5th Ted Talks

Politics and Religion are Technologies 

                                                                                      by Noah Feldman

A Summary

Noah Feldman insists that people cannot define the right way of looking at  political systems and religion since both they are just a kind of technology and he refers democracy and Islam to explain this . First, Feldman says Democracy is set of technology that spread power source to the public and can be reconstructed by small group such as  government. Furthermore, Islam was interpreted by small extremely radical group of people, so people should acknowledge about Islam not to misunderstand. Islam’s political technology is salvation,preveinting or saving someone from danger and the slogan of Islam brings many questions about their social, political, personal, spiritual sides. They engage the world as one accomplish desirable goal such as peace, justice, equality. Moreover, in the world of Muslim, democracy exists, and they leaders are elected by the public’s respects and belief, so people cannot define that democracy in Islam differ from the United States’. However, the leaders in Islam often feel that the United States does not respect their politic and democracy. The speakers says fear people in US go through after or about coming  war is appropriate reaction, many people in Islam  do not want war as well. He maintains people should recognize both democracy and Islam can be manipulated and can cause positive outcomes.
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          A response  

          I chose this topic since my topic for a debate was religion, and I expected learning more from this lecture. I think he gave me a new way to think of politics, and I learned democracy or some political system can be formed by their own tradition, value, and religion. As a matter of the fact, I tended to regard the United States as a standard of democracy and a country which have desirable political systems. While preparing debates, and listening to this ted talks, they realized that the main reason people feel fear and conflict is ignorant and misunderstanding about other culture and religion rather than a variety of religion, political system , or culture . People tend to naturally regard their one as the most reasonable and appropriate and regard others’ as inappropriate and unreasonable. I hope the main reason South Korea and North Korea go though conflict is misunderstanding between us, but unfortunately, I think it’s not a key reason we conflict.  

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http://www.ted.com/talks/noah_feldman_says_politics_and_religion_are_technologies.html