Summary Of The Song 'We Didn T Start The Fire'
Spring 2012
English 199
Prof. Morelatto
Billy Joel talks about many controversial topics, events and people in the song “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. The topic that I have chosen to write about is the controversial issue of birth control. Contraception has been a controversial issue for many years and is still talked about in the news today. Birth control can be viewed as having a positive impact on the current society but it can also be considered as having a negative impact.
Many of the arguments against the use of birth control are related to religious views. It is considered interfering with God’s plan to give life and can be seen to some people as immoral because it is used for stopping or taking away life. Without birth control …show more content…
life would take its natural course in the reproduction cycle. The major argument in favor of birth control is that it helps control the population. There are circumstances and situations in which people should not be reproducing and bringing new life into the world. Young couples for example do not always have the financial resources or the maturity level to give children a stable living environment.
The song’s lyrics also state “no we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it”. These also apply to this topic because this is a topic that has been argued for centuries and will never be settled. Birth control is a topic that will always be open to discussion because it involves feminist, political and religious views. The book titled “Birth Control and Controlling Lives” begins to explain a women’s point of view on the topic and how they have been subject to scientific experiments and ethical discussions.
For Centuries religions have harped that premarital sex is sinful. Churches have taught that the primary blessing of marriage was offspring and the primary purpose of sex in marriage was offspring. Those who wished to bear children were supposed to marry first. The church did not see reason for fertility control because they believed in abstinence. People who believed in fertility control were assumed fornicators, adulators and prostitutes, whom were all serious sinners. This idea was not adopted by all (Maguire, Daniel). Sidney Callahan stated in the book “The Catholic Case for Contraception”
“That the communal social process of procreation and childbearing has often been discussed in a misleading context. Labeling procreation as “Rational,” the “Duty” of married peoples as misleading both biologically and emotionally. Man’s drive to reproduce him may be less maybe less strong than reproductive instinct in animals and is less tied to mating, but it does exist. Distinctively human emotions reinforce the primitive drive for offspring. Sensual delight in physical presence of one’s child fuses with the awe and delight in seeing the child’s mind and personality…….Procreation is an instinctive pleasure, a joy, a delight and a privilege-rather than a rational duty”
The matter of the fact is even with influence from others, people are going to do what they want whether they decide to have sex for joy and pleasure before/after or if they have sex as only means of reproduction. (Callahan, Daniel)
Reproduction of the human race is a beautiful thing and is needed to keep society going on earth. There also is an importance to population control. The world does not have the space to put people at the rate some countries are reproducing; As you see in China today there government has limited families to 1 child because their population exceeds the space of their country. A population explosion can really affect countries and families economically. We have seen examples of this in the early-1800s and recently as we deal with the effects of the baby boom in the mid-1900s. French laws and customs in the 1800s regarded both poor married and poor unmarried women responsible for providing food, clothing, and shelter for children rather than their father. Female jobs as domestic servants and factory workers did not make enough money to support children and conditions of their labor did not allow them to raise children even if they were respectably married. This was hard on women and lead to several forms of infanticide. (Maguire, Daniel)
Early modern records suggested that “laying over” and “still births” were very common public explanations for infanticide. The number of these reported grew so high that it began to draw legal suspicion. In an attempt for more civilized and respectable fertility control the Romans substituted abandonment for infanticide. Infants instead were being left in the woods at the mercy of animals, at crossroads, doorsteps and marketplaces in hope the child would be accepted. Many times if the child was rescued they were used as slaves and not a member of the household. The church then offered a new type of abandonment called oblation. The church would take in the human “gifts” to be raised by religious orders to join those orders. Oblation was not the most common solution to excess fertility, but since the vast majority of children donated to the church joined the celibate orders and therefore did not reproduce, which also severed to lower general fertility. (Maguire, Daniel)
In the present day, effects of the baby boom have added to the country’s economic crisis. Social security and other retirement benefits are continuing to dwindle and age requirements to receive such benefits continue to rise. Social security is paid by current workers, usually 2 people pay for one individual to receive his benefits, but with the baby boomers closing in on retirement the people who receive the benefits will far outnumber the people paying for them resulting in increased taxes for the people paying. With the country in the economic crisis we are in its hard for people to take care of unexpected pregnancies.
Kids today are engaging in sexual acts at a much younger age which runs a high risk of unexpected pregnancies because the youths may not be as well educated in that area. A survey done in 2002, for the average age of first sexual intercourse shows that women have an average age of 17.3 years old while men have an average of 17 years old. (newstrategist.com) This was in 2002, I saw on the news the other day that some schools were discussing handing condoms out to 12 year olds because they did a survey and 27 percent of 12 year olds in the school district reported thy were sexually active. Not many 17 year olds are mature enough or economically stable enough to raise a child at that age let alone 12 years old. This can put a large burden on families to help raise an unexpected child.
