zandd.com: You know, just about every God-fearing individual today gripes about what's wrong with our society today. Many talk about it, but most of them never really do anything about it. I happen to be one of those people who happen to gripe about things but never do anything about it. I can say that I am a student studying in college right now, having no time whatsoever to take up a crusade to change society from its ills. Yet, it could be considered a pathetic excuse to many because you have the freest time as a student and not as a working individual. With that said and done I would like to list the ten things that bug me most about society.

1) So much is being talked about having sex these days. It seems that people have forgotten how special lovemaking is and how it should be practiced between two people who will spend the rest of their lives together. Recently watching the idiotic debacles in the Jerry Springer Show, whether it is real or just acting, men and women are having multiple sex partners and also engaging in premarital sex. Many no longer feel that it is an issue anymore to have premarital sex and have multiple sleep partners. Cheating on a spouse has also become increasingly frequent, showing how much society has morally degraded. In this day and age, I wonder if any one of these people engaging in these adulterous and sinful acts have any realization that they are setting their lives and livelihoods on line for their behavior. Many problems are caused because of these damned unions, as many of you already know. Sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS/HIV have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. Abortions have also been committed, often repeatedly, by shortsighted and irresponsible people who have sex with whoever they feel they have a lust for, portraying an animal that only goes after its desires instead of clearly thinking about its consequences. There are also teenage pregnancies that often destroy a young woman's life without the male taking responsibility for his idiotic actions. These are just several problems of many linked to people who do not know what it means when it comes to sex being a sacred act between two people.

2) The problem of drug use has been well documented since the days when the Opium consumed China trade in the 19th Century. In fact, I am sure, many of you have been overwhelmed by the flow of information about the harmful usage of drugs. Yet, there are people who have to try and use drugs anyway, even though they may know that it's harmful. Some are ill informed that certain drugs that they use are not as harmful and they can do it without it affecting their lives too much. Some of the drugs that many people underestimate are:

Ecstasy
Marijuana
Cigarettes
Alcohol
Methamphetamine

The usage of these drugs has been increasing everywhere in America and has contributed to the destruction of many peoples' lives, health, or both. As I mentioned in my past article, the use of ecstasy does affect your short-term memory and does cause you to have verbal speech problems and other cognitive skills attributable to it. The use of marijuana fries your short-term memory that could shorten an otherwise bright academic career. Cigarettes, when taken during middle school and high school, can lead to lung cancer and other cancer of the throat and mouth in your forties. There is much financial hardship for you and your family in trying to fight these kinds of cancer, which runs in the hundred of thousands of dollars in payments. Excessive use of alcohol can lead to brain damage and also cause alcoholic addiction that can clearly lead to nowhere. And meth causes environmental hazards everywhere and dangerous explosions that can kill the person making them. Many of us already know what these drugs can do to us. Yet, why are drugs still being a problem? Why are so many young people taking up these drugs and believing in rumors that aren't true at all? Do they not know that drugs lead to the loss of productivity to a country and cause the degeneration of families? Why are they continuing to take drugs even with all its consequences?

3.) Why are divorces being an accepted norm for a family? Since when did divorce become such an "honorable" or "normal" act to commit? I am sure there are reasonable divorces that should occur should there be an abusive spouse in the family or a drug using spouse in the family. However, I found out that many divorces occur simply because they did not envision their lives to be this way when getting married. Many of these divorces occur because of pathetic reasons, often stemming from one's own selfish individual tastes and/or feelings. It is ridiculous to hear what many people say the reasons for their divorces are. One woman writes that she divorced because she wanted to have a career or that he can't hang out with his friends anymore after being married. I often wonder if they realize how their children feel about the divorce and what negative impacts it has upon them. I am not trying to say that a woman should sacrifice herself to taking care of the children; both the man and the woman must make sacrifices to help keep the marriage working for the sake of their children. If they did not want to do this, why did they marry in the first place? And of course, there are many repeat marriages by divorcees who often end up divorcing again and again. I say to this, if you can't handle marriage, do not marry at all. You are only causing a lot of pain and suffering for the children of society who have to call you their parents. I think it's a shame to have a divorce for these mere childish reasons.

