Service Learning

I partook in the event day group of the project, where I was the referee for one of the courts.

The pros of our service learning project were that we were able to all work in areas that we could preform well and enjoy doing, whereas a giant day devoted to one activity or chore would maybe not suit every class member as well as this project could. There was a flexibility to the project that benefitted us personally to allow us to work in matters we'd prefer. Utilizing skills such as leadership on the day of the event, organization and networking for the planners or the creativity of pumping out flyers and posters.

In terms of the product of our service, we did well to raise money for our cause. For the Kids will be happy to have the proceeds of our event, I'm sure. Our hard work did pay off. The money will go to an organization we all support and, in the case of some students, are active members of.

As for the cons, I only have one.

The experience was not as first hand as it could have been. We did work really hard, about as hard as we would have for any other activity, but our efforts did not go directly to serving the community, rather we held an event to raise money to give the community. I'm not suggesting our work was any less important than, say, working in a soup kitchen or building houses, but there is a rewarding, somehow tangible sense of accomplishment that comes from physically being able to judge or weigh one's action. For example, the ability to gauge one's impact on the community by working first hand is more rewarding, in a sense, than raising money, where there is no definitive correlation between hours working and money raised.

However the feeling instilled in the volunteer isn't nearly as important as the product of his/her work. But the experience is a learning one, and I would have maybe liked to work in that more first-hand environment.

What I learned about poverty, sickness, and hunger? Not much. Like I said, we worked in a different, second handed kind of way where our skills were concentrated more on organizing or managing the event as opposed to working first hand with such issues.

Generosity was a theme of our event for sure. We did need donations and aid for some areas like to buy the food. Generosity actually had a lot to do with our project. As a fund raising event, it was necessary for people to give money, whether they had it or not. It was going to a cause in which money is always necessary. I learned that money is better spent on others, especially when the need is much more dire than mine own.

Raising awareness is what FTK does, and working for them, we helped raise awareness for FTK and for their cause. To raise awareness you need a lot of advertising and reaching out to those around you. Something as simple as letting people know of the problems and issues they might be bling to can bring the world closer to an understanding and towards possibly becoming involved in the cause for FTK or for donating money.

The main thing I learned about NGO's are the hoops one must jump through to get any action done or anything completed. Simply finding the right people to talk to proved challenging in some areas, as with HEB. It's a complicated legal process, and can be disheartening. But in the end jumping through the loopholes is necessary and worth the ends.

I personally am rather pessimistic about the public's concern for these things. That is, I believe most people are content in their own personal sphere and space, and are not bothered to venture out and extend a hand to those who need it. Most well off people are unconcerned with poverty or hunger, for they themselves are not hungry. It is viewed for some as inconvenient to become involved in such matters.

Working together is always beneficial. Seeing your peers concerned about and working towards the same causes and goals is always encouraging. I learned about myself that I should spend more time volunteering, and that the efforts I give so far are not to my full capability. I am capable of lending much more time to helping the community, and I aspire to do so now.

The class could have improved to recruit more people to come play at our dodgeball tournament. More participants could have contributed more money to our cause.

World issues can be put in the spotlight at the local level. Every cause needs to begin somewhere, and can be acted on anywhere. There are impoverished families in every city, and working to help at least one is an effort worth while. Working outwards and upwards towards a national cause or at the national level could be done too. With the right amount of organization and determination we could achieve anything.

Here I Stand: pgs 129-190

The German Hercules:
This section of Here I Stand mentions briefly the German regards towards nationalism and humanism. While in this time Germany was without a centralized government, some were looking to change this. Hutton, for example, was in the process of stimulating the public towards the nationalist movement. He wrote on the Roman Catholic Church's sins in what he called The Roman Trilogy. In many areas he searched for the public's support, in church officials and affluent individuals alike, but found that the only response to his pleas were in his own "class" as it is explained, the knights. However, Luther shot down Hutton's dreams of domination tainted with blood and war, and said "I am not willing to fight for the gospel with bloodshed."

The Wild Boar In The Vineyard:
Thus far Martin Luther has detailed his philosophy on the paths to salvation and thoughts on God, but he has not laid out methods and practices of Church, as Bainton says beginning this chapter. Luther declared a radical stance on the traditional sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, denouncing five of the seven. Those he declared false were: Confirmation, marriage, ordination, penance, and extreme unction. What remained of the sacraments were the Lords Supper and baptism. Luther's reasoning behind abolishing these sacraments were that "a sacrament must have been directly instituted by Christ and must be distinctly Christian."