Dr. Roger Short, head of the medical research council’s unit on reproductive biology in Edinburgh reviewed a study of work carried out in Africa on the relationship between socioeconomic levels of contraception during lactation. In the study of rural and urban Rwandese females who were solely dependent on breast feeding for contraception, the malnourished rural mothers who carried their babies continuously and fed them whenever they cried showed in 50 percent of the cases a 23-month elapsed interval before conception occurred again. On the other hand, 50 percent of the better-nourished urban mothers, who fed their babies on a specific time schedule, conceived within 9 months of the last birth. Among women who did not breast feed at all, the differences between the rural and urban mothers disappeared completely and 50 percent of each group was pregnant again within 3 months. Short points out “Although if it is not possible to disentangle the relative importance of nutrition and the frequency of the suckling stimulus in bring about post-partum in fertility in Rwandese women, the study does emphasize how changes, can have a major impaction on human fertility.” (Djerassi, Carl)
It is hard to determine how fertile a woman is and is smart to take contraceptive caution to prevent unexpected pregnancies.
The birth control pill is a small pharmaceutical drug that can be taken in secrecy.
The pill prevents pregnancy, protects and reduces the risk of endometrial and ovarian cancer, ovarian cysts and pelvic ulcers. It also improves acne, helps treat and reduce endometriosis and pelvic inflammatory disease, while lightening menstrual flow and decreasing the severity or frequency of menstrual cramps. In contrast to IUDs, whose most common side effect is increased bleeding, the use of the pill leads not only to more regular menstrual cycles but also decreased blood loss. The pill has become the most significant hardware component of contraception and recent estimates from the World Health Organization state that somewhere between 50 and 80 million women currently use the oral contraception. The pill like any other drug does have some cautionary side effects. Some minor effects include weight gain, nausea, libido changes, breast tenderness and headaches. More serious effects include abnormal blood clots, strokes, heart attacks and risk of gallbladder disease. These side effects do not happen to all users; each woman’s body is different and reacts differently to things put into it like a food allergy. (Tythan, Lily J., Djerassi, Carl, …show more content…
Womenhealth.gov)
Whether or not a woman decides to use the pill or any other form of contraception is her choice. Women fought for the emancipation of their rights and have been rewarded an indispensable ability to decide whether and when to become pregnant. Her choice may go into discussion of right or wrong but it is the women’s choice and we must live with that. (Callahan, Daniel) Contraception is seen as a way of taking a human life in the eyes of many. This has a negative effect on society because they feel that women who become pregnant and abort the baby or prevent becoming pregnant are killing children and should be punished for this. There are organizations that have traveled the world protesting the right to be able to have an abortion. Many people in society feel the need to fight for the baby because the baby does not have a fighting chance. They cannot speak or stand up for themselves, so they need someone to do it for them. These protests have reached some higher political figures that have used this as ways to gain leverage in political campaigns. The choice of whether or not a woman chooses to have a child or not can have a larger effect than some think.
Billy Joel’s song lyrics to “We didn’t start the Fire” have many controversial topics, events and people.
As discussed in this paper you see that contraception is a major controversial topic affecting feminist, politics and religion. This is an issue that has come about since the beginning of time till the present day. This topic will never stop being discussed and perceived because there is not definite answer to whether it is right or wrong. Opinions are formed based on the information present.
Work Cited
1. Callahan, Daniel. The Catholic Case for Contraception. Ontario: The Macmillian Company, 1969. Print.
2. Djerassi, Carl. The Politics of Contraception. Toronto: George j. McLeod Limited, 1979. Print.
3. Holmes, Helen B., Betty B. Hoskins, and Michael Gross. Birth Control and Controlling Lives. 2. Amherst: Humana Press Inc., 1980. Print.
4. Maguire, Daniel C. Sacred Rights-The Case for Contraception and abortion in world religions. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2003. eBook.
5. Tythan, Lilly J., ed. "Pros & Cons Of the Birth Control Pill." Livestrong.com. Demand Media, Inc., 01/03/2010. Web. 18 Apr 2012. .
6. , ed. "Birth Control Methods fact sheet." WomensHealth.gov. U.S. Federal Governent, 11/21/2011. Web. 18 Apr 2012. .
7. Karen Limbar, A. S. B.. "Seventeen is the average age at first sexual intercourse." Newstrategist. N.p., 2009. Web. 18 Apr
2012.
