In "The Clan of One-Breasted Women" Terry Tempest Williams discusses her opinion that nuclear bomb testing in the 50's and 60's is to blame for the prevalence of cancer in her family. While she makes a good argument about the possibility of this happening, I find it difficult to believe that every occurrence of cancer in her family can be blamed on this. When she finds out her dream of the bright light is true her father tells her "The bomb. The cloud. We were driving home from Riverside, California. You were sitting on your mother's lap. She was pregnant." In the beginning she blames 7 deaths on the nuclear testing, although her mother was the only death that was in the car at the time. She never tells us how far the family lived from the testing, only that at this time they were traveling.
Williams makes a good argument about having blind faith in government and religion. She says, "Tolerating blind obedience in the name of patriotism or religion ultimately takes our lives." It is always important to remember that having faith in something is a good thing, but it is never good to follow something that you cannot make sense of on your own. Do people today seem more inclined to blindly follow what they are instructed to do?
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I would like to believe that as a whole people are more inclined to follow their own ideas more now than in the past. But there are always afew who choose not to go their own way, but we need followers (and I'm using that word loosly) in this nation also to keep things balanced. One thing president Obama mentions that gave me this idea is when he said that america has, is, and can continue to change for the better. It takes people who are willing to stand up and not follow to cause change in a nation. He says "what we have already acheived gives us hope... for what we can and must acheive tomrrow." This quote really captures my point that people are willing to change for the better, because what happens in the past ussually repeats, to an extent, in the future.
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