Reflective Diary about Conflict – by Heni Fitria

In week 3, we talked about conflict including its meaning, types, and samples of conflict. In the slide that Dr Ahamad Faosiy presented, conflict revers to overt and coercive behavior initiated by one contending party against another. In my opinion, conflict is disagreement among parties involved because of misunderstanding, different ideas, disrespect, and many other causes. Regarding to what Dr Faosiy explained, conflict contains the nature and the areas. We cannot call it if both of them are not included. The nature and the areas of conflict are: 1. Parties in conflict : the people who involved in the conflict. 2. Issues in conflict : the problems that parties hold, the misunderstanding, the differences of perceptions, values, and beliefs. 3. Environment conflict : unstructured environment can determine our behaviour and broke every relation among people. Example: revolution. 4. Behavior in conflict :how we behave when we have a conflict in order to achieve its goals. Each party who involved can persuade other people to support his or her argument, so that he or she can be the winner. Conflict occurs in every part of the world. However, sometimes, many people prefer to avoid it, they just run away from that without any expectation to solve it. Somehow, I am sort of that person. When I am facing people who have prejudice behavior and always think negatively, I prefer to be easy going person and do not think of the conflict too much. Thus, the conflict will not affect my delighted life. In the other hands, we should have responsibility to solve any problems around us. But we should prevent any conflict before it happens, as a proverb said that prevention is better than cure or seeking the solution. There are many types of conflict, intra-state conflict, inter-state conflict, non-state conflict, political conflict, social-cultural conflict, economic conflict, territorial conflict, ethics conflict, religious conflict, and ethno-political conflict. One of the samples of economic issues is corruption. It has spread almost all parts of the world. Nowadays, people are blind when they face money. Especially parliaments or governments, without any concern, some of them just take money that actually belongs to the societies. Corruption can also affect the economic growth in the world. In my opinion, all of us have to be aware that we should not take anything which does not belong to us. And for the people who do corrupt and have been caught, they should be given appropriate penalties, it can be death penalty or they have to in a prison till the end of their life. In today’s societies, there are also so many children who cannot go to school or continue their study in a secondary school or a university. It is just because they are from underprivileged background and the government also does not even care and help them. I think, if the government cannot solve this problem, there must be many rich and generous people that can help the poor people without asking for the reward from the poor or force them to give the money back. As Tan Sri Mokhtar Al bukhary does, he gives free scholarship to us. I am really proud of him and I have expectation to be like him, a person who can help many people, especially in case of study, hunger, and standard of living. I agree with what Mr John said that globalization cannot be seen by only economical, but ideas are also included. In my opinion, cultural issues are a sort of complicated conflict because it comes from many differences of thought. Therefore, we should understand and respect each other. For example, intercultural marriage, the understanding and respect should be spread in the family. Otherwise, there will be conflicts among members. However, sometimes, creative thinking and precious skills from each person can create many advantages. Competition among culture is one of interested things. The competition is through the creativities and skills, such as, FIVA –world cup, McDonals/starbucks, fashion style competition, and etc. Those competitions are famous and give many benefits for people around the world. Besides that, there are health problems that make people suffering. For example, HIV/AIDS and avian influenza (H5N1), both of them are from 2 countries, but they influence other countries, thus the virus can spread to each part of the world slowly. In my opinion, the government should prohibit people to do bad things that can affect others (have free sex, distribute any drug, and etc.). There must be an inspection for each people before they visit another country. For the environmental problems, human can be the cause of it happen. Therefore, we should know whether what we have done will damage the earth or not. However, there is natural disaster which we cannot avoid, like tsunami happened in my country. Many victims are killed by it. In the other hands, there will be a mercy from Allah behind each test. After tsunami happened, the people there got many improvements, including the buildings and their standards of living have been improved as well. Allah always gives the best things for His creatures by a secret way. Nowadays, science and technological are more advanced. As in one of our classmates’ presentation, he said that very long time ago, people had to go by ferry or ship to reach another island or country and it also took some day’s journey. And there was no excellent telecommunication to communicate to other people who are far from them. They just used letter for their communication. However, now, because of advances in technological, we can do whatever we want easily and no need to take so long time. As I have done during I am in Malaysia, I always use internet to call even see my family by using Skype, yahoo messenger, or other programs/website. And there is no any payment for it. However, there are many disadvantages as well. Sometimes it gives bad impact for students, they spend their time only for chatting or go searching many useless website (illegal websites), and playing game. In my opinion, as a student, we have to manage our time properly in order to not disturb our study. Besides that, the government has to close all the website that should not be allowed and affect us in case of study.

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