4) So many students these days study for the sake of earning money and becoming rich. Many do not have a passion about protecting the environment or working for the cause of the poor. Many college students, if you ask them, want to graduate, get a good job, and earn lots of money so they can sport a big house and a couple of Mercedes. Rarely do I hear someone say that they are going to graduate so that they can go into the Peace Corps to help people in need in third world countries. Many of these students seem to study for the sake of themselves mostly, instead of others. Hey, I myself have been guilty of it once, so I don't blame many of you for being like that, but think about it. Is life just about satisfying one's own desires and appetites? Shouldn't life being a bit more meaningful?

5) I hear many incoming college freshmen saying they want do this they want do that. Usually they want to study to become doctors, lawyers, and engineers, fields that require lots of time, money, investment, and effort. But a few months later, many of them give up those dreams; some of who continue to deny that they do not qualify till the end. Why is this so? This is because many forget that hard work must follow to become a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. Tremendous amount of effort must be made in order for a student to get into the field he/she wants, but many fall into the party crowd, drinking and dating, and many neglect to put much effort into their studies. I know many of our parents nag at us for not doing our homework, but think about it for a minute. Over 70% of would be engineers drop out of that major before their third year. Many who want to get into med or law school find out that they need at least a 3.5GPA and a score of blah blah blah to get into a graduate worth investing in. So where do many of these people end up? They end up going into fields that they do not want to get into. The reason? Many of them did not put the effort into studying. This is especially true for Korean Americans, who are one of the biggest groups to get into college, but one of the smaller groups who get into grad schools or graduate with a comp sci or engineering degree. The bottom line is, if you have big goals about your life, make the effort and stop getting into these three traps that many Korean American students fall into that kill their big ambitions in college: partying, sleeping, and dating.

6) There is an increasing rise of hate crimes in this country against Asian Americans. A smart alec may point out that perhaps this is because Asians are becoming more visible in America. But as studies have shown, hate crimes committed against Asians have increased significantly more than the rise in numbers of Asian Americans in this country. Studies have also shown that hate crimes are increasing in many of the college campuses across America. What is the point in saying this? My point is that there are many Asian Americans out there who completely underestimate the racism that exists for Asians in America today. I hear countless times in the forums on the internet and in the real world among my class mates saying that this is the 21st century and racism isn't much of a threat anymore. What a naive way of looking at the world. Although many Asians in America have an optimistic view about race relations in America, the incidents that are occurring throughout America are portraying a very different picture of what race relations are really like for Asian Americans. Watch out for more occurrences soon. I have a feeling that racism in this country is far, I mean far, from being over.

7) You know, as an Asian American male, I feel as if I am non-existent in this country. It feels like I am being erased in this country where Asian males are the last things that should be seen on TV. You see a rise in Asian American females on TV these days only with white men, but you don't see any Asian men at all. Although we do have a few Asian men in leading roles, like Chow Yun Fat and Jackie Chan, many play into stereotypical roles that are supposedly common in this country. I could go on and on about this subject, but many of you probably already know about it so I will end it here.

8) These days Hollywood really disappoints me, along with the many other media outlets that represent the American culture. I see an over-representation of specific groups of people *ahem* whom I am really tired of seeing these days. I do not feel that they represent me at all and I am consciously running away from American movies, films, and dramas, to Korean movies, films, and drama that I can relate to. Don't you all notice how none of the stuff that comes out of the movies or dramas has any relevance to a typical Asian American life? I sure don't. Tell me if you see it anywhere.

9) Have we become a society of blamers or what? I also have to admit that I tend to be a blamer as well. I try my best not to blame others but to blame myself for the problems I created, but as many others do, I try to point the blame on others. If I got a ticket by a cop I would make the excuse and put the blame that I did not clearly see the stop sign and that they should let me go because it's the city's fault that caused me to violate traffic safety rules. You can also see this among many of our public and prominent figures in our society today. I am sure many of you will grudgingly admit that you'd find it much easier for you to find a scapegoat instead of blaming yourself for the problems you've caused. Somehow, our society needs to start taking responsibility for its own actions instead of trying to find a scapegoat to stick it to.

10) Am I just imagining things or have we become a much more isolated society? Many of us are usually on our computers, typing away to people whom we've never met before. It's as if we are talking to a box and living a life of fantasy by clinging to our computers. When was it that many of us, alone in our rooms, kept to ourselves before a computer screen? Aren't we, as humans, a sociable being meant to mingle with each other? Don't you think that our lack of human interaction may cause social problems we've never faced before? Many of us are virtual hermits, each in their own little world in one of millions of different chat rooms and forums that dot cyberspace. This gives me an eerie feeling.

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