Ch 22, 23

The idea that we experienced the end of empire in our modern world kind of doesn't sit right to me. Sure, we pulled out from directly controlling other countries' governments and exerting direct military control, but its not like economic relationships dissolved. Resources and 'stuff' is why European powers colonized people and just because they pulled out of their respective foreign countries doesn't mean that they still don't get their stuff. Africa can govern itself now and control its affairs, but we stripped the whole place bare and we still dump our toxic waste there. I think empires never went away.

I think empire just took on a new form allowed by capitalism, which basically means exploit other people to get rich. Sounds kinda like imperialism right? Instead of waging war for resources and 'stuff' we use money and economic pressure. Corporations control our government today and exert influence in countries all around the world. I don't think a private company should be allowed to pay millions of dollars to a legislator to make laws that favor their acquisition of extreme wealth. We mentioned in class that corporations are slightly different in that they don't exert military force, but don't they? We invaded iraq because of oil didn't we? and I guarantee you that weapons companies heavily lobby politicians to continue blowing people up so they can keep getting rich off of destruction. Personally, I think we are one step away from mega corporations being allowed to have their own private armies and once some major world catastrophe strikes, they will be poised to assume control of our government and establish their United States of Corporation, where they will proceed to enslave us all. Full circle.

Ch 19,20,21

I thought it would be good to talk a bit about the flappers that arose in mainstream culture after world war 1. Finally for the first time in history, women were starting to gain a level of independence not seen for a long time and even not at all in some cultures. Resulting from the war, women were working in factories and making good money and for the first time began to express themselves more publicly. They smoked in public and drank and partied. I didn't know this was unacceptable before then or stigmatized. It's also interesting that this cultural phenomenon occurred during prohibition, which in my opinion seemed to be more of a return to traditional values.

Prohibition seemed to me to be so silly, but when looking at why it happened i am not surprised. Groups who valued extreme ideas of morality still exist today. Back then it was alcohol. Today, its things like LGBT rights. These people are scary and many of them hold a considerable amount of lobbying power. Special political climate allowed them to pass an amendment to the constitution. That is so crazy to me! How much influence would be required to amend the constitution today? It happened once and it definitely can happen again. I just hope that the next amendment to the constitution gives people more protections and freedom. If its the banning of something of the stripping of someones rights, I am leaving the country.

Chapters 16-18

The industrial revolution marked the beginning of society as we know it today. While it was an amazing time of technological advancement, it was also a time of conquest and exploitation of the rich against the poor. By exploiting new technology and abusing the working class, wealthy industry moguls were able to produce products at crazy new rate. Being a computer science major and trying to pursue a career in innovation, I definitely support technological advancement however, unchecked innovation for the sole purpose of hoarding wealth (especially at the great expense of others,) seems to really miss the mark for me. I get that then they were just figuring things out and trying anything and everything but, in my opinion the role of technology should improve peoples life and make things easier. Sure factories created jobs, but workers were basically exploited to the degree that slaves were. So did the general population really benefit? The people who owned the factories definitely benefited, but weren’t they in most situations already doing pretty well?

I found it outrageous to read that one major reason for Britain’s colonial practices was that they were producing too many goods for its population and needed to flood foreign markets to justify their output. I don’t remember reading anything about a ‘Great Cotton Shortage’… The book says that they (and most European and white ethnic majorities) developed a notion of racial superiority, which they justified with science (i.e. they probably paid a scientist to publish a study,) but I think that was just propaganda for the masses to keep everyone in their place. I don’t think anyone could profit like the wealthy minority did from exploitation of other people across the globe without knowing exactly what they were doing. If white people are the superior race, why ban colonized people from education or restrict areas of study? They don’t (sorry didn’t) want people to know what they were up to, which basically looks like worldwide economic domination. I severely doubt that even most of the people of Britain directly profited from these conquests. Sure they got access to more ‘stuff,’ but they had to buy this stuff from the wealthy minority. I’m sure if you looked at the amount of things the average person could consume before and after the industrial revolution it would be astonishing. Creating this capitalist consumerism symbiosis makes the individual feel included in whats going on but in reality its just wool over the eyes as the real people profiting shape the world in their image--one where they stay wealthy.

