Environment

Global problems

Informally, a global issue is any issue that adversely affects the global community and environment, possibly in a catastrophic way, including environmental issues, political crisis, social issues and economic crisis.

Solutions to global issues often require cooperation among nations.^[1]

In their book Global Issues,^[2] Hite and Seitz emphasize that global issues are qualitatively different from international affairs and that the former arise from growing international interdependencies which makes the issues themselves interdependent.^[3] It is speculated that our global interconnectedness, instead of (only) making us more resilient, makes us more vulnerable to global catastrophe.^[4]

GLOBAL PROBLEMS OF OUR WORLD


Environmental disasters
The biggest disaster was Černobyl I thing - the explosion of nuclear power station cause problems all over the world not only in Ukraine. The wind blew radioactive waste in Europe as well as in Asia. A lot of people died and many of them are handicapped and have handicapped children. A lot of animals died and the nature was spoiled for many years. It the time of Chernobyl people cannot eat fresh vegetables or fruit, the water was spoiled too.


Endangered species (animals in need)
Everyone now "Red Book of Endangered species". There used to be a lot of different kind of animals few centuries ago. Indians hunted bison for food but when white men
came they hunted it for fun. People hunt whales of dolphins for money. There used to be a lot of elephants in Africa but Humans nearly extirpate (vyhubit) them. But it's better now than few years ago. Special organizations care about endangered species and they helped them. They try to save what they can. Poachers (pytlák) are punished (potrestáni) but sometimes it's not enough.


Global warming
Global warming is caused by the greenhouse effect. Normally, heat from the sun warms the earth and then escapes back into space. But carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere trap the sun´s heat, and this is slowly making the earth warmer. The result is a rising temperature. The temperature of the earth could rise by 3°C over next 50 years.


Tropical foersts
They are covering 7% land surface of the world and they are called “liver of the Earth”, because of producing oxygen, which is very important and without it we can’t live on the Earth. Amazonian forests are full of many animal and plant species that we don’t know and which can be very useful and important. Burning of forests causes emissions of carbon dioxide. Governments are supporting to encourage good forest management.


Acid rain
Some poisonous gases dissolve in water in the atmosphere and then fall to the earth as acid rain. Acid rain damages trees and buildings, and can kill fish in lakes and rivers. Rivers can also be polluted by industrial waste from factories and chemical fertilizers and pesticides used by farmers.


Ozone hole
Scientists have recenly discovered holes in the ozone layer. Ozone layer helps to protect the earth from the sun´s ultraviolet radiation, which can damage our skins and cause cancer.


Protection of our environment:
Recycling
How do we reduce the waste which seems to grow more and more? Recycling is the processing of used objects and meterials so that they can be used again. About 60% rubbish from homes and factories contain materials that could be recycled. Recycling saves energy and raw materials, and also reduces damage to the countryside. Glass, paper and aluminium cans all be recycled very easily. Many towns have bottle banks and can banks where people can leave their empty bottles and cans for recycling. A lot of paper bags, writing paper and greetings cards are now produced on recycled paper.


Alternative energy
People should try to use alternative sources of energy. Most of the energy we use today comes from coal, oil and gas. But these will not last for ever, and burning them is slowly harming the atmosphere. We need to look for other ways of supplying energy. Solar power is a way of using the sun´s energy as heat or to make electricity. We can also use wind-power by building modern windmills that spin in the wind. There are several types of water-power. River water in mountains can be used to generate hydroelectric power, and we can also create electricity from sea water flowing in and out with the tides.


Drugs 
A problem especially with young, it usually starts as fun or a new experience but sometimes it finishes as horror. Drugs are very expensive and the "victims" have no money so they have to steal, women have to cruise (šlapat chodník). It 's very tough to stop it. Most of them are not able to do it. We can meet it also in small towns.


Homeless
They have no home, family, money, they live in a street, a lot of them are able to find the job but they don't want. They are used to their life and they don't want to change it. Some of them play music in the street to earn money.


Povert 
Problem especially in Africa or Asia, the relief in unpleasant they cannot grow enough food. They have nowhere to store food so in one period they have too much food and in another period they starve. One family has a lot of children.


Racism 
Problem also in our country, usually white people thing their race is better, gypsies - problem in our country, racism used to be a big problem in the time of Hitler - Jewry (židé) were killed because they were "low-class race" (podřadná rasa). In America problems with black. I thing it going better now. My opinion is that some people take advantage of it like gypsies in our country.

