A book review on '有品社會' written by 黃昆嚴

I spent an afternoon to finish this book. The book is all right, not brings too much inspiration for me. However, I do agree with the some points mentioned by the author. The author basically talks about the several ethics issues in Taiwan. He thinks we Taiwanese people should aware the low ethical standard in our society and take actions to fix it which undoubtedly include to start the action from ourselves.

The author reviews the ethical issues from different parts of the society, including from our education system and policy, politicians, cultural tolerance and even from our public toilets. Firstly, let's talk about our education system. In our education system, the educators take too much notice on teaching skills instead of teaching humanization. Consequently, after graduation, people only know how to earn money but don't know how to respect other people's rights or treat people well and fairly. The author also said that sadly that on most universities' graduations, the host schools usually invite the speakers who are successful in their career to give graduates the lectures, but the universities are unlikely to invite someone who is famous for his/her humanization and earn his/her credits on promoting the fairness and humanization or doing the good for the people. The whole education system seems to send the wrong message to the students that the people who earn more money is more respectful.

Secondly, regarding to Taiwanese politicians. I can't be disappointed more on those people. Before the election, Most of them never give voters their structure political views. What they do just to blackmail other candidates or say which party they come from and if our people really love Taiwan, we should support them not other party's candidates. Ironically, most of our people support this kind of candidates. Some people even vote the candidate who came to their wedding parties or their relatives' funerals or something like that. Once those candidates been elected, they become our politicians who are in charge of our legislation and law system. How ridiculous that can be. No doubt our society is falling since we are leaded by those unqualified and shortsighted politicians.

Thirdly, cultural tolerance. Or I should put the words in other way - respect people who are different from you. We are not doing that very well. We people look down the people who are originally from South-East Asian countries. We can see the news reported that how our local people treated the foreign labors badly or even abuse their basic human rights. Those abuser turn our society became a living-hell to those foreign labors. I feel so shameful as the same nationality of those abusers. But honestly, sometimes I see those foreign labors on the train, I was thinking whether in my head I think they are as same as regarding to the human beings or I think I am superior than them. I tell myself that I need to watch out my unconsciousness and don't let them effect my behaviours and attitudes towards to those people.

Finally but lastly, the topic of public toilet. Probably some people wonder what that has anything to do with the ethic. But from the author's viewpoint, it does play a part in our ethic. When people have higher ethic, they would respect the public property more and they would urge government to build more aesthetic public infrastructures. We can apply this theory to the big infrastructure project, such as highway or a very very small project - the public toilet in the park. If the government can raise the standard on building the good public toilet for the public to use which should include the consideration for disabled people, then our people would learn to use the public property appropriately and carefully. The uglier property makes people carefully less.

In summary, after reading this book, I expect I can put my ethical thoughts into action. I want to be more like a whole-person, doing what is right and what should be done. In addition, I should be quitting judging others. Don't judge someone simply because they are shallow. Respect someone if who really knows and put the ethics into the actions. I know sometimes saying is much easier than doing it but at least have awareness on my wrong behaviours is a good head start.