“With great power come great responsibilities.” Of course, everyone knows it come from Uncle Ben, but I feel not a lot of people understand the meaning behind this great sentence. This is shown through the absurd violence in school.

            CBC survey reveals 40% of boys are physically assaulted at school. Why is that? Well, when you are in high school you are also your teenage years, also know as the years of “who even am I?” School as a concept is a mini society, and everyone tries to find their place. But since they do not know how, they revert to the most primal behavior, the stronger is the alpha. To prove themselves, they need to beat someone else, and it is natural to go for the weak one. In those situations, everyone like to blame the adults. But I strongly believe it is the role of the students to do something. They need to be able to fix their own problem, that is what it means to be a functional human being.

One of the ways, to put it blunt, is to become strong. If you are not weak, you will not be the victim anymore. When I say to be stronger I do not specifically mean become a bodybuilder, even if it can be one way, but to develop a redeeming quality. Preferably you want something to go with your passion, if you like music learn an instrument, if you love writing develop a book. It can be anything, but what is important after that, is to make friends who have the same interests. Once you have done those two things, I am not saying it will be easy, you will not see the bullies the same ways. You become over them. You have people that love you for what you are, which develop a presence of confidence around you that stop most bullies.

You probably think I do not know what I am talking about. There is this kid who got bullied because he was smart and small, it was not going well for him. Then he started karate and eventually stop being a victim. The story is simplified but the elements are there. He found something that he was good at and find a place where he belongs. It took that victim persona out of him.

            The second way is for the strong to deal with the strong. There is no doubt that a hierarchy exist between students. The higher you go the more power you gain, but more responsibilities come with it. Kilmartin describes that one of the aspects of being a man is status and achievement. I believe we can take it further; a man is defined by what he does with the status and achievement that he gains. Personally, a lot of my school friends while I was in high school never got into problems because they knew me. I have a strong personality in general and luckily I have what it takes to back it up. If someone harmed one of my friends, they would have to answer to me. And in my school everyone knew me. In the high school hierarchy, I was high, I did not bully but helped people. The best way to go higher in life is not by crushing others, but by helping everyone climb.

            In his chapter on relationships, Kilmartin stated this: “Friendship is probably the most common form of relationship.” Being the most common, it is important to carefully choose our friends. Even more important in school since we will see them almost every day. Good friends can help develop in the beautiful butterfly you can become, just like bad friends can bring out the worst demon that sleep inside you. I am sure that a lot of bullies do not want to act mean, but feel pressure to do so. They also need our help.

            In conclusion, people often criticism he adults for not believing them or not acting. Since we, the students, are the closest to the situations we need to act for us. There is no one better to act that one who saw the crime with his own eyes.

The first thing i learned from those presentation is that women feel inferiors. It is not only a feel but a reality. In many case the people in place of power are a majority of men. They tend to take decision without taking in consideration women. For example law 21, restraining people in place of power from wearing religious symbols. The main group that is target are Muslims women who were the hijab. seeing the political situation, I would say that this law was put because of the Muslim terrorist group (which are the opposite of what Islam teach) and the government what to show that they are against them by targeting Muslim women. Showing that they don’t care about what women think and are only focus on themselves.

I’ve also learned that women know how to stand their ground. Its been more that three decades since the feminist movements started and they accomplish a lot. I didn’t even knew their were a international Women’s day. Which reinforce my incomprehension of why women want to be more like men and why men don’t respect more women. There is a old movie (sadly I don’t remember the name) with a quote that marked: “Yes, the father is the head of the family, but the mother is the neck of which turn the head in the right direction.” It says everything, why would women want to be men when they are already in control. Probably because both gender don’t realize it yet.

The third think I learned was that men (and people in general) are not smart at all. They pollute like crazy, destroy homes, vote laws that doesn’t make sense, and all for their personal gain. The funny part is that the laws that actually make sense, they can’t even respect them. For example the law about indigenous’ right is one of the most logical one in Canada, and it is past over again and again. They also make studies to be sure what they are doing is right, but if the results go against them they just ignore the results.

Why are you close?

