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#里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀
Following the narrative told by those who create fairy stories, religions and other superstitious beliefs, and based on the arbitrary values that those superstitions, religions and fictions claim to adhere to, there are supposedly good and evil activities, objects and people in this world. So, if according to this warped reasoning – if it can even be called reasoning when based purely on make-believe – what was wrong with burning thousands of witches if they were exercising their evil powers as others claimed them to be, especially when it was the religious, superstitious and regal who made the claims against said sorcerers? The truth of the matter is that if we trust the claims of people who have irrational and unreasonable world-views based on pure fantasy and delusion, it inevitably results in actual suffering in the real world – whether it be the branding, torturing, imprisoning or murdering of other people , or the same and worse misery for other innocent creatures of this world. Keeping the masses ignorant and deceived by encouraging tribalism, and fostering blind faith that avoids questioning the fundamental values that are indoctrinated in the population from birth by religious, royal and other so-called ‘spiritual’ leaders certainly leads to atrocities like burning witches, but also to many other lesser and yet still harmful customs in everyday life. Where are the supposedly virtuous values of these belief systems then, and why do we still accept such primitive and irrational thought today? #里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀
Was Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the world’s most widely recognised and highly regarded composers of classical music, whose music greets Taiwanese on an almost nightly basis, and whom the German people regard as one of their greatest cultural icons, in fact a black man? Despite sounding as absurd as claiming that basketballer Jeremy Lin is actually Korean, and in spite of the fact that there is absolutely zero evidence to support it, this method of asserting ownership over another culture’s successes or heroes in an attempt to undermine the other culture’s dominance, is ostensibly another example of the provocations that have become all too common in the USA’s “culture wars”. #里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀
Can a culture belong exclusively to one person or people? Even if a culture is closed, exclusive and xenophobic – unaccepting of outsiders because of racism and selfishness – a member must either be extremely ignorant about anthropology, history and fashion, or else living in a constant state of delusion to believe that they have sole rights to learn about, celebrate or even adopt parts or entirety of a culture. If culture was indivisible, immutable and permanently attached to one place or people, the world would not exist as it does in reality – as a pluralistic and multicultural melting pot, where borders between civilisations are fluid, and there are constant cultural exchanges at a whole host of levels, from language to customs, and festivals to fashions. #里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀
Languages that are in use today are not like those that have already died out from lack of users in one very important aspect: contemporary languages can be seen as ‘living’, and therefore also constantly ‘evolving’. A language is both a means of communication and a cultural repository, as it changes with the culture that it is expressing, and just as with culture, conservatives will always attempt to resist these changes. Usually they are fighting losing battles because the forces of change in popular culture are much more widespread and powerful than the strangled cries of some obscure grammarian or self-proclaimed cultural guardian. Witness the disappearance of the use of ‘whom’, the lack of a need to capitalise the ‘i’ in the ‘internet’ as just two recent examples among countless others, and it is clear that languages will keep changing, no matter what. That said, the myth of Sisyphus is still used today in English as an analogy for trying to complete impossible tasks, even though it is from Greek culture thousands of years ago, so perhaps prescriptive linguists (aka ‘grammar Nazis’) can take heart in their Sisyphean task. #里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀
Some say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but in reality, plagiarism is just outright cheating which is born of laziness, and in cases involving master’s and doctorate theses, resulting from immorality. It is different from the type of cheating that indolent students might do when trying to look at a classmate’s test paper to steal their answers because of its severity in terms of the amount of other people’s work being stolen. What makes it even more reprehensible is that, if left undetected it enables frauds to gain respect, reputation and even employment that they are totally undeserving of, based on qualifications they have never earned. In addition to highlighting the dishonesty of the degree-holders, it also cheapens the inherent value of those qualifications, while also completely undermining the credibility of the institutions that issued them. #里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀
本週的外師專欄，大家記得點進文章，先讀完這篇新聞，再來看外師對這篇新聞的想法哦。 Are you a dog lover or a cat person? Regardless of your preference, by owning a pet, you are directly or tacitly helping sustain the horrific selective breeding practices (not unlike eugenics when applied to humans) that have created the specific appearance and traits that you love in your furry friend, and which cause them to suffer horrendous pain, diseases and discomfort – sometimes for their entire lives. As discussed previously and mentioned again in this article, there is the torturous procedure of having your pet’s reproductive organs cut off or mutilated for your convenience that is part and parcel of owning your own slave. But this time you can also read about what many centuries of forced inbreeding and crossbreeding does to species, mostly for the sake of human aesthetic preferences and subjective concepts such as “cute” and “beautiful”. If you are a pet owner and did not already know about the awful conditions that pets are bred in and the appalling diseases pets suffer so they can look how you want them to, then shame on you for not educating yourself and also for supporting modern slavery and eugenics. #里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀
本週的外師專欄，大家記得點進文章，先讀完這篇新聞，再來看外師對這篇新聞的想法哦。 Heroes, prophets and idols – are these the makers and deliverers of our dreams, deliverances and fantasies? Many societies and even entire nations put people possessing of certain talents up on pedestals for everyone to revere; perhaps none more so than the sports stars of the world. Likewise, completely excessive and usually undue respect is often given to self-proclaimed holy men and women who make untested and unprovable claims of supernatural powers or divine guidance. Let’s not forget the celebrities of the world – those people often famous simply because more attention begets even more fame, especially in these times of instant social media sensations. Do they have some secret insights, exclusive knowledge or magical recipes that could make us instantly as talented/magical/wealthy as them and which we lowly humans could share in for a (usually not so small or infrequent) fee? Billions of people seem to think so, hence the ubiquity of celebrity endorsement, the perennial popularity of different faiths and pyramid schemes, and also Goop. #里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀
本週的外師專欄，大家記得點進文章，先讀完這篇新聞，再來看外師對這篇新聞的想法哦。 What do you get when you take a huge population of right-wing conspiracy theorists, allow them to arm themselves to the teeth, then have the US president lend them a façade of legitimacy by allowing them to patrol the streets? The answer might just be a self-fulfilling prophecy from one of the many of the deranged conspiracy theories that the militias of the USA are now pushing: a descent into civil war. The Boogaloo Bois, the Utah Citizens’ Alarm, the Proud Boys, neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists are obviously not taking the attempts at making progressive changes to American society well, and Donald Trump is openly supportive of their reactionary movements. #里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀
本週的外師專欄，大家記得點進文章，先讀完這篇新聞，再來看外師對這篇新聞的想法哦。 From reading Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf, it is possible to learn a valuable lesson about the perils to society of the false claims being made by fake news in the modern era. When a large percentage of the population relies on an untrustworthy media source, such as with the huge number of Americans who have complete faith in Fox News, and that media deliberately tries to distort, misrepresent and cast doubt on the veracity of important issues affecting the world, it creates a segment of the population that is unable to accept facts or comprehend reality. This can be seen with the blatant support of corporate interests in denying that climate change exists, and it is also evident in the deliberately misleading opinions spouted by Trump about COVID-19, which is subsequently parroted by Fox News. #里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀
本週的外師專欄，要來看一下國際熱門人物—川普先生！大家記得點進文章，先讀完這篇新聞，再來看外師對這篇新聞的想法哦。 Just in case you got the impression that it is an uncommon or unpopular view that Donald Trump is undeserving of the presidency and unqualified for the job, here is an opinion piece that highlights the dishonesty that Trump has displayed in his term as “the most powerful man” in the world. Politicians may be famous for being dishonest and fake news may be prevalent in all sources of media nowadays, but it is Trump that has played one of the most sinister roles in making lying more acceptable in public. |
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