Robert Mugabe: only believing

Basically, Mugabe has been the only Zimbabwe president for 28 years, he has created terrors in the country. No one seems to really care, because Zimbabwe doesn't have enough natural resources  for other people to go in and help. Mugabe has and still is using violence to gain what he wants, such as winning the election, taking the people's land, and much more. I think at first, Mugabe really believed what he was doing is right, people around him praised him, that's why he did all the things he did. Robert Mugabe's nephew even calls him their own "Moses". But now, I'm sure he now realizes the stuff he has done is wrong, but he can't just step down and say I'm sorry to everyone. So, that's why Zimbabwe is still in such a mess.

Dance Reflection

These are two reflection questions on the video shoot the Dance and Art class did together.

How did the site of DongMen alter the choreography that you created in the classroom?

The original plan of our group was for Tyler and I to crawl slowly on the floor, and then to slowly rise up, sort of like zombies. After seeing the place however, we decided not to, the floor was filthy and covered in who knows what. Our group had other problems as well, since our group's choreography includes a lot of stuff on the floor, so we put clothes on the floor to make it "bearable". 

Now that you know this site better; if you were to go back to DongMen, what would you add or subtract from your choreography to make it stronger?

Our theme was the people we usually don't look at, so i would decide to shoot it when it's darker, though I think you can adjust the lighting on a computer, so that doesn't really matter, though it might make the actors and actresses better. 

Saving Life on Earth

I find this talk simply amazing. Edward O. Wilson opened my mind more than anyone has ever done, the talk about how bacteria is the ruler of the world. I know nature's law: the survival of the fittest, and lots of times, when the world is going chaos, the fittest often are the most simple organisms, rather than the fierce animals we see. 

Humans think that humans are the fittest, they can do anything they want, they think they can use the technology and knowledge they have to control the world. They think they know everything, they think they know everything that's been going on, and how to solve it. But, the fact is that we don't know everything, there are thousands and even millions of things they haven't found out yet, and there will always be stuff they will never know. There are lots of incredible things yet to be discovered, and humans still think they are superior to everything. I think it's Mother Culture speaking to them, telling them: Look at all your achievements, you done great things, and even greater things are yet to come, keep going, and everything will be fine. Just like what Ishmael said our Mother Culture said to us.

Bacteria, the true ancestor of every living creature, is really the true master of the world. They cover everything, and they are everywhere. "IF" humans really did get rid of all the bacteria, then humans will die very soon, because humans need them to live, just as humans need everything else, it just haven't affected us directly yet. It's like Ishmael said, nature is balance, and if we don't keep that balance, we will die out. It's like the As, Bs, and the Cs, they kept the balance, and didn't think it was any law at all, they followed it, and they still have nature. 

Humans just need to find the balance, and they will be saved!!

Are there laws for Everything?

Ishmael said to his student that there are laws for everything, even a way of living, it's just we don't know it's out there. From that chapter of the book, I'm thinking that does everything really have a law applied to it? Is it really like gravity, no matter where you are on Earth, you will somehow be affected by it? I think humans would say that there aren't laws for everything, for example, the way of living. Humans might think that there's no certain way of living, it's just different cultures have different ways to live. If there are laws out there, then why don't we even have a single clue about it? But then, Ishmael said that before we knew anything about flying, we all have different ways of flying, well we thought we did. But then, after we knew the laws of areodynamics, all our ways of flying became the same, we all say now that this is how it's suppose to be done! I still think it's unlikely to have a way of living, because we are already living, it's not like flying, not all of them made it in the air. They didn't get the aircraft in the air with all the different ways, so that doesn't count as a way. But we have been living for quite some time now, so I think there are no certain way of living. I have a feeling that I'm going to be surprised.

I think it's genius that Ishmael said that the road to extinction is like falling down at 9.8 meters per second, accelerating faster and faster, it will be when we least expect it, it will come to us so suddenly, we will be so shocked as to why we have never thought of it before. Maybe it's Mother Culture speaking to us, she's telling us that everything will be all right or she just doesn't want us to face the fact that we are dying faster and faster by each second. I totally agree with Ishmael on the part. We don't know when to give up, we are blinded by something we never bother with.

