Tell me the truth!

In our last lesson we talked about how to tell lies with integrity. It is probably the most interesting session of the whole semester because in my none of us can say that we never lied. In fact, we live surrounded by lies. From the most important politician to the less important member of society, all of us are liars. I found this lesson very interesting; we did not only talk about lies in the traditional sense of lies, as something bad and despicable, but also as something necessary. Sometimes, lies can be a necessity, for example they can be used to defend our interests. Sometimes we also lie in order to avoid harming the feelings of people we love. Moreover, I found it fascinating how the word of lies was described, defining lies as a mechanism of auto-defence. Thus, we can conclude by saying that sometimes, lies are necessary, but we have to make a distinction among the different types of lies.

Another thing that I found really fascinating was to see how our society is so hypocrite about lies. We could say that society lies about lying. The majority of people see lies as something bad and despicable, but the truth is that all of us tell lies sometime in our life. In fact, a lot of people are addicted to tell lies (as some films reflect); they are not able to tell the truth about their own life. Certain lies are necessary in certain contexts; could any of us imagine a world without lies? A world without lies could not probably be a world where we humans could exist. In fact, I think that lies are linked to human behaviour and is one of the characteristics of human intelligence.

Bad Behaviour

Last week we had a lesson about bad behaviour. We talked about prostitution, shop-lifting and stalking. At the first, we clarified what we understood for each one of these terms. For example, if we understand prostitution as the fact of selling our own body in exchange of money” we can not talk about prostitution in situations in which this term is false. That is, if you “sell your body” for free or if you received money without selling it, we can not consider it as prostitution. Prostitution is probably, one of the most ancient practises of human beings and, if the fact of prostitution is accepted by the prostitute we can not talk about something wich is really bad. In fact, we can find some websites that try to legalizate it The serious problem appears when prostitution is forced by circumpstances or other people.

Shoplifting....what a familiar thing to most of us is not it? Shoplifting is probably one of the most extended ways of bad-behaviour. Some people even began to do it when they where only children (those sweet candys that some children lift when the shopkeeper is out hehe). Shop-lifting can be considered as a kind of bad behaviour. Without any kind of doubts, shop-lifting is stealling, and we have to call it this way . Nevertheless, we have to admit that is a very small cuantity which is stolen and it can not be compared with, for example, the fact of stealling a bank. Moreover, people say that shoplifting is very addicitve. It should be true, because in some cases, people lift things that they really can buy without any problem. Really human being likes be bad? Searching in the web, you can found associations that fight against this vice.

We also talked about stalking. Stalking probably is one of the most terrible vices and one of the worse things that people can do. Invading the privacy of other people without their agreement must be considered a great offence. Despite of the despicable fact of this action, I am sure that many people continue to do it. Why? Only do they know.... In any case, we can find some interesting information about that here.

Put a price on it

These days, I have been reading some blogs with different proposals for week 12. I have seen some about drugs, the city of Amsterdan, incest or sadomasochism. But I want to propose a different thing: brive and corruption. I think it would very interesting to have a lesson in which we talk about thes ephenomena in many aspects of our life: sports, politics, bussiness...why do people become corrupt and accept brives knowing that these are bad? And why does the majority of the population accepts these phenomena as something normal and even,as some people say: “If I were him, I would probably do the same things”.

Have you a light, man?

“A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”

( http://thinkexist.com/quotation/a_cigarette_is_the_perfect_type_of_a_perfect/326682.html)

" Lung cancer is directly related to smoking. Over 40 carcinogens have been identified in cigarette smoke"
(http://www.chestx-ray.com/smoke/smoke.html)

Last week, our Being Bad lesson was about smoking. Nowadays, in spite of the fact that everybody knows that smoking is bad for our health, some people continue to do it. Is it only due to the additive effects of nicotine or do people really want be bad with themselves when they smoke?

This lesson helps some understand the role that smoking has on history. We can also discover that tobacco has not always had the bad image that it has today. Moreover, smoking is probably one of the most ancient and universal vices of humanity. We can find smokers in many cultures, from the American Indians to the Chinese. We can find them also in every stage of our history.

As we have seen in the lecture, smoking can be associated to religious issues, like in tribal societies. It can be related to politics (we can mention the indian's “pipe of peace”). In addition, we can find smoking associated to the most sexy actresses of Hollywood, the cowboy's freedom in the countryside or the secret agent in the city. In this sense, I found an interesting website (http://scenesmoking.com/) that makes a kind of list of films saying the way in which they use the smoking issues.

Smoking has ways been related to positive issues. Even cigarrettes can be seen as reivindicative in a women's mouth, as something that fights for the end of patriarchal society or it can also mean rebellion in a man that wants to rebell against the stablished order. We see different possitive connotations aimed to some smokers with the idea of being bad, even when this means goes against their own health. Nevertheless, we can choose between our health or being bad. Personally, I prefer my heatlh (I am not bad in this aspect) but I believe that some people prefer to be bad with their deligtfull cigarrette betwen their lips.

PS-The alarm fire sounded during the class...was anyone being very bad smoking in a forbidden place? Hehehehe.

Introduction

I found the first lesson of “Being Bad” very interesting. The teacher gave us a little introduction about the issues of the subject during this semester. I think that it is very interesting to know how people want be bad. In my opinion, society needs certain rules to run in the right way but people usually want to break these rules and be bad. For this reason, I think that the fact of being bad can be understood as a kind of freedom or liberation that breaks the “jail” that social rules has created. This does not justify all the bad actions, but I have no doubt that being bad is, in many cases, associated to this idea of rebellion and freedom.

Moreover, I found the attemps to exteriorize evil behaviour in external figures very interesting: Religion did so by creating the devil and some literary works create evil characters (like Sauron in "The Lord of the Rings") to exteriorize the most despicable acts of human behaviour. But everybody knows that bad and evil things are inside human beings and not in any external figures.

I hope to know more things about being bad in relation to the topics of this subject. It can be very interesting and it can also help us to understand our own mind in a better way.