My friend and I are close because we have a very similar view of life and how it should be. We both see the same problems in the World and offer the same solutions. We both like same things that other people find odd or weird. We both like doing the same things and doing them together. We both have precisely the same taste in women. We both want to be rich for the same reasons. When we are put together, we are a great pair. I am his way of exteriorizing his thoughts, and he is my conscience of right and wrong 😛

What kind of things do you like to do together?

We like going out together ; dancing, drinking (when I used to drink), singing. Basically, we love partying together. We also like playing the guitar together, whenever we have time. Whenever one of us goes out on a trip, we always arrange to meet in a small restaurant to catch up on how the trip was and what happened in the city while the other was away. But what we really love to do the most is train in martial arts and parkour! We both want to be ninjas who will be able to survive the next zombie apocalypse.

Have you ever told your friend how much he means to you?

I don’t think so. But I believe I show it to him whenever I can. Whenever he goes away on a trip, I offer to bring him to the airport. For the longest time, I would drive him home after karate class, even when he wasn’t on my way home. I get him gifts sometimes. Once, I paid for one of his karate camps. When I’m away on a karate trip on which he couldn’t come, I manage to film fights that I know he’d like.

How did he react?

No specific reaction. I know he knows, and he does things for me too. We just know.

Institutions gender.

Michael Kimmel wrote  “Institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes.”

This refers to the fact that we generaly give gender to jobs. For example elementary teacher is for woman and director is for man.

There will always be a visible minority that is dedicates by the view of society.

Masculinities

Kimmel prefer the use of “masculinities” over the use of “masculinity”,

It is do to the fact that there are many ways of showing masculinity. Which is why we use it at plurals.

In the discussion, every man had a different view on how a man should act and behavior.

With 7 billions humans on earth. There are 7 billions ways on being a man.

Sports are not for weak

In the documentary “The Mask That You Live In”, the first thing that stroke me was the violence use in sports.

It really caught my intention because, as an athlete, I can’t accept such behavior.

I do karate, a sport where the goal is to hit each other. And even then, we learn to respect each other.

Of course we are here to win, and it is frustrating to loose. But getting mad and yelling at the players won’t fix anything.

When you loose there is only one thing to do, fix what didn’t work and improve what did work. Only training and hard work can do that.

Like my coach always says: “The work is never done.”

Video Game and violence

The second that jumped at me was when they talk about video game.

I firmly think that video game doesn’t encourage violent behavior. It could even reduces them.

In most case, people play video games to be someone that they cannot be in real live. Like a secret agent, a professional hitman or even a super hero.

We know this isn’t reality and that’s why it feel so good. There is no consequence, so why not enjoy it.

Most main character are stoic and without emotion. But it is over shadow by how cool they are.

If you want to feel emotion they are a lot of different media. Video game is suppose to make your heart bounce, make your adrenaline go wild, and make you like a boss.

Since it is so violent, is is a good chance to take all your rage on the game and not on a real person.

The link with Carlos story.

The part of Carlos story that caught my attention was when he spend time in a eastern country.

I founded funny how he was embarrassed with everyone being so open to physical contact.

The documentary explain it by saying that it all come to education.

The main school of thought is that we need to taught our children to be thought and strong.

But we don’t have to stop there. We can also teach them to be kind and how to deal with their emotion in a healthy way.

Happiness bring happiness. Only by surrounding yourself with people who are truly happy that you can see the light in this dark world.

I believe this is something we can learn from eastern country. It is correct to have emotion and to shared them with other.

The only person I can think about is my brother Aiman. I am the man I am now thanks to him.

He taught me the importance of never letting someone get under my skin while staying true to myself. I think I never saw him get angry at someone no matter what, and that’s true strength.

He’s a genius at school with a bachelor in physiotherapy and he almost finished a bachelor in mechanical engineering. But he decided to stop school to focus on his dream of becoming a karate world champion.

This proves to me that, sometimes, the risk of following your dream is more fulfilling and can open you to a whole new world than if you were to follow the normal course expected from society.

If life was a dark road that you need to follow, my brother is the bright light that I decided to follow.

My favorite food is tajine.