The "End" of History?

The United States and Soviet Union were in the midst of the Cold War, and general policies and attitudes of people and countries around the world largely centered around the conflict. On both the capitalist and communist sides, their ideals were abandoned numerous times in order to gain an upper-hand against the other. At the time, only two outcomes seemed likely: an eternal stalemate between two equal and opposing forces, or the obliteration of all life on Earth, thousands of times over. Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed general secretary of the U.S.S.R in 1985. Not long after, it all collapsed. Gorbachev liberalized the Soviet Union with his perestroika and glasnost policies, in an effort to rejuvenate Soviet politics and the economy. However, in 1989, the Warszawa Pact dissolved when its Eastern European members abandoned bureaucracy and communism in favor of democracy and capitalism. Only two years later, the Soviet Union itself shattered into several knew republics in Europe and Asia, including the Russian Federation.


After that we reached today’s post-Cold War world. However, history didn’t end. Much of American foreign policy has been focused on anti-terrorism, notably in the Middle East. This region was centralized under the Ottoman Empire for centuries, until the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne was signed between the Triple Entente and the new Republic of Turkey. The rest of the Middle East was put under “protectorate status” by France and The United Kingdom until after World War II. The empires and superpower status of both collapsed and the nationalist uprising used to bring the Ottomans down now targeted the British and French. New countries were formed, ranging from Westernized democracies to kingdoms. The Red Army tried to invade Afghanistan in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but the Mujahadeen, with fighters from all over the Muslim world, used the terrain to fend off against the atheist threat. These fighters broke up into various groups, including al-Qaeda, the Taliban, I.S.I.S., and Boko Haram. Many of these harbor anti-Western (and anti-American) values as a response to imperialism, capitalism and communism, ideally favoring the teachings of Islam to be the foundation of their society. This is known as 'islamism'.

There are plenty of other issues we as humans have had to deal with since 1991, and plenty of wonderful and generally significant events. Our effects on the environment are still an ongoing ordeal (for some reason), with climate change, pollution, and species extinction all pressing problems. Recent conflict and strife, due to natural disaster or the past centuries of inequality has created immigration crisis from the developing world (Hispanic-Latino-America, Africa, the Middle East) to the developed world (the United States, Canada, and Europe). Other reactions to the Soviet collapse, notably in Russia, China, and North Korea show cloudy futures. Technology continues its exponential advancement, with society struggling to keep up. This has led to the polarization of society, and the resurgence of far-right hate groups inspired by those of the 19th and 20th Centuries.

"The World is 'Flat'" in the Age of Globalization

As he describes in The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman refers to the decreasing steepness of upward social mobility and access to a longer, healthier, wealthier (not just financially, but a life of more in general) life. Despite the deceptive title, Friedman describes “flatness”* as, “how more people can plug, play, compete, connect, and collaborate with more equal power than ever before”. He attributes this largely to technology, which has advanced exponentially since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.

'Globalization' v.s. 'Americanization'

Globalization is the process by which different peoples all across the world share ideas. It began in 1492, when Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean and made contact with another face of the world. Previously, around ~1000 A.D., Erik the Red settled in Greenland while his son, Leif Erickson, sailed to Vinland (modern Nova Scotia). Neither of these settlements lasted long enough for continued and significant contact between European and Native American peoples. Columbus is credited with popularizing the exploration and colonization (not to mention subjugation and extermination) of Native America. Losing Native worker populations to Old World diseases to quickly, the European colonists needed another source of slave labor. Sub-saharan Africa was contacted by Portuguese sailors about half a century prior. However, the demand for African people in mines, plantations, etc. established Africa as part of this new Eurocentric global system. Eurasia had small amounts of intercontinental trade, but it wasn’t until the rise of the Pax Mongolica (Mon.-Mongolyn Enkh taivny) when this trade was centralized and encouraged by the Khans. Once the Mongols fell and the Ottomans blocked trade between East and West, Europeans set out to get their hands on Asian goods directly. With the decline of the Mughal and Qing Empires and the improvement of European technology (ie. military and navigation), these European powers began controlling Asia directly, either colonizing it or creating spheres of influence (as in China). The final human-inhabited part of the world to fall under European influence was Oceania, which occured in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries. 

