On November 4th, we who are Americans will have a new president. This president will, as leader, enable America's political, economic, cultural, and moral ascent, or descent. The president will be elected by the voice, or lack thereof, of citizens-if that describes you, YOU are part of the power for change, for better or worse. Inactivity aligns itself to the most powerful side at the moment, regardless of your wishes.
Don't blame "them" for what you don't like about the nation's next leader. And if the candidate you hope wins, does win, you will celebrate with the satisfaction of knowing you are an active a part of this change to your nation.
This is the first year I will vote; in the past, I held a fatalistic view of the political process. Recently, I have been impressed by the nature of personal responsibility. I believe that a great many of the world's problems exist because we allow ourselves that deep sense of resignation, and abdicate our personal responsibility to the community.
On November 4th, I will be voting for Barack Obama, because I believe he has more potential to bring forth good for my
nation than his opponent does at this moment. However, I am putting out this challenge of personal responsibility to citizens of all political persuasion. I respect a variety of beliefs and reasons, but I no longer respect the "what will be, will be" mindset of those who abandon hope and will not engage in our society because the issues are too complex, or discouraging, or too far removed from our daily life.
www. voteforchange. com is a website that makes it very simple to register to vote. It is obviously a pro-Obama site, but the site allows you to choose your political affiliation, even Green Party!
I definitely experience frustration with the political process in America- pettiness, partisanship, vested interests, etc. haunt both sides of the presidential race, and that every election time. But we live in an imperfect world, and must chose what we believe, through research and soul-searching, what is the better choice in each situation. Whether it is choosing a president, or a new roommate, or where to go for dinner- if your community is involved, ENGAGE!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
RIVER OF JANUARY
A Response to the Idea of Beauty
Ouro Preto, Black Gold in Portuguese, is a stunning Colonial city in the Serra do Espinhaco mountains of Brazil. Its Baroque churches and sculptures are rich with gold, beautiful gold dug from Ouro Preto mines by the hands of slaves. Think of them, ten thousand slave-backs bent, as you run your hand over a statue, its beauty dazzling in the sunlight .
I was sent here to see beauty. Don't bother with Rio, everyone said, Rio crude and crowded. Rio de Janiero, River of January in Portuguese, with slums running down its hillsides like sewage. I was stunned by Ouro Preto's beauty, its dark history hardly detracting from its glory.
Later, in my Brazilian friend's kitchen, they told of hard-swept dirt floors and pride of home, among the tin shacks of Rio's slums. Think of this joy as you visit the sweltering interior.
And so it is, beauty contrasted within the same scenario. We speak of anorexic supermodels, and the age-worn beauty of laughter wrinkles. If we learn anything about beauty, we learn to look beyond. What is this beyond? Am I impressed with obvious beauty, but unwilling to look beyond to the pain, to injustices inflicted upon those who create? Am I willing to wrestle with the complexities in the beauty around me?
For beauty is nothing but complex. Many of Ouro Preto's marvels were created by Aleijadinho, Little Cripple in Portuguese. Aleijadinho, who sculpted with tools strapped to the stumps of his hands, as illness destroyed his body. His work illustrates subjects such as justice and mercy, condemnation and deliverance. The artist, himself caught in an unjust system, transformed his suffering into profound beauty.
"That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful." - Ninon de L'Enclos.
A Response to the Idea of Beauty
Ouro Preto, Black Gold in Portuguese, is a stunning Colonial city in the Serra do Espinhaco mountains of Brazil. Its Baroque churches and sculptures are rich with gold, beautiful gold dug from Ouro Preto mines by the hands of slaves. Think of them, ten thousand slave-backs bent, as you run your hand over a statue, its beauty dazzling in the sunlight .
I was sent here to see beauty. Don't bother with Rio, everyone said, Rio crude and crowded. Rio de Janiero, River of January in Portuguese, with slums running down its hillsides like sewage. I was stunned by Ouro Preto's beauty, its dark history hardly detracting from its glory.
Later, in my Brazilian friend's kitchen, they told of hard-swept dirt floors and pride of home, among the tin shacks of Rio's slums. Think of this joy as you visit the sweltering interior.
And so it is, beauty contrasted within the same scenario. We speak of anorexic supermodels, and the age-worn beauty of laughter wrinkles. If we learn anything about beauty, we learn to look beyond. What is this beyond? Am I impressed with obvious beauty, but unwilling to look beyond to the pain, to injustices inflicted upon those who create? Am I willing to wrestle with the complexities in the beauty around me?
For beauty is nothing but complex. Many of Ouro Preto's marvels were created by Aleijadinho, Little Cripple in Portuguese. Aleijadinho, who sculpted with tools strapped to the stumps of his hands, as illness destroyed his body. His work illustrates subjects such as justice and mercy, condemnation and deliverance. The artist, himself caught in an unjust system, transformed his suffering into profound beauty.
