As mentioned in the previous blog, The USA faces many social
problems such as education, discrimination, healthcare, unemployment and drugs.
Rome also went through similar problems to these ones.
One of Roma’s biggest social issue was discrimination.
Social status was very clear, and it was mostly determine by wealth. As Juvenal
cites in his work, that “A man's word is believed in exact proportion to the
amount of cash which he keeps in his strong-box”. Basically, if a person was
poor with word was worth nothing, and thus they were discriminated.
Education was another important issue. Not everybody has
access to receive an education. Great scholars had the means to learn from the
best, but education was not relevant for everybody.
Juvenal speaks about drunk people when he says “Your drunken
bully who has by chance not slain his man passes a night of torture”. Similar
to drugs, the body is being tortured and harmed by consuming this substances.
At the beginning of the satire, Juvenal talks about “no
reward for labour”. Which implies that somehow there were issues with unemployment.
As mentioned, social classes were well defined, and working hard didn’t help to
get out of misery.
Finally, the over population of Rome created a problem in
the health of the people. Since doctors were educated people, they were
probably expensive too.
I assume there are similarities in the social issues between
the Roman Empire and the USA because these problems usually arise when a nation
becomes powerful. During the Roman Empire, they were the greatest power in the
world, and nowadays, the USA is a really powerful nation too. Social problems
arise because it’s hard to take care of everybody in a huge population. Governors
will try to do as much as they can, but there will always be people who will
stay behind
At times, it does seem as though our freedom of speech doesn't technically mean that we will be heard in an affective way. What I mean by this is that without the wealthy status, we average American citizens don't really make that much of an impact--or at least it feels that way sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your blog and I agree that these issues are really good comparisons to the US. I hadn't read anyone else's blog that talked about education but it is a really good idea and definitely has an impact on where you can go in life and what you can accomplish. You made a lot of really good points.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment about there being more social problems when a nation become more powerful. Any large nation will have many countless interest groups and many complex issues. Whenever a large group of people is collected in one system it becomes nearly impossible to address every issue and as a result certain people fall through the cracks and find there problems unresolved.
ReplyDeleteI thought your views on education were very interesting. How not everyone had access to a good education. It was actually very limited who received an education. Today it is becoming expected in America that you get a education to degree.
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