 GOFFMAN Essay, Research Paper

In the The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life Goffman seeks to show the reader how everyone sets out to present themselves to the world around them, always trying to maintain the role they have selected for themselves, since those whom they meet not only try to decide what role it is you are playing, but also whether or not you are competent to play that role. More significantly, impression management is a function of social setting. Erving Goffman portrays everyday interactions as strategic encounters in which one is attempting to “sell” a particular self-image–and, accordingly, a particular definition of the situation. He refers to these activities as “face-work.” Beginning by taking the perspective of one of the interactants, and he interprets the impact of that person’s performances on the others and on the situation itself. He considers being in wrong face, out of face, and losing face through lack of tact, as well as savoir-faire (diplomacy or social skill), the ways a person can at tempt to save face in order to maintain self-respect, and various ways in which the person may harm the “face” of others through faux pas such as gaffes or insults (209). These conditions occur because of the existence of self presentational rules. These rules, in turn, are determined by how situations are defined. For instance, there is greater latitude in social situations than in task-oriented situations. Situations also dictate available roles and how much self-importance people can sustain. Herewith one will try to analyze two situations that reinforce the desired interpretation of self that one wishes to convey. The first performance takes place in the university environment on the first day of school. The second scene takes place at the formal wedding reception among family and friends.

Both interactions describe the Goffmanian concepts and schemas that the author uses throughout his book.

The first situation is portrayed in the university setting. Among a thousand first year students some will undoubtedly know each other beforehand, but on the whole everyone will be on their own and looking to make friends. Martin is walking proudly to his first class trying to impress everyone. But if Martin was to make a mistake in his self-presentation now, he could take several weeks to recover his credibility. The process of establishing social identity, then, becomes closely allied to the concept of the “front,” which is described as “that part of the individual’s performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance” (22). The front acts as a vehicle of standardization, allowing for others to understand the individual on the basis of projected character traits that have normative meanings. As a “collective representation,” the front establishes proper “setting,” “appearance,” and “manner” for the social role assumed by the actor, uniting interactive behavior with the personal front (27).

A student will often act differently when talking to someone in his lecture, than he will with his friends in the bar later that night -the former providing a sense of intimacy, the latter a more public occasion. Goffman discusses the need for belief in the part you are playing, both in terms of the audience, and in terms of the performer himself. For the performance to appear credible the performer himself should believe the performance is genuine; the alternative is have no belief in the performance, to be what Goffman terms a “cynic” -someone who is deliberately seeking to mislead his audience (18). If the student genuinely believes he is an easy going guy who doesn’t worry about work, he may appear sufficiently credible to overcome any of the apparently contradictory evidence of the impression given off.

When there is little or no occasion for ?dramatizing? the performance the student will always appear unconcerned when the subject of work comes up, to show that work isn’t a priority in his life. This process, known as “dramatic realization” (30), is predicated upon the activities of “impression management,” the control (or lack of control) and communication of information through the performance (208). To emphasize this, he may leave files on the floor, or leave books half open to show that work is a something he does when he has time in between partying or talking to friends, and if someone comes round he will show mock concern about going out rather than working, before quickly agreeing to go out, even if he knows he has work to do for the next day, all in order to dramatize the front he his performing, and therefore make the front more credible.

Secondly, the family setting is described as a mother-daughter relationship as ?team? members during a wedding reception. Both mother and daughter co-operate together to avoid any unpleasant surprises. They engage in a discussion with guests but only in a general talk. The ?dark secrets? of the bride have to be well kept from the guests and other family members. Here the author explores nature of group dynamics through a discussion of “teams” and the relationship between performance and audience. He uses the concept of the team to illustrate the work of a group of individuals who “co-operate” in performance, attempting to achieve goals sanctioned by the group (79). Co-operation may manifest itself as unanimity in demeanor and behavior or in the assumption of differing roles for each individual, determined by the desired intent in performance.

The mother engages in a group talk while the daughter is beside her. The mother comments on her daughter?s looks and the audience responds in the positive way. Therefore, the mother performs as a “shill,” a member of the team who “provides a visible model for the audience of the kind of response the performers are seeking,” promoting excitement for the realization of a goal, as an example of a “discrepant role” in the team (146). In each circumstance, the individual assumes a front that is perceived to enhance the group’s performance ? mother-daughter performance.

