Jenny+Lee

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This reading explains the Finial Piety as the responsibility of the son to one’s parents, and how other members of the family gets affected due to this responsibility. For example, the role of the son is comparably important than the roles of any other members of the family. The wife is counted as a useless member of the family, unless she gives birth to a boy, who would continue their family tradition of respecting the elders, and doing the ritual ceremony instead of their father, when the absence of the father occurs. I thought that this similar to the Korean society, because there are still elders to prioritize boys over girls, because of the ceremonies that need to behold after their death. Even though, there are some families that don’t obey the ceremonies anymore, because they are Christians, however there are still many families in Korea, which performs the ceremony.

=QUESTIONS=

1) Regarding the scholars in the Tao of Pooh, words that are straightforward could be somewhat easy to put in words, but hard to actually put into practice, because some of them can be only achieved when actually thought about it through time, after some realization of oneself. But, some of them could be about little actions that can change a whole after all, which is somewhat easy to put into practice. 2) From the point of view of Pooh, who is the typical Taoist, he doesn’t quite agree with the scholars’ perspective about education, and how important it is to obey the rules that were designed. He believes it is more of an open-minded question rather than a set rules that decide what is right and wrong, and thinks it is better for the society to run to the way it has been done so far, following the inner nature, rather than getting stuck between the strict rules that are established. 3) I think the message behind the story Cottlestone Pie is, how immoral and stupid humans are sometimes when they are trying to fit something that doesn’t fit, and they even know that it would not fit, however they just forcefully fit it in. The author criticizes the useless actions that are done like that, and rather suggest that it is more convenient and right to follow the flow, and just let the inner nature decide its way, and it is somewhat stupid trying to change something that can’t be changed that easily just upon our will.

Write a short reflection of what you learned from these readings. With the benefit of hind site and knowledge of China and Japan, would Korea had been better off if it had “opened up to the west.”?

There are always the benefits and the drawbacks of new changes. For Korea, they were more focused on the drawbacks that they would get my opening up their country, than the benefit that they would achieve. It is a fact that Taewon-gun was one of the strongest leaders that Korea could have, and I believe his made the right decision at that point. Many things could have changed it Korea had opened up earlier, but I don’t’ think it would have made much different consequently.