#thats the extent of my knowledge of American politics | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yoshi-p · 5 years

Text

everyone and their dog is doing it and everyone is absolutely allowed to share their opinions so i want a turn but first let me clarify:

hello im yase, been around since 1.0. I am of turkish and nogai descent and i can speak fluently in tatar, turkish but my english doesn’t hold 100% so i will be all over the place.

Unfortunately this will all be word of mouth and may be taken as vague posting, but I have experienced issues since the release of 4.0 and would like to give my opinions. I want to let this all off my chest this is just a huge vent basically so i guarantee my english will be terrible.

the most important point: NEVER EVER SPEAK FOR ANOTHER CULTURE. NEVER EVER SPEAK ABOUT A CULTURE YOU DON’T KNOW. YOU HAVE SPREAD FALSE INFORMATION AND I AM SO HURT.

another point is ITS A VIDEO GAME GUYS (does not apply to everything but some people really need to take a step back because people are concerned.)

Here’s the hot topic I’ll talk of first: garleans. I personally do not play one as I prefer to play characters that would never be involved in a sense with the political agenda because in real life im too stupid to comprehend anything like that so i wouldn’t even know how my character would behave with the hot topics. I really do think people need to take a step back and see that everyone who is putting in their input is making solid points but personally I would never compare them to nazi germany though I see why people are generalising. I always saw it as tsardom of russia with the use of roman influence as well, something obvious in naming conventions and the way the ranks/monarchy(?) works but it’s not so clear what the main influences of most places in this game if you have a look at the bigger picture. Without like full on spoiling, its weird to have this view to me with the knowledge that ascians are behind this. Are you implying anyone who plays or was influenced by ascians is also under this umbrella?

Also why THE HELL WOULD YOU TAG SOMETHING KNOWING IT WOULD GET A LOT OF TRACTION AND RESPONSE THEN BE LIKE “you guys misunderstood, I was expressing my feelings” lol no. “ I don’t understand where this is coming from, and at this point, I don’t really want to.” then why did you even fucking bother do it in private dont tag it.

You are COMPLETELY valid to feeling uncomfortable, it is fine because with how much of this world we have there will be aspects some of us don’t like. You are not inclined to involve yourself with someone if they roleplay as a garlean but you do not need to start publicising it in a way that will paint the community in black and white when its truly a wider spectrum.

YOU CHOOSE WHO YOU INVOLVE YOURSELF WITH AND WHO YOU PLAY WITH, PLEASE GET AWAY FROM PEOPLE WHO GIVE YOU NEGATIVE FEELINGS OR YOU’LL SPREAD IT TO OTHERS.

from that initial and very brief tagged post there popped up many others and new discourse is arising, opening discussions about many things which is better then being blind to it all. but if you have personal grievances with someone and you state its over, let it be over. It’s not healthy behaviour. it’s also troubling to see someone complain a lot about the game and continue to play, no one is forcing you or holding a gun to your head. take breaks if you need to and play less frequently. like, real life is so much more important and there are people in this community that prioritise relationships with players etc.

Also, please stop fucking talking about mongolian/turkic/turkish culture like you know things. 99% of the big mouths in this community are americans. like majority are white americans.

over the course of this expansion i have had many people of varied backgrounds share with me some terrible experiences and i myself have seen some truly stupid shit.

WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU LEARN OF OUR CULTURE AND WHERE TO CONTINUE DOING SO. DO NOT INTERPRET MEDIA AS ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF CULTURE.

it is absolutely not hard to tag a post and ask around, someone will pop up. I’ve been doing my very best to let everyone i know that i can help with learning about my culture or to find someone who would be more then happy to explain and share with other cultures. But when you go off of a documentary you saw of Genghis khan or only know of the tourist white people scenes of istanbul you as a community say some TRULY dumb shit.

I like to try and be patient because i myself when approaching someone of a culture i admire and am curious about i want that in turn. But if you say to me things like “Ainu aren’t real” or “Tatar people have nothing in common with tribes from the Altai mountains” its hard to do so.

FFXIV regions are not just “Germany” “Turkey” “Mongolia”. If you think this, it’s clear to me you don’t know shit and are too lazy to explore, further just google shit its not that hard. I had someone tell me that my people could never be in this game since its “Straight up mongolia” fucks sake NO ITS NOT. The designs vary and i can see the differences in simple things like words because i actually bother to do research even coming from a turkic culture. There were some beautiful little things dropped that linked to not only my people but others like Uyghur and Altai. The only place in FFXIV i think could only have a singular influence is Kugane, because from a foreigner’s perspective that’s already interesting enough. Many people have grievances and real issues with how SE has handled Doma’s influences and no one ever talks about that. Representation for asia in media has turned into this mess of specific east asian countries, the trio that even then gets categorized into China/Japan with brief mentions of Korean culture.

Its frustrating. There are people who are happy to teach you. Who are willing to show what is wrong with the picture.

I have read several posts about Turkey/istanbul/Antalya. Yall fuckin weird you guys seem to think its in U.A.E or some shit with how you act. It’s in the Mediterranean/Europe/Asia/Middle East and there is no such thing as a specific looking Turkish person. You claim everyone is specifically white/brown, HELL NO. It’s a mixed nation and that’s the history of the land, if you had ever fucking stepped in turkey and spoke to any person on the street they’ll say their heritage that lead them to there. People claim Ala mhigo’s influences are turkey but i have yet to see that. As someone who has lived there and has heritage there and is strongly connected to that culture, i dont see it. sure the ala mhigan gown had patternings but thats also present in my nogai culture too because parts of turkey’s society descended from the line of the Kayi tribe. Just fucking LEARN TO READ GUYS. None of you guys even know what the altai mountains mean and i could sit and explain over and over again if you let people SPEAK.

Look at Thavnairian items. We have outfits that are completely different, a full length dress and then a bustier. you can’t start generalising things in video games to be one culture you have to realise most places in this game have several influences. We don’t know a lot but everything we have been given has been varied enough to pin point it to ONLY one influence.

I don’t want to just keep going about this simply because im growing frustrated.

The thing with Viera complaints. I think some are valid but some are stupid. For one as I make this post it hasn’t even been confirmed so there is no reason for policing Viera to a severe extent. Considering all the Ivalice content in game has been an alternate universe kind of thing its dumb as shit. But feol viera being made without understanding the knowledge that people who have played rw picked up is quite frustrating. As a community, its important to help people when we have information that others may need that they cant understand the context of.

I know people are worried about them being fetishized, that is my legitimate fear too as a huge ivalice fan. But this is a repeated cycle especially when we consider generalizations like miqo’te especially seekers and belly dancing or when au ra arrived and people thought xaela were genghis khan basically.

The game is not solid, there are so many holes in the lore and the plots and i know people hate that but we fill the gaps with our own opinions and theories. While I understand some people think we need to move forward in 2019 because “japan is xenophobic”, its a very difficult thing to do. THEY DO HIRE PEOPLE FOR CULTURE ADVISING. THEY TRAVEL OFTEN AND DEVELOP WITH THIS. IT’S NOT LIKE THEY WENT ON GOOGLE AND SAID “yeah a japan land would be fun” they literally have people hired specifically for this stuff. however, at the end of the day its a company that has yet to show it can evolve with the times. Its becoming more and more evident with the recent patterns of main titles in FF and side projects having so many issues in story/lore/management. remember 1.0 basically died being absolute garbage and this is salvaged from that.

its really late and i had a terrible evening so i may not be making the most sense but theres more important things to worry about then to make this game a miserable experience when it could be a huge learning opportunity for everyone. There’s no need to generalise people into categories because of characters they choose to develop but its important to note with majority of people standing up higher on the pedestal are those speaking for the minorities groups that have direct influences in the game.

also lol if you fucking say ainu aren’t real to me one more time i will fucking throttle you

#this ended up being ramblings which i seem to make monthly lol

40 notes · View notes

adambstingus · 5 years

Text

Welcome to the land that no country wants | Jack Shenker

The long read: In 2014, an American dad claimed a tiny parcel of African land to make his daughter a princess. But Jack Shenker had got there first and learned that states and borders are volatile and delicate things

Bir Tawil is the last truly unclaimed land on earth: a tiny sliver of Africa ruled by no state, inhabited by no permanent residents and governed by no laws. To get there, you have two choices.

