Hsinchu Discussion of Entitlement

Pre-discussion:
On Voting—
Making wrong decision is better than making no decision at all, because you can learn from the mistake.

If you know them very well, and you know both of them are not very good, you still will vote for …

The better one. I still have some hope. If you don’t vote, one will still be picked, so you might as well try to get the better one ine.

Just now you said you cannot keep quiet when you see something wrong. I don’t mean elections. When you see something wrong.

Well, I don’t speak out often.

I know it’s difficult when the situation is complicated, we see lots of people keeping quite and not talking about the bad things around them and the think, it’s not my business.

It all depends. I don’t do it all the time. If there’s a risk you still have to protect yourself first. But if there’s a way I can do it without risk, I’ll do it. You have to go there and do it. If I’m safe, I can live to another day, to right another wrong.


But when you see teenagers with wrong opinions, do you try to tell them when it’s wrong?

Well, if it’s an emergency, you can call for help, and not just jump in for yourself. Doing something doesn’t mean you have to go in there.

I mean, if something not good happened, not dangerouse…

For example, when waiting to buy a ticket for movies, if someone cuts the line, I will say, politely of course, but I will say, are you in a hurry? If not, I got here first! You have to think first before you do it, but you can also get help.

You have to do it politely and subtly, but you have to do it.

But I mean something bad happen around you, is not a dangerous thing, maybe you find a colleage tries to interrupt other people’s marriage, or try to steal money from the company. Not such kind of instinct danger, just do bad things, would you keep quiet and let go and see it happen, or would you try to convince them?

I had a manager who got some bribes from a company, and she offers some bribes from her staff.

What would you do?

I would say, thanks, and not take it, but keep my mouth shut.

I would not work for this kind of boss.

Of course you say in your mind, I know who you are, I don’t want to work for you.

But if you don’t take the money, they’re more likely to try to hurt you.

So it’s difficult.

If you have little to lose, you can afford to be a big mouth, but if you have a lot to lose, you cant afford.

I’d like to join Team b, but with one condition, there’s a limit to the authority, they can’t do all of what they want all the time. The limit to freedom is authority.

Opening statements
For me, respect is Respect is accepting others’ personality, choices and actions without expecting them to conform to your own personality choices and actions. Perfect. For me, definitely.
Everyone has his own personality and actions, IF they are responsible for the result. Someone doing something bad, and he thinks it’s good, that’s fine, if he’s willing to take responsibility.

Respect is Respect is accepting others’ personality, choices and actions
Because ifi you don’t accept other people’s personality it’s difficult for me to respect you.
If it’s just about giving face, I can’t truly respect this person. It’s got to be about his personality, his corevalues, his decent beharious, etc. if these are all good, then I can sincerely respect him, not just only consider giving space and avoiding losing face. But I think, for example, we respect one great person in the world in history, it must be based on many things that person has done. But it’s not so easy to respect a person only knowing them a short period of time, because it’s too hard to know them in such a short period It takes a while to observand understand sb. but when you find out he’s got the right qualities, then you can.

So many children are taught to listen to others. We are taught to be the typical, to be like the model of what children should be. WE are look like weaker or less of ability to compare with others, like other countries or peope. But now, learn from the western countries, our students are encouraged to express our opinions. It looks like totally the opposite way. Now students and children always like to expres themselves, but don’t listen to others at all. In this situation, lots of arguments or struggles happen, because noone wants to communicate. This is why I say we have to respect other’s difference, but we shouldn’t hurt others because they are different from us. And we shouldn’t take advantage of others because we want to win or be superior to other.

Respect to others is generated from a deep heart, from someone you admire. His personality and heart make you admire them. So what I want to say jaqueline said better.

Team a;
I chose team I because it mentioned conforming with social customs. Team b did not address this. It’s important from a macro view. If a president from phillipine or south Africa comes…for instance, if he kills people, and he’s allowed to do it in his country, he still would not be welom here. It could work in his country, but not in our. “I can accept him without expecting him to conform to our choices” doesn’t cover this situation.

Discussion
People are different. How do you expect them
to conform to your own personality choices and actions?

You expect people to conform?

No, team a is about conforming to social custom. If I go to an Arabic country and always s want to eat pork, it’s not respectful to their social custom.

Ok, I have a question about team a. you mean you only observe proper social behavior. You don’t care about it’s true value? I mean, you just want to keep people from losing face? And you just observe their social custom? If the country has many bad rules, you think it’s right to respect these bad rule? It’s okay to respect a person who doesn’t have his own core values, and just obeys social custom? Do you think this is right?

Okay, I say I see this team a from a macro view, from social custom. If I go to India, where they think the cow is sacred, it’s not wrong or right, so I think I should respect this social custome. And antoher side, I think most social custom are good, is based on good ideas.