The Salvadorian Connection

El Salvador is a rather complex corner of the Americas. Located in Central America, it lies on the Pacific Ocean, not far from the Caribbean coasts of neighboring Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, leaving it in the path of hurricanes from both sides. It also lies on the Middle American Trench, part of the larger Ring of Fire, that separates the North American, Caribbean, and Cocos plates. As a result, El Salvador is prone to frequent and intense earthquakes. Each major city in the country has its own volcano of the same name (some cities have two or more). Obviously, these pose great risk to the Salvadorans, but they also have provided the country with fertile soil. Historically, agriculture has been the primary economy. However, in recent decades, they have transitioned into a manufacturing economy, especially for clothes. Much of these are maquilas, with Salvadoran workers being paid very little, and most of the profit and socioeconomic development going to service-based developed nations, notably the United States.

Revolutions!

Revolutions occurred, historically, because the middle class, eager to obtain power and compete with the nobles, harnessed the sheer numbers of the lower classes against the upper classes and create their own order of some kind. This was the case in many modern revolutions, including those of the United States and France. Usually, these middle classes are interested in profit-maximization policies such as lower taxes, lower tariffs, a laissez-faire attitude, etc. Again, true for both American burgesses and la bourgeoisie française. 

A Global View: Australia’s Aboriginal People

Aboriginal policy has followed a very similar history to Native American policy in the United States. Both lands were explored and colonized by various European powers until the British came to dominate. This introduced diseases that neither native American nor Australian populations had immunities to. While Europeans like the French, Portuguese, and Dutch were mainly concerned about claiming land for trade purposes, British colonies were more geared towards permanent settlement, featuring women and children as well as men. These white settlers weren’t content to remain in their coastal port cities. They needed to develop agriculture to support a further growing and expanding population, in both North America and Australia. They did this by any means necessary. Natives voluntarily handing over their land, perhaps for something in exchange, adds much more legitimacy to European expansion, but most of these “fair deals” were in fact scams. Whites in both the U.S. Congress and Māori Australian Parliament used plenty of loopholes and vague wording to legally choke the natives to get what they wanted. Both the Native Americans and Aboriginal peoples were forced to relocate from their resource-rich homelands on the coasts to resource-scarce, desolate environments inland (Indian Territory and the Outback respectively). 

Ben Shapiro Takes on Institutional Racism and White Privilege

Ben Shapiro’s argument that racism can only be fought against by confronting individuals sounds awesome and romantic. I love stories in which people come together to bring down a common enemy that is absolutely evil.

However, that isn’t how the world works. There are over 7.5 billion people living on this planet, and not one of them is an evil person. Evil by definition, is the intentional and needless causing of suffering upon others. Nobody thinks of themselves as evil, but their actions may be seen as evil. 

Studying Whiteness

On the homework for Sept. 18th, I began the Critical Thinking question with, “I suppose that I am white within a social context.”, as opposed to directly stating, “I am white”. Answering that question felt rather awkward, since I don’t think or feel any identity of “whiteness”. Reading this made me wonder if members of minority groups have their minority status imprinted onto their identity in a way that the dominant group doesn’t. Of course I recognize that race exists (as a social construct only based on arbitrary physical traits). However, I do look forward to a society that only “judges [the individuals that make it up] on the content of their character”. I’m not sure if this is the same or related to, as the textbook mentioned, being “color-blind” and/or “race-neutral” and distancing myself from the very real struggles these people face. My intention is to help them and everyone to achieve that future eutopia in which race, as a concept, is something people find in history books (hologram computers?) and know existed in our minds, but can’t fully understand it the way we do today.

Becoming 'White'

I took Intro to Sociology during my first semester of undergrad. I remember the professor explaining how the Irish and Italians emigrated to the United States in the 19^th Century and “became white” in the 20^th. At this point, the concept of race as a social construct dividing people based on arbitrary physical features was extremely profound in my mind. This made me question the process of “becoming white”. I asked him why these Irish and Italians (as well as Poles, Greeks, Russians, etc.) became white if they only landed in the Americas from the 1830’s-1930's, but African-Americans, who were forced onto American plantations beginning all the way back in 1619, couldn’t. His response was something along the lines of, “the Irish and Italians could pass off as white more easily than African-Americans.” There was a pause (perhaps longer in my mind than it actually was) in which I asked the most obvious question imaginable. Whites are white; they have light skin, even if they are not northwestern European. Blacks are black; they have dark skin.