Goffman describes the division between team performance and audience in terms of “region,” describing the role of setting in the differentiation of actions taken by individuals (107). Extending the dramaturgical analysis, he divides region into “front,” “back,” and “outside” the stage, contingent upon the relationship of the audience to the performance. While the “official stance” of the team is visible in their front stage presentation, in the backstage, “the impression fostered by the presentation is knowingly contradicted as a matter of course,” indicating a more “truthful” type of performance (112).

In the back stage, the preparations for the front stage performance are made, the garbage of performances is there taken care of, actors prepare and rehearse their roles, and they can meet there before and after the performance. Note that any physical space can vary between front stage and back stage. For instance, when the mother takes her daughter to the back of a room, where no one can see them, she reminds of the roles that they should play. This can be analyzed as the backstage, the conflict and difference inherent to familiarity is more fully explored, often evolving into a secondary type of presentation, contingent upon the absence of the responsibilities of the team presentation. The performance is more ?cynical? in the front region, perhaps. To be outside the stage involves the inability to gain access to the performance of the team, described as an “audience segregation” in which specific performances are given to specific audiences, allowing the team to contrive the proper front for the demands of each audience (137). This allows the mother-daughter team and audience to preserve proper relationships in interaction and the establishments to which the interactions belong.

Goffman investigated social interaction as though it were a drama, a theatrical performance. He maintained that people use statuses and roles to create impressions. They work with the available tools on their cultural palette. People use a process called the presentation of self to create specific impressions in the minds of others. Performances occur both front stage – in public- and back stage – in privacy or with primary group members.

The author?s language in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is very cold, with sufficient irony on occasion to seem more amused than sympathetic. There is a sense of detachment, not engagement. The very use of the vocabulary of the stage gives the impression of insincerity and contrivance on the part of the participants. So it is no wonder that this work is often characterized as cynical by naive commentators. Few are likely to see it as a celebration of the self; more likely is the view that it is at least neutrally a dissection, or more actively an expos? of social manners. But such reactions are superficial and unjust because in this book Goffman analyzes the ordinary, everyday people in everyday life, circumstances in which personal ruin is more literary than real, in which the price to be paid for failure is not much greater than embarrassment, circumstances in which efforts to sustain creditable selves are largely successful. In contrast, there are circumstances in which the self is profoundly threatened, in which it is attacked and discredited and its actual survival put to doubt. It is in those circumstances that Goffman shifts his stance and creates an eloquent and passionate assertion of the dignity and value of the self and a defense of its right to resist the social world even when, from the observer’s point of view, it resists what may be for its own good.

The performance takes place in the front stage, where different props are used, making possible a specific type of interaction and creating a specific picture of the self. The front stage is generally fixed and defines the situation. It consists of the setting, i.e. the physical scene, and the personal front, i.e. the items of expressive equipment that the audience expects of the performer. The personal front is divided into appearance, i.e. the items that reveal the actor?s social status, and manner, i.e. the role, which the performer expects to play. Public and private lives are sustained by the ritual performances of the everyday. In this interaction process the self is created and manipulated. The self moves between front stage and back stage. On the front stage of publicity, the self uses more props and works harder on the right presentation of self than in the back stage of privacy. In the back stage the front stage performances are prepared, and this space is therefore in a way more “authentic”, more private and less social.

The culture of Japan has changed greatly over the millennia, from the country's prehistoric Jōmon period, to its contemporary modern culture, which absorbs influences from Asia, Europe, and North America.^[1] Strong Chinese influences are still evident in traditional Japanese culture as China had historically been a regional powerhouse, which has resulted in Japan absorbing many elements of Chinese culture first through Korea, then later through direct cultural exchanges during China's Sui and Tang dynasties. The inhabitants of Japan experienced a long period of relative isolation from the outside world during the Tokugawa shogunate after Japanese missions to Imperial China, until the arrival of the "Black Ships" and the Meiji period. Today, the culture of Japan stands as one of the leading and most prominent cultures around the world, mainly due to the global reach of its popular culture.^[2][3]

Japanese is the official and primary language of Japan. Japanese has a lexically distinct pitch-accent system. Early Japanese is known largely on the basis of its state in the 8th century, when the three major works of Old Japanese were compiled. The earliest attestation of the Japanese language is in a Chinese document from 252 AD.

Japanese is written with a combination of three scripts: hiragana, derived from the Chinese cursive script, katakana, derived as a shorthand from Chinese characters, and kanji, imported from China. The Latin alphabet, rōmaji, is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when inputting Japanese into a computer. The Hindu-Arabic numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also very common.