Bainton explains that the the removal of ordination was more severe than others, in that it stripped the priest of unprecedented power and gave the power of the priest to any ordinary man. "All Christians are priests," he explains.

Not only does Luther denounce these five sacraments, but he tampers with the foundations of the two left as well, which causes more irritation than the removal of the five.

Peasant Revolts 2

Central to the peasants argument concerning the reformation was the Twelve Articles of the Upper Swabian Peasants. It was explained to have been the "most widely influential" program for the peasantry, gaining much circulation and attention. It is also said to have "constituted the key manifesto of the entire Peasant' War." Why this document?

Two preachers, Lotzer and Schappeler, condensed the original 60+ articles into those strictly central to the core values and ideals of the peasantry. I believe this trim to be wise; peasants who work busy schedules would be able to read the articles at more convenience, which was part of the attraction. The articles  Upon condensing these articles, Schappeler thought it wise to include Bible verses in dictating the arguments of the Peasantry so as to create the illusion of God-mandated rights to the peasants. I believe this tactic to be critical in appealing to the ethos of the Christian people.

Outlined in the articles are commands that Peasants be entitles to elect their own pastors to preach the work of God, the disbandment of serfdom, more fair tax and rent on lands and righteousness within the criminal justice system.

The articles, I believe, were so successful due to their simplicity and sensible ethological connection to the Bible. Peasants having problems appealing to their Lords or spreading the ideas of the reformation could more eloquently argue their points, armed with this document. Also, a more sturdy foundation of peasants could unify under the concepts discerned in the articles, as opposed to a disorganized group of barking dogs which would surely fail to intimidate their superiors.

The Peasants formed the Christian Union, and created a set of rules and guidelines which to gain entry needed to be practiced wholeheartedly. These guidelines were expressed in The Memmingen Federal Ordinance. What pleases me about this document is the fraternity like connection the Union members were also drew up more documents demanding just lawful structures and procedures.

Pamphlets and Protestant Reformation

In the beginning of this excerpt of Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution, Ozment begins by disclaiming that historical interpretations of this movement tend to differ with different historians. There is not much factual backing that can help discern the thoughts and motives behind the European subjects in this age, so much of what is explained or told of this revolutionary age is largely assumed or inferred from what tangible evidence we do have. 

There was a great surge in literacy and education in this age. New universities and boarding schools were built in Germany, France, Italy and England by the hundreds. Likewise, to accompany this growth in the intellectual body of Europe, there was a dire demand for mass distribution of printed texts. So begins the mobilization of information and ideas. Protestants strategically gaged this opportunity and began printing thousands of pamphlets. Much of this revolution, it seems, is played out in the minds and interactions of the common people in these centuries. Ozments says that while the pamphlets were pivotal in the spreading of Protestants ideas, the ideas and lessons written on the pamphlets were spread orally in a more rapid, fervent manner which set the countrysides ablaze with bright new ideas for change and reformation. 

(http://jumpthecurve.net/health-care/exaptation-and-the-future/)

The ideas spread throughout this time by the Laity, (the common people, in regards to the clergy) were in opposition of the corrupt establishment of religious. In attempts to debunk the Catholic church, commoners assembled pamphlets themselves and wrote directly to priests and clergymen, telling them no longer to treat their people as sheep and blind mice. They laity were tired of being scared by sinister sermons of hell and damnation and tricked into giving money and penance to the church. Protestants cast light on the Church's many corruptions and spread these ideas fervently. 

Protestants gained their thunder through denouncing the Pope and their religious figurehead, and referring only to the Bible as the source of superior truth.

Landmark Speeches in National Socialism

So far in our reading of Landmark Speeches of National Socialism, we've been narrated through speeches by Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, National Women's Leader Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, head of German Physician's Association Gerhard Wagner and newspaper editor and regional leader Julius Streicher. Prefacing the speeches was Bytwerk's own commentary on the Nazi party's (or Hitler's) views on the significance of oratory persuasion and command. The principles of Nazi propaganda rely single-handedly on Hitler himself according to Bytwerk, and the thoughts and ideas expressed in other Nazi party member's speeches could be traced back to the dictator's extremely influential dogma.

