Ray Lian, Period 7, 1/3/22

 Ray Lian

1/3/22

Period 7

Gods, Monsters, and the Apocalypse

What are your thoughts and feelings about issues of inequity, oppression, and/or power?

Oppression, inequity, and power are all connected together. Inequity happens because of oppression which in turn is caused by those with power. I believe that everyone should have the right to live a comfortable life. People shouldn’t have to worry about getting harassed, arrested, fired from their job, or even killed because of their gender, race, skin color, or sexual orientation. Yet they do have to worry because these ideas, racism, sexism, etc, are deeply rooted into the government. People harboring hate towards a group of people because they want to maintain power and stay elite is absurd and preposterous to me. People with power grow hungry for more, and become arrogant. They lose their sense of rationality because they want to prevent themselves from losing that power. Every time I see injustice and corruption, it baffles me that people have the audacity to do such things. Even though everything might seem gloomy, I believe that it will get better. With the world changing at such a rapid pace, an increasing number of people are uniting to combat these prejudices and problems. It’s only a matter of time now.

How do you reflect critically on your own beliefs, assumptions, values, and experiences, and how these can influence your perception of self and others?

There are many times where I would just sit alone and think of everything that has happened in my life till now, all the experiences I associate with happiness and all those that associate with stress or sadness. But most of the time, I remember the stressful events much more vividly. I always go back to them and think about how I could have done things and approached them differently. These memories linger with a sting of bitterness if I see myself able to repeat these mistakes. I constantly try to be better than who I was yesterday. The questions I constantly ask myself are “did I do it correctly” and “am I satisfied with what I did.” If the answer to either question is no, I take a step back to reflect on those actions. 

My beliefs and values are very straightforward, in the sense that people should be treated with respect and kindness, whether or not I like them. I always see myself becoming foolish when I start becoming disrespectful because someone is being rude or obnoxious and this goes for how I see other people as well. A lot of my decisions are made with rationality and judgement so when I see people acting recklessly and unreasonably, it gives me a bad impression of them. Though I try my best to at the very least, to respect them even if my ideas disagree with theirs. Some of my introspection has taught me to become more aware of what I am doing and how that can affect the people and environment around me.