Here we are on our last reading in our book “World
History.” The class was long, and
lots of work, but yet it went by quickly.
I learned so much in such a short time. Every time I get closer to the end of a class, I start to
feel sad. I truly enjoy all my
classes here at NDNU, as well as this History class. Sometimes I wished that my classes were longer instead of
short courses. But at the same
time, I am glad to see that I am getting closer to being finished with my
education.
Now this brings me to the last chapter I read. This chapter brought me back to when I
was a little girl playing with a Barbie doll. I never looked at the doll “as being more harmful than an
American missile” (p. 723) as it states in this chapter. Let alone Ken being her unmarried
companion. I just thought Barbie
was a mature, shapely doll that I was playing with. When I was young I always did notice her figure and
everything else that came with it.
At a young age, of course we don’t have that type of figure yet, and I
guess when looking back we probably did want to look like her when we grew
up. But I never saw that being
harmful to me. I never knew that
in other countries they were seeing the Barbie as a negative influence on their
children.
When I look back at the first chapters when human first
evolved, using basic old stone tools and also known as gatherer-hunters, I
think of them as that how we were at the beginning of mankind. Then the Neolithic era became a bit
more advance using new stone tools, and then came agriculture. We look at how amazing we have grown on
this earth from the beginning.
Most of us would think of this as progress, but after reading Chapter 24,
the progress we have made is not really progress as far as the environment
goes. With all the new technology,
our environment is being destroyed.
There are three ways that the environment is being change: 1. “Is by the quadrupling of the
world’s population in a single century”.
2. “The ability of
humankind to tap the energy potential of fossil fuels” and 3. The economically
growth.
With all the above, it’s changing our forest and
grasslands. Some animals and
plants are being extinct. There is
heavy air pollution in some cities.
For instance, Japan are having to wear facemask. The pollution is even killing people in
Mexico at a large rate. We all
heard years and years ago that the “chlorofluorocarbons have thinned the ozone
layer, which protects the earth from excessive ultraviolet radiation” (p.
749). Has anything really been
done to protect the ozone, since it’s been pointed out?
Logging has been a great concern for years. All of our forests are being
destroyed. I enjoy hiking the
beautiful areas like Yosemite. If
technology keeps destroying the environment then our children’s children will
not be able to see the world like we see it right now. This is a global concern now and with
this technology someone, and all of us need to take a different approach to
save the environment. Otherwise we
simply won’t have one to save.
Last, I thank Professor Andrews for making this class
entertaining with all the debates, and projects we did in class. Even though I would rather being
traveling somewhere in Europe this summer, I am glad that this class was part
of my summer. It was as if I were
in Europe, well perhaps studying it instead of actually being there.