Hitler's first speech concentrates on reclaiming his power over the socialist party after being released from his jail sentence. He eloquently traces through the origins of Germany's current struggles, and often poses rhetorical questions about the German will power that, if answered undesirably, would mean failure for Germans as a race. Needless to say he proposes several ultimatums like, 

"Is it still possible in Germany to reach the masses who no longer believe in their ethnicity, but rather see their brother more in their enemy than in their racial comrades who are of a different party or worldview, and will it be possible to lead this great mass back to a united people's community? Yes or no?" 

These dramatic questions instill the emotion in his listeners that is necessary for Hitler to come back into power. He claimed that "Hundreds of thousands cheered [their] defeat," shaming and humiliating those who settled with the outcome of WWI. While he might be offending most by putting into question the loyalty and the confidence of the German people, he does not hesitate to do so, and thusly forces the Germans to reevaluate their optimistic views of the result of the war. To the audience who are unhappy with the war's outcome, Hitler's criticism of the people's antinationalism outrages them into wanting to prove to Hitler there were still people displeased with the way things were. In this way Hitler dynamically captures both types of Germans with one question.

Bytwerk believes that in Goebbels' speech on the 9th of July 1932, he strategically does not speak to win over the crowd by summing up the Nazi's plans of action to restructure the country, but rather to criticize the current operating government and to put them down. Goebbels employs an array of weighted diction in his speech, from negative connotation like, "disgrace," "misery," "failure,""terror," and "suffering," to inflict shame on the people and condemn the opposing parties, while killing his audience with kindness, with words like, "re-birth," "awakened,""proud," "brave," "victory," and "faith." 

In this speech, Goebbels employs several traditional Nazi speaking strategies. He, like Hitler believed in, spoke to the "lowest common denominator" of the people-the common folk-so as to captivate audiences ranging in all levels of intellect. Doing so was outstandingly brilliant, for the perfect balance of ethos and verbosity was needed so as to avoid turning away confused audience members and bored audience members alike. 

The other speeches by  Scholtz-Klink and Wagner pertain more to the ideals of the Nazi movement, such as the duties of women and anti-semitic beliefs.

Mein Kampf and thoughts

In this excerpt from Hitler's memoir Mein Kampf, Hitler spells out his political and social ideology to his desired audience. From behind bars he writes "My struggle" as an attempted plea and call to the people. He infuses nationalistic diction into his racist arguments to ward off any discomfort the extreme statements may cause.

He compares and contrasts the differences between categories of civilizations he refers to as "culture creating," "culture bearing," and "culture destroying". The Aryan, according to Hitler, is the single-handed source of all art, science and technology and therefore is superior to all races by far. They can attribute some claim to this superiority to fertile and bountiful lands, however it is the intellect of the people and the motivation that creates their prosperity. And how could they get there without exploiting the labor that inferior races provide (unwillingly)? Hitler compares these races- ones primarily sucked into slavery- to horses. Useful, yes, when building up countries but in this day and age, obsolete.

The correlation Hitler draws between slaves and horses perfectly illustrates his extremism. How bold he can be with his language. Hitler not only claims Aryans as the only source for culture in the world, but also the source for every other race's culture too, as exemplified in the statement "the first cultures originated in those places where the Aryan, by meeting lower peoples, subdued them and made them subject to his will." Of course, Hitler could get away with such fictitious statements granted his critical audience was too base to read Mein Kampf themselves, and his intellectual audience already bolstered his movement and ideals. The common folk easily accepted these beliefs in his rallies and demonstrations, where his verbose speaking skills persuaded many.

The decline of the Aryan race, Hitler continues to explain, is solely attributed to the lower races overcoming the master-slave dynamic and rightfully taking their places in Aryan society. The infiltration led to the mixing of races and the blood lines becoming impure. It is here that we can see Hitler's connection to Social Darwanism and the genome understanding. "He became submerged in the race-mixture. he gradually lost his cultural ability more and more, till at last not only mentally but also physically he began to resemble more the subjected and aborigines than his ancestors." Hitler's interpretation of Social Darwanism is so outlandish to we who finally understand evolution and its concepts on a molecular level, yet in a society where these ideas were still thrown around and given many inferences, Hitler's connections could more easily be accepted and believed. Especially so when the people wanted very much to believe it.

Hitler then begins his rant on the Jews. He bashes them for their alleged "self-preservation" and describes them as the "so-called 'chosen people'". To be facetious, I want to know what Jewish kid bullied Hitler in primary school to make him so butt hurt about their entire race. He literally carries no justification in any way shape or form to hate on them so ferociously. And how on earth he rallied so many people to act with such a hatred I can never personally comprehend.

