The Road Goes Ever On and ON

THE ROAD GOES EVER ON AND ON~~~

          For the past 2 months, we, the 18th wavers have made numerous efforts to assimilate into a society called 'KMLA'. Sometimes the 'missions' that we encountered seemed so harsh that we fell into abysmal disgrace. Some of us even failed to achieve certain expectations and goals that we set in the beginning of our 'journey'. However, that was not the most important thing happened to us. The most important thing was that every time we faced such moments, we consoled each other and saw our missions ahead in an optimistic view. 

          Before we entered this school (KMLA), people around us always considered us as intelligent students. Not only our friends, but also our teachers and relatives. It was indeed very uncommon to hear someone say that we are not talented at studying. But as we commenced our lives as KMLA student, things have changed without any doubts. No one recognizes us as an 'extremely talented' student (except for the few who always receive good scores) and even some of the teachers are heavily criticizing us for not making efforts to improve our academic skills. In other words, our existence became much more powerless than our 'heydays' when we were considered as geniuses. 

          Well, for me, having undergone through this shocking experience, I feel abashed for meaninglessly spending time during my middle school years. I wonder why I denied all the opportunities that were given to me. Maybe it was because I fell into deep mannerism after I knew that I was one of the most clever students among the students. But no more can I hold on to those ridiculous thoughts. Things are absolutely different now. The wall of pride inside my mind is already breached and now, I feel a great need for learning how to cooperate with my friends. 

       Mid term is now over, yet other exams lay upon our doorstep. This time, we all know that most of the students will strive to pull themselves up to the top. Competition. It is an inevitable thing. BUT if we cannot avoid it, we should enjoy the process. 

World End Coming True? 3Cs: Corruption, Contamination, Climate Change

Film Review: The Age of Stupid.

World end. Apocalypse. It has been a quite long time since people began to expose their concern about negative impacts of drastic climate change in multimedia. Eminent films such as ‘The Day after Tomorrow’ and ‘2012’ delineate how our lives would become if we ignore the potential danger of global warming that we, humans are creating every day. Ice melting in Alps with increasing speed, strike of hurricane Katrina, and complete destruction of Nigeria’s ecosystem and its society by multinational oil companies; Franny Armstrong’s film of ‘the age of stupid’ portrays the seriousness of dearth of natural resources and resultant climate change with an acute view.  

Until now, people have blamed avarice of normal citizens in developed nations from producing innumerous wastes.  They say we are cruel, ignorant, and do not recognize the true value of ‘mother nature’. However, are the abject poverty of third world communities and extreme sufferings of their people repercussions of our everyday behaviors? The answer to that would be ‘no’. The documentary comprises six stories of individuals whose life is directly or indirectly bonded with natural resources. Conspiracy of government, natural disasters, and environmental problems; the film discusses these three issues through six different scenes.

Above all, it expresses its criticism towards introspective governments of developed nations, the main control hub of these chaotic and incessant wars happening around the world. America, a country with the highest expenditure of natural resources is described as a 'corrupted' nation whose government manipulates truth behind military actions especially those related to Iraq War. Hundred billion dollars spent every year and millions of refugees are small part of results of America’s ‘little effort’ to achieve world peace. America seems to bear the burden of maintaining world peace by using its powerful and incomparably advanced military system. However, the ultimate purpose of America’s assault is completely revealed by film’s narrator’s specific explanation about complicity of the governors who secretly possessed desire to overtake ascendancy in oil industry. Hence its scornful view effectively censures the governors and affluent enterprises that are reluctant to reveal their collusion.

 The episodes of Nigeria and hurricane Katrina shows people whose livings have been devastated by either natural disasters such as flood and hurricane, or contamination by human activities. Steady increase in consumption of energy and natural resources which led to unimaginable amount of emission of greenhouse gases made detrimental impacts to environment and ecosystem. Although most affects were ironically concentrated on poor nations, industrialized nations still receive considerable damage by changed climates. In addition, the fact that film showed lively moments of such consequences in both developed countries and developing countries accentuates the fact that climate change is not ‘their’ problem but one that WE encounter.   

At the end of the film, optimistic view of people living in extremely ‘civilized’ society about ameliorating the current environmental issues is introduced when Piers Guy founders to persuade people to build wind mill in their town. Most of them had a consensus that constructing wind mill will ruin the view and thus disagreed with his proposal. Also despite the fact that majority of people were conscious of great need for construction of fundamental structures for renewable energy, their selfishness blindfold them as it is shown in this NIMBY(Not-in-my-backyard) phenomenon. In other words, the film suggests that  people’s general 'narcissistic' view of environment is a goal that is yet far away from our present state.

We could have saved ourselves’. The documentary commences and ends with this short ‘regret’. Day by day, without being noticed, our planet ‘earth’ is losing light of its ineffable beauty of nature. To make a definitive change to reduce the negative impact of climate change and stop the process of global warming, we must thoroughly react and stand up to the reprehensible decisions of governments and people in high social classes. Ignorance to these issues will only exacerbate the situation and yield difficulties that later generations cannot bear. Our generation has the duties to respond to the postponed responsibilities of early generations and contribute to the construction of eco-friendly and ‘veracious’ society. In other words, we must be the ‘protagonist’ not the ‘audience’ of our history!

Contact Jea Hyun Kim at bfjh522@naver.com