The World Revolves Around "Us"

I am simply a complex Dog. A house Dog, who wants a comfy life living indoors. The world revolves around us, everything was made for us, even humans. I am much more kind than the others that roam outside of houses, I decided to own a few humans, and all of them came from the same family! I would never do anything to separate them. Whenever one of my humans decides to go for a walk, I always have to go with them, to protect them, in case they get into trouble. Sometimes there are "free" Dogs (the ones who are living outside houses and has no responsibilities) who try to scare my human, I have to scare them away first. When I'm resting in the house, they sometimes come annoy me. Being the superior species, I had to be patient, humans are shallow animals, they annoy me and one another for fun, I guess it's the only thing they can do. When the humans leave in the morning to "work" to make this world more convenient for us. When my humans come home, I have to sniff and see if they went anywhere inappropriate. We use humans to control the world, it seems that they are controlling, but it's really us that makes the decisions. We influence when they are young, and then, when they have control over other animals, we give orders. Dog is goD spelled the other way around, we are in disguise as harmless Dogs sitting at home. We live among humans now, watching over them in secret, always protecting. Always here.

Ethical and Social Rules

There was once no rules at all, before this world had cities or cars. Then small tribes began to appear, and from that day on, social rules appeared, the tribes that first found out that waste from our humans should be at an appropriate distance from where they live survived and populated. Natrually, there were leaders who took charge and prevented mayhem. As time went on, the ethical and social rules doubled and tripled, there was more to follow, more to learn.

How do we become conscious of the ethical and social rules in our societies?

There are so many ethical and social rules that we can never learn them all in a lifetime. We learn many of the most basic ones at home, from parents or guardians, who wants to best for you. After we have a vague idea of how we should behave in this world, we are starting school, and school takes us to another level or learning. At home, we learn about things, at school we can actaully experience some of them, and with the help of health class, we learn more about life. As we grow older and wiser, we understand why some things are wrong, and the punishment was not as simple as we thought it to be. All this talk about learning doesn't seem to say anything at all. So, in conclusion: We learn the ethical and social rules from everyone, doesn't matter who they are, we learn how to treat each other by knowing more people and listening to what they have to say.

New Perspective

Apple computer, plasma TV, cell phones, satellites, the Internet, and much much more! What a great civilization, this must be the best situation humans can live in, right? Actually no, humans have lived in this "modern" society for all our lives, people are used to live this way, if you take a single thing away, our lives will be disastrous. There are many ways to live life, and this is only one of them. There are other ways like living in the mountains at a few thousand feet, living in your own world, seperated from the other humans, and live a non-polluting life, you can go and achieve enlightenment, there are many ways to live. But they don't get to do anything, right? Again, no. Our cities, cars, and all the other objects that humans have created seems all good and great now, but it's only temporary. The groups of people who seperates themselves from all these stuff are the ones that do things that help in the long run, and anthropologist Wade Davis said that "If you took all the genius that allowed us to put a man on the moon, and applied it to the understanding of the ocean, you will get polynesia." We don't know more things than the people that lives in the polynesia, we just know different things. The people who live in the polynesia has a great civilization as well, same with the people in Tibet, they think in a way we don't know how, they can go inside the dark for their life long retreat for 55 years, and when the person comes out, you don't see a crazy person, but a person more clear than a pool of water in a mountain stream. No matter what we know or believe in, biologists have proven that we are all the same, we are all humans.

There are many unique cultures and languages in the world, but we are losing them each passing day. There are roughly 6000 languages in the world, but there are only half of the languages are being taught to the children, and the children are unable to pass it on. Every two weeks, there will be a person with a language which no one else can speak pass away, bringing the culture and the language with them. Another reason is because of the "modern" people, they think they are superior because they know how to program a computer system, they think they are better because they drive cars and use cell phones. They don't think much about other people elsewhere, the people who are doing nothing to pollute the planet we all live on. They assume that the world should just have a few of the most spoken languages because the rest aren't important. Most of the people don't really care or know about the dying cultures and languages. The disappearing languages and cultures are still actually very important.

We shouldn't just ignore the minorities, we should help them and try to get the languages and the cultures to go on, every culture and language is just as important as the other. There are things the people who lives in the polynesia can do, and we can't even imagine it. These are people