Intolerance

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” said Confucius. There are a lot of strange phenomena in our world such as speech intolerance, religious intolerance, sex intolerance, racial intolerance and culture intolerance. If people can live with those rights instead of intolerance, they need to cherish those opportunities more. After all, people need to understand that those rights are not natural-borne because their ancestors have struggled with government for rights. In other word, people have to think about rights that belong to them. If they find the unresonable incidents in the world, they should continue fighting for their rights.

People need to understand how precious the speech freedom and religion freedom are. When it was in the time of war, citizens would be confined to speech by government. Also, the authorities would inhibit citizens’ critical thinking from growing. Take Latter-day Saint’s religion for example, most of them would fulfill their covenant with God through being missionaries that convey Gospel’s messages. There are many missionaries all over the world except Mainland China. Therefore, people can know how confined China is in terms of religion freedom. Thirty years ago, Mr. Hu, who was a peace-loving secretary general in China, died of heart attack. Owing to his commitment to China, citizens loved him a lot and would follow his will to reform the communism. Hence, there were students demonstrating and going on strike. Finally, the Communist government sent tanks to run over those demonstrators in the Tian An Men square. Ten years ago, the Falun Dafa, which was established by Mr. Li, was getting more and more popular in China. In general, it is a good religion that helps people redefine themselves in the world and encourage citizen to involve themselves in pubic welfare. However, China government sent followers into prison by accusing them of untrue crimes because the authorities were afraid that those followers would threaten the power of China governments.

People should combat against sex intolerance and racial intolerance. If we compare Chinese society with American’s, we would find a lot of unfair phenomena in Chinese society. In terms of Chinese society, female can find jobs very easily in some work such nurses and teachers. On the other hand, male can’t find jobs easily in some work such as secretaries and tellers. Furthermore, the handicapped are hard to find jobs even though they are equipped with enough abilities. But America has more open-minded perspectives and action than Chinese society. Hence, Chinese people should stand up for their rights now as one of the democratic countries in the world now. Also, people from developing countries are not easy to find jobs and they can’t earn sufficient money for their livelihood even though they have made efforts on jobs. Nevertheless, I read about a successful story of a handicapped person who has created numerous work opportunities for others who are also handicapped. Though he can only write about one hundred words a day, he individually finished a project for the handicapped and he began to persuade companies into sponsoring his project. It was not going well because most companies thought that the handicapped can’t make money on their own and the training costs for them would be extremely expensive compared with that of ordinary people. It is just as well that the board chairman of the MiTAC incorporation was willing to sponsor this project which the handicapped can fix the broken cell phones on behalf of the MiTAC incorporation. With the success of this project, more and more handicapped people can make money independently. Besides, they can contribute to the society with their own strength.

People should tolerate the differences of various cultures, especially when people are living in the other countries. Ten years ago, virtual bookstore became more and more popular with the popularity of the Internet. Therefore, some virtual bookstore also wanted to occupy the market of Taiwan. Due to the fact that Taiwan’s culture and conveniences were totally different from America at that time, virtual bookstores didn’t work out in Taiwan. If Taiwanese wanted to buy a book, most people would choose to buy a book in real bookstores instead of virtual bookstores and they only need to spend about five minutes arriving in a bookstore faster than in the U.S. The other day, Nike’s advertisement led to Chinese’s resentment. In this advertisement, the Nike’s shoes beat a dragon, but they overlooked that the dragon has been a symbol of Chinese for thousands of years. Take myself for another example, I made a Russian friend last year, and we indeed got along with each other very well at the beginning. I would usually help people out though I am still busy with my work. Therefore, I helped him in a lot of ways such as finding a part-time job with him, translating a lot of information from Chinese to English for him, and giving him free rides for many times. I was doing it without asking anything for return. What I thought was to show the hospitality of Taiwanese. However, he gradually took everything for granted. Even worse, he would blame me for not sufficiently helping him. He seemed to misunderstand the culture of Taiwan. Besides, he would criticize Taiwanese’ using chopsticks because he is accustomed to using fork and knife. After all, Taiwanese are not responsible for showing their hospitality to foreigners if foreigners wouldn’t open their mind to tolerate the differences of various cultures.

Speech intolerance, religion intolerance, sex intolerance, racial intolerance, and culture intolerance are still alive and well in our world. If people are lucky enough to live with all the rights, they should cherish those rights more. After all, there must be martyrs fighting for rights before. In other word, people need to fight for rights if they still don’t have rights that are mentioned above. Most importantly, as long as people put themselves in the others’ shoes, they can realize what kind of action they should take. Finally, our world will be better off.