The Virtual Wall seems really interesting. To be able to navigate throughout the wall and also through different time periods is going to give people a very real idea of what the wall represented and when it had that meaning. This is a truly innovative concept. I think what a lot of people have trouble with when it comes to wrapping their hands around history (I know this is my issue) is understanding not only the chronology of events and ideals but also the general feel of the culture as they relate to what happened when. I think that this Virtual Wall project is really going to help people understand that. I'm hoping too that it might help people see the burden separations like this cause and that such a divide can only bring negative things.
The End of History I had trouble understanding on many levels. First, I was trying to read it while ill (I'm getting over a pretty severe cold) so almost everything I read passed up my brain in one way or another. The other problem that I had with this essay and its response was the vocabulary used and my lack of understanding for many of the concepts he addressed. I suppose the only reflection I can give is that I don't feel that liberalism is the cause of all the problems or "the end of history;" I can see the problems liberalism raises, especially in the eyes of conservatives, but I think that for the most part, liberalism is a uniting factor and not a dividing one. However I could have completely missed the point he was trying to make. But since I have a weak grasp on political institutionalism, these essays were quite difficult for me to understand and agree with and thus reflect on.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Bordered Perceptions, Separated Realities
The word 'neighbor' can manifest itself in many ways: a friend, a neighbor in proximity, a neighbor in experience, a neighbor in belief... Catholicism chooses to define the ambiguous word as simply a fellow human being. Love thy neighbor, we're told, and within reason (however without God), that is the way I choose to live. Love beams from my body and compassion sometimes has no ending point. It's difficult for me do dislike someone; I try to see the good in everyone. What happened to me then on Easter Sunday was shocking and disappointing, however necessarily dealt with.
As I was considering borders that exist and are sometimes hurtled in Seattle, the first thing that came to mind was this odd relationship between the homeless and the housed that occurs in all big cities I have become familiar with. The two entities live as neighbors, one asking for a cup of sugar a bit more often than the other. However the giving process is not only multi-faceted, it is a ritual in which each party gains an equal amount. The sugar exchange of food or of money occurs mostly first with a question, then with an action, followed by satisfaction on either side of the exchange. It is a selfish deed, to give someone money; we do it because it makes us feel good to do something worth while or to help someone in need. Everyone wants to be a hero. To say giving is moved by selfishness is not to downgrade the goodness of the deed nor is it to say that it is impossible to reside in selflessness, because I think it is, however in this particular case it's well known that one dollar will not establish any residence.
So then in order to give money, one must believe a reality which most of us decide to be untrue. I remember once when I was seven or eight telling my mom that I had the ability to tell which homeless man would use money for good and which would buy drugs with it. Come on, no one is that perceptive. But there is a line there between a reality we think we know and a reality we want to believe is true. There's always been a border between the experience of the poor and what we, who don't have those particular sufferings, think is the reality (whether it be more positive or more negative).
This separation of perceptions of reality made itself more than prominent on Easter in an area of Seattle with which I'd never been. After a brunch, clad in pearls, dresses, and easter heels, my friends and I were standing outside a Safeway waiting for our bus. I pointed out a purse resting on the bench, unattended, with bottles of alcohol and a pair of shoes inside. I knew a man
had been in that same spot before. With no other motive but rationality, I mentioned to my friends that this purse was probably stolen and just to be aware of their surroundings and hold tight to their belongings until our bus came. The man returned, grabbed the purse, and stood near us. We played it safe. A woman, raggity and messy as the man was, walked out of the store with an apple and the knife she was cutting it with, a utensil sharp enough to be a weapon. The man gave her the purse and he walked behind us into the lip of an alleyway aside the store and called his armed friend over to him. Seeing what was in her hand and witnessing the man gesturing to our bags, my friends dragged me away from the threatening couple. The two came closer to us so we moved inside the store to wait for the bus and discussed the very small likelihood of either of the long-haired, unkempt ones doing anything, but because she had a knife, the precautionary distance was important.
