60-80mph. Making a difference.

    For the majority of us who drive on a daily basis, the urge to drive over the speed limit have gotten the best of our good judgment at least once in our life. A public service advertisement that was shown in class showed the limp and broken body of a young girl and her teddy bear. The scene was a profound strike to almost anyone who was not expecting such a direct portrayal of the dead, especially a young girl. The ad then proceeded to reverse time and showed the broken bones of the girl cracking back into place until the girl was back in the middle of the road. A message then appeared on the screen, providing information about the vast difference in surviving a car hit at 60 and 80mph.

    With the unexpected execution of the ad, the limp body of the young innocent girl practiced the 'Cultivation Theory'. Sometimes reading news of tragic accidents is not enough, seeing a 'dead body' albeit an acted out one, especially one that we can relate to really does make a difference. Even after two weeks or so since I saw the ad, I can still remember the scenes of the ad including the feeling I got when I saw it. It really did make a difference.

    That being said, if the cultivation theory can have such an impact on human beings, how else has the media shape this world we live in? The media practically revolves around us and is involved in everything we do. Would the world be a much different place without the media? Have we been duped into believing that North Korea really is the unpredictably governed and poor country it is portrayed to be? Is there not a different side to it? As a matter of fact there is. There is the incident when North Korean soldiers defected and left for the South. Or the story of the citizens just working hard living hand to mouth everyday barely scraping through.

    Despite these stories of ordinary citizens like you and me, there are still those among us who thinks we should just 'nuke' the country and be done with it. It scares me to see that sometimes they actually really mean it and think that the US should just be rid of that country or any other country it may be at war with. Perhaps they were probably just too ignorant to realize the many people who are undeserving of such a death lived in North Korea as well. Fanatics and nut heads certainly do exist in that country, but so do young children and honest working people. Either way, we have come to rely on the media too much. Time and again, many of us have failed to think critically of the messages portrayed by the media. As we sit in front of the 'Idiot Box' and let it do the thinking for us, we pass ill rationalized judgment on the world to both our own and societies doom.