The first is to fly to the Sudanese capital Khartoum, charter a jeep, and follow the Shendi road hundreds of miles up to Abu Hamed, a settlement that dates back to the ancient kingdom of Kush. Today it serves as the regions final permanent human outpost before the vast Nubian desert, twice the size of mainland Britain and almost completely barren, begins unfolding to the north.

There are some artisanal gold miners in the desert, conjuring specks of hope out of the ground, a few armed gangs, which often prey upon the prospectors, and a small number of military units who carry out patrols in the area and attempt, with limited success, to keep the peace. You need to drive past all of them, out to the point where the occasional scattered shrub or palm tree has long since disappeared and given way to a seemingly endless, flat horizon of sand and rock out to the point where there are no longer any landmarks by which to measure the passing of your journey.

Out here, dry winds often blow in from the Arabian peninsula, whipping up sheets of dust that plunge visibility down to near-zero. After a day like this, then a night, and then another day, you will finally cross into Bir Tawil, an 800-square-mile cartographical oddity nestled within the border that separates Egypt and Sudan. Both nations have renounced any claim to it, and no other government has any jurisdiction over it.

The second option is to approach from Egypt, setting off from the countrys southernmost city of Aswan, down through the arid expanse that lies between Lake Nasser to the west and the Red Sea to the east. Much of it has been declared a restricted zone by the Egyptian army, and no one can get near the border without first obtaining their permission.

In June 2014, a 38-year-old farmer from Virginia named Jeremiah Heaton did exactly that. After obtaining the necessary paperwork from the Egyptian military authorities, he started out on a treacherous 14-hour expedition through remote canyons and jagged mountains, eventually wending his way into the no mans land of Bir Tawil and triumphantly planting a flag.

Heatons six-year-old daughter, Emily, had once asked her father if she could ever be a real princess; after discovering the existence of Bir Tawil on the internet, his birthday present to her that year was to trek there and turn her wish into a reality. So be it proclaimed, Heaton wrote on his Facebook page, that Bir Tawil shall be forever known as the Kingdom of North Sudan. The Kingdom is established as a sovereign monarchy with myself as the head of state; with Emily becoming an actual princess.

Heatons social media posts were picked up by a local paper in Virginia, the Bristol Herald-Courier, and quickly became the stuff of feel-good clickbait around the world. CNN, Time, Newsweek and hundreds of other global media outlets pounced on the story. Heaton responded by launching a global crowdfunding appeal aimed at securing $250,000 in an effort at getting his new state up and running.

Heaton knew his actions would provoke awe, mirth and confusion, and that many would question his sanity. But what he was not prepared for was an angry backlash by observers who regarded him not as a devoted father or a heroic pioneer but rather as a 21st-century imperialist. After all, the portrayal of land as unclaimed or undeveloped was central to centuries of ruthless conquest. The same callous, dehumanising logic that has been used to legitimise European colonialism not just in Africa but in the Americas, Australia, and elsewhere is on full display here, noted one commentator. Are white people still allowed to do this kind of stuff? asked another.

Any new idea thats this big and bold always meets with some sort of ridicule, or is questioned in terms of its legitimacy, Heaton told me last year over the telephone. In his version of the story, Heatons conquest of Bir Tawil was not about colonialism, but rather familial love and ambitious dreams: apart from making Emily royalty, he hopes to turn his newly founded nation which lies within one of the most inhospitable regions on the planet and contains no fixed population, no coastline, no surface water and no arable soil into a cutting-edge agriculture and technology research hub that will ultimately benefit all humanity.

After all, Heaton reasoned, no country wanted this forgotten corner of the world, and no individual before him had ever laid claim to it. What harm was to be caused by some wellintentioned, starry-eyed eccentric completing such a challenge, and why should it not be him?

Jeremiah Heaton makes his claim to Bir Tawil in 2014. Photograph: Facebook

There were two problems with Heatons argument. First, territories and borders can be delicate and volatile things, and tampering with them is rarely without unforeseen consequences. As Heaton learned from the public response to his self-declared kingdom, there is no neutral or harmless way to claim a state, no matter how far away from anywhere else it appears to be. Second, Heaton was not the first well-intentioned, starry-eyed eccentric to travel all the way to Bir Tawil and plant a flag. Someone else got there first, and that someone was me.

Like all great adventure stories, this one began with lukewarm beer and the internet. It was the summer of 2010, and the days in Cairo where I was living and working as a journalist were long and hot. My friend Omars balcony provided a shaded refuge filled with wicker chairs and reliably stable wireless broadband. It was up there, midway through a muggy evenings web pottering, that we first encountered Bir Tawil.

Omar was an Egyptian-British filmmaker armed with a battery of finely tuned Werner Herzog impressions and a crisp black beard that I was secretly quite jealous of. The pair of us knew nothing beyond a single fact, gleaned from a blog devoted to arcane maps: barely 500 miles away from where we sat, there apparently existed a patch of land over which no country on earth asserted any sovereignty. Within five minutes I had booked the flights. Omar opened two more beers.

Places beyond the scope of everyday authority have always fired the imagination. They appear to offer us an escape when all you can see of somewhere is its outlines, it is easy to start fantasising about the void within. No mans lands are our El Dorados, says Noam Leshem, a Durham University geographer who recently travelled 6,000 miles through a series of so-called dead spaces, from the former frontlines of the Balkans war to the UN buffer zone in Cyprus, along with his colleague Alasdair Pinkerton of Royal Holloway. The pair intended to conclude their journey at Bir Tawil, but never made it. There is something alluring about a place beyond the control of the state, Leshem adds, and also something highly deceptive. In reality, nowhere is unplugged from the complex political and historical dynamics of the world around it, and as Omar and I were to discover no visitors can hope to short-circuit them.

Six months later, in January 2011, we touched down at Khartoum International airport with a pair of sleeping bags, five energy bars, and an embarrassingly small stock of knowledge about our final destination. To an extent, the ignorance was deliberate. For one thing, we planned to shoot a film about our travels, and Omar had persuaded me the secret to good film-making was to begin work utterly unprepared. Omar according to Omar was a cinematic auteur; the kind of maverick who could breeze into a desolate wasteland with no vehicle, no route, and no contacts and produce an award-winning documentary from the mayhem. One does not lumber an auteur, he explained, with printed itineraries, booked accommodation or emergency phone numbers. Mindful of my own aspirations to auteurism, this reasoning struck me as convincing.

There was something else, too, that made us refrain from proper planning. As the date of our departure for Sudan drew closer, Omar and I had taken to discussing our plans for Bir Tawil in increasingly grandiose terms. Deep down, I think, we both knew that the notion of claiming the territory and harnessing it for some grand ideological cause was preposterous. But what if it wasnt? What if our own little tabula rasa could be the start of something bigger, transforming a forgotten relic of colonial map-making into a progressive force that would defeat contemporary injustices across the world?