Suddenly, our understanding of reality was completely altered. Every person in baggy clothes outside the store looked, to all of us, a threat of some sort. A man was running from point A to point B outside the store then to point C inside the store and one of my friends immediately said, scared, "but why does he have to be running?" Another man who was standing outside looked to me much more frightening than he did when we passed him before this incident; he was eating a corn dog inside the store and I felt warmed by the image. However now, my original perception of what was had been completely modified and everything I saw chilled me.
The border had been widened, extended, swollen, thickened.
The bus came. We had made a decision that if these two threats (as we now knew them) were to get on the bus, we'd simply sit near the driver. We took the first three seats open on the bus. As they loaded, the couple didn't even glance at us and I began to feel awful for the assumptions I had made. The running man got on the bus with his clearly non-impoverished little girl and her well put together mother, pushing her daughter's stroller. I then felt quite honestly horrible for letting myself feel threatened by a false reality I had built up in my head.
I feel that this is an important border to both experience and cross. It represents how scared our culture is of the unknown and how little faith we have in those who suffer. How we, to mention my favorite quote in Pocahontas, "think the only people who are people are the people who look and think like [us]," and why that's so incredibly wrong. How that border ironically marks the entire history of our nation and how we've been trying to overcome it since the conquistadors first set foot on American soil.
That the most important thing, overcoming the border, is so incredibly difficult, is painful and possible only through personal experience. We need to overcome our tendencies to stick our noses in the air and start being honest with ourselves and each other. Admitting that we are selfish beings but that we still care is key (and, in my generation, exceptionally important). Being open to other realities that aren't our own. Trying to be okay with notions we might not personally think are right or moral, but accepting them for the truth that they are. Each of these actions is a project which, once accomplished, will add a step in the ladder to hurtle over this wall. Then maybe we can at least shorten the divide so that we can see our neighbors and smooth over the division.
As I was considering borders that exist and are sometimes hurtled in Seattle, the first thing that came to mind was this odd relationship between the homeless and the housed that occurs in all big cities I have become familiar with. The two entities live as neighbors, one asking for a cup of sugar a bit more often than the other. However the giving process is not only multi-faceted, it is a ritual in which each party gains an equal amount. The sugar exchange of food or of money occurs mostly first with a question, then with an action, followed by satisfaction on either side of the exchange. It is a selfish deed, to give someone money; we do it because it makes us feel good to do something worth while or to help someone in need. Everyone wants to be a hero. To say giving is moved by selfishness is not to downgrade the goodness of the deed nor is it to say that it is impossible to reside in selflessness, because I think it is, however in this particular case it's well known that one dollar will not establish any residence.
So then in order to give money, one must believe a reality which most of us decide to be untrue. I remember once when I was seven or eight telling my mom that I had the ability to tell which homeless man would use money for good and which would buy drugs with it. Come on, no one is that perceptive. But there is a line there between a reality we think we know and a reality we want to believe is true. There's always been a border between the experience of the poor and what we, who don't have those particular sufferings, think is the reality (whether it be more positive or more negative).
This separation of perceptions of reality made itself more than prominent on Easter in an area of Seattle with which I'd never been. After a brunch, clad in pearls, dresses, and easter heels, my friends and I were standing outside a Safeway waiting for our bus. I pointed out a purse resting on the bench, unattended, with bottles of alcohol and a pair of shoes inside. I knew a man
had been in that same spot before. With no other motive but rationality, I mentioned to my friends that this purse was probably stolen and just to be aware of their surroundings and hold tight to their belongings until our bus came. The man returned, grabbed the purse, and stood near us. We played it safe. A woman, raggity and messy as the man was, walked out of the store with an apple and the knife she was cutting it with, a utensil sharp enough to be a weapon. The man gave her the purse and he walked behind us into the lip of an alleyway aside the store and called his armed friend over to him. Seeing what was in her hand and witnessing the man gesturing to our bags, my friends dragged me away from the threatening couple. The two came closer to us so we moved inside the store to wait for the bus and discussed the very small likelihood of either of the long-haired, unkempt ones doing anything, but because she had a knife, the precautionary distance was important.Suddenly, our understanding of reality was completely altered. Every person in baggy clothes outside the store looked, to all of us, a threat of some sort. A man was running from point A to point B outside the store then to point C inside the store and one of my friends immediately said, scared, "but why does he have to be running?" Another man who was standing outside looked to me much more frightening than he did when we passed him before this incident; he was eating a corn dog inside the store and I felt warmed by the image. However now, my original perception of what was had been completely modified and everything I saw chilled me.
