Dramas, Dramas, Dramas

I love watching dramas. Daytime soaps, Korean Dramas, Taiwanese Dramas, Thai Dramas -- I love them all. Thus, instead of being productive as I intended to be, I found myself in front of my desktop streaming Youtube videos yesterday afternoon. After three hours of gluing my eyes to my monitor, I finally left to get a drink of water. Well, partly also because I’ve surfed through every popular series I could find online. As I was drinking water, I wondered why I waste my time watching these dramas. They all have the same formula: guy meets girl, they fall in love but are separated by a misunderstanding which is often caused by a third wheel and/or family members. Somehow, in the end, they resolve the issues and live happily ever after, or in some cases either the guy or girl dies from a terminal disease such as leukemia. Sure, most of the dramas, especially the Asian ones, often teach morals and ethics to the audience, but aside from this and love, there is really not much else to gain. Why then do I anxiously return home every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday after work to check for updates of drama series if it’s the same old storyline? I can’t be the only person who feels this way, I mean, I visited forums which contains the exact same speculations. Dramas can be and generally are predictable, formulaic and terribly cheesy. But why is it that I find it hard to make time for homework, but I can always squeeze in a quick drama? What’s so entertaining about predictability? Honestly, sometimes I don’t even watch it for entertainment; I just watch it for the sake of watching it.
It is not peer pressure, I don't do it to fit in with others. On top of that, there are not that many people at Davis who are addicted to dramas and I do not feel pressured to do it. It certainly is an addiction though, I miss it terribly if I don’t watch it for a long period time. Have I become so intellectually lazy that I can be satisfied with such simple and formulaic entertainment? Furthermore, what aspect of my life and my society is not formulaic or predictable, is it really just me or has society as a whole “dumbed down," or rather, become less intellectually active?

Capitalism and friends

My group has decided that after defining our own term, we would somehow explain why our keyword is connected to or related to the other four terms. Since we selected the keywords based on the theme of economy and capitalism, we felt that there had to be a degree of relativism between capitalism, economy, marginal, welfare and class. In my opinion there is a clear relationship between these five words.
As mentioned in my previous page, capitalism is often thought of as an economic system. When asked about economy, the term capitalism and money are the first few thoughts that would arise in my mind, I can safely assume that it is the same for the majority of Americans. Thus, there is a direct relationship between these two keywords in that one makes up the other. I had difficulty trying to link marginal and capitalism. To be marginal means to be on the boundary or borderlines in reference to the center. The text explains the center to be the power and the further away from the center the lesser power. In terms of capitalism, those who have control or have capitals and resources are concentrated in the center, those who have little or no capitals are marginalized; they are barely surviving on the boundary. Those who are marginalized are those who occupy the lower class. Class is a stratification, or ranking system base on socioeconomic status. The more capital one has, the higher their class is and the closer to the center they will be which translates into more power and control. Lastly, welfare can be related in terms of the stigmatization of poverty and low class which accompanies welfare, as mentioned by one of my group members. Although welfare refers to the wellbeing of the population, however, today welfare is highly stigmatized. When people think of welfare, they tend to think of poor and lazy people.
Perhaps this group project and the course text have taught me that we can not simply define a word as it is “just” this or “just” that. A term as commonly used as capitalism captures so many endless meanings. It is not clear to me what I am supposed to take from this project, to understand the terms? Is it to enhance our vocabulary and to better understand a term which we think we understood already? Or is it to learn how to be random and creative in the ways we think about everyday things. If these were the goals of the task, then I believe I have achieved it.

Capitalism

The housing and economic crisis which our country is experiencing at the moment has struck fear in many American households. Many, like me, are reminded of the great depression which swept through America in the 1930s. As I was learning about the Great Depression in my Social Welfare class this past quarter, I could not help but think that if the government had intervened at an earlier stage, would the depression progressed into such devastating stage? The White House staff were well aware of the thousands of Americans who were starving and suffering from the famines across the nation. Yet, the President who was Herbert Hoover at the time, refused to distribute direct government aid. Rather, he laid the country’s future in the hands of the free market system, or as it is commonly called, capitalism; believing that the market will fix itself and the country will recover from the depression. After all, capitalism is believed to be the “one best way.” Of course, the market “bounced” back, but the social condition continued to suffer.
After reading and rereading the keyword capitalism nearly a dozen times in order to make an understanding of why any leader or individual would base the future and lives of millions on a market system even though there is urgent and clear signs of intervention needed, I have to conclude that I cannot give a singular meaning for the word for capitalism. Some things are more complicated than what first comes to the eyes, and capitalism is one of these “things.” I have heard capitalism used in several different ways, however it has mainly been used to refer to the market or economic system, I believe this is the definition that the majority would agree with. However, as stated in Keywords, for some individuals, the term capitalism is thought of as a class conflict, others may see it as a political arrangement – there is no singular meaning or definition since it is such a contradicting word.
When President FDR began his term, he established numerous governmental programs in order to resolve the social and economic problems. I believe that without these social programs the economy would not have “bounced” back, I really question the capability of capitalism to fix all social and economic problems. Now that history seems to be repeating itself, what should our government do? Should we wait for capitalism to “fix” the economy or should the government intervene in distributing social welfare?

getting the text

Buying books for classes is always frustrating; today's experience was no different. Like several students who were in class this morning, I rushed over to the bookstore after class to purchase the required text. Upon arrival, I stood in line to wait for a locker (this is typically a dreadful routine during the school year since the line can be very long) to find out, several minutes later, that it was not necessary to put our bags in a locker. I was a little irritated that they did not inform us earlier but I brushed it off and proceeded down the stairways to get the book. Once I found the "UWP101" section, I walked over and scanned the shelves for the text. A student from the class walked over and joined me in the search for the book. A few minutes later another student came by. After a short conversation about the necessity of the bookstore to order more copies we went our ways. On my way towards the stairway I caught sight of the book in the arms of another student. I asked her if her copy was the last one. She said no and pointed me towards the shelf that I can find the book; who would have thought that a UWP101 book would be shelved under ENG3! I was a little frustrated but was glad that it was cheaper than the expected price so I once again forgave the bookstore staff for being unorganized. Hopefully the other students who were searching for the book found it as well. I really like the concept of the text since I’ve always wondered where certain words originated. I only hope the course will not be as difficult to grasp as the task of purchasing the text.