The mechanics of how this might actually work remained a little hazy. Yet just occasionally, at more contemplative junctures, it did occur to us that in the process of planting a flag in Bir Tawil as part of some ill-defined critique of arbitrary borders and imperial violence, there was a risk we could appear to the untrained eye very similar to the imperialists who had perpetrated such violence in the first place. It was a resemblance we were keen to avoid. Undertaking this journey in a state of deep ignorance, we told ourselves, would help mitigate against pomposity. Without any basic knowledge, we would be forced to travel as humble innocents, relying solely on guidance from the communities we passed through.

As the two of us cleared customs, we broke into smiles and congratulated each other. The auteurs had landed, and what is more they had Important Things To Say about borders and states and sovereignty and empires. We set off in search of some local currency, and warmed to our theme. By the time we found an ATM, we were referring to Bir Tawil as so much more than a conceptual exposition. Under our benevolent stewardship, we assured each other, it could surely become some sort of launchpad for radical new ideas, a haven for subversives all over the planet.

It was at that point that the auteurs realised their bank cards did not work in Sudan, and that there were no international money transfer services they could use to wire themselves some cash.

This setback represented the first consequence of our failure to do any preparatory research. The nagging sense that our maverick approach to reaching Bir Tawil may not have been the wisest way forward gained momentum with consequence number two, which was that to solve the money problem we had to persuade a friend of a friend of a friend of an Egyptian business acquaintance to do an illicit currency trade for us on the outskirts of Khartoum. Consequence number three namely that, given our lack of knowledge about where we could and could not legally film in the capital, after a few days we inadvertently attracted the attention of an undercover state security agent while carrying around $2,000 worth of used Sudanese banknotes in an old rucksack, and were arrested transformed suspicion into certainty.

The route to Bir Tawil

On the date Omar and I were incarcerated, millions of citizens in South Sudan were heading to the polls to decide between continued unity with the north or secession and a new, independent state of their own. We sat silently in a nondescript office block just off Gamaa Avenue the citys main diplomatic thoroughfare while a group of men in black suits and dark sunglasses scrolled through files on Omars video camera. Armed soldiers, unsmiling, stood guard at the door. Through the rooms single window, open but barred, the sound of nearby traffic could be heard. The images on the screen depicted me and Omar gadding about town on the days following our arrival; me and Omar unfurling huge rolls of yellowing paper at the governments survey department; me and Omar scrawling indecipherable patterns on sheets of paper in an effort to design the new Bir Tawili flag; me and Omar squabbling over fabric colours at the Omdurman market where we had gone to stitch together the aforementioned flag. With each new picture, a man who appeared to be the senior officer raised his eyes to meet ours, shook his head, and sighed.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, I pointed out to Omar how apposite it was that at the very moment in which votes were being cast in the south, possibly redrawing the regions borders for ever, we had been placed under lock and key in a military intelligence unit almost a thousand miles to the north for attempting to do the same. Omar, concerned about the fate of both his camera and the contents of the rucksack, declined to respond. I predicted that in the not too distant future, when we had made it to Bir Tawil, we would look back on this moment and laugh. Omar glared.

In the end, our captivity lasted under an hour. The senior officer concluded, perceptively, that, whatever we were attempting to do, we were far too incompetent to do it properly, or to cause too much trouble along the way. Upon our release, we set about obtaining a jeep that could take us to Bir Tawil. Every reputable travel agent we approached turned us down point-blank, citing the prevalence of bandit attacks in the desert. Thankfully, we were able to locate a disreputable travel agent, a large man with a taste for loud polo shirts who went by the name of Obai. Obai was actually not a travel agent at all, but rather a big-game hunter with a lucrative sideline in ambiguously licensed pick-up trucks. In exchange for most of our used banknotes, he offered to provide us with a jeep, a satellite phone, two tanks of water, and his nephew Gedo, who happened to be looking for work as a driver. In the absence of any alternative offers, we gratefully accepted.

Unlike Obai, who was a font of swashbuckling anecdotes and improbable tales of derring-do, Gedo turned out to be a more taciturn soul. He was a civil engineer who had previously done construction work on the colossal Merowe dam in northern Sudan, Africas largest hydropower project. On the day of our departure, he turned up wearing a baseball cap with Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics emblazoned across the front, and carrying a loaded gun. As we waved goodbye to Obai and began weaving our way through the capitals rush hour traffic, Omar and I set about explaining to Gedo the intricacies of our plan to transform Bir Tawil into an open-source state that would disrupt existing patterns of global power and privilege no mean feat, given that we didnt understand any of the intricacies ourselves. Gedo responded to this as he responded to everything: with a sage nod and a deliberate stroke of his stubble.

Im here to protect you, he told us solemnly, as we swung north on to the highway and left Khartoum behind us. Also, Ive never been on a holiday before, and this one sounds fun.

Bir Tawils unusual status wedged between the borders of two countries and yet claimed by neither is a byproduct of colonial machinations in north-east Africa, during an era of British control over Egypt and Egyptian influence on Sudan.

In 1899, government representatives from London and Cairo the latter nominally independent, but in reality the servants of a British protectorate put pen to paper on an agreement which established the shared dominion of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The treaty specified that, following 18 years of intense fighting between Egyptian and British forces on the one side and Mahdist rebels in Sudan on the other, Sudan would now become a British colony in all but name. Its northern border with Egypt was to run along the 22nd parallel, cutting a straight line through the Nubian desert right out to the ocean.

Three years later, however, another document was drawn up by the British. This one noted that a mountain named Bartazuga, just south of the 22nd parallel, was home to the nomadic Ababda tribe, which was considered to have stronger links with Egypt than Sudan. The document stipulated that henceforth this area should be administered by Egypt. Meanwhile, a much-larger triangle of land north of the 22nd parallel, named Halaib, abutting the Red Sea, was assigned to the Beja people who are largely based in Sudan for grazing, and thus now came under Sudans jurisdiction. And that was that, for the next few decades at least. World wars came and went, regimes rose and fell, and those imaginary lines in the sand gathered dust in bureaucratic archives, of little concern to anyone on the ground.

Disputes only started in earnest when Sudan finally achieved independence in 1956. The new postcolonial government in Khartoum immediately declared that its national borders matched the tweaked boundaries stipulated in the second proclamation, making the Halaib triangle Sudanese. Egypt demurred, insisting that the latter document was concerned only with areas of temporary administrative jurisdiction and that sovereignty had been established in the earlier treaty. Under this logic, the real border stayed straight and the Halaib triangle remained Egyptian.

By the early 1990s, when a Canadian oil firm signalled its intention to begin exploration in Halaib and the prospect of substantial mineral wealth being found in the region gained momentum, the disagreement was no longer academic. Egypt sent military forces to reclaim Halaib from Sudan, and despite fierce protests from Khartoum which still considers Halaib to be Sudanese and even tried to organise voting there during the 2010 Sudanese general election it has remained under Cairos control ever since.

Our world is littered with contested borders. The geographers Alexander Diener and Joshua Hagen refer to the dashed lines on atlases as the scars of history. Compared with other divisions between countries that seem so solid and timeless when scored on a map, these squiggles enclaves, misshapen lumps and odd protrusions are a reminder of how messy and malleable the process of drawing up borders has always been.

What makes this particular border conflict unique, though, is not the tussle over the Halaib triangle itself, but rather the impact it has had on the smaller patch of land just south of the 22nd parallel around Bartazuga mountain, the area known as Bir Tawil.

Egypt and Sudans rival claims on Halaib both rest on documents that appear to assign responsibility for Bir Tawil to the other country. As a result, neither wants to assert any sovereignty over Bir Tawil, for to do so would be to renounce their rights to the larger and more lucrative territory. On Egyptian maps, Bir Tawil is shown as belonging to Sudan. On Sudanese maps, it appears as part of Egypt. In practice, Bir Tawil is widely believed to have the legal status of terra nullius nobodys land and there is nothing else quite like it on the planet.

