"democracy brings out stability"

Let me begin by establishing what democracy and stability refer to. Democracy refers to a system of government where political sovereignty is retained by the people and exercised directly by citizens or through their elected representatives or a government for the people, by the people. The ideas of ‘majority wins’ and ‘power to the people’ are the main ideas that are upheld in democracy. I feel that democracy creates stability in the society as the people get to choose what they want for themselves.

What does stability refer to? It refers to a government bringing the country to “equilibrium”, where there is economic, social and political stability. Stability generally comes about when there is little or minimal problems in terms of social, economic and political state.

Democracy provides people with freedom, the liberty to choose or do what they want. This is especially important in achieving stability. In terms of economic stability, people must have the right to choose who they want to trade with and people who come to trade can make their own choices and not be bound by any trading laws. To create social stability, there must not be any conflicting ideologies with the government. Democracy does create social stability by allowing the people decide what they want by asking for change through their political representatives.

Democracy is also able to create political stability. The people are allowed to express their views freely through their votes by choosing what they want for their society, whether it be amendments made to policies or during the country’s general elections, thus, bringing out political stability. However, for democracy to work, there must be certain criteria. The people would have to be literate or have a good understanding and acceptance of democracy. If the society is not like this, the minority would be unhappy with the results of the elections and cause trouble.

Also, having full democracy would be “tedious” for the simple reason that for every change that the government makes to any policy, they would have to make a vote and the people would have to decide, making it a time and resource consuming style of governance. Going back to the must have criteria, since democracy brings out economic, social and political stability, people would have access to education this would increase the literacy level of the people. This increased literacy level would mean that the people would easily gain acceptance of democracy. So, this “criteria” issue would be solved.

In conclusion, I feel that democracy creates stability in a country as the people would be able to choose what they want to satisfy them, thus creating a country that has little problems in terms of social, economic and political state.

“I don’t care”

Article taken from: http://newslink.asiaone.com/user/OrderArticleRequest.action?order=&_sourcePage=%2FWEB-INF%2Fjsp%2Fuser%2Fsearch_type_result.jsp&month=01&year=2008&date=14&docLanguage=en&documentId=nica_ST_2008_7861670

The article I found is about a survey done by the Straits Times to see how many teens actually know anything about the US presidential race. Shockingly, about two-thirds of the students interviewed did not know anything about the US presidential race as they simply “did not care”. Statistically, Of those aged 15 to 17, three got Obama's gender wrong, 14 tagged John Edwards to the wrong party, and four think Hillary and Bill Clinton are siblings.

It seems that teenagers of the 21^st century are beginning to adopt this “I don’t care” attitude. There is also a prejudice for those who are both well informed (and also most of the time getting reasonably good grades) and they are called “muggers”. This attitude can be seen from one of the everyday things that we do: crossing the road. When my mum “chauffeurs” me from place to place, we often encounter teenagers in school uniform crossing the road without looking out for traffic. This adoption is bad, and it is spreading.

Why and how is this happening? These days, teenagers are having a more “free” lifestyle, as their parents give them a lot of freedom to do whatever they want. This would obviously spoil them as they would only care about themselves, leading them to not caring about anything that does not concern them. This type of attitude would be seen as “cool” and friends would then also adopt this attitude leading to a passing on of the “I don’t care disease”.

Well, personally I feel that this should not be the case in our modern society where information is so easily obtainable and people are more sensitive towards how others treat them. I also feel that this attitude that teens are adopting is sometimes quite selfish as this would lead to only being concern with things that concern themselves. For example, if your mother asks you to clean your room up so she can mop the floor, a typical teenager would not care as he/ she would think that his/ her mother cleaning the room does not concern him/ her. Therefore, one can conclude that this attitude brings out unhappiness and selfishness. This could also lead to the downfall of the person in life, where the teenager does not care about his studies and fails his examinations. Instead, we should be more concern about others needs, putting others before self, thinking if our actions would affect others and also love yourself and always give it your best.

Thinking about the statistics revealed in the newspaper, I just simply cannot imagine what the next generations of leaders would be like if all of them have the “I don’t care” attitude and if they do not bother to change.