Kuk Sool style forum

Discussion in 'Kuk Sool' started by Gary, Sep 8, 2010.

  1. Bruce W Sims

    Bruce W Sims Banned Banned

    Well, I certainly hope thast noone is shocked or surprised. As a person who has grown-up in the American culture I can testify to the willful blindness Americans turn on the rest of the World whether it concerns a social issue or not.

    Yes, we want our cell-phones with games and apps, and yes we want our gasoline so we can drive where we want---when we want----cuz we want. We want our houses full of stuff that is used once and forgotten about. What we DON'T want is to know the cost of getting such things made, transported and recycled around the World. We even want our promotions and belt ranks and standings---almost on demand--- and raise a stink when we don't get them. When we go overseas we are shocked that not everyone in the World speaks English!

    As person born in this country I can report that I am both embarrassed and appalled by what passes for social Consciousness in this country. FWIW.

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
     
  2. elliotmurphy

    elliotmurphy Valued Member

    Well Bruce, a lot of what you say is true, albeit an ugly truth. But not all of us act like that, when I have went to Europe I had a great time and made lots of friends because I observed the culture around ne and was as polite as I could be, I also avoided other Americans like the plague when I saw them acting like that. I am fluent in spanish and know some French and German, and I found that being polite and making the attempt made me welcome in most places. I did almost get into a fight one night in Frankfurt with san Irish guy but he was just going for it from the moment he found out I was American up until he found out my ancestry was Irish but the logic of a drunk, lol
     
  3. Bruce W Sims

    Bruce W Sims Banned Banned

    You pegged it, Elliot!!

    The trip I took to Korea to meet the folks at the YONG SUL KWAN was marred only by the one day I spent with some American and Canadian ex-pats who spent all of their time bitching about how goofy the Koreans were. Absent this or that, I had a fantastic time otherwise, and excepting only that single encounter! All I could think was that if the ex-pats were that unhappy why the hell didn't they just go home to their own countries!

    For myself I have found that being a good guest, doing one's best to experience a new culture on that culture's terms causes things to flow much more pleasantly.

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
     
  4. izumizu

    izumizu Banned Banned

    I would definately agree Bruce. We definately have our share of embarrasments to contend with, and I have experienced the same overseas, and witnessed it among American tourists who basically think they own the planet, and others should be at their beck and call, and basically ready to learrn and understand what it is these American tourists like, want, need and have to offer.

    On a different note, we also have our own share of inequities to deal with, as well as social inequialities. I don't believe we are such the great and free nation our early school textbooks would have us believe.

    And as for China and Confusionisim? I think it's a pretty big leap between the ideals of Confusionism and the ideology of Stalinism, Lenninism, and Communisim with their repressive practices being to blame.

    Anyways, just my thoughts.
     
  5. unknown-KJN

    unknown-KJN Banned Banned

    Well, not trying to justify the rudeness of those folks you described but from the experiences of people who work abroad that I've spoken with, it's a vast difference to be immersed in another culture than simply visiting a foreign nation while on holiday. Soaking up "culture" in an effort to learn more about how other people live is fine and dandy when you're headed home in a week or a month, OTOH, when you have to deal with ineptness (i.e. taking a backwards approach to doing things than how you would normally expect to approach them) on a day-to-day basis, CAN get awfully frustrating.
     
  6. Bruce W Sims

    Bruce W Sims Banned Banned

    Yeah.... point well taken. I honestly had not thought of it in quite that light. Makes me wonder about folks whose "dream experience" would be to go to Korea and learn their material "straight from the horse's mouth", as it were. Flipping the coin over, I also wonder if the host might get a little tired of having to adjust things in deference to their guest. Afterall, someone who is not grounded in the same culture might constantly commit little infractions to common social courtesies that the "natives" respect out of long-used habit.
    Good point! :cool:

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
     
  7. Pugil

    Pugil Seeker of truth

  8. Bruce W Sims

    Bruce W Sims Banned Banned

    In a very weird sort of way, this tends to parallel the arguements made about who is responsible for the drug trade. If you ask the people who grow the crops, they report that there is good money in growing drugs instead of some other crop. If you ask the people who process and transport the drugs they relate how there is a demand for the drugs and they are simply responding to the demand. If you ask the people who sell the drugs, they report that the drug trade provides profits out of all proportion to what people in their impoverished and under-employed condition might have otherwise. If you ask the people who use the drugs they will tell you that the body, and the life, are theirs to use or abuse as they choose.

    The only people who are making a huge noise about this are non-drug-users who have to deal with the collateral damage all the way down the line. Like any business, anywhere in the world, the people involved with the business from making to using will not be held accountable for their colateral damage.