Omar and I were not, it must be acknowledged, the first to discover this anomaly. If the internet is to be believed, Bir Tawil has in fact been claimed many times over by keyboard emperors whose virtual principalities and warring microstates exist only online. The Kingdom of the State of Bir Tawil boasts a national anthem by the late British jazz musician Acker Bilk. The Emirate of Bir Tawil traces its claim over the territory to, among other sources, the Quran, the British monarchy, the 1933 Montevideo Convention and the 1856 US Guano Islands Act. There is a Grand Dukedom of Bir Tawil, an Empire of Bir Tawil, a United Arab Republic of Bir Tawil and a United Lunar Emirate of Bir Tawil. The last of these has a homepage featuring a citizen application form, several self-help mantras, and stock photos of people doing yoga in a park.

From our rarefied vantage point at the back of Obais Toyota Hilux, it was easy to look down with disdain upon these cyber-squatting chancers. None of them had ever actually set foot in Bir Tawil, rendering their claims to sovereignty worthless. Few had truly grappled with Bir Tawils complex backstory, or of the bloodshed it was built upon (tens of thousands of Sudanese fighters and civilians died as a result of the Egyptian and British military assaults that ended in the establishment of Sudans northern borders and thus, ultimately, the creation of Bir Tawil). Granted, Omar and I knew little of the backstory either, but at least we had actually got to Sudan and were making, by our own estimation, a decent fist of finding out. We ate our energy bars, listened attentively to tales of Gedos love life, and scanned the road for clues. The first arrived nearly 200 miles north-east of Khartoum, about a third of the way up towards Bir Tawil, when we came across a city of iron and fire oozing kerosene into the desert. This was Atbara: home of Sudans railway system, and the engine room of its modern-day creation story.

Until very recently, the long history of Sudan has not been one of a single country or people: many different tribes, religions and political factions have competed for power and resources, across territories and borders that bear no relation to those marking out the states limits today. A lack of rigid, recognisable boundaries was used to help justify Europes violent scramble to occupy and annex land throughout Africa in the 19th century. Often, the first step taken by western colonisers was to map and border the territory they were seizing. Charting of land was usually a prelude to military invasion and resource extraction; during the British conquest of Sudan, Atbara was crucial to both.

Sudans contemporary railway system began life as a battering ram for the British to attack Khartoum. Trains carried not only weapons and troops but everyday provisions too, specified by Winston Churchill as the letters, newspapers, sausages, jam, whisky, soda water, and cigarettes which enable the Briton to conquer the world without discomfort. Atbara was the site where key rail lines intersected, and its importance grew rapidly after Londons grip on Sudan had been formalised in the 1899 Anglo-Egyptian treaty.

Everything that mattered, from cotton to gum, came through here, as did all the rolling stock needed to move and export it, Mohamed Ederes, a local railway storekeeper, told us. He walked us through his warehouse, down corridors stacked high with box after box of metal train parts and past giant leather-bound catalogues stuffed with handwritten notes. From here, he declared proudly, you reached the world.

Atbaras colonial origins are still etched into its modern-day layout. One half of the town, originally the preserve of expatriates, is low-rise and leafy; on the other side of the tracks, where native workers were made to live, accommodation is denser and taller. But just as Atbara was a vehicle for colonialism, so too was it the place in which a distinct sense of Sudanese nationhood began to develop.

As Sudans economy grew in the early 20th century, so did the railway industry, bringing thousands of migrant workers from disparate social and ethnic groups to the city. By the second world war, Atbara was famous not only for its carriage depots and loading sidings, but also for the nationalist literature and labour militancy of those who worked within them. Poets as well as workers leaders emerged out of the nascent trade union movement in the late 1940s, which held devastating strikes and helped shake the foundations of British rule. The same train lines that had once borne Churchills sausages and soda water were now deployed to deliver workers solidarity packages all over the country, during industrial action that ultimately brought the colonial economy to a halt. Within a decade, Sudan secured independence.

The next morning, as we drove on, Gedo grew quieter and the signs of human habitation became sparser. At Karima, a small town 150 miles further north, we came across a fleet of abandoned Nile steamers stranded on the river bank; below stairs there were metal plaques bearing the name of shipwrights from Portsmouth, Southampton and Glasgow, each companys handiwork now succumbing slowly to the elements. We clambered through cobwebbed cabins and across rotting sun decks, and then decided to scale the nearby Jebel Barkal Holy Mountain in Arabic where eagles tracked us warily from the sky. Omar maintained a running commentary on our progress, delivered as a flawless Herzog parody, and it proved so painful for all in earshot that the eagles began to dive-bomb us. We set off running, taking refuge among the mountains scattered ruins.

Jebel Barkal was once believed to be the home of Amun, king of gods and god of wind. Fragments of Amuns temple are still visible at the base of the cliffs. Over the past few millennia, Jebel Barkal has been the outermost limit of Egypts Pharaonic kingdoms, the centre of an autonomous Nubian region, and a vassal province of an empire headquartered thousands of miles away in Constantinople. In the modern era of defined borders and seemingly stable nation states, Bir Tawil seems an impossible anomaly. But standing over the jagged crevices of Jebel Barkal, looking out across a region that had been passed between so many different rulers, and formed part of so many different arrangements of power over land, our endpoint started to feel more familiar.

Abandoned Nile steamers stranded on the river bank at Karima. Photograph: Omar Robert Hamilton

The following evening we camped at Abu Hamed, on the very edge of the desert. Beyond the ramshackle cafeterias that have sprung up to serve the artisanal gold-mining community sending shisha smoke and the noise of Egyptian soap operas spiralling up into the night Omar and I saw the outlines of large agricultural reclamation projects, silhouetted in the distance against a starry sky. Since 2008, when global food prices spiked, there has been a boom in what critics call land-grabbing: international investors and sovereign wealth funds snapping up leases on massive tracts of African territory in order to intensify the production of crops for export, and bringing such territory under the control of European, Asian and Gulf nations in the process. Arable land was the first to be targeted, but increasingly desert areas are also being fenced off and sold. Near Abu Hamed, Saudi Arabian companies have been greening the sand blanketing it in soil and water in an effort to make it fertile with worrying consequences for both the environment and local communities, some of whom have long asserted customary rights over the area.

It was not so long ago that the prophets of globalisation proclaimed the impending decline of the nation-state and the rise of a borderless world one modelled on the frictionless transactions of international finance, which pay no heed to state boundaries.

A resurgent populist nationalism and the refugee crisis that has stoked its flames has exposed such claims as premature, and investors depend more than ever on national governments to open up new terrains for speculation and accumulation, and to discipline citizens who dare to stand in the way. But there is no doubt that we now live in a world where the power of capital has profoundly disrupted old ideas about political authority inside national boundaries. All over the planet, the institutions that impact our lives most directly banks, buses, hospitals, schools, farms can now be sold off to the highest bidder and governed by the whims of a transnational financial elite. Where national borders once enclosed populations capable of practising collective sovereignty over their own resources, in the 21st century they look more and more like containers for an inventory of private assets, each waiting to be spliced, diced and traded around the world.

It was at Abu Hamed, while lying awake at night in a sleeping bag, nestled into a shallow depression in the sand, that I realised the closer we were getting to our destination, the more I understood what was so beguiling about it. Now that Bir Tawil was in sight, it had started to appear less like an aberration and more like a question: is there anything natural about how borders and power function in the world today?