"That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful." - Ninon de L'Enclos.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
SAVING SARAJEVO
A Response to the Question "Is it the media’s responsibility to go beyond what’s happening today in order to predict future conflicts?"
Sarajevo, 1984. The city welcoming the world to the XIV Olympic Winter Games that year was itself an international model of harmony, renowned as the city where Muslims, Orthodox, Catholics, and Jews lived peacefully for centuries. The hospitality was warm, the slalom course was perfectly chilled, and Yugoslav hopefuls contemplated what their Olympic spokesman said during preparation: “We are Communists. We have finished our part of the work. The rest is in the hands of God.”
God allowed the Yugoslav people their first Winter Olympic medal that year, as native son Jure Franco took the silver; the skater’s immense popularity inspired a saying in Sarajevo in the following months, “We like Jurek better than burek!” (a popular pastry)
But God didn’t allow, or the Yugoslavs, or the international community didn’t allow, the peace and goodwill of Sarajevo to last beyond the decade. In a rapid descent to hell, the names of the next years became synonymous with destruction: Serb, Croat, Bosnian. Milošević. Sarajevo.
Was this out of nowhere, a freak episode in European history? From April 5,1992 to February 29, 1996, the city of shining Olympic humanism experienced the longest siege in modern warfare. Did the international community not feel the winds of change over the ski slopes?
In 1989, five years after the Sarajevo Olympics and mere months before the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, a journalist named Robert Kaplan reported to the Atlantic Monthly on his travels in Yugoslavia and the region:
“In the 1970s and 1980s the world witnessed the limits of superpower influence in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan. In the 1990s those limits may well become visible in a Third World region within Europe itself. The Balkans could shape the end of the century, just as they did at the beginning.”
Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s was a euphoric world, with walls tumbling and economies growing. Yet this journalist kept a wary eye on the region southeast of Berlin, from where no new stories were reported; in the November 30, 1989 Wall Street Journal Europe he writes,
“Two historic concepts are emerging out of the ruins of communist Eastern Europe. One, ‘Central Europe’, the media is now beating to death. The other, ‘the Balkans’, the media has yet to discover...”
Robert Kaplan’s book Balkan Ghosts, completed by 1990, was published in 1993. His bio says, “His magazine articles of the 1980s and early 1990s were the first by an American writer to warn of the coming cataclysm in the Balkans.”
Kaplan’s bold statements were based on travel, observation, and analyzing events from history. In his journalism, he digs through history and pieces together a picture of the future based on the past. He dares to suggest that the past affects the future, and that seemingly unrelated incidents are interconnected. This future was fulfilled in the ensuing breakup of Yugoslavia, and years of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and bloody war.
If Robert Kaplan had simply reported on obvious news events, no doubt the articles would have stayed on the economic reforms Reagan influenced in Yugoslavia, and Slobodan Milošević‘s push for Serbian dominance. There would have been stories on ethnic tensions in villages, but without an understanding of history with which to interpret events, this kind of reporting is mere disjointed information and of little use for understanding our world. For what is the present, without the past and the future?
Not only questions of time, but questions of the interconnectivity are key. Did the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, spark World War I? Will global oil demand effect conflict in the world’s oil producing regions today?
An article from February 3, 2003 on CNN.com shows mainstream media awakening to the truths of time and interconnectivity:
It is generally acknowledged that media’s responsibility is to report news as it happens, and that truthfully. But the present depends on the past, and the future, for its meaning; “here” depends on “there” for its meaning.
Not all responsibility for this meaning lies with media, however. A short news story or television program cannot realistically include all the history and interconnectivity necessary; often, media’s practical limitations can merely give leads to the audience. It is incredibly tempting to abdicate our responsibility as an audience, blaming “the media” for withholding insight and information. An intelligent audience must face its responsibility for using critical thinking toward what it receives from the media. It is easy human nature to look at what is most exciting at the moment; it is deeper human intuition, logic, and intelligence to look for what lies beyond.
A couple hundred years before the age of television journalism and soundbites, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe summed up media’s tension well: “The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish; the impressions remain flat and unconnected in the soul. Thus they are easily led by the opinions of others, are content to let their impressions be shuffled and rearranged and evaluated differently.”
Is it the media’s responsibility to go beyond what’s happening today? It is the responsibility of all thinking people in all roles in society to “go beyond”. Only then (borrowing from that Olympic spokesman) can media say, “We are ‘media’. We have finished our part of the work. The rest is in the hands of...you.”
A Response to the Question "Is it the media’s responsibility to go beyond what’s happening today in order to predict future conflicts?"