Chapters 13 -15

A little late on last weeks journal, but oh well here ya go!

I found it interesting to read that the amount of slaves that were sent to South American plantations was way WAY higher than that that of North America. The book tells us that a big reason for this was a direct effect of the sugar industry, but it only briefly mentions that the reason was because of how difficult the work was so I thought i’d go into the sugar production practices of the time and try and describe why it was so much more intense than other slave-driven manufacturing processes of the era.

One major difference in the cultivation of sugar that differed from industries like cotton was that industries like cotton typically just grew the raw material and shipped it out to another manufacturer who refined the product into a usable material. Sugarcane is different in that once it is harvested it will spoil quickly and consequently must be processed quickly into its final crystalized form. Because of this, sugarcane plantations also had to handle the responsibilities of refining the raw product into the crystalized form that people could directly use in addition to the planting and harvesting of the plant.

Virtually every aspect of the planting and harvesting of sugarcane is intense, back breaking work. To plant sugarcane, workers had to dig a square roughly five feet wide down around 8 inches and were expected to do at least 60 of these a day. So these plantations must have been massive considering the amount of slaves they had working for them. Because these places were usually in tropical areas, weeds and rodents would attack growing plants thus requiring an entire portion of slaves to be dedicated to pest extermination and weed removal. The plants grew taller than the average human by harvest and because of that were difficult to chop as the plant needed to be cut at basically the base. The stalks were taken to factories where wind powered crushers would crush the juice that would be sent to the boilers to boil and refine into crystalized sugar. I’m sure its not surprising that many people lost limbs in the machinery during this process.

After reading up on this process i’m not surprised now by the number of slaves required for the sugar industry. Sugar really isn’t necessary for any human diet; its basically a drug and the europeans were hooked (and willing to exploit anyone to get their fix.) Its not surprising that slave labor was used, but at the scale at which this was happening it is surprising to me how long this went on before revolution occurred. I suppose humans will take a lot of abuse to maintain routine in their lives and I cant say I’m exempt from this assumption.

Chapters 10,11 and 12

So I didn't realize that chapters were switched from last week and this week. Last week I commented a bunch on Islam because I thought we were supposed to read that one and not the Christendom chapter. Reading about Christendom was quite interesting. I never really knew how the split between the western Christianity and Eastern Orthodox happened. The Byzantine Empire is super interesting and I didn't know that it essentially was the Roman Empire 2.0. I had always assumed that the Roman Empire ended when the fall of Rome and that it was no more. How surprised was I to learn that it continued on in a new form for almost a thousand years. It was cool to learn that latin and greek and roman teachings continued on in the east while the west was in total rural disarray. It is also a little silly to me that this split in Christianity occurred when it was the western Christians that put that capital in Constantinople in the first place. Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that they were continuing on in the faith's best interest?

Another thing I found fascinating was the expansion of the Mongol empire under Genghis Khan. It is amazing to me that they were able to conquer so much in such a short time and with so few people. They were truly a military machine with every facet of the society contributing in some way to the war effort. I wasn't surprised to learn how short lived the empire was. With your entire economy depending on the conquering and assimilating of new areas, cultures and resources, its not surprising that they would eventually 'burn out' and run out of things to plunder. Still an amazing feat that will probably never be matched again in our history (unless nuclear apocalypse happens then someone will probably try and be lord of the ashes.)

Chapters 7-9

I found it interesting to read about the fluid nature of religion as civilization continued to develop during the time period outlined in the reading this week. From what I understand based on what I have read and previous classes, the main purpose of religion is to address complicated questions to which we have no answer. I am referring to questions like, "What happens when we die?" and similar things. For the people then, it could also refer to things like ,"Why did a tornado just drop and decimate our entire village?" Religion sought to answer the tough questions. I like this aspect of religion and through that lens I believe it to be very beneficial to society. Unfortunately, religion was appropriated throughout history by powerful people and rulers to justify their actions and policies. When you speak to a follower of one of these religions, they are very passionate about the sacred writings of their religion, but somewhat ignorant about the general history of religion in general.