In the end, there was no fanfare. On a hazy Tuesday afternoon, 40 hours since we left the road at Abu Hamed, 13 days since we touched down in Khartoum, and six months since the dotted lines of Bir Tawil first appeared before our eyes, Omar gave a shout from the back of the jeep. I checked our GPS coordinates on the satellite phone, and cross-referenced them with the map. Gedo, on being informed that we were now in Bir Tawil and outside of any countrys dominion, promptly took out his gun and fired off a volley of shots. We traipsed up a small hillock and wedged our somewhat forlorn flag into the rocks a yellow desert fox, set against a black circle and bordered by triangles of green and red then sat and gazed out at the horizon, tracing the rise and fall of distant mountains and following the curves of sunken valleys as they criss-crossed each other like veins through the sand. The sky and the ground both looked massive, and unending, and the warm stones around us crumbled in our hands. After a couple of hours, Gedo said that it was getting late, so we climbed back into the jeep and began the long journey home.

Well before our journey had ever begun, we had hoped albeit not particularly fervently that we could do something with it, something that mattered; that by striking out for a place this nebulous we could find a shortcut to social justice, two days drive from the nearest tap or telephone. In 800 square miles of desert, we thought that we could exploit the outlines of the bordered world in order to subvert it.

Jeremiah Heaton, beyond the kingdom for a princess schmaltz and the forthcoming Disney adaptation (he has sold film rights to his story for an undisclosed fee) seems albeit from an almost diametrically opposite philosophical outlook to be convinced of something similar. For him, the fantasy is a libertarian one, offering freedom not from the iniquities of capitalism but from the government interference that inhibits it. Just as we did, he wants to take advantage of a quirk in the system to defy it. When I spoke to Heaton, he told me with genuine enthusiasm that his country (not yet recognised by any other state or international body) would offer the worlds great innovators a place to develop their products unencumbered by taxes and regulation, a place where private enterprise faces no socially prescribed borders of its own. Big companies, he assured me, were scrambling to join his vision.

Jack Shenkers makeshift flag planted in Bir Tawil Photograph: Omar Robert Hamilton

You would be surprised at the outreach that has occurred from the corporate level to me directly, Heaton insisted during our conversation. Its not been an issue of me having to go out and sell myself on this idea. A lot of these large corporations, they see market opportunities in what Im doing. He painted a picture of Bir Tawil one day playing host to daring scientific research, ground-breaking food-production facilities and alternative banking systems that work for the benefit of customers rather than CEOs. I asked him if he understood why some people found his plans, and the assumptions they rested on, highly dubious.

Theres that saying: if you were king for a day, what would you do differently? he replied. Think about that question yourself and apply it to your own country. Thats what Im doing, but on a much bigger scale. This is not colonialism; Im an individual, not a country, I havent taken land that belongs to any other country, and Im not extracting resources other than sunshine and sand. I am just one human being, trying to improve the condition of other human beings. I have the purest intentions in the world to make this planet a better place, and to try and criticise that just because Im a white person sitting on land in the middle of the Nubian desert He trailed off, and was silent for a moment. Well, he concluded, its really juvenile.

But if, by some miracle, Heaton ever did gain global recognition as the legitimate leader of an independent Bir Tawili state, would his pitch to corporations base yourself here to avoid paying taxes and escape the manacles of democratic oversight actually do anything to improve the condition of other human beings? Part of the allure of unclaimed spaces is their radical potential to offer a blank canvas but as Omar and I belatedly realised, nothing, and nowhere, starts from scratch. Any utopia founded on the basis of a concept terra nullius that has wreaked immense historical destruction, is built on rotten foundations.

In truth, no place is a dead zone, stopped in time and ripe for private capture least of all Bir Tawil, which translates as long well in Arabic and was clearly the site of considerable human activity in the past. Although it lacks any permanent dwellings today, this section of desert is still used by members of the Ababda and Bisharin tribes who carry goods, graze crops and make camp within the sands. (Not the least of our failures was that we did not manage to speak to any of the peoples who had passed through Bir Tawil before we arrived.) Their ties to the area may be based on traditional rather than written claims but Bir Tawil is not any more a no mans land than the territory once known as British East Africa, where terra nullius was repeatedly invoked in the early 20th century by both chartered companies andthe Britishgovernment that supported them to justify the appropriation of territory from indigenous people. I cannot admit that wandering tribes have a right to keep other and superior races out of large tracts, exclaimed the British commissioner, Sir Charles Eliot, at the time, merely because they have acquired the habit of straggling over far more land than they can utilise.

Bir Tawil is no terra nullius. But no mans lands or at least ambiguous spaces, where boundaries take odd turns and sovereignty gets scrambled are real and exist among us every day. Some endure at airports, and inside immigration detention centres, and in the pockets of economic deprivation where states have abandoned any responsibility for their citizens. Others no mans lands are carried around by refugees who are yet to be granted asylum, regardless of where they may be having fled failed states or countries which would deny them the rights of citizenship, they occupy a world of legal confusion at best, and outright exclusion at worst.

Perhaps that is why, as we switched off the camera and left Bir Tawil behind us, Omar and I felt a little let down. Or perhaps we shared a sense of anticlimax because we were faintly aware of something rumbling back home in Cairo, where millions of people were about to launch an epic fight against political and economic exclusion not by withdrawing to a no mans land but by confronting state authority head-on, in the streets. A week after our return to Egypt, the country erupted in revolution.

Borders are fluid things; they help define our identities, and yet so often we use our identities to push up against borders and redraw them. For now the boundaries that divide nation states remain, but their purpose is changing and the relationship they have to our own lives, and our own rights, is growing increasingly unstable. If Bir Tawil the preeminent ambiguous space is anything to those who live far from it, it is perhaps a reminder that no particular configuration of power and governance is immutable. As we drove silently, and semi-contentedly, back past the gold-foragers, and the ramshackle cafeteria, and the heavy machinery of the Saudi farm installations Gedo at the wheel, Omar asleep and me staring out at nothing I grasped what I had failed to grasp on that lazy night of beer drinking on Omars balcony. The last truly unclaimed land on earth is really an injunction: not for us to seek out the mythical territory where we can hide from the things that anger us, but to channel that anger instead towards reclaiming territory we already call our own.

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/welcome-to-the-land-that-no-country-wants-jack-shenker/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/184057060162

0 notes

apsbicepstraining · 7 years

Text

Psycho thrillers: five movies that educate us how the attention cultivate

Power, savagery, fatality and reality the movies can educate us plenty about lifes large-scale concerns. From the Godfather to Groundhog Day, five psychologists pick the cinemas that tell us what realizes humen tick

Ten days ago in London, the Hungarian director Lszl Nemes hosted a preview screening of his film, Son of Saul. He explained that if beings didnt want to stay for the Q& A afterwards, that was fine; he wouldnt take personal offence. The gathering chuckled politely. Thats the last laugh youll have for a while, he told them.

Son of Saul Photograph: Rex/ Shutterstock

He was right: Son of Saul out in the UK on Friday is what you might call a taxing watch. Set in Auschwitz in 1944, it presents a era in living conditions of a Sonderkommando, a Jewish captive forced to work in the gas chambers, disposing of the deaths organizations. Almost every frame is filled by the beyond brutalised face of a mortal fated to die and already living in hell.

The film armies you to grapple with “the worlds largest” frightening moral selections imaginable. Should you delude your fellow prisoners into thinking theyre just going for a shower? Can you square a duty to truth-telling with a responsibility not to justification farther damage? Son of Saul requests topics few dare to pose about the human condition. Numerous movies from the sacred to the debase do the same. Here, five leading psychologists look at the classic movies that explore how human beings work.

Groundhog Day by Philippa Perry

Freud caused his patients the chance to re-edit their narrations

Andie MacDowell and Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Image: Allstar/ Columbia

In Groundhog Day, weatherman Phil Connors lives the same day over and over again. At one point, he has a schmooze in a forbid with two drinks: What would you do if you were stuck in one region and every day was exactly the same and good-for-nothing you did mattered? That simply summing-ups it up for me, replies the wino. Summarizes it up for a lot of us.

