Many people argue on one side that science is harmful to society, providing examples such as the atomic bomb, killing animals during experiments and eugenics in Nazism. However, I disagree that science threatens civilisation, because people harness science and hence should be responsible for their use of science. The nature of science is to benefit society, which I will discuss later.

To start off, science is invented by people for people. Consider the following scenario. A serial killer is captured by the police after his murder attempt. The police subsequently recover a machine gun used to kill the victim. Should the gun or the killer be sentenced? The answer is obvious, as it would be absurd to sentence the gun. In parallel motion, humans that harness science to harm the society should be blamed, and not science. Therefore, the many examples that are summoned to blame science for today's insecure society are basically non-examples. As such, instead of investigating the defects of science, we should dwell on the human character and examine its innate evil.

Back in the primitive times where people lived in caves, civilisations already began to attack each other with bones and sticks. These bloody battles already showed the savagery present in all humans, which is also discussed in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies'. Indeed, it is the savagery in us that is a menace to civilisation. In addition, phenomena such as global warming are a dire consquence of human's over-exploitation of technology, best characterized in the astronomical number of plastic bags that came to waste and the light that is turned on every minute, every second. However, some people may argue that since we know the bloody desires harboured deep in our soul and the greedy nature of humans to over exploit scientific achievements, should science not be discovered to suppress these urges such that minimal damage to civilisation is achieved? To me, this argument serves to utterly avoid the harmful effects of science. We have always been told to face our problems and not to avoid it, which can be similarly applied in this case. Instead of banning the improvement of research, we should rather learn how to use science to suppress human's innate nature to exploit and to kill. In this way, we are truly facing the problem. Moreover, we can introduce awards to encourage people to better utilise science, which many countries are seeking to do now. Examples include the Shaw Prize which awards researchers who benefit the society in their fields of research.


Nevertheless, some passionate enviromentally friendly people may point out that progress in medical science has brought about the longetivity of human life and more births than before, thus using the earth's resources more rapidly than before and threatening the civilisation to a lack of resources. However, Soviet Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev once proposed the Kardashev Scale in 1964, which measures the technological advancement of a civilisation in terms of how much resource it can gather. According to this scale, as we advance in techonology, we can harness more resources, soon approaching Type I which can harness all the resources on Earth. As such, rather than minimizing science such that less resources are used, we should be more optimistic and use science and techonology to allow us to harness more energy for more people. In a nutshell, we should harness science effectively and not ban the progress of science.

Most researchers from past to present were not innately evil, if not to benefit the society in their research. For example, Albert Einstein hated his invention of nuclear energy which ultimately lead to the making of the atomic bomb. To begin with, his intention of this invention was to benefit society. Moreover, after the testing of the atomic bomb, the researchers involved in the Manhattan Project felt uneasy. For example, Robert Oppenheimer quoted, "I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds". This also supports that humans are responsible for the misuse of science and the blame should not be put on science. Hence, the nature of science is to benefit society. However, this rationale is upset by a few dark-hearted people who aim to destroy their only home planet.

In conclusion, science is not a menace to civilisation; rather, human's innate evil, savagery and the tendency to exploit causes them to wrongfully harness science such that these people become a menace to civilisation. Nonetheless, this does not mean that we should ban the progress of science but we should use science to suppress these urges and to construct a society where science is used rightfully.

Pornography has been stereotyped as intruding one's privacy and causing the harmed to feel sexually degraded for the rest of their lives. According to Wikipedia, it is the explicit depiction of sexual subject matter with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer. However, through all these years, the nature of pornography is restricted to such definitions.

Believe it or not, if we trace back to Genesis in the Bible, Adam and Eve were forbidden by God to eat from the tree of knowledge, but they were coaxed by Satan in the end to consume the apple from that tree. Instantly, they realised that they were naked and hid in the bushes away from God. At this point, for me, I can infer that the nature of pornography lies in the acceptance of the degree of nudity of the majority of humans. This indeed gives rise to the larger capacity for nudity in the West than in the East, since the more 'open' Western society views nudity as an art as depicted in some paintings, while the more conservative Eastern society views nudity as degrading the privacy of the human. By logical extension, since pornography is mostly concerned with one's 'private parts', the term 'private parts' is also highly arbitrary. In ancient China, a woman will feel embarrassed for the rest of her life if her bare feet were revealed to a man other than her husband. For those women, her feet are also part of her private parts. Moreover, in the Muslim societies, women have to wear a tudong, which is a headscarf, to ensure modesty and not arouse sexual fantasies in men when seen. In other words, the head is a private part in Muslim societies since men get sexually interested when they see the Muslim female's head. Thus, 'private parts' are centred on the society's definition and vary in different societies. In conclusion, the nature of pornography depends on the definition of 'private parts' in different societies and the degree of how society accepts such 'private parts'.

Recently, different societies have debated on how much pornography should be censored. In Hong Kong, after the Edison Chen photo scandal. In this photo scandal, actress Gillian Chung was the spotlight of the media. She had also resorted to withdrawing from the entertainment field after pictures of her nudity floated massively on the Internet. This gave rise to a proposal that netizens below the age of 18 was to be barred access to pornographic websites, which had widespread approval from parents in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, not all societies can employ this proposal wholesale. Therefore, it depends on the society's definition of the nature of pornography that controls how much pornography should be censored and whether pornography should even be censored. For me, I feel that there are a few factors that determine if pornography should be censored and how much if it is to be censored.

Firstly, society is made up of citizens in a country and hence any policy that society passes embodies the mutual agreement of the members in that society and also benefits them. As a result, the degree of pornography censorship is highly based on society's acceptance of it. As we investigate further into why the Hong Kong public decided to propose that children under the age of 18 be barred access to pornographic materials, we understand that the majority of them define pornography as material that is only suitable for individuals aged 18 and above. Minors are not mentally mature enough to control themselves over porn addiction, hence should not be given the opportunity to arouse their sexual tendencies. Moreover, Muslims are highly conservative due to their religious beliefs and hence all forms of pornography should be censored almost fully as an answer to the stand that the Muslim society takes.

Secondly, we must also consider the impact of such censorship in this area radiantly. Such impacts include economic, social and international relations, since these directly impact the members in the society. Negative economic and social impact on the public is self-evident and if international relations decline, economic and social impact would be exponential. Therefore, it is important to study how these three items affect the society. For China where the porn industry takes the lead, if porn were to be banned completely, the economic impact would be devastating. Hence, China has to consider such impact if it advocates that porn is to be banned. On the other hand, if banning porn means a reduction in free speech for some societies, continuing with such action means that society has compromised free speech for a porn-free society. This is not acceptable as human rights include social rights. Such societies can either persuade its members to compromise free speech or to abolish their plan to ban porn completely. To put it in a nutshell, the congress should achieve a mutual agreement with the public. Finally, if a country's partners are largely very 'open', it should not ban porn completely since it would affect relations with such partners, thus affecting trade, which gives rise to economic and social impacts. Such societies then have to make sure that they do not compromise international and regional relations with a porn-free country. Therefore, whether porn should be censored or not depends on whether the society accepts it and whether the economic, social and international relations are compromised for this cause.

In conclusion, the nature of porn depends how society defines and approves of 'private parts', while whether pornography should be censored depends on how much society benefits from such censorship. If it outweighs the compromises, then it should be banned; if it does not, then society has to consider strategies to achieve a unanimous agreement with the public.