The border had been widened, extended, swollen, thickened.
The bus came. We had made a decision that if these two threats (as we now knew them) were to get on the bus, we'd simply sit near the driver. We took the first three seats open on the bus. As they loaded, the couple didn't even glance at us and I began to feel awful for the assumptions I had made. The running man got on the bus with his clearly non-impoverished little girl and her well put together mother, pushing her daughter's stroller. I then felt quite honestly horrible for letting myself feel threatened by a false reality I had built up in my head.
I feel that this is an important border to both experience and cross. It represents how scared our culture is of the unknown and how little faith we have in those who suffer. How we, to mention my favorite quote in Pocahontas, "think the only people who are people are the people who look and think like [us]," and why that's so incredibly wrong. How that border ironically marks the entire history of our nation and how we've been trying to overcome it since the conquistadors first set foot on American soil.
That the most important thing, overcoming the border, is so incredibly difficult, is painful and possible only through personal experience. We need to overcome our tendencies to stick our noses in the air and start being honest with ourselves and each other. Admitting that we are selfish beings but that we still care is key (and, in my generation, exceptionally important). Being open to other realities that aren't our own. Trying to be okay with notions we might not personally think are right or moral, but accepting them for the truth that they are. Each of these actions is a project which, once accomplished, will add a step in the ladder to hurtle over this wall. Then maybe we can at least shorten the divide so that we can see our neighbors and smooth over the division.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Reflecting on Devil's
It was interesting re-reading The Devil's Highway with this border concept and after having taken an anthropology class. What really struck me the most was this occurrence of dehumanization, and what suffering the cycle promotes. Border patrol doesn't see emigrating Mexicans as human; they give them other nouns (wet, Juan Doe) with which they refer to them, they would rather bring them back dead than alive, they don't see them as faces, stories, families, lovers - they see them as strictly bodies. Pests. Bugs that must be squashed. Paper work. Sand-ridden, crackled annoyances. Not human, more animal. And they speak of them in this way as well. It's pretty sickening.
I feel that this treatment promotes severe suffering of both parties. The Mexicans suffer to their death (murder, rape, lack of resources) and the men of the border suffer in their inability to move through compassion, or even sympathy. This is what stood out to me the most when revisiting the Common Book. Every other element of the three chapters had a lesser effect on me which is sad, but at the same time also telling of how much I've learned in the past nine months.
I feel that this treatment promotes severe suffering of both parties. The Mexicans suffer to their death (murder, rape, lack of resources) and the men of the border suffer in their inability to move through compassion, or even sympathy. This is what stood out to me the most when revisiting the Common Book. Every other element of the three chapters had a lesser effect on me which is sad, but at the same time also telling of how much I've learned in the past nine months.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Understanding Ghosts
I really appreciate Brian Ladd for his contribution to my education about the wall. That said, I appreciated him much more in the first chapter than I did in the second. Reading The Ghosts of Berlin gave me definitions to words I only half knew regarding the wall and to concepts which were far too blurry to remain so through my trek. I think my favorite part of the whole reading was his descriptions of the graffiti, how they "made the wall visible," how these depictions of people and creatures, words, ways around and through the fence, strategies to end the ridiculous existence of the ugly grey thing were "to call attention to the injustice, anomaly, or artificiality of the barrier." How, yes, law-breaking art has that power. I felt that notion so powerfully, half because my background allows me to understand systems' influence on people of different worlds and half because of my love for art, that the pictures in the book were - quite literally - a thousand words.