From the reading, we find that Buddhism began in India. They have a fascinating view of the divine, but because the followers of Hinduism (the ones in power) didn't think they meshed well and thus Buddhism declined in India. The buddhists were pushed out of India and started spreading their message in other parts of Asia. In China people didn't really like Buddhism because it didn't mesh well with their familiar confucian values. So, Buddhists literally just changed their messages to be more favorable to the Chinese (For example, changing gender-equal messages in favor of the patriarchy.) Humans are apparently totally fine changing their divine writings in favor of power. The Buddhists weren't really conquerors, but other religions are a different story.

Islam apparently arose because a charismatic man wanted to unite the Arab people and solve a bunch of cultural and societal problems. He didn't like the Jews because they were exclusionary and apparently the Christians were wrong to consider Christ a god, so he made a new religion in his own image (one that addressed the issues facing his community.) Looking broadly over the centuries, it seems that these religions kind of just pop up when theres something bad going on. The caste system brought lots of order to India for a long time, but eventually Buddhism was birthed from it. Rulers claimed divine status as a way to control the people they extorted from.

As I bring this rant to a close, I'd like to finish with addressing a big concern I have with all this. Whether or not a divine presence channeled knowledge into these ancient prophetic people we will never know, but it was all written down way later by someone else. These sacred writings are used to justify some pretty horrific stuff. They aren't scientific in any way and give no evidence to support anything they claim yet, people kill and subjugate in their name. In the reading it says that the Quran says women are equal to men yet in Islamic countries women are totally---
So yeah, I think religion should stick to philosophy and stay away from the people who have power to control others.

Chapters 3-6

One thing I found interesting that I read was regarding slavery during the Roman Empire. Slavery, wasn't really racially motivated rather it was purely economic and strongly tied to their culture. Even more interesting was the fact that slaves held literally any occupation in society with the exception of the military. Slaves were skilled craftsmen and even doctors. It is so crazy to me to read that it would be perfectly legal to own a person and train them for years in a skilled task to never pay them or let them have any rights as an individual. For a long time I assumed a big reason slaves didn't revolt very often was due to them being uneducated and generally kept segregated from one another. The book said that they worked alongside non-slaves in all sorts of occupation. This leads me to think that many more of them were educated and able to read and write than I had previously thought. Was it simply that the military would step in readily and execute slaves trying to start rebellions? Also, was the fact that they were not allowed to learn military skills enough to keep them from challenging authorities? This would make sense considering that a big factor contributing to the failure of the rebellion led by Spartacus was his lack of military skills compared to the legions he was up against. Still, with at least a third of the population being slaves, that's a huge population that could be mobilized. I think all the women and the slaves should have united for civil rights as they would then hold the majority population wise, but as we know, nothing of the sort happened and patterns continued to repeat until modern times and only get darker. 

Another thing I found interesting was how the absence of domesticated animals shaped society in the Americas. Because America didn't have many animals capable of being enslaved, it greatly affected how civilizations developed. They couldn't produce food on the scale at which was possible in Eurasia and consequently, population didn't explode like it did over seas. Also, giant civilizations were much more difficult to grow so you had many more smaller states with few great rulers. It kind of makes me think about what would have been better. We now have the ability to feed an insane number of people, but what does more food mean? It means more people. Famine is natures way of population control and enforcing a sort of balance among all life on the planet. We figured out a way to 'hack' that natural process, but its unsustainable. A famine a thousand years ago meant little to the planet as a whole and with regards to all forms of life, but if humans are to experience a global famine today it would mean such a depletion of world resources I am worried will leave our planet lifeless (at least in the way Earth has been for millennia, I'm sure some bacteria and algae will start to evolve again into more complex creatures eventually as global climate change permits.)