Sarajevo, 1984. The city welcoming the world to the XIV Olympic Winter Games that year was itself an international model of harmony, renowned as the city where Muslims, Orthodox, Catholics, and Jews lived peacefully for centuries. The hospitality was warm, the slalom course was perfectly chilled, and Yugoslav hopefuls contemplated what their Olympic spokesman said during preparation: “We are Communists. We have finished our part of the work. The rest is in the hands of God.”
God allowed the Yugoslav people their first Winter Olympic medal that year, as native son Jure Franco took the silver; the skater’s immense popularity inspired a saying in Sarajevo in the following months, “We like Jurek better than burek!” (a popular pastry)
But God didn’t allow, or the Yugoslavs, or the international community didn’t allow, the peace and goodwill of Sarajevo to last beyond the decade. In a rapid descent to hell, the names of the next years became synonymous with destruction: Serb, Croat, Bosnian. Milošević. Sarajevo.
Was this out of nowhere, a freak episode in European history? From April 5,1992 to February 29, 1996, the city of shining Olympic humanism experienced the longest siege in modern warfare. Did the international community not feel the winds of change over the ski slopes?
In 1989, five years after the Sarajevo Olympics and mere months before the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, a journalist named Robert Kaplan reported to the Atlantic Monthly on his travels in Yugoslavia and the region:
“In the 1970s and 1980s the world witnessed the limits of superpower influence in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan. In the 1990s those limits may well become visible in a Third World region within Europe itself. The Balkans could shape the end of the century, just as they did at the beginning.”
Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s was a euphoric world, with walls tumbling and economies growing. Yet this journalist kept a wary eye on the region southeast of Berlin, from where no new stories were reported; in the November 30, 1989 Wall Street Journal Europe he writes,
“Two historic concepts are emerging out of the ruins of communist Eastern Europe. One, ‘Central Europe’, the media is now beating to death. The other, ‘the Balkans’, the media has yet to discover...”
Robert Kaplan’s book Balkan Ghosts, completed by 1990, was published in 1993. His bio says, “His magazine articles of the 1980s and early 1990s were the first by an American writer to warn of the coming cataclysm in the Balkans.”
Kaplan’s bold statements were based on travel, observation, and analyzing events from history. In his journalism, he digs through history and pieces together a picture of the future based on the past. He dares to suggest that the past affects the future, and that seemingly unrelated incidents are interconnected. This future was fulfilled in the ensuing breakup of Yugoslavia, and years of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and bloody war.
If Robert Kaplan had simply reported on obvious news events, no doubt the articles would have stayed on the economic reforms Reagan influenced in Yugoslavia, and Slobodan Milošević‘s push for Serbian dominance. There would have been stories on ethnic tensions in villages, but without an understanding of history with which to interpret events, this kind of reporting is mere disjointed information and of little use for understanding our world. For what is the present, without the past and the future?
Not only questions of time, but questions of the interconnectivity are key. Did the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, spark World War I? Will global oil demand effect conflict in the world’s oil producing regions today?
An article from February 3, 2003 on CNN.com shows mainstream media awakening to the truths of time and interconnectivity:
Civil war. Mutilations. Threat of nuclear deployment. Human trafficking. Starving babies. Those are some of the seeds and harvest of conflicts in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America.
Neglecting these conflicts is dangerous, said Arthur Helton, director for peace and conflict studies at the Council on Foreign Relations...
Most regions in conflict suffer from long absences of international attention until overwhelming bloodshed or combat renews interest, Helton said, adding that the cycle of atrocity, shock, atrocity should be a wake-up call to seek lasting solutions.
It is generally acknowledged that media’s responsibility is to report news as it happens, and that truthfully. But the present depends on the past, and the future, for its meaning; “here” depends on “there” for its meaning.
Not all responsibility for this meaning lies with media, however. A short news story or television program cannot realistically include all the history and interconnectivity necessary; often, media’s practical limitations can merely give leads to the audience. It is incredibly tempting to abdicate our responsibility as an audience, blaming “the media” for withholding insight and information. An intelligent audience must face its responsibility for using critical thinking toward what it receives from the media. It is easy human nature to look at what is most exciting at the moment; it is deeper human intuition, logic, and intelligence to look for what lies beyond.
A couple hundred years before the age of television journalism and soundbites, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe summed up media’s tension well: “The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish; the impressions remain flat and unconnected in the soul. Thus they are easily led by the opinions of others, are content to let their impressions be shuffled and rearranged and evaluated differently.”
Is it the media’s responsibility to go beyond what’s happening today? It is the responsibility of all thinking people in all roles in society to “go beyond”. Only then (borrowing from that Olympic spokesman) can media say, “We are ‘media’. We have finished our part of the work. The rest is in the hands of...you.”
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