Conflict
Sample 1: personalised beginning about clash of ideas, views and values (Galileo)
Last week, my family and I participated in the march to Parliament House to protest against the Government’s plan to slash the renewable energy targets. Motivated by recent claims that the earth may be inhabitable by 2050, we, and thousands of others, voiced our protest at the cuts. We believe that global warming is the “greatest moral challenge of our time”. It seems immoral that there are climate-deniers and apologists for the mining industries who believe that coal is the best guarantee for a prosperous future.
Link to prompt: Evidently, each generation has its challenges, as new ideas and theories clash. For the past 30 years scientific theory has challenged the status quo. This sets up a powerful divide between groups in society.
(round up your essay: So we marched for a cleaner and brighter world. We also marched because we believe that it is important to voice your opinion and defend your values, for the sake of all those in the firing line, who have already suffered so much.)
Sample; personal for war stories (sticking to core values) (Quiet American/Stack/Paradise Road)
Last week, my brother and I participated in a student rally against the Abbott government’s decision to return to war. Just because Iraq asked us, none of us thought was sufficient justification to meddle yet again in another country’s affairs, and not one as complicated as the Middle East. It was never our war, and irrespective of how barbaric the Sunni jihadists are, war should never be the solution. Not then, not now. Besides there are troubling reports that we are indirectly supporting Shiite militias that are just as barbaric as the Sunnis. (But of course that’s just one of many inconvenient truths that the Government will never tell us.)
Link to prompt: in such cases we believe that it is important to take a principled stance and remain true to your core pacifist values. Conflict should not be solved by aggression, by force or by brutality. Such an approach stokes the flames and creates more problems than it solves. Certainly, there are times when compromise is inevitable, and indeed the warring stakeholders must find a compromise to ensure a long-lasting solution. But violence is not one of them.
HOW TO USE: SAMPLE BEGINNING:
It is important to compromise: one should not get involved; one should face conflict head on etc
Last week, I decided to join a few of my university friends who were protesting against the Abbott government’s decision to return to war. My grandfather was a war veteran and lost his arm during the Vietnam way, so I hated the thought of young adults my age fighting another country’s war. And besides, just because Iraq asked us, none of us thought was sufficient justification to meddle in another country’s affairs, and not one as complicated as the Middle East. My friends and I were of the view that no matter how barbaric the Sunni jihadists/terrorists are, war should never be the solution. Besides there are troubling reports that we are indirectly supporting brutal Shiite militias in the process. It is once again a war without end, violence leaving nothing but futile footprints.
Link to prompt: in such cases we believe that it is important to take a principled stance and remain true to your core pacifist values. Conflict should not be solved by aggression, by force or by brutality. Such an approach stokes the flames and creates more problems than it solves. Certainly, there are times when compromise is inevitable, and indeed the warring stakeholders must find a compromise to ensure a long-lasting solution. But violence is not one of them.
During war time there are numerous competing interests it is better to stay neutral. This view is supported by many of those who opposed Australia’s involved in the Iraq war in 2003. In many ways, interfering in another country’s political affairs leads to far greater catastrophe. (quote from an expert about that war – Middle East correspondent)
Similarly, this is Thomas Fowler’s position in The Quiet American. Graham Greene endorses his view that it is better to remain a bystander, especially when it concerns the affairs of another country.
conflict: / whose reality
Personal one for David
For a few years now, the tension has been mounting between my parents and our neighbour over the dilapidated fence. My parents do not like fences and refuse to replace it. I’’m not sure whether they’re against being hemmed in, or against the increasingly threatening demands of the neighbour. By stealth one night, he ripped it down and issued an ultimatum; the fence was going to be rebuilt whether we liked it or not. Somehow, during the simmering tension, I felt like the narrator in Robert Frost’s poem, who was of the view, “something there is that doesn’t love a wall” and yet the neighbour adamantly insisted “good fences make good neighbors”.
Link to prompt; Evidently, the fence reflected our opposing views to property, to nature and even to life itself. Likewise, in “Mending the Wall”, Robert Frost depicts the clash between a conservative-minded neighbour and a broad-minded progressive neighbour . This clash is often typical whenever change threatens the status quo or when two world views clash.
OR: / Intertwine in essay: Symbolically the neighbour’s territorial view of the world focuses on differences and separation, whilst I would like to think that we are more community-oriented. This clash is often evident between the interests of the powerful and the powerless or between victims and oppressor, or between the progressives and the conservatives.
Finish with another comment on the different competing world views.
Also familiarise yourselves with a different soldier story as a back-up. There is definitely one for most prompts. I’ve included some link sentences. See soldier stories.
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