Beat The Problems out of Society

When I first heard the strained voice of Bob Dylan meaningfully informing me that “the Times they ar a Changin'”, my whole world was sent into a spin. I was 13 years old at the time and the only previous album I had owned was a poor excuse for music by Averil Lavigne (how embarrassing), so naturally when I first heard Dylan my mind was blown! You could hear he wanted to send a message to the world and to change the way people thought, he was singing for a cause. I delved deeper into the genius that is bob Dylan and discovered a whole generation of people using their talents in order to send a message and change ways of the world, people like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Joan Baez were all using their talents in order to create change and they were using their personas in order to create awareness, it was not only the first time I had been made aware of problems that occurred outside my own little world and my own culture, but it was also the first time I had seen that one person can in fact make a difference and bring about change for a better world.

Dylan, Baez and Ginsberg became major players in the anti-war movements  and pro-equality movements of the late 60's, they had managed to influence a whole generation of people into taking a stand and enforcing change for the better in the world. Although Dylan and his beat friends were relevant well before my time, it still made me aware that there were some serious problems in America and all over the world, and to my disdain they had helped me discover that these problems were still present more than 40 years after Dylan first sang out that the times they were a changing. While race inequality and war are still major problems in the world, The way Dylan used song to enforce change and create awareness and Ginsberg used poetry to protest changed the way of protesting and music for years to come.

 

Today you can see Dylan and the beat generations influences being extended further than just poetry and folk music and being carried over  in to musical movements such as hip-hop . Today you can hear in hip-hop songs the use lyrics and rhymes being used to create awareness and enforce change for a better America and essentially a better world, targeting a younger generation and focusing on relevant inequality issues of race, Gender and Sex.

Music has a special ability to make people connect despite cultures, countries, gender or even beliefs, it has the ability to create awareness and connect the world. Not only can music change opinions, emotions and even lives, but music can to change the world!

Religion and its role in society

As a Baptised atheist with beliefs which go against the religion to which I was baptised I find it hard to understand why, firstly my agnostic mother and my atheist father would have their three children baptised, and secondly why religion of any belief is ever present in politics and seen as a dominant ideology in many countries’?

When prompted as to my baptism and why it occurred my mother clarified that “it was just a family thing more so than a religious thing.  I was baptized, my mother was baptized and so on and so forth”,  I feel used, my body was offered to be engulfed in water to pledge my “obedience” and “allegiance” to Jesus Christ, a fictitious character, without me having any say in it…just to please my grandma.

In Australia we have the right to religious freedom allowing Australian citizens to practice a religion of their choosing however they also have to accept that “although they are free to practice their religion, they must accept the nation’s legal or traditional preference for another faith” (Trofin, L, & Tomescu, M 2012) begging the question, why is religion present in politics’ at all if we have a right to choose against that? And this is not only an issue in Australia but multiple democratic nations around the globe; it would seem that Religion is an opposing force against social and cultural globalisation, and for that matter, peace.

It is easy to see how in the bronze ages that religion was necessary, to set needed ground rules so to speak (i.e. the Ten Commandments) however those rules have been established and now the use and necessity of religion is hard to see in any realm of living.

For as long as there are conflicting religions, cultures and beliefs around the world is social and cultural globalisation even possible?

No. Religion is becoming less about preaching equality and peace but proving that their individual religion is the best, it is driving communities, countries and the world apart and “The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world actually could come to an end” (Bill Maher, 2008).

Maher B 2008, Religulous, Documentary, distributed by Lions Gate Entertainment, USA

Trofin, L, & Tomescu, M 2012, 'SOLIDARITY AND SOCIETY IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION', Contemporary Readings In Law & Social Justice, 3, 2, pp. 236-241