Freud inspired patients to tell their narratives and got them to free-associate around their narrative to find out how they thought and experienced about themselves. This rendered his patients the chance to relive, re-examine and maybe re-edit their narrations in terms of the room they impart themselves in the present. Our earliest context has a profound impact upon the americans and anatomies, to a great extent, how we watch and interact with the world.

When we firstly satisfied Connors, played by Bill Murray, whatever happened to him in his past has shaped him grumpy, contemptuous, disruptive and insulting. He is trapped in the narcissistic defence of assuming he is superior to everyone else and we consider parties being circumspect around him and not enjoying his company. In psychotherapy, we often talking here self-fulfilling revelation if you expect everyone not to like you, you behave defensively and, hey presto, your prophecy starts true-life. Being caught in the same day is a metaphor for how he is stuck in this pattern.

Groundhog day also illustrates object relations belief: the hypothesi of how we find bad objects( a negative influence from our past) in objectives that are around us in the present. To find our bad object we search for and find negative characteristics even when, in other peoples sees, there used to be none. For precedent, at the Groundhog Day gala that Phil reports on from the small town of Punxsutawney, he can only determine hypocrisy and satire, whereas the TV creator, Rita( Andie MacDowell ), discovers the grace of institution and the delight it brings to the people. In object relations theory, the relevant recommendations is that the psychoanalyst was becoming good object for the patient, and with the psychoanalysts facilitation individual patients learns good objects where hitherto they could not. Rita is Phils good object and the catalyst in Phils transformation. Her influence begins to rub off. He detects the joy of educating himself in literature, art and music. He acquires out about beings, assisting them and befriending them rather than writing them off and finds out that this has its own reward.

The tradition of Punxsutawney is that if the groundhog, too called Phil, can see its shadow on Groundhog Day, the town will get six more weeks of winter. It takes Phil the weatherman quite a long time to see his darknes more, but when at last he does, the working day miraculously moves on. In Jungian assumption, the darknes refers to negative various aspects of your own personality that you reject and project on to others. There are also positive aspects to the darknes that is still conceal from consciousness. Jung said that everyone carries a shadow and that the less it is embodied in the individuals awareness life, the darker and more destructive it has the potential to be.

Although we dont have the indulgence of living in the same day for as long as it is also necessary in order to recognise how we sabotage ourselves, our missteps do have a garb of happening often enough for us to become aware of them. What remains of our lifespan is hour enough to do something about it.

Philippa Perry is a psychotherapist and the author of the graphic tale Couch Fiction .

The Godfather by Steven Pinker

It explains why the impulse for savagery derived to be a selective programme

James Caan and Marlon Brando in The Godfather Photograph: Moviestore/ Rex/ Shutterstock

The Godfather is not an obvious choice for a mental movie, but its stylised, witticised savagery alleges often about human nature.

Except in war zones, beings are extraordinarily unlikely to die from savagery. Yet from the Iliad through video games, our species has always apportioned time and resources to destroying simulations of violence.The brain seems to run on the adage: If you want quietnes, prepare for conflict. We are mesmerized by the logic of promontory and menace, the psychology of alliance and sellout, the vulnerabilities of their own bodies and how they can be employed or shielded. A likely interpretation is that in our evolutionary record, brutality be a major enough threat to fitness that everyone had to understand how it works.

Among the many subgenres of violent presentation, one with perennial appeal to brows both high and low is the Hobbesian thriller a storey set in a circumscribed zone of chao that saves the familiar trappings of our times, but in which the exponents must live beyond the reach of the modern leviathan( the police and judiciary ), with its monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Examples include westerns, spy thrillers, battlefield dramas, zombie holocausts, seat tale and movies about organised criminal. In a smuggled economy, you cant sue your rivals or call the police, so the credible menace( and occasional expend) of violence is your one protection.

The godfather of Mafia movies is, of course, Francis Ford Coppolas The Godfather trilogy. The screenplays are a goldmine for remarks on the human condition in a state of nature, beyond such constraints of modern institutions. Four wrinkles stand out: in the opening stage, Vito Corleone, having promised to mete out some bumpy justice on behalf of a victimised undertaker “whove been” abandoned by the American leviathan, demonstrates how reciprocity provides as the plaster of traditional societies: Some era, and that day may never return, Ill call upon “youve got to” do a service for me. But until the working day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughters wedding day.

The opening panorama of The Godfather

Following the tragic death of his eldest son, Vito addresses the heads of the rival violation households and shows the tactical rationality of evident irrationality: Im a superstitious male. And if some unlucky coincidence should befall my son, if my son is struck by a bolt of lightning, I will accuse some of the people here. Elsewhere, he elaborates: Coincidences dont happen to people who plow collisions as a personal insult.

A foot soldier of one of these adversaries explains why the inclination for savagery advanced to be a select programme , not an indiscriminate bloodlust or a hydraulic pressing: I dont like violence, Tom. Im a businessman. Blood is a big expense.

And for all our hotheaded counsels, Michael explains the knowledge of ensure your ardours: Never hate your foes. It feigns your judgment.

Steven Pinker is Johnstone family professor of psychology at Harvard .

Rushmore by Dacher Keltner

It shows us that to consolidate in dominance, we must unite others

Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore. Photo: Rex Shutterstock

All art, French social theoretician Pierre Bourdieu debates, is an expression of social class, from the music you experience to the trinkets you put on your walls. Few cinemas, though, have undertaken the class subdivide between the haves and have-nots as imaginatively as Wes Andersons 1998 cinema Rushmore.

The film reveals at Rushmore Academy, a prep school in Houston, Texas, and tells the story of the friendship between schoolboy Max Fischer( Jason Schwartzman ), the son of a barber, and rich industrialist Herman Blume( Bill Murray ). They both fall for a lately bereaved teacher at the school( Olivia Williams ), and resort to misguided tactics to triumph her affection. As this timeless strife undoes, the film illustrates various following principles class and dominance uncovered in psychological science.

The first that affluence is rising unethical and socially detached action is on display at a birthday defendant for Blumes sons, who attend Rushmore Academy with Max. The two sons greedily shred through a collection of presents( and are most enjoyed by a crossbow ). Nearby, Blumes wife flirts blatantly with a young man, while Blume sits far away from the mayhem, languidly convulsing golf balls into his dirty pool.

The puddle vistum in Rushmore

This scene captivates recent considers showing that upper-class individuals are more disposed to impulsive and socially aloof behaviour, including misconstruing others ardours, swearing, lying in recreations to win prizes and flouting the regulation of the road.

Navigating power structure, such as prep schools, is the cause of stress for lower-class individuals, and can heighten levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol. To adapt to such social emphasizes, people from lower-class backgrounds reach out and is attached to others a second principle of class and influence. Studies find that it is parties from lower-class backgrounds who share more, collaborate, attend to others carefully and do acts that unite others, a intend by which they can rise in strength when paucity the advantages of lineage. With brilliant detail, Anderson accompanies this principle to life in Maxs defining social inclination: forming sororities. Max is at the head of every imaginable guild, including the beekeepers culture, the kung fu golf-club and the astronomy squad all touching, quaint acts that discover a deeper principle at participate: to increase in dominance, we must unite others in common cause.

Dacher Keltner is a prof of psychology at University of California, Berkeley .

Altered Nation by Sue Blackmore

It plays with the question of what we mean by reality

William Hurt in Altered Regime. Image: Moviestore/ Rex/ Shutterstock

Ken Russells Altered Position is based on a wild time in the 1970 s, when a whole lot of professors took hallucinogenic drugs. One of them, John Lilly, started working with isolation containers where you swim in saltwater in total stillnes, resulting in absolute sensory deprivation with resultant vivid imagery and bizarre sensations.

