Posted by Stephen Emlund in Discussion
The following is a guest post summary of CTP Week #2 by fellow CTP enthusiast, Jerry Willette:
“What would you do if you woke up and suddenly had no money, income, car, house, or someone to support you?” Such a deep thought provoking question and probably not something you’ve thought of before. That’s why we have the CTProject. When we’re here we’re able to think about ideas and situations that we don’t normally get the chance to think about. The second installment of the CTProject was entitled “Yours, Mine, and Ours.”
Our discussion started out with what we defined Justice as. For your knowledge Merriam-Webster dictionary defined Justice as “The maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.” Our group that night decided to put it into laymen terms and we defined it as “Getting what you deserved, be it good, or bad.”
Then we kept right on going and talked about the problem of poverty and how it is plaguing our world and must be stopped. This topic, so we realized, directly intertwined itself with almost every topic for the rest of the night. Be it, school dropouts, orphans, kids acting out, or the prison system.
Another big topic of the night was race and how “The battering ram of ‘race’ needs to stop.” Too often people bring up race as a reason for success or failure and it shouldn’t be. We are all born equal, just at different times and parts of the world and we need to remember that. We need to start treating each other as human beings and “Challenge injustice and value diversity.”
We also spent a lot of time talking about the younger generation and whether they were doing everything they could to better themselves and strive to be individuals that worked towards bettering humanity or whether they were just looking out for themselves and only looking for handouts. Then our discussion turned to the adults and we posed the question “Do we blame the children of the generation or do we blame the adults” who “broke the system”? What if the children are doing their best to be raised in “A broken system where the politicians aren’t helping at all”? Or on the other hand, do you take the outlook that “The government should not be your saving grace, don’t expect the government to save you.”?
So many different problems to discuss and so many different viewpoints to look from to analyze each problem. Here at CTProject we don’t just bring up problem after problem with no solution. We also talk about what solutions we can come up with to the problems that we have mentioned, because when it comes down to it “We have to change things, it’s up to us to change things!” The biggest agreement of the night was that “We need to be proactive instead of reactive and stop the problem not the symptom.” We can’t “wait for things to get horribly out of control and then try to band-aid them up and expect it to fix the problem.”
All around the night was filled with enlightening discussions and for the first time a pretty heated discussion arose about three quarters of the way through. Still, we all left with a more open outlook on problems and situations that different people face and deal with. So if you’re looking for a way to spend your night, then come on down to the next CTProject and add your input to the discussion. The point of the night isn’t to change your mind and make you agree with someone else’s point. The point is to give you a chance to see how other people think and to be able to voice your own opinion in an accepting environment.