Revolutions in Russia

In 1929 Stalin came into the Soviet Union and changed the entire game. After suffering much humiliation from Germany, Joseph Stalin rose to power of the communist party with a loaded agenda to turn the tables around. Stalin began making changes to his nation state through rapid industrialization.  He constructed 5 year plans which aimed to increase the output of products such as iron, steal, coal and machinery. The Communist party built cities from the ground up and brought in peasants to work in mines, factories and offices. To cover the costs of these expenditures and feed the new working regime Stalin merged thousands of privately owned farmlands into large governmentally owned fields. Obviously not everybody would approve of this radical change. The Party had to deploy soldiers to force the kulaks, the more wealthy peasants, into the collective agricultural fields. The kulaks burned and destroyed everything they owned from their fields to their own livestock and equipment in retaliation. Furious, Stalin commanded the poor peasants to rise up against their wealthier counterparts and eventually most of the kulaks were killed in concentration camps. Famine plagued the nation after most of the government's resources were destroyed in the uprising.

What became of the USSR after the massive industrial boom was due to the widespread infiltration of fear and suspicion. This is the part that interests me. Stalin had personal paranoia issues according to our textbook. He exercised his strength and power as a dictator and had many high officials removed and put on trial out of his extreme suspicion or distaste for a particular person. And a snowball effect trickled down thereafter onto the common people, who would accuse innocent neighbors and coworkers. Many were put into jails without trials, but Stalin's popularity only increased when the job market was opened up to more and more citizens who were thus far suppressed by superiors.

I wonder if inspiring such terror can only be achieved in communist societies, and what kind of affect that had on the USSR's nationalism. Stalin wrongly murdered and accused millions of his citizens, yet he was so loved by his people. How could people love their government who was taking away their neighbors and fellow people? I can imagine nationalism had a large part to do with it; how the people could be literally torn apart from each other yet still feel proud and unified. And how better to keep that illusion than through propaganda? I found some interesting pieces. 

[1926] The first poster reads "Liberated women, build up socialism!" This poster reminds women that they have been given new rights at the price of bolstering their socialistic society. It says to me, "Now that you hold the same rights as men, you must engage in the same livelihood." There is not the same air of freedom of choice that accompanied the women's equality movement in the United States.

"Long Live the Mighty Aviation of the Socialism Country!" [1939] This poster envolves many elements that boast the nation's unity and strength in both the land and sky. The people have all rallied together in the streets and are being protected by their fleet of airplanes overhead. Overall this poster is dripping in modesty.

"We will keep the Kulaks from the Collective farms" [1930]

This poster is undoubtedly in favor of the peasants rising up against the Kulaks after Stalin declared the purge of the Kulak class from society.

Globalizations and How it's Failing.

As the world shrinks, a great divide between assimilation and hatred is opening up. Something that troubles me is terrorism. Reading about all these attacks in Europe in section four and five in Chapter 10 of Sources of European History makes me uneasy-- and terrified! Obviously.

These writers discuss why the immigrating Muslims aren't integrating into society well. Laqeur says the unrest in British Muslims is due to the poorer state of their living conditions and low quality of life. These young Muslims have little employment opportunities and are surrounded by prejudice. Looking for acceptance, they join the underground movements that follow the foreign Imams who preach Anti-Western sentiments and eventually become as adamant as the radical religious leaders. They group up and spend more time on the streets than on studies and even form gangs like the German Turks. Laqeur says they engage in minor crimes and get away with them. This is simply the snowball affect in action.

Once the assimilation fails, the Jihad movement strengthens and terrorism swells. These outcasted Muslims are under the impression that the West has exploited their faith and thinks poorly of them; which is exactly what these extremist religious leaders feed the youth.

China is similarly undergoing this clash of cultures and beliefs right now, and in a rather violent manner. Their fighting over the DiaoYu islands with Japan has escalated towards an entire racism towards Japanese people and products all together. Japanese cars are being smashed, libel everywhere, marches of thousands of Chinese in all the major cities too. Where is all this hate coming from?

I feel as if it all comes down to a matter of nationalism and pride. Besides opening up the world to equality and opportunity, Globalization is also breading elitists. The ever present threat of terrorism in America today is instilling racist tendencies and attitudes, which goes against our Western "core values". So this vicious circle continues on. People are eager to explore the world and know whats out there beyond the domestic life, and find that the opportunity can't be more accessible. But once you step foot out of America, there's that prejudice and hatred discussed in the beginning of this chapter, particularly in Europe. Foreigners aren't welcome anymore despite economic dependence on tourism and our (so-called) lauded opinion of globalization. Americans will get funny looks wherever the world they go, as if we can be sniffed out.