English 199
Prof. Morelatto
Billy Joel talks about many controversial topics, events and people in the song “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. The topic that I have chosen to write about is the controversial issue of birth control. Contraception has been a controversial issue for many years and is still talked about in the news today. Birth control can be viewed as having a positive impact on the current society but it can also be considered as having a negative impact.
Many of the arguments against the use of birth control are related to religious views. It is considered interfering with God’s plan to give life and can be seen to some people as immoral because it is used for stopping or taking away life. Without birth control …show more content…
life would take its natural course in the reproduction cycle. The major argument in favor of birth control is that it helps control the population. There are circumstances and situations in which people should not be reproducing and bringing new life into the world. Young couples for example do not always have the financial resources or the maturity level to give children a stable living environment.
The song’s lyrics also state “no we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it”. These also apply to this topic because this is a topic that has been argued for centuries and will never be settled. Birth control is a topic that will always be open to discussion because it involves feminist, political and religious views. The book titled “Birth Control and Controlling Lives” begins to explain a women’s point of view on the topic and how they have been subject to scientific experiments and ethical discussions.
For Centuries religions have harped that premarital sex is sinful. Churches have taught that the primary blessing of marriage was offspring and the primary purpose of sex in marriage was offspring. Those who wished to bear children were supposed to marry first. The church did not see reason for fertility control because they believed in abstinence. People who believed in fertility control were assumed fornicators, adulators and prostitutes, whom were all serious sinners. This idea was not adopted by all (Maguire, Daniel). Sidney Callahan stated in the book “The Catholic Case for Contraception”
“That the communal social process of procreation and childbearing has often been discussed in a misleading context. Labeling procreation as “Rational,” the “Duty” of married peoples as misleading both biologically and emotionally. Man’s drive to reproduce him may be less maybe less strong than reproductive instinct in animals and is less tied to mating, but it does exist. Distinctively human emotions reinforce the primitive drive for offspring. Sensual delight in physical presence of one’s child fuses with the awe and delight in seeing the child’s mind and personality…….Procreation is an instinctive pleasure, a joy, a delight and a privilege-rather than a rational duty”
The matter of the fact is even with influence from others, people are going to do what they want whether they decide to have sex for joy and pleasure before/after or if they have sex as only means of reproduction. (Callahan, Daniel)
Reproduction of the human race is a beautiful thing and is needed to keep society going on earth. There also is an importance to population control. The world does not have the space to put people at the rate some countries are reproducing; As you see in China today there government has limited families to 1 child because their population exceeds the space of their country. A population explosion can really affect countries and families economically. We have seen examples of this in the early-1800s and recently as we deal with the effects of the baby boom in the mid-1900s. French laws and customs in the 1800s regarded both poor married and poor unmarried women responsible for providing food, clothing, and shelter for children rather than their father. Female jobs as domestic servants and factory workers did not make enough money to support children and conditions of their labor did not allow them to raise children even if they were respectably married. This was hard on women and lead to several forms of infanticide. (Maguire, Daniel)
Early modern records suggested that “laying over” and “still births” were very common public explanations for infanticide. The number of these reported grew so high that it began to draw legal suspicion. In an attempt for more civilized and respectable fertility control the Romans substituted abandonment for infanticide. Infants instead were being left in the woods at the mercy of animals, at crossroads, doorsteps and marketplaces in hope the child would be accepted. Many times if the child was rescued they were used as slaves and not a member of the household. The church then offered a new type of abandonment called oblation. The church would take in the human “gifts” to be raised by religious orders to join those orders. Oblation was not the most common solution to excess fertility, but since the vast majority of children donated to the church joined the celibate orders and therefore did not reproduce, which also severed to lower general fertility. (Maguire, Daniel)
In the present day, effects of the baby boom have added to the country’s economic crisis. Social security and other retirement benefits are continuing to dwindle and age requirements to receive such benefits continue to rise. Social security is paid by current workers, usually 2 people pay for one individual to receive his benefits, but with the baby boomers closing in on retirement the people who receive the benefits will far outnumber the people paying for them resulting in increased taxes for the people paying. With the country in the economic crisis we are in its hard for people to take care of unexpected pregnancies.
Kids today are engaging in sexual acts at a much younger age which runs a high risk of unexpected pregnancies because the youths may not be as well educated in that area. A survey done in 2002, for the average age of first sexual intercourse shows that women have an average age of 17.3 years old while men have an average of 17 years old. (newstrategist.com) This was in 2002, I saw on the news the other day that some schools were discussing handing condoms out to 12 year olds because they did a survey and 27 percent of 12 year olds in the school district reported thy were sexually active. Not many 17 year olds are mature enough or economically stable enough to raise a child at that age let alone 12 years old. This can put a large burden on families to help raise an unexpected child.