    Hey!! How about if we send all of the heroin addicts to Afghanistan and all the coke-heads down to Peru and let them grow their own crops!! :bang:

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2011
  9. jamesdevice

    jamesdevice Jötunn

    two things you have to remember:
    1) for many of those oppressed workers, the conditions are better and higher paid than the alternative of agricultural labour. The situation closely echoes the British Georgian & Victorian-era experience of country dwellers flocking to the towns in search of regular income and better conditions - despite the insanitary hovels and terrible working conditions. Whatever many may think, the image of the happy healthy farm worker is a total illusion. Many (in the UK at least) were little more than walking skeletons. I am sure the situation in the "developing countries" is the same. I can't talk from personal experience of China or Korea, but can about India, where I've seen the conditions of workers in the chemical industry.

    2) this is all a direct result of the increasing trend to "globalisation" and "free trade". All those terms mean is that a business has the freedom to source at the cheapest possible level, while ignoring any element of regulation for safety or pollution. The River Thames gets cleaner and cleaner, while the Chinese and Indian environment suffers more and more
    As to the conditions, a few personal experiences come to mind
    One was a plant in China from which we were going to import a chemical for use in production of that famous "little blue pill" for the sexually unable. It was worth a fortune to us, but we had the sense to send a Chinese speaker out to inspect the plant a couple of weeks before the end-user did its own audit. Just as well we did, as the guy we sent found that the site was being run using Chinese military prisoners as slave labour, with no personal protective equipment. We pulled the plug. Good thatl we did - eight months later the site was washed away when the Yangtzee flooded
    Another one was when I needed a few kilogrammes of 2,6-Dinitroaniline. Making this is damned dangerous - nitrations explode (I can think of four chemical sites in the UK which were demolished by similar reactions which went wrong). Nobody in the UK would touch it due to safety regs, but we were offered it by a well-reputed Indian company who said they could, and that they had the gear to do it safely. We ordered. Six months later, after a series of delays they came clean. They had subcontracted the job to a guy to do in a tin shack with no safety equipment, and with no real knowledge of the danger. The reaction blew up, killing three and blinding two. And the thing was, the people we were dealing with didn't give a **** - to them the injured were expendable
    Another example was a site I inspected in Ahmdebad, India. That company specialised in Bromine chemistry. The workers were handling carboys of bromine and drum loads of flammable solvents with no protective equipment. They worked bare-chested, shorts for trousers and flip-flops for shoes. No masks or breathing gear. Ventilation was through unbolting a side off the glavanised building. Lighting was through simple incandescent light bulbs directly over the reactors and flammables. No flameproofing at all. I'm sure anyone else who has spent time out there on industrial sites will have seen similar.
    The problem with the last case was that we needed their chemicals. They were the only supplier available, they produced a key product and if we didn't act as their import agents they had another dealer already lined us to replace us. We either accepted them for what they were, or we were out of the game - with the knowledge that someone else WOULD import their stuff and sell it. We needed the money, so the decision became one of pure finances, but I hated doing it.

    Whats the moral? Well, these things happen because we can't see them HERE. Its out of sight, out of mind. we impose all kinds of Health, Safety and Environmental regulations on the things we make, but NOT on the things we use. Just where is the sense? Effectively what we end up doing is paying foreign countries to allow them to use OUR technology, while polluting their countries and killing their workers - while at the same time through the payments we facilitate their population explosions
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2011
  10. jamesdevice

    jamesdevice Jötunn

    These kind of problems exist in other parts of the Eastern economy
    I once spent a short while as a buyer in the garden furniture trade, and to say my eyes were opened is an understatement. China is involved in that business in a massive way, much of it with timber
    I ddn't think much about this, until a dealer from Vietnam (who was struggling to make his certified "sustainable" products seem cost effective) pointed out that China's exports of furniture from supposed Chinese forests represented three times that which was actually declared as felled. The implication being it was either felled illegally, or imported illegally from Burma. Besides which their annual shipments of supposed FSC furniture (Forest Sustainability Certified) actually exceeded the total amount of certified forest available for logging
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2011
  11. unknown-KJN

    unknown-KJN Banned Banned

    :topic: OFF-TOPIC :topic:


    I'll agree with your last statement, J-D, upon one condition: that the money is being used to help improve the health conditions of these third world countries. Obviously, a "population explosion" would be mighty difficult to foster if you had a bunch of "walking skeletons" as the progenitors, not to mention that the infant mortality (probably at a significantly high percentage given the unhealthy circumstances) could hinder any such rapid growth. But assuming that the people enjoy a modicum of health, and since they don't have the distraction of game-boys, cell-phones, etc., then IMO, engaging in "hide the one-eyed monster" is bound to consume the bulk of their "free time." :D
     
  12. Pugil

    Pugil Seeker of truth

    Yes, that is indeed true. By the end of the 1800's, 80 per cent of England's population lived in cities, mainly due to the Industrial Revolution bringing people in to work in factories, etc.