But really, why are Americans so hated? It can't be because of our sudden development as a world super power, I refuse to believe jealousy can withstand hundreds of generations. Is it because Americans are content with staying in America, and aren't entirely curious about the mysterious abroad? Could be. "Ignorant Americans" and whatnot. Europeans can travel immensely without extreme prejudice. Why can't we anymore?

And I just realized that ties into this Islamic extremism again. (Hooray I actually got somewhere with this tangent.) Being frowned upon for throwing yourself out there into the world generates the resentment and anger called for in the Jihadist movement.

Expectations

So I've always wanted to know more about this whole Vietnam thing. It's been that one lurking event in America's history that was always shrouded in mystery for me; every other major war was referenced some way or another in Saturday morning cartoons and stories. Growing up, the history lessons just stopped after the mid 20th century. It seemed like society was reluctant to discuss the topic all together.

Well I understand why now. Our reading thus far in The Things They Carried has filled in the holes of curiosity left by the 1979 film Apocalypse Now (the extent of my personal research on the Vietnam war). The horror (pun intended) of the stories O'Brien has shared have already inspired mixed emotions in me. O'Brien starts off his exposition with a very in depth analysis of the lives of the soldiers stationed in Vietnam, and by telling the story of the irrational Lieutenant Cross. His mind flips from longing thoughts to his lover back home and the gruesome war he is leading his men into. O'Brien doesn't even style his writing into first person until later when he begins telling his own story, like his experience as a young man shortly after being drafted. He explains his inner turmoil and his trip to the Rainy River. To establish ethos with the audience, O'Brien breaks down and clarifies the differences between true and false war stories, and starts telling his own.

I feel as if there is meaning in the haphazard nature of Tim O'Brien's writing style and story telling patterns. As far as structure goes, his lack thereof seems to embody the Vietnam war in its entirety. To paraphrase, he describes the war from his pre-war self as lacking a singular purpose, without distinct plans, and sloppy. O'Brien's style of storytelling is (so far) random--- I'm expecting it to all come together in the end. Well what I actually expect is for all of his irregularities and varying chapter lengths to form a greater picture of the war, as a means of representation. It would be insufficient and unsatisfying to tell one's story in a traditional chronological order. From what I've gathered so far, the war didn't feel like a day by day experience in retrospect. It was nights of waiting in silence in the brush, brief moments of gazing into the clouds from the foxhole in the ground under rain of flak and artillery, it was counting breaths and hearing the same stories over and over again, and being lost in thought for hours until an explosion brings you back to that moment and kills your comrade. Days for the soldiers didn't have the same numbers as the days of their pen pals. It wouldn't make any sense to write down your Vietnam war story in such a way, you wouldn't capture the meaning of it all.

My reaction to it all-- taken aback? Not quite. I was hoping a diary of mad stories and utter insanity. This was the content I was looking for that nobody wants to tell. Grandpa doesn't want to tell stories of Vietnam, and the same goes for the American media as a whole, for that matter. We like to relish in our glory; it's human nature. We tell stories of killing Nazis and giving the suppressed their human rights back and overthrowing dictators. Not how when the American boy soldier in Vietnam threw a grenade at the most feeble looking enemy boy soldier treading softly down the path on rubber sandals.

One last thing too. I'd like to dwell on what I was not expecting.

I guess I still have on my fiction reading cap, because at the end of every chapter I expect that one little sentence with the delicious bait on the end. You know, the cliffhanger. But out of self defense I'd like to say it's a deep, subconscious expectation. Can't find the right word to describe the tiny disappointment inside when the chapter ends and there's no redemption for Mary Anne, or no flashy sentence that makes me long to read more. Sometimes it's a line by Kiowa, but it's never what I want. Which is again that kind of intended emotion O'Brien is trying to condition in the reader. War stories aren't like that-- they aren't flashy or heroic or top selling movie material. It takes a while to assimilate, the notion of the glitterless reality. It's all the evolution of the boy soldiers thrown into the last place they'd ever want to be, and in the most maddening circumstances. They don't evolve into heroes. They turn into Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, and they shoot baby buffalos and cry.