User:MandaG/Prosocial Behviour tutorial

So in tutorials this week we started off talking about social capital and disengagement. When the words social capital were mentioned a lot of blank stares followed, including my own. James asked what we thought it meant and in response I could almost hear the crickets. I am somebody who hates silence so I gave it a bit of thought and came up with the most outrageously wrong answer ever (seemed plausible at the time). I thought it may be something like communism...its not. However, on the upside my fellow class mates were much more apt at coming up with ideas and thoughts on what it might mean, the end result being a sort of pooled culture/interactions, karma, knowledge and structure. A bank (thanks ms chicco!) if you will of individual social interactions making bigger contributions (karma,knowledge, structure) to society at large which brings me to this idea of social karma. Now I'm a little down on karma this week as the night of my tutorial my car got broken into and I had quite a lot stolen (the irony of just discussing prosocial behaviour did not escape me), however the idea of social karma as a whole is quite an appealing concept. This idea allows for incidents such as the cronulla riots (shocking as they were and I am certainly not condoning them at all!) to occur and not have those idiotic individuals condemn the rest of our society by having the good our society does balance out these shameful events through better actions such as the tsunami appeal- yes it would be better to have an entirely good society but that is probably not all that realistic. So back to this bank concept, good karma and bad karma deposited hopefully will balance out or optimally be tipped to a good profiting. To work analogy in with knowledge it is a little skewed but in my view still good. Every single person in the world has something to offer to someone somewhere, and no matter what anyone tells me i refuse to believe any different, therefore all the knowledge we "deposit" is of value and hopefully be distributed for the betterment of society. As for structure, I don't know if you guys have read or watched Lord of the Flies, but the premise is that culture determines how a society will function and I think that concept can be applied to our "social capital structure" we live in a culture that dictates how leaders are elected and gives us all a say (supposedly...) in how we work as a society.

We then spent some time listening to Hugh McKay and his ideas on social disengagement. On a personal level I did not enjoy his ramblings at all. All problems e discussed were things that have been discussed in the past, while a relevent discussion it did not propose anything fresh. Afterwards we got into groups and discussed the issues we picked up on the most and tried to suggest ways in which the problem could be tackled. I really enjoyed doing this and my partner and I had a number of animated debates on what could be done. My partner was adamant that to reduce some types of prejudices we should have a compulsory Australian history course in all the schools so that like the americans we could recite all major historical moments and understand where we come from. I was of the position that we already have history as an elective and that enforcing it could create more prejudices and feelings of resentment and that all the knowledge of historical moments and knowing where we come from in the world would not make a difference to the individual unless they cared about it which is something a compulsory education can't make happen. Of course thats not to say it wouldn't work I just enjoy a good debate. My point of focus was on the great divide between the higher earners and lower earners. The only problem was I could not think of a rational way to relieve the problem. I was going down the Robin Hood path of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, of which my partner was not having a bar. She said, in hindsight rightly, that we should not punish people who have worked hard for what they have to give to people who have not worked as hard. However, I don't think all people are in unfortunate situations through a lack of trying or working. The problem would then lie in legislating "Those who are rich without effort, give to the poor who are poor through no fault of their own. Those who are rich because you've earnt it, good job and those who are poor because you are lazy too bad."