Hoping for a better day ~Reflections on Israel and Palestine

This presentation made me reflect upon what is needed in conflict resolution.
The problems between the Israelis and Palestinians have made people suffer for a long time. While at first the problem began with a disagreement of beliefs and identity, because the conflict becomes political, it becomes impossible for anyone to live in Israel without having their day-to-day lives affected by this conflict.

"Maslow's hierarchy of needs"
I found Andrew Watson's reference to Maslow's hierarchy of needs interesting: the needs of people living in the conflict-affected areas are being less and less fulfilled,  bringing their level of fulfillment down to safety, and sometimes even to physiological. Their worries for tomorrow are so simple, yet due to a difference in identity, people cannot achieve these basic needs.

Problem solving is at the top of this hierarchy. To have the emotional capacity to be able to solve problems, reduce prejudice, accept and respect others, first the bottom needs need to be attained. The situation in which the people live in though, cannot address these needs. The longer the people are deprived of basic needs, the more the situation aggravates: an example being a change in attitude, where people begin to use definitive language and hold dogmatic views. The children grow up in this environment, and the views of their parents are passed on through the generation. The views begin to lose sight of the reason the conflict happened in the first place.

In this presentation the importance of education was justified, because respect for each other can be promoted, and a attitude towards conflict resolution can be created, especially because people have suffered enough hard times. Educating the younger generations can help create understanding of the problems that exist, and create a generation who know how to work towards conflict resolution.

10 Thousand Miles (film)
What did we see that surprised us?
The style of the movie and the plot were good, but not many of the elements in the movie actually ‘surprised’ me, because I have a father who travels often to these areas of the world, who’s told me about their situation, and I think their cultural background is more similar to that of Japan than that of the Western world.
What I felt was interesting was that the university students that appeared in the film that they mostly wanted just to have a family, and didn’t feel a great desire to travel. Most of them didn’t have the means to travel, but it was also that they didn’t have much motive to travel. In comparison to the allegory of ‘the frog in the well’, it seems that people are perfectly content staying ‘in the well’.

What was TOK about this?
The main idea of ‘the frog in the well’; having a limited perception/vision of the world, and going on a journey which stretches this perception was TOK. Each person came from a different background and experienced situations and saw what they had not known before. This gaining knowledge by aquaintance and learning about different ways of thinking is TOK. It was also interesting that Liam, the producer of the film, felt essentially that what the western media portrays of this part of the world, and what the ‘local’ Chinese media portrayed showed completely seperate images. From his first hand experience, he described as reality being somewhere in between, which I think is the case with most medias.

‘Politically Correct’
Political correctness is often mocked because of its extent that it becomes ludicrous. In the radio show that we listened to in class, the man mentioned ‘gaijin’, which means foreigner in Japanese. I think the separaration between what is and what is not is not always so clear, and the term ‘gaijin’ is a good example of this. It seems to me that in Japan because of the common use of this word, it is almost implanting a discrimatory notion in Japan, that people are either Japanese or not.