Buddhism developed in India around the 6th and 4th centuries BCE and eventually spread through China and Korea. It arrived in Japan during the 6th century CE, where it was initially unpopular. Most Japanese people were unable to understand the difficult philosophical messages present in Buddhism, however they did have an appreciation for the religion's art, which is believed to have led to the religion growing more popular. Buddhism is concerned with the soul and life after dying. In the religion a person's status was unimportant, as every person would get sick, age, die, and eventually be reincarnated into a new life, a cycle called saṃsāra. The suffering people experienced during life was one way for people to gain a better future. The ultimate goal was to escape the cycle of death and rebirth by attaining true insight.^[4]

The Japanese "national character" has been written about under the term Nihonjinron, literally meaning "theories/discussions about the Japanese people" and referring to texts on matters that are normally the concerns of sociology, psychology, history, linguistics, and philosophy, but emphasizing the authors' assumptions or perceptions of Japanese exceptionalism; these are predominantly written in Japan by Japanese people,^[5] though noted examples have also been written by foreign residents, journalists and even scholars.

The flowing, brush-drawn Japanese rendering of text itself is seen as a traditional art form as well as a means of conveying written information. The written work can consist of phrases, poems, stories, or even single characters. The style and format of the writing can mimic the subject matter, even to the point of texture and stroke speed. In some cases, it can take over one hundred attempts to produce the desired effect of a single character but the process of creating the work is considered as much an art as the end product itself.This calligraphy form is known as 'shodō' (書道) which literally means 'the way of writing or calligraphy' or more commonly known as 'shūji' (習字) 'learning how to write characters'.Commonly confused with Calligraphy is the art form known as 'sumi-e' (墨絵) literally means 'ink painting' which is the art of painting a scene or object. Painting has been an art in Japan for a very long time: the brush is a traditional writing and painting tool, and the extension of that to its use as an artist's tool was probably natural. Japanese painters are often categorized by what they painted, as most of them constrained themselves solely to subjects such as animals, landscapes, or figures. Chinese papermaking was introduced to Japan around the 7th century. Later, washi was developed from it. Native Japanese painting techniques are still in use today, as well as techniques adopted from continental Asia and from the West. Schools of painting such as the Kano school of the 16th century became known for their bold brush strokes and contrast between light and dark, especially after Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu began to use this style. Famous Japanese painters include Kanō Sanraku, Maruyama Ōkyo, and Tani Bunchō.

Traditional Japanese clothing distinguishes Japan from all other countries around the world. The Japanese word kimono means "something one wears" and they are the traditional garments of Japan. Originally, the word kimono was used for all types of clothing, but eventually, it came to refer specifically to the full-length garment also known as the naga-gi, meaning "long-wear", that is still worn today on special occasions by women, men, and children. The earliest kimonos were heavily influenced by traditional Han Chinese clothing, known today as hanfu (漢服, kanfuku in Japanese), through Japanese embassies to China which resulted in extensive Chinese culture adoptions by Japan, as early as the 5th century AD.^[7] It was during the 8th century, however, that Chinese fashions came into style among the Japanese, and the overlapping collar became particularly women's fashion.^[7] Kimono in this meaning plus all other items of traditional Japanese clothing is known collectively as wafuku which means "Japanese clothes" as opposed to yofuku (Western-style clothing). Kimonos come in a variety of colors, styles, and sizes. Men mainly wear darker or more muted colors, while women tend to wear brighter colors and pastels, and, especially for younger women, often with complicated abstract or floral patterns.

The kimono of a woman who is married (tomesode) differs from the kimono of a woman who is not married (furisode). The tomesode sets itself apart because the patterns do not go above the waistline. The furisode can be recognized by its extremely long sleeves spanning anywhere from 39 to 42 inches, it is also the most formal kimono an unwed woman wears. The furisode advertises that a woman is not only of age but also single.The style of kimono also changes with the season, in spring kimonos are vibrantly colored with springtime flowers embroidered on them. In Autumn, kimono colors are not as bright, with Autumn patterns. Flannel kimonos are most commonly worn in winter; they are made of a heavier material and are worn mainly to stay warm.One of the more elegant kimonos is the uchikake, a long silk overgarment worn by the bride in a wedding ceremony. The uchikake is commonly embellished with birds or flowers using silver and gold thread.Kimonos do not come in specific sizes as most western dresses do. The sizes are only approximate, and a special technique is used to fit the dress appropriately.