    But just because we used to send little boys up chimneys, in our dim and distant past, etc., doesn't mean that we should allow and encourage the same sorts of wrongs to happen again in emerging nations. Otherwise, we might as well reintroduce slave labour into this country [and I'm talking only of Britain at this point]... Oh no, wait a minute, that already happened with the Cockle-pickers, and the Poles who clean up crap, and other such jobs, because our own people on benefits feel that sort of work is beneath them!
     
  13. SeongIn

    SeongIn Banned Banned


    Not singling you out Pugil, but this type of convenient thinking applied to some things then the other type thinking of "it's not our place to tell other countries what to do" is somewhat hypocritical. Same situation as "we should stay out of the politics/wars of other countries" then later saying "we should intervene when a country goes to far" (in our or some other county's opinion).

    Either the world wants and accepts the U.S. or any particular country as a police power or they don't. They can't eat their cake and have it too.

    BTW, "have their cake and eat it too" is incorrect.
     
  14. jamesdevice

    jamesdevice Jötunn

    I wasn't trying to justify it: just trying to show that by the local standards these exploited people are actually better off... Thats the fundamental contradiction that underlies this whole issue: quality of living (and life) is relative, not absolute. And THATS one reason why when any country does try to act as a global police power inevitably it hits a comprehension gap with the country it is trying to police. Obviously not the whole story, but part of it
    However it doesn't avoid my main point: exporting of these jobs to the third world is wrong: it costs us, and diverts them from the real job of building their own infrastructure.
     
  15. Pugil

    Pugil Seeker of truth

    I'm sure you weren't JD, and I apologise if my post made you think that. I was just musing the issue over, 'out loud', so to speak. And I certainly have nothing against the Poles if they want to come over to the UK in order to better their lot. Many of them start at the bottom of the ladder too, by doing jobs that work-shy Brits on benefit payments won't get their sorry arses out of bed to do. In the end, a lot of them work their way up into jobs of a higher stature, at which point, the shyster Brits complain that the foreigners are coming over here and taking their jobs. Not that a lot of them have ever held down a job for more than a few days at best anyway.

    They talk about their 'entitlements', even though they, and often their fathers, never had a job in the first place. It's not their fault of course. When politicians dream up schemes that make it financially more beneficial not to work in the first place, what are people going to do? And when those same politicians [and they're all the bl**dy same when it comes down to it!] allow our own industries to be run down by supporting the idea of having stuff produced in countries with appalling human rights records, what more can anyone say?

    Actually, I can say more. One of the major reasons that industries started to decline in this country, was after the workers — aided and abetted by their Trade Unions — became too greedy for their own good. At which point, a lot of big companies, and the politicians, realised that it was cheaper to get stuff made abroad and imported. And whilst all that may sound a bit like I'm contradicting my own argument, I will emphasise that I have nothing against imports that are produced by people who are being paid a fair wage, whilst working for companies that provide them with good working conditions, and a healthy and safe environment.

    As to someone saying that to 'have one's cake and eat it too' is incorrect. Who says? It not a quotation attributable to anyone in particular. And who cares anyway? Why the need to be so pedantic? The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, & Quotation lists it as being: 'You cannot have your cake and eat it', and that's good enough for me. I couldn't care less what the Korean version is!
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2011
  16. Pugil

    Pugil Seeker of truth

    And before anyone tries to pick me up on that last sentence:
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw"]YouTube - David Mitchell Writes - Dear America...[/ame]
     
  17. Bruce W Sims

    Bruce W Sims Banned Banned

    I guess since we are already waaay off track I'll throw this itty-bitty "entitlement story" out there.

    Some of you folks may have heard that north of me in the US State of Wisconsin there is a battle going on about "collective bargaining". If you listen to the Unions tell it, the State is trying to undercut the Union right to bargain collectively. This is a very interesting position to talk about because there is a huge entitlement piece that goes along with "collective bargaining".

    Put simply, if one group of a collective gets a perk, then EVERYBODY gets a perk. In this way school teachers can't get a raise unless every mother's son of that bargaining unit gets the same thing. The odd thing is that a bargaining unit may be made up of a huge cross section of workers who only have the union in common. So you might have city delivery, secretaries, administrators and teachers all in the same bargaining unit. One doesn't get a raise unless they ALL get a raise.

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
     
  18. Pugil

    Pugil Seeker of truth

    Hi Bruce,

    Yes, but they also have to pay the same price as each other for their groceries and fuel, etc. Speaking of fuel... I put some diesel in my car earlier this evening and it cost me 135.9p a litre. No other product in the UK (at least) can be sold in .9 of a penny, but forget that little gripe of mine for a moment and let's consider what that would be in US Dollars guy: EIGHT DOLLARS THIRTY ONE A GALLONS! And you guys thought you had it tough!
     
  19. elliotmurphy

    elliotmurphy Valued Member

    Yeah pugil, gas prices were awful when I was in Europe, I remember for us here gas is up and expensive although not as high as it is where u are.
     
  20. izumizu

    izumizu Banned Banned

    OUCH!!!
     

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