Berlin has existed in my head a place a mystery. Through my parents' accounts, perplexing images of David Hasselhoff, and understated paragraphs in my thousand-paged high school history books, the question lay twisted in the knots of my brain. This is one reason I felt this program call to me. I mentioned in my application, honestly, that I knew nothing of Berlin except its popularity and that there once was a wall, and I am excited to have my questions slowly (and thoroughly!) answered. This is fun. Aside from my interest in the art and what it had to say to me (what the people will have to say to me...), I was struck from my ignorance that the wall was erected in the '60s. I'm surprised I didn't underline every part of every page that mentioned this. Ladd discusses an author, Muller-Hegemann, who distinguishes the political connotations the world has with the highlighted decade. That in a time of love, "peace and growing prosperity," unity, justice, the word of the people, a raised fist in the air (the list could continue): something so dividing would occur is astounding to me. This blows me away so greatly in fact that I am considering integrating it into my research project.
I'm loving learning all of this and enjoying being intellectually pushed and challenged (and maybe a little beat-up) with the honors students as well. It's good for me. Dulling that separation of little 'h' and no 'h' at all. Smoothing the ridges, breaking the wall.
Berlin has existed in my head a place a mystery. Through my parents' accounts, perplexing images of David Hasselhoff, and understated paragraphs in my thousand-paged high school history books, the question lay twisted in the knots of my brain. This is one reason I felt this program call to me. I mentioned in my application, honestly, that I knew nothing of Berlin except its popularity and that there once was a wall, and I am excited to have my questions slowly (and thoroughly!) answered. This is fun. Aside from my interest in the art and what it had to say to me (what the people will have to say to me...), I was struck from my ignorance that the wall was erected in the '60s. I'm surprised I didn't underline every part of every page that mentioned this. Ladd discusses an author, Muller-Hegemann, who distinguishes the political connotations the world has with the highlighted decade. That in a time of love, "peace and growing prosperity," unity, justice, the word of the people, a raised fist in the air (the list could continue): something so dividing would occur is astounding to me. This blows me away so greatly in fact that I am considering integrating it into my research project.
I'm loving learning all of this and enjoying being intellectually pushed and challenged (and maybe a little beat-up) with the honors students as well. It's good for me. Dulling that separation of little 'h' and no 'h' at all. Smoothing the ridges, breaking the wall.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Major Wall?
I thought it appropriate to use my indecisiveness to choose a major for my wall metaphor (I'm really excited this class will move through metaphors as that is how my life navigates itself). My problem is that every new thing I learn, I want to latch onto and learn more about it, a product of my highly addictive personality. I'm pretty sure I know what I want to do with my life however in my goal career's specificity there are many elements that could be focused on. I want to talk individually with people in groups that are systematically or culturally oppressed (prisoners, pregnant teens, gang members), hear their individual stories and write essentially ethnographies. My goal in this is to present them as individuals so that readers can see persons in these groups as individuals with stories and not reckless mishaps as most of America does (and also to give these people someone who just wants to listen to them). Because I want to write, the obvious choice might be to major in English however I feel that writing is an art and art can be argued to be anything; I'd rather know my subject. The three majors dancing above my head have been at least constant this whole year: Anthropology, Sociology, and CHID. There are also two minors I am highly married to: Astronomy and Dance. But the list continues to be added to.
Finding a suitable and enjoyable major is my wall and I am in no rush to hurtle it. I'm only a freshman and I'm really enjoying grazing with no immediate direction. It makes me more open to ideas and subjects (however thus making my decision infinitely more difficult). I'll figure it out. And if I don't, I'll simply pick one out of a hat.
Finding a suitable and enjoyable major is my wall and I am in no rush to hurtle it. I'm only a freshman and I'm really enjoying grazing with no immediate direction. It makes me more open to ideas and subjects (however thus making my decision infinitely more difficult). I'll figure it out. And if I don't, I'll simply pick one out of a hat.
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