Should Children be Sheltered from Loss?

Too much pressure on kids to perform well is, without a doubt, unhealthy (there are some youngsters who improve and thrive under pressure, but I think this can be attributed in part to effective parenting). However, does this pressure really stem from the fact that there is a winner and there is a loser? I do not believe so. While the increasingly popular trend to say "everyone's a winner" mitigates some of the negative aspects of excessively competitive sports, the real culprit of this issue lies in the culture of winning and losing. Losing does not mean you have failed because no matter how badly you did, you can always learn from your past experiences. I'm not saying that everyone's a winner, it's obvious that the person who lost is still the loser. However, loss can be an even more effective teacher than success, and as a society, we need to learn how to maximize the positive side of a failure. Parents often get way too invested in their kid's scoresheet, and fail to teach their children the more important result of games: experience. Some parents even go to extremes and show children the ugly side of competition, as this article by the Washington Times details. In the end, the lack of a scoresheet is harmful to the development of children because it negates failure, a core aspect of life that should be learned sooner rather than later.

Additionally, without failure, we can't know what true success is. If winning and losing are equivalent, what's the point of putting in more work to win? If I could win the Olympics just by "giving it my all", what's the point of improving? The reality is, improvements cannot be made without failure. There is a plethora of inspiring quotes about failure (with irrelevant background pictures) and as cliche as they may be, they are often very true.

Are we raising a generation of wimps by coddling and refusing to let them experience the pain of failure? In some ways, yes. If not wimps, we're raising a bunch of sniveling, snobby sore-losers. [Side note: I may sound especially critical because I don't have an iota of respect to spare for sore losers.] I remember reading an article some time ago (a month, perhaps?) about losing with grace, and after a quick minute of using Google, I found it here. Even though I enjoyed the article and think it offers many good points, I find it somewhat disconcerting that it was posted in "The Art of Manliness". Losing with dignity is a principle that applies to everyone and should be ingrained in children from a young age, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or class.

A Mild Face Lift for a Failure of an Essay

Here's the absolutely atrocious original intro paragraph from my in class essay:

- As we can see from Adichie's TED talk, "The Danger of a Single Story", people are guilty of making preemptive assumption before knowing the whole story. Marjane Satrapi shows us that even the most open minded of individuals are guilty of this fallacy in her graphic novel The Complete Persepolis. One of the single stories presented in the novel is of the ex-leader of Iran, the Shah, as well as all the abhorrent deeds described in The Complete Persepolis. Throughout the novel, we only ever see the bad side of the Shah.

Here's a (hopefully) less atrocious version of the intro paragraph:

- In her graphic novel, The Complete Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's depiction of the Shah shows us that even the most open minded of individuals are guilty of stereotyping with a single story. From the very beginning of the book, Marjane introduces Iranian government as oppressive and stifling in the story "The Veil". Starting from the fourteenth page, the Shah is explicitly introduced as the power hungry leader of Iran to whom everyone directs their hate. She tells the readers of the Shah's unscrupulous ways in the stories: The Bicycle,  The Water Cell, and Persepolis. However, she doesn't say anything remotely positive about the ex-leader of Iran even once. The single story of the Shah is proof of the split between the leader and the people that can occur due to a story that's only partially told.

In my original in class essay, I noticed that I was somewhat at a loss of words concerning examples to use for my argument. Since I was distracted by my lackluster idea as well as the looming deadline, my writing was very stiff and formulaic, yet disorganized. In my opinion, it had the dryness of a middle school paper without the organization. In short, my essay was dreadful. One of the problems with my intro paragraph was the fact that it was missing a "road map", a user's manual going over the different examples to be used in the essay. I tried to make it more structured by finding a few relevant stories (chapters?) from the book. Also, I was overly concise, or should I say hasty, with the presentation of my reasoning. That was a more simple fix, I just added in some extra meat on those bones to make the introduction a little bit more palatable.

The moment I read the blog assignment for 24/9/15 (found here: http://rathskg.blogspot.com/),  I knew that I was going to be in for a rough ride. I'm very critical of writing, especially bad writing, and even more so if it's my own bad writing. Most of the time my writing isn't embarrassing enough to make me cringe too much, however, reading my essay was arduous. I can tell that I was not nearly prepared enough for the assignment, and I wasn't even fully convinced of the point I was arguing! Knowing myself (fairly well, I think), I would say that I am capable of crafting a quite convincing argument, provided that I care about what I am arguing about. If I were to rewrite the essay, I would spend more time finding an argument that I personally feel for, so that I can put more life and fluidity into my writing. From this experience, I think that I will strive to keep myself relaxed and keep myself from being too terse when explaining my thoughts. I often tend to omit things, whether from the fear of being too verbose or from plain laziness.

Closed-minded Communities

In every community, there's a good side and a bad side. Some communities have a more apparent bad side and some communities have a more apparent good side, but every community has pros and cons of some sort. I know for a fact that religious communities can form especially strong bonds but I also know for a fact that they can form unfathomable rifts. The collective passion of a people can be strong enough to bring a variety of personalities together but can also be strong enough to split like minded people apart. Some communities derived from religions have closed minded teachings and produce closed minded people as a result. Since the members of a community often don't venture out of their comfort zones, communities can often create misconceptions. 

A classic example of this is the Christianity vs Atheism debate that has always been an issue, especially online. The most common argument against Christians is that they are unwilling to accept scientific facts and logic. I have to say that this is a very valid assertion, I have noticed many hard headed pious people. However, this is certainly not the only aspect of Christianity. I know several devout followers who have recognized the multi-faceted nature of religion and philosophy and have carefully weighed truths against myths. Atheists seem to have the misconception that Christians are all dim-witted sheep because of what they've heard from other nonbelievers. Christians are also guilty of hating on Atheists based on common views found in church. This isn't just an issue with religion, however. Close-mindedness in communities can be found just about anywhere.

Take sports for example. I have no interest in watching sports (not even tennis) but even I can see how important they are to human relations. Different communities of people gather regularly to root for one team or another, sometimes getting so involved that they start fights and quarrel over the superiority of their preferred team. I've basically only talked about the bad side of communities in this post, since everyone already should know of the good side of communities, I won't bother rambling on.

Acquaintance -----> Close Friend

About a year ago, my trip to Taiwan with my family coincided with a friend's. After making some quick arrangements online, we met up in Taichung, the city of my cousins' home, and spent some time having philosophical conversations and building up new rapport. This picture was taken when we decided to explore the city - we happened to spot an abandoned building in the middle of the bustling city close by the Taichung Train Station (side note: sharing fast food sushi from a random kiosk is wonderful).

This picture is important to me not just because of its subject, but also the richly detailed memory that it conjures upon viewing. I can still taste my scrumptious sashimi salmon bowl... After our adventures of urban exploration this summer, Daniel became one of my closest friends, second to my sister.
(Below are a few more photos from the abandoned building)