For example, if a tyrant kills a lot of people in his own country, do you still respect,…

No!

He’s still respected by his own people, you know what I mean?

So in that case, I wouldn’t’ respect him, and I wouldn’t invite him to Taiwan.

But I think it’s dangerous to only go by social custome. Because this will influence our humanity. If the social custom is not righteous…it will be very dangerous if the social custom is not moral. I think there are still many countries who don’t do the right thing…

The USA for example

…who are ruling their people in the wrong way. So it’s dangerous to only conform to social custom.

But your viewpoint is still that of team b. you’re not expecting them to to conform to your own personality choices and actions.
In team b you will still accept their actions. In team b you still face the same situation,

You’re judging them, its still not right.

So I don’t think we cannot judge people only by their proper social behavior, we need to look directly to their personality. I don’t think it’s right, I mean , if you just respect them for proper social behavior…what I mean is, there are still many countries without moral behavior, and the king rules them by bad rules. In that kind of country, I don’t think by kproper social behavior people do the righ thing, they just need to survive, so they need to do bad things in order to survivie.

I think that your question is, I will not accept this kind of person, because his behavior is also not respected by social custome. But I think team b would accept him, because you resepce all choices.

So you’re saying I expect others to follow my choices?

I’m saying team b means that I respect choices. There must be some sort of core value in everybody’s mind.

So you’re team a, that’s social custom.

I mean I cannot expect other people can follow my thought. But almost everybody has similar ideas about what is right and wrong, they have similar ideas about morals and humanity. So it’s not so difficult to judge appropriate behavior. It’s not so difficult to judge wrong and right social custome.

Youre saying there’s an across the board social value. No matter if they’re American or Chinese, still they have the same value there, so you can tell what’s good. It’s not difficult to tell good from bad.

Sure, so that’s why I think core vale is the same as social custom.

For me, core value and social custom has to conform to me. If they don’t conform to my judgement, I’ll drop it. If the social value goes against my values, I wn’t conform. They have to pass my own judgement.

I agree with this. For example, wearing slippers in a wedding social party. Some peole wil find it okay, but I won’t do it.

Killing people, I can’t accept.

If Taiwan were like the US, and invaded Iraq, would you support the troops.

But calling it an invasion, that makes it sound bad.

But call a spade a spade.

But what aobut darfur, there’s so much war and difficulty, and we go in to help, then that’s an intervention.

But you’re going in to someone else’s country with troops, that’s an invasion.

Also a macro view and micro view. You said country it’s a macro view. If you see some guy beating an old lady, would you do something.

If it’s in front of me, I’ll try to save the old lady, but that doesn’t mean I have to kill or hurt that guy.

But you’re trying to intervene, even that guy didn’t hurt you.

Yes, it’s a matter of survival.

So what if it’s a coutry king and his people?

I don’t have the power, then I couldn’t do it, or I would try to do it a different way. To always evoke a war to solve the problem, it’s just the quick and dirty way to solve the problem. There has to be a better way than killing each other.

I’m not in favor of war either. It’s too bloody, and I don’t think its right to solve problems by killing other people. So if I amn in a governt position, I don’t agree to invade iraq. Because it’s not our coutnry’s affairs, and they didn’t do bad things to our people, so why do we send soldiers to their country and intervene in sb’s affairs.

I don’t agree with that argument here. It is related to us sooner or later. Even if the war is only between Iraq and US, still it is our business. But I still don’t agree to go to war.

So, if you think that you should help a small person being attacked by a big person, do you think Taiwan should go to fight against the US in iraq?

What I mean is, if Taiwan is being attacked by China, then the US or the UN should help us.

Why?

Just like the old lady.

They’re not doing it for moral reasons! They’re doing it for their own self-interest! They know that if they don’t help us they will be in danger soon.

Why.

You know, political economic issue all involve.d

I don’t expect them to, I just think they should

There is no should. They’ll come because they need it.

I do agree with you

Let’s come back to respect. I respect people because I want them to respect me. So I’m kind of extreme on this point. I don’t really see it from a macro view, I see it from an individual view. I value the respect between people. To get that respect, you have to give it. And I want people to see it this way, we all respect each other, as long as we are all acting responsibly. If you are brave enough to say Im gonna do this, and I’ll take responsibility for the actions, then I’ll respect you for that.

I think that respect is a verb.

So I’ll respect you you respect me.

So ths is for countries, too. But anyway, let’s go to individual. What kind of respect shold be based on social customes. The guy bullies the old lady, but he respects you, should you respect him? Hould you just let him bully her?

If there’s the situation, I would jump in.

But you also respect the old lady’s needs.