Dr. Roger Short, head of the medical research council’s unit on reproductive biology in Edinburgh reviewed a study of work carried out in Africa on the relationship between socioeconomic levels of contraception during lactation. In the study of rural and urban Rwandese females who were solely dependent on breast feeding for contraception, the malnourished rural mothers who carried their babies continuously and fed them whenever they cried showed in 50 percent of the cases a 23-month elapsed interval before conception occurred again. On the other hand, 50 percent of the better-nourished urban mothers, who fed their babies on a specific time schedule, conceived within 9 months of the last birth. Among women who did not breast feed at all, the differences between the rural and urban mothers disappeared completely and 50 percent of each group was pregnant again within 3 months. Short points out “Although if it is not possible to disentangle the relative importance of nutrition and the frequency of the suckling stimulus in bring about post-partum in fertility in Rwandese women, the study does emphasize how changes, can have a major impaction on human fertility.” (Djerassi, Carl)
It is hard to determine how fertile a woman is and is smart to take contraceptive caution to prevent unexpected pregnancies.
The birth control pill is a small pharmaceutical drug that can be taken in secrecy.
The pill prevents pregnancy, protects and reduces the risk of endometrial and ovarian cancer, ovarian cysts and pelvic ulcers. It also improves acne, helps treat and reduce endometriosis and pelvic inflammatory disease, while lightening menstrual flow and decreasing the severity or frequency of menstrual cramps. In contrast to IUDs, whose most common side effect is increased bleeding, the use of the pill leads not only to more regular menstrual cycles but also decreased blood loss. The pill has become the most significant hardware component of contraception and recent estimates from the World Health Organization state that somewhere between 50 and 80 million women currently use the oral contraception. The pill like any other drug does have some cautionary side effects. Some minor effects include weight gain, nausea, libido changes, breast tenderness and headaches. More serious effects include abnormal blood clots, strokes, heart attacks and risk of gallbladder disease. These side effects do not happen to all users; each woman’s body is different and reacts differently to things put into it like a food allergy. (Tythan, Lily J., Djerassi, Carl, …show more content…
Womenhealth.gov)
Whether or not a woman decides to use the pill or any other form of contraception is her choice. Women fought for the emancipation of their rights and have been rewarded an indispensable ability to decide whether and when to become pregnant. Her choice may go into discussion of right or wrong but it is the women’s choice and we must live with that. (Callahan, Daniel) Contraception is seen as a way of taking a human life in the eyes of many. This has a negative effect on society because they feel that women who become pregnant and abort the baby or prevent becoming pregnant are killing children and should be punished for this. There are organizations that have traveled the world protesting the right to be able to have an abortion. Many people in society feel the need to fight for the baby because the baby does not have a fighting chance. They cannot speak or stand up for themselves, so they need someone to do it for them. These protests have reached some higher political figures that have used this as ways to gain leverage in political campaigns. The choice of whether or not a woman chooses to have a child or not can have a larger effect than some think.
Billy Joel’s song lyrics to “We didn’t start the Fire” have many controversial topics, events and people.
As discussed in this paper you see that contraception is a major controversial topic affecting feminist, politics and religion. This is an issue that has come about since the beginning of time till the present day. This topic will never stop being discussed and perceived because there is not definite answer to whether it is right or wrong. Opinions are formed based on the information present.
Work Cited
1. Callahan, Daniel. The Catholic Case for Contraception. Ontario: The Macmillian Company, 1969. Print.
2. Djerassi, Carl. The Politics of Contraception. Toronto: George j. McLeod Limited, 1979. Print.
3. Holmes, Helen B., Betty B. Hoskins, and Michael Gross. Birth Control and Controlling Lives. 2. Amherst: Humana Press Inc., 1980. Print.
4. Maguire, Daniel C. Sacred Rights-The Case for Contraception and abortion in world religions. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2003. eBook.
5. Tythan, Lilly J., ed. "Pros & Cons Of the Birth Control Pill." Livestrong.com. Demand Media, Inc., 01/03/2010. Web. 18 Apr 2012. .
6. , ed. "Birth Control Methods fact sheet." WomensHealth.gov. U.S. Federal Governent, 11/21/2011. Web. 18 Apr 2012. .
7. Karen Limbar, A. S. B.. "Seventeen is the average age at first sexual intercourse." Newstrategist. N.p., 2009. Web. 18 Apr
2012.