The Hispanic Dairyland

Immigrants arrive on U.S. American shores for a variety of reasons: economic opportunity, fleeing war, persecution, disaster, etc. Many of these people would and do accept what those already living here consider to be undesirable jobs, and are willing to do them for less pay than U.S. American citizens would want, much less than minimum wage. As stated in the text, this is partially out of fear for themselves or those they know being found out as illegal and deported. It also may come from desperation or a perceived better life than what they had in their country of origin.

Speaking Out: The Conversation We’re Not Having about Affirmative Action

Affirmative action is certainly a controversial subject; one that I never, before this point, formed an opinion over due to lack of knowledge or understanding of the subject. Non-minorities have distinct advantages on campus, in the workplace, etc. Minorities are disadvantaged in these areas. It would seem logical to compensate for this and give individuals of minority status more opportunity. However, that seems to goes against the idea of meritocracy we value so much in the West. The goal of both sides, in fact, is to make group status a non-factor in societal functions.

Pale Blue Dot

NASA's Visible Earth Catalog

NASA's Earth to the Solar System-Images for Exhibition

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. 

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." 

-Carl Sagan (1994)

Carl Sagan asked to direct Voyager I's camera to face our home in 1990. He discussed it multiple times, including in a lecture at Cornell as well as on Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. He then was inspired to write a book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. 

This image, as well as his "15 billion years" quote have put the human experience into an intriguing perspective. Everything we know of is made up of the same "stuff" and follows the same "rules". These simple, fundamental beginnings, after about 13.8 billion years, have become too complex for the human mind to even begin to comprehend (hence, the title of this blog). I prefer to think of whatever This is (life, the Universe, the Multiverse, Existence, etc.) as a sandbox or garden. Many are trying to find the meaning of it all. As an existentialist, I believe we create meaning from an inherently meaningless Existence. Using the same "stuff" and "rules" that govern the rest of known existence, we must build our future, whether that be to make our mark on existence, or to make it a better place for as many sapiens as possible.

Egalite

Egalitarianism is an often sought after idea, that yet also conjures plenty of controversy. The belief that one should be treated with the same amount of respect as their fellow sapiens has been the driving force behind so much in the world, with consequences both positive and negative. While equality has been established as a foundation of our society in recent centuries, the means by which those go to protect this idea has, commonly, led to its infringement.

Kate Chopin and Realsim

The 19th Century was a period of change in Louisiana. It began during the Romantic era, in which people imagined and sought after idealized forms. Many romantics were inspired, not by the mechanical thinking and reason of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th Centuries, but by emotion and nature. This idealization led to grandiose, almost mythical depiction of subjects. This was at a time of rising “-isms”, like nationalism, imperialism, communism, socialism, etc., born out of the Enlightened revolutions like those in France, Haiti, and Latin America. These inspired more Romantic revolutions in France (twice more), Austrian Bohemia (modern Czechia), Greece, Jugoslavija, and the Southern Netherlands (modern Belgium). It also drove Italian and German unification, as well as Confederate secession and American unity. However, after the revolutionary fervor subsided, the West would experience relative peace until 1914. This was a period of prosperity and industrial growth (for some), and poverty for most, as well as rapidly increasing technological advancements. People settled down and went back to their lives. Art of all kinds began to look at everyday life as opposed to grand ideas.

Written v.s. Moral Law

Government has been a part of human society for thousands of years. The laws they make certainly play a significant part in how the world operates. However, there can be problems with government, and laws can be made to help some more than others. These are the ideas that were spreading around Classical Greece around 429 B.C.E., especially in Athens. There, Sopholes served not only in politics, but also as a playwright. In his famous Oedipus trilogy, he brought to question the real-life debates amongst the city-states ('Ελ-poleis) at the time. One of these was whether adherence to the law was always the best option, or if one’s own ideas should guide their actions. In the final part, the titular Antigone supported the latter view and buried her brother, Polyneikes, in the wake of a Theban civil war. Their uncle, Kreon, had declared Polyneikes a traitor and enemy of the polis. By his law, he was not to be buried, but remain above ground, chewed, decomposed, and dishonored.