The films hero is a scientist called Eddie( William Hurt) who starts experimenting with psychedelic drugs to explore other countries of consciousness and our notions of actuality. At one point he emerges from his isolation tank having been transformed into an parrot but Im not so interested in this kind of hopeless fantasy. What interests me is how the cinema manages the altered commonwealths of consciousness. We know that when you take hallucinogenic drugs of this kind, a very early hallucinations are simple, colorful, geometric decorations. Passages and spirals are common, as they are in out-of-body and near-death knowledge. The movie has batch of passageways, and a wonderful maelstrom near the end, where Eddie is being sucked away into oblivion. That is all extravagant cinema material, but the maelstrom leaves a good suffer of hallucinatory know-hows, and is rather well done.

Lilly was trying to understand the nature of actuality, and thats what this movie gamblings with. What do we make by world, regardless? You might say that what we know, and what Eddie in the film presupposed, is that there is a physical actuality and our intelligence interprets it, and that hallucinations are not real. But if you make a hallucinogenic drug into most peoples mentalities, they get remarkably similar experiences.

A lovely detail in the film is where Eddie starts for a formality with an indigenous tribe in Mexico. He is given a tonic, goes into an extreme adjusted territory and considers flows of idols coming out of his body. The hotshots are not real in the sense that there are no white-hot lights flowing from us, but lots of people who take those same doses appreciate the same thing so there is a kind of reality here, a kind of shared experience.

In consciousness analyzes, we struggle with the hard question of consciousness. It is a deep riddle how do subjective know-hows arise from objective intelligence task? We dont know. Numerous people, myself included, say there isnt actually a hard problem. We become dualists in childhood we think that recollection and psyche are divide and thats why we have a problem: how can the knowledge arise from the intelligence? Somehow, we have to see how the two are the same circumstance. Many people have these hallucinatory suffers, or go through intense customs, and claim to have achieved non-duality. We dont get that explanation in this film, but it would be amazing if we did.

Sue Blackmore is a writer, professor and visiting professor at Plymouth University .

The Seventh Seal by Susan Greenfield

Its about the psychology of parties the hope you are going to be better

Ingmar Bergmans film is so striking and implacable, unlike most movies nowadays. A knight, returning from the Crusades to plague-ridden Sweden, is visited by Death, a pale-faced, black-cloaked attribute. They play out a chess coincide which, if the cavalier triumphs, will stave off his demise.

The Seventh Seal

The fact The Seventh Seal is in black and white and was reached in the 1950 s is evidence of its staying appeal, in the same way Greek misfortune weathers it is something that speaks of eternal appraises, folks hopes and anxieties, and is not dependent on current culture. It has been satirised, most famously by Monty Pythons The Meaning of Life, in a sketch in which Death transforms up at a middle-class dinner party. Its funny, but it doesnt detract from the original, where everyone is fated at the end. It is the opposite of the joyous stops of movies we have now.

The film has a very dark, nihilistic feel to it in an age when people are soft and easy. There is one panorama where one of the specific characteristics, an actor, is up a tree, and Death comes to looked through it. He expects him who he is, and Death says he has come for him. The man adds its not his time, he has his performance to do. Death enunciates: Its cancelled. Because of death. All the fantasies and hopes you have are annulled because of death.

Im not recognizing also that Bergman was inevitably expounding any particular mental assumption, but he does talks about the silence of God, which perhaps for many parties echoes true. I think it is about the psychology of beings the hope that you are going to be better and different, to think that you can get away with things.

The knight goes to confession and starts to tell the priest about the chess move he is going make and, of course, the clergyman is Death. You cant overcome fatality and all of us are playing chess with demise, in a way hoping well be the one who wont get cancer, wont have a heart attack, that this happens to other people , not us. I think there is that mentality in numerous parties, and this film brings it home to you. I am an rosy party, and it clears me appreciate life because of its highly transient and arbitrary nature.

Susan Greenfield is a scientist, scribe, broadcaster and a member of the House of Lords .

The post Psycho thrillers: five movies that educate us how the attention cultivate appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2uHivwX via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes

tzpeace · 7 years

Text

Rules of Peace Corps

It can be really hard on all levels transitioning from living in America to living in a developing country. I don't want to speak for all of Peace Corps, even within Tanzania my experience is different from other volunteers . I have learned more here than I had ever expected; not just about Tanzania but about people and, most importantly, myself. Following a “strict” set of rules I have found happiness here and I think most rules (if not all) can apply to life in general.

1. Rule of 6

This is the absolutely most important rule in Peace Corps. You never want to travel with more than 6 people. When there's too many people, even the most independent minded of people (PCVs) turn into sheep (sheeple). Trying to travel with huge groups in a developing country is setting yourself up for failure unless you’re on a Mzungu safari in Mzungu land.

2. Never have expectations.

Sure sometimes you can get away with having low expectations but if you can reach a level of no expectations, then you've won Peace Corps. When traveling, if/when I run into Tanzania delays (bus breaks down/takes forever to leave the standi), I remind myself that I can't die if the bus isn't moving. People from the west equivalate time with money. Time is valued differently in the developing world. If someone here tells me they'll get back to me “kesho” (tomorrow), I now know that it could mean tomorrow, the day after, next week, next month, basically whenever they want. This can be extremely frustrating to those who try to get projects done in the village. Things that should only take a month end up taking 5. Don't expect things to get done very quickly (or if ever). People do things on their own time here because where's the rush? Haraka haraka haini baraka- Quickly quickly there is no blessings

3. Don't make plans

You should make vague plans of what you want to do but, with Rule 1 in mind, don't try and plan your trips with everyone and their mother. This can be difficult in Peace Corps due to the large amount of travelers. When going to a neighboring country or new town, it's nice having a vague plan of what you want to do (keeping rule 2 in mind). Some of my most successful trips have been vaguely planned. I decided to go to Malawi the day before I left and it was awesome (beautiful place, highly recommend). When combining rule #2 and #3 we get: “Don't have expectations for plans you didn't set in stone”. You'll never be disappointed ever again.

Rule #4. Be willing to lose anything (and everything).

Ive lost a phone, wallets, shoes, clothes, and various little things forgotten in the many guestis that I've stayed in while traveling. And my service still isn't over! Theres still so many things that can get lost or stolen, especially when traveling. I came to terms with everything that came to TZ might not return which has helped me reach a healthy detachment to my objects, something more people should try to achieve.

Rule #5. Peace Corps incest is real.

It's Game of Thrones status here. The thirst is REAL. When people go for long periods without sex, things get weird. Being surrounded by a different culture is stressful (people need to release it somehow). Even just having a friend touch your arm or give you a hug feels so nice. PCVs can be surrounded by people all day but yet still feel so alone and isolated in their villages/daily lives. Our culture defines us to an extent and missing that component in your day to day life can be harder than you think.

Rule #6. PC actually stands for Politically Correct.

I have never, in my life, been surrounded by so many PC people. It can be a little over whelming at times. I'll just quote Macklemore here when he said “It seems like we're more concerned with being called racist. Then we actually are with racism” and direct you to watch South Park Season 18. The whole season surrounds the politically correct social movement and their conclusion (as per usual) hits the nail right on the head by making the argument that PC is a form of gentrification.

Rule #7. Don't. Trust. Anyone.

This is not a bad life motto to have actually. It's not that Tanzanians are liars, its just that PEOPLE are liars. Being a foreigner (especially with an American accent) makes you a target in the developing world. As long as you use PC's RADAR and some common sense everything should be fine. Dont take candy from strangers, even grandmas (thats how one volunteer here got drugged and all of his stuff stolen). When you put your trust in a strangers hands, you might as well just hope that Jesus is at the wheel. By the way, I'm quoting Kristen Wigg from Bridesmaids when I say “You cannot, trust, anybody.” because it's an amazing movie that everyone should watch.

