as many as you want, they're just isolated from the others.
That's like a untold but widely-known rule. So when I dated my ex-boyfriend since I was a sophomore, people told it's gonna be hard if both of you were from the same class, which I found later as true. School and personal life can be mixed and 'messy' together.
Interpersonal relationship is such an interesting stuff that you can easily say how but hardly able to explain why.
That's probably what life should be. Different.
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