The gods of Classical Greece played a significant part of daily life. Known as the Olympians, Greeks prayed for them for temperate weather, favorable winds at sea, assistance on the battlefield, and a pleasant afterlife. Angering the divine beings who breathed life into clay and formed humans wasn’t a good idea. Antigone knew this when she told Kreon during her interrogation, “Yes, it was not Zeus that made the proclamation...I did not believe your proclamation had such power to enable one who will someday die to override God’s ordinances; unwritten and secure.”-Antigone (Sophokles 494-499). What makes the word of one mortal man greater than that of the gods, those who do not take too kindly to being disrespected and certainly have the power to punish the king’s insolence. Later on, Haemon also explained to his father, “the natural sense that the gods breed in men is surely the best of their possessions.”-Haemon (Sophokles 734-736) The gods made humans. Surely, they know what’s best for us. Obeying them (aside from the respect and not having lightning striking from the sky) would just be in our best interest, especially when it comes to something as important as the treatment of a corpse. Historically, religion had been a powerful force in the running of a state. In fact, the first governments were theocracies, and priests claimed authority since they could ask the gods themselves for the best course of action. When kings first gained power, they were still weary of the priests. Those like Hammurabi made sure to keep them happy at all times. When Amenhotep IV became Akhenaten and tried to convert the Egyptian New Kingdom to his monotheistic worship of Aten, the priests convinced the people that the pharaoh had lost the blessing of the gods. He was quickly ousted. His successor quickly reverted back to the old gods. Similarly, the sin of Chinese emperors was to blame for the loss of the Mandate of Heaven and the crowning of a new dynasty.

Of course, governments and the laws they establish are the work of imperfect humans. The purpose of laws is to try to subdue our selfishness. Those laws, however, will inevitably backfire when passed by monkeys who only had government for an instant of our species’ existence. Later on in Haemon’s debate with Kreon, he posits, “A man who thinks that he alone is right, or what he says, or what he is himself, unique, such men, when opened up, are seen to be quite empty. For a man, though he be wise, it is no shame to learn-learn many things, and not to maintain his views too rigidly.” -Haemon (Sophokles 759-764) What Haemon tries to instill in the king’s mind is pluralism, in which there can be multiple valid perspectives and opinions. Kreon’s position is unchanged after this and he proceeds to execute Antigone. To those who feel that a law isn’t helpful, they must encourage civil debate and resist in the hopes of changing it. The alternative would be to suffer under an oppressive regime. Our world, in all aspects, changes every day. Laws need to adapt with this evolution to make sure they benefit as many people as possible. These are not new ideas of course. The struggles of colored people in places like the Jim Crow United States and apartheid South Africa, Middle Eastern and African refugees in 21st Century Europe, and 20th Century independence in the British Raj are just some recent and mainly pacifist examples. For government to help everyone, each person must participate in it.

In Kreon’s perspective, Polyneikes betrayed Thebes and should eternally suffer for it. In his eyes, he is the king, he made the law, and the law is final. “Polyneikes, a returned exile, who sought to burn with fire from top to bottom his native city, and the gods of his own people; who sought to taste the blood he shared with us and lead the rest of us to slavery-I here proclaim to the city that this man shall no one honor with a grave and none shall mourn.” (Sophokles 217-223) Polyneikes, in a selfish grab for power, fled Thebes and returned at the head of an Argive band of mercenaries to attack the polis. He sought to harm Thebans, his own people, for his own gain. This is an action that should be met with no honor. Later on, Haemon confronts his father, Kreon, on his decision to dishonor Polyneikes and execute Antigone for treason. Kreon responds with, “Yes, my son, this should always be in your very heart, that everything else shall be second to your father’s decision….The man this city sets up in authority must be obeyed in small things and in just but also there opposites.” (Sophokles 689-719)

Let’s keep in mind the context in which “Antigone” was written. Sophokles lived in Classical Athens and served as treasurer under Pericles. The conflict of law v.s. morals is a reflection of the atmosphere. Before, all Greek poleis were ruled by kings, but Athens established the first democratic state. Greece had just thwarted the absolutist Achaemenid Persian Empire, and was experiencing a golden age. War had broken out between the Delian League and Peloponnesian League, lead by the militant, totalitarian Sparta. Aside from the fact the the Persians had no slavery and Sparta had greater women's’ rights, “Antigone” is a call for people to follow their own ideas. If a powerful and despotic man got in the way of one’s dreams, then neither the gods, nor Sophokles, would have objections to his removal.