Rule #8. Be Selfish

This is the hardest rule for most volunteers. We put our whole life on hold to come here to try and help the people of Tanzania. But sometimes the best thing you can do for everyone is to be selfish. Volunteers are people too and they need time off work and out of the vil. Don't put other people's happiness before your own.

Rule #9. Be prepared for the Paparazzi.

If you have ever wondered how celebrities must feel like, then Peace Corps is the service for you. If you don't want to do that, then just be white and travel to most developing countries. Everywhere I go people stare. I have caught so many people taking pictures of me without asking (and I always say yes when they do). People can be thrown off by the random white lady on their bus, and probably (like most people) wanna share the moment with their friends and family. My mood dictates how I respond, but I usually pull a celebrity move and hide my face or ask for money.

Last, but not least

Rule #10. You can never have too many buckets.

Buckets are so useful. I never realized how much potential they have until I came here. The first thing I'm going to do when I get back to America (after going to In-n-Out and then Del Taco) is to drive my car to Home Depot and buy some buckets. How else will I catch rain water or wash my clothes?

So I've learned a lot from this experience. It took a while to figure life out here, most things came with time. The struggles were real but they were important. This part of the world is huge and the people are so beautiful. Culture, language, and borders may separate us but we are still human beings. We all have flaws/talents/potential given the opportunity. Peace is what we strive for in life, Love will always conquer hate, and Knowledge will always be the key to liberation.

#Bridesmaids #South Park #PC culture #Peace Corps Tanzania #pct2016 #peace corp #Peace #Love #Knowledge #peace corps volunteer

0 notes

viralhottopics · 7 years

Text

Our democracy is broken, debased and distrusted but there are ways to fix it | George Monbiot

Trump and Brexit are responses to a political system thats imploding. But could a radical redesign wrest it from the liars?

Debased and de-based: thats the condition of our political systems. Corrupted, they no longer fulfil their democratic potential. They have also lost their base: the politically engaged population from which democracy is supposed to grow. The sense of ownership has been eroded to such an extent that, for millions of Americans, Donald Trump appeared to be the best the system had to offer.

I dont blame people for voting for him, or for Brexit: these are responses toa twisted, distrusted system. Elections captured by money, lobbyists and the media; policy convergence among the major parties, crushing real choice; the hollowing out of parliaments and other political institutions and the transfer of their powers to unaccountable bodies: these are a perfect formula for disenfranchisement and disillusion. The global rise of demagogues and outright liars suggests that a system nominally built on consent and participation is imploding.

So could we do better? Could a straighter system be fashioned from the crooked timber of humanity? This is the second of my occasional series on possible solutions to the multiple crises we confront. It explores some of the means by which democracy may be improved. Over the past few months, Ive read dozens of proposals, some transparently awful, others pretty good.The overall result so far is this: there is no magic formula, no single plan that could solve our democratic problems without creating worse ones. But there are plenty of ideas, just a few of which I will mention, that could enhance our politics.

The first necessary shift is a radical reform of campaign finance (political funding). The power of money in politics poisons everything literally in some cases. In my column last week, I mentioned the pollution paradox: the dirtiest companies must spend the most on politics if they are not to be regulated out of existence, so politics comes to be dominated by the dirtiest companies. It applies across the board. Banks designing dodgy financial instruments; pharmaceutical companies selling outdated drugs; gambling companies seeking to stifle controls; food companies selling obesogenic junk; retail companies exploiting their workers; accountants designing tax-avoidance packages: all have an enhanced incentive to buy political space, as all, in a fair system, would find themselves under pressure. The system buckles to accommodate their demands.

My proposal for reforming campaign finance is brutally simple. Every party would be entitled to charge the same small fee for membership (perhaps 50 or $50), which would then be matched by the state, with a fixed multiple. Any other political funding, direct or indirect, would be illegal. This would also force parties to re-engage with voters. Too expensive? Not in the least. The corruption of our politics by private money costs us hundreds of times more than a funding system for which we would pay directly. That corruption has led to financial crises caused by politicians failure to regulate the banks, environmental crises caused by the political power of the dirtiest companies, and lucrative contracts for political funders; and overcharging by well-connected drugs companies.

The next crucial reform is to help voters make informed choices. Germany provides a brilliant example of how this could be done: its federal agency for civic education publishes authoritative but accessible guides to the key political issues, organises film and theatre festivals, study tours and competitions, and tries to engage with groups that turn their backs on democratic politics. It is trusted and consulted by millions.

Switzerland offers the best example of the next step: its Smartvote system presents a list of policy choices with which you can agree or disagree, then compares your answers with the policies of the parties and candidates contesting the election. It produces a graphic showing whose position most closely matches your interests. There is some excellent civic technology produced by voluntary groups elsewhere (such as Democracy Club, Crowdpac and mySociety in the UK). But without the funding and capacity of the state, it struggles to reach people who are not already well informed.

Once these reforms are in place, the next step is to change the architecture. As both US presidential elections (distorted by the electoral college system) and UK general elections (allowing a minority of the electorate to dictate to the majority) suggest, this should start with a switch to proportional representation. Ideally, in parliamentary elections this would mix the national with the local by retaining constituency links, such as the single transferable vote or the additional member system.

There are plenty of proposals to replace representative democracy with either sortition (randomly selecting delegates) or direct democracy (referendums and citizens initiatives). Such systems might have worked well in small city states with a limited franchise (sortition was used in ancient Athens and medieval Venice and Florence). But in populations as large and complex as ours, these proposals are a formula for disaster. Its hard to see how we can escape the need for professional, full-time politicians. (Perhaps, in a fair and accountable system, we could learn to love them.)

But I believe that both approaches could be used to temper representative democracy. Sortition can be seen as political jury service, in which citizens chosen by lot are presented with expert testimony then asked to make a decision. As an advisory tool, it could keep representative politics grounded in the real world. It could be used to create constitutional conventions, at which proposals for better political systems are thrashed out. There might even be some virtue in the idea of a second parliamentary chamber (such as the House of Lords or the US Senate) being chosen by lot.

But we should be aware of the dangers. The Westminster governments first experiment with citizens juries (Gordon Browns attempt to determine whether doctors surgeries should be replaced with giant clinics) was corrupted from birth. Jurors were hand-picked and presented with one-sided evidence, then the results were buried when they came out wrong. No system is immune to fraud.

Once political funding has been reformed, ballot initiatives of the kind widely used in US states if you gather enough signatures you can demand a vote become a powerful political instrument, enabling people to propose legislation without waiting for their representatives (without reform they are another means by which billionaires rig the system). Referendums on huge questions, such as our membership of the EU, suffer from an imbalance between the complexity of the issue and the simplicity of the tool: they demand impossible levels of political knowledge. But for certain simple, especially local, issues should a new road be built?, should a tower block be demolished? they can, if carefully designed, enhance political transparency.

Also at the local level, a method called sociocracy could enhance democracy. This is a system designed to produce inclusive but unanimous decisions, by encouraging members of a group to keep objecting to a proposal until, between them, they produce an answer all of them can live with. A version designed by the Endenburg Electronics firm in the Netherlands is widely used in companies and cooperatives. Its not hard to see it producing better decisions than the average local authority meeting. But it is difficult to imagine how it could be scaled up without losing intelligibility.

Making any of this happen well, theres the challenge. Ill pick it up infuture columns. But change happenswhen we decide what we want,rather than what we think we might get. Is a functioning democracy an outrageous demand?