Post-colonialism, Greed at its Finest.

Throughout history, man’s greed has propelled a sort of hostile attack on customs and traditions of those of the weaker race, White being the dominant one. This has been prevalent even to modern times; the dominant white races as well as other dominant forces are still trying to subject third world countries into being more westernized. From the chapter on Cultural studies I quote “Throughout this long history, the West became the colonizers, and many African and Asian countries and their peoples became the colonized” (236). African and Asian countries have been stripped from power by colonizers, and in some ways forced to reckon with the oppressor’s beliefs and traditions. The colonizer influences greatly the future of the colonies’ existence.

                This chapter on cultural studies, mainly dealing with Post-colonialism has provided me with a lens for the one of the major themes in the novel we are reading Things Fall Apart. Certain customs and traditions that one nationality might have are under warfare against westerners.  In this novel, the character Okonkwo is resistant to the new political and religious customs because he feels they are not manly and that he will not be manly if he consents to join them. He does not want them and will not tolerate them, a reaction most would find in a colonized country. Resistance is inevitable, but the Europeans are the dominant force in this tragic history for this colonized place. Some of the villagers; however, are opportunistic about this social change in their lifestyles, believing that change will be for the best. The European influence threatens to destroy the need for the mastery of traditional methods of farming, harvesting, building, and cooking. Methods that were once crucial for survival are becoming unnecessary. Throughout the novel, Achebe shows how quickly the abandonment of the Igbo language for English leads to the eradication of these traditions.

Technopoly

            Technology has become a very important part of one’s life in the modern society. Recently, technology has been exponentially growing, and will continue to exponentially grow. Technology has done a lot to make our lives easier.

            In Neil Postman’s book Technopoly, Postman describes how our lives have changed from technology, because of the demand for it to make our lives easier. He believes that the United States has become a technocracy because of capitalism and the profit motive of using efficient machines to do work instead of risking human inefficiency.  Postman describes a technocracy as “a society only loosely controlled by social custom and religious tradition and driven by the impulse to invent.” This has become evident in our exponential technological advances in technology. It is said that “Technocracy also speeded up the world.” People are able to easily get to place to place because of technology such as inventions in cars, trains, and other forms of transportation.

            Postman states that a Technopoly “eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World. It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant.” Fredrick W. Taylor believes that in a Technopoly, the goal of human labor is efficiency, so it eliminates inefficiencies such as religion. Taylor states that “human judgment can not be trusted.” He argues that it cannot be trusted because of different moral expectations, and it is plagued with bias.

            I could see how these concepts that Postman is describing fits into Brave New World, because in Brave New World, the whole society is based on technological advances. One for example would be the way they produce babies. They do not naturally reproduce, instead the embryos are hatched in a lab due to technological advances.

Man and Machine

Article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2048299-1,00.html

            In the article “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal’ by Lev Grossman the concept of singularity is addressed. I personally believe that man will eventually merge to machine creating the existence of Singularity. There are already breakthroughs in science that are happening even today, referring to the scientists’ discovery of a particle that traveled faster the light. If you look at the history of mankind, there have been a numerous amount of beliefs that have been proven faulty, and I believe with our technological advances and increased intelligence, breakthroughs will continue to happen. The merging of human and machine, will be good as far as increasing life and health of humans, but there will come a point where advances in technology will outweigh the species of human.

            In the article, scientist Raymond Kurzweil believes that “[2045] In that year, he estimates, given the vast increases in computing power and the vast reductions in the cost of same, the quantity of artificial intelligence created will be about a billion times the sum of all the human intelligence that exists today.” Human intelligence will eventually be outweighed by the advances in artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence thus, will become the future and human intelligence becomes the past. Already we are seeing signs of this today, i.e. the calculator, computers, and any other machine that is programmed or its purpose is to help out with or do a task for humans. Humans are already becoming lazy due to technological advances, soon it will catch up to us to where we do not need to do anything, then Darwin’s theory of natural selection will takes its place. Aubrey de Grey is a biologist that is one of world’s best known life-extension researcher, he works for SENS, or Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence. De Grey states “The human body is a machine that has a bunch of functions, and it accumulates various types of damage as a side effect of the normal function of the machine. Therefore in principal that damage can be repaired periodically.” De Grey points out that the human body is an organic machine that has a bunch of functions; there have already been mechanical inventions that help the human body carry out natural process such as a pace maker, which helps those have heart problems.

            I believe that soon humans will become a sort of cyborg that will be using mechanical inventions to increase health and age. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the character Bernard is one who thinks he has a difference purpose in the world he lives in. I believe that Bernard is onto something , that he feels that in his society, they are losing humanity by progression of technology. In Brave New World, Bernard says to Lenina “No, the real problem is: How is it I can’t-what would it be like if I could, if I were free-not enslaved by my conditioning” (Huxley 91). Bernard feels that he is oppressed and born into a form of social slavery, which he cannot be himself. In the about Singularity, humans will begin to be a part of something for which they cannot change. Technological advances are increasing exponentially and there is nothing we can do about it. Singularity is inevitable. 

Peace: A Way of Thinking

http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/352/1/ending-ethnic-conflict-and-creating-positive-peace-in-rwanda-and-sierra-leone This is the Article that i analyzed.

            Katherine J. Wolfenden discusses the dilemma of the widespread notion that war is inevitable. Her purpose for writing about this is to get the idea out there that peace is not just idealistic; it can be attainable. Wolfenden intends to make people aware that war does not have to be inevitable, that international peace can start to occur if the nations of this world is willing are change.  The intended audience in this article is anyone and everyone; she is trying to get her message across to the world no matter what social standard, including political leaders. The author uses a down to earth tone, at the same time using elevated language to appeal to the mass and more sophisticated others.

            The subject of Wolfenden’s article is peace and it would be appreciated by her audience simply because I feel that most people do not always want war to affect the economies of the world consistently, because that is what it has been like unless you live in a neutral country, such as Sweden or Switzerland. The thesis of her article is that Peace is attainable in this world that peace can be made before a conflict arises in war by direct nonviolent action. This thesis is controversial because many have the belief that war is inevitable. I personally did believe that war was inevitable simply because I live in America, where war is inevitable because of the United States’ longing to exploit countries to attain money at the expense of others. I opened my eyes to a new side of the world, and saw from a different perspective, where peace can happen, it just takes the willingness to change for the greater of the world. This has not been able to happen unfortunately due to propaganda and teachings about war, which Wolfenden points out in her article about the Rwanda and Sierra Leone conflicts. In these conflicts children were taught to be aggressive and hostile, and that war was positive, which kept fueling the violent fires.

            In this article, the author uses the rhetorical device ethical appeal. She makes reference to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. both of which are highly respected and remembered for their nonviolent protests for social change. She uses their accomplishments as a reference to how a peaceful solution can work out, it does not have to be just violence and temporary peace. Martin Luther King Jr. led the early African American Civil Rights Movements, in which he installed the idea that with peaceful marches and patience, the African Americans will gain political freedom as well as economic and socially. King’s marches showed the violent nature of discrimination and it is that characteristic of humans that the world needs to stop, in order for this to become a peaceful world. The reason why there are constantly violent conflicts is because tensions are just temporarily eased by war. War is not a long-term peaceful solution. Wolfenden wants to get across that we need to work things out peacefully therefore war will not have to continue.