You’re saying you’re worried he would also do it to you. You’re saying the behavior is not good, so it cant be allowed for anyone. So that’s social behavior, and conforming.

I don’t know why respect is so important to me.

Because you’ve struggled a lot in your life to respect yourself and to get respect from others.

I have a uestion. If oter people, if you respect yourself, and don’t care about if other people respect you or not, can you do it?

Do what?

Can y ou respect yourself without caring if other people respect you? Its difficult to ask others to respect you…

If you respect yourself, you naturally respect others, and so they will r espect you. I’ve seen this, when someone is disrespectful to themselves, they’re willing to disrespect others.

I want to see if respect is really the basis of conforming to social custom, it means we will make other people become like the victim. Like I said before, in the past students are taught to be ‘good’. Teachers or parents have a criteria or standard of a typical model. It means that we have all to follow only one criteria or typical model. We cant express our own opinions, or ask what we want, if our demands are against the typical model. Just like labels. Some students are labeled conforming or unconforming. But the standard or criteria is supposed by our custom, but I don’t think it is fair, or it is right, because we have to respect other’s difference. If we have only one criteria, we can’t express the diference of thoughts or ideas.

Of course I agree your popint. But in my definition, social custome is not so narrow, not just a model.

But there are also several kinds of modesl. In school, how to be a good student, in familes, how to be a good childe. In society,we have to be a good person. But what is the criteria for that? We’re expected to listen to others ideas on this only. Remember your gradschool experience: yo’re told not to be friends with certain people, because they’re bad people. And if someday you did bad things, your parents will say, usually you’re good, so it must be your bad friends amek you bad.

I remember that, but I think the bad students is not because they have bad grade. If we lable them baed its mostly because they fight or steal or do some thing that doesn’t conform to social custom.

But in my person experience, some people were labled bad for raising their hand to ask questions, because they think they’re just trying to make the teacher look bad.

But that seems to be the exception.

Sure it happens …

Wait be careful here, you’re accusing her of generalizing from her experience, but you are also generalizing from your experience.

But let me tell you a story, I had a classmates, who had really bad grades, but she was still the leader of the class, because eshe knows how to get peope to work together. So my teacher put her at the head of the class.

But you can also see in movies, in our society our students are taught to be listeners more than speakers. So I can say its when I was a child its not just mine, but others. Just because someone is an active person, he likes to express his opinion only, he was labled as a problem student.

So who labled them, the teacher?

So maybe he didn’t write ‘a bad student’.

It’s possible, I was ostracized in this way.

So it’s possible that someone is afraid to talk in class, because hes afraid someone will call him stupid. So now, the message is, you have to ask questions, and if you don’t, then maybe
So the message has changed, so I want to know how can what we know what is proper social custom, and what is right or wrong, if the standard changes?

You have to look inside yourself, what do you believe.

My question is, the realson why I don’t choose the team a.

I think we just need to look upon the principle, not upon the detailed changes. If you look at the principle, it’s easier to judge. But I still insist in team b, I think if we cannot only respect people by their proper social behavior, and we respect their mind, their personality, it will last a long.

But I’ll say, that incident I told you, when the teacher told me I was too loud, that’s when I started questioning social values.

Okay, I agree this point. Students have to wear uniforms to school, if the student doesn’t want to, how does this change your view.

Of course, it’s a uniform I’ll respect the uniform, so.

But the uniform is social conformity.

But of course I’ll give her a choice to go to a different school.

But that’s not a real choice!

Okay, I have a son who is so rebellious, and a daughter who doesn’t want to conform. I tell her, if you want to differently, then you have to accept the consequences of your actions. If you want to do this, you’ll get puinished. If you can accept that, its your choice.

So you’re teaching them to pick their battles.

I’m trying o teach them to shape their own value system. They have to take some risks, as a mother I have to advise them, but I let them make the choices.


Closing statements
Team a
30 sec
I think if you choose b, at some level you still have to follow social custom. Basically if we follow social customs, in some degree we are respectin others.

Team b
30 sec.
well, I think proper social behavior or social constant aries. It’s not easy to confirm. But the core values or morality is what people should respect.

1 min
I don’t think, in my opinion, respect cannot be based on social custome, because customs are changeable, but human values are not easily changeable. So I think respecit is accepting others’ personality because our core value is priceless, and humanity ispriceless, and it’s easy to tell good from bad.

Is till think respect it respecting other’s values, so I would choose to wear the uniform out of respect for the school. but it doesn’t mean that school should ignore my personality or choices. Like sue said, I can make some changes in my uniform to express my peronslity.

Socks! At my school we had the craziest socks.

I want to people to respect me and I want to respct people. Even their values are different than mine, I respect them. If the difference is very big, and I think it’ll cause problems in the future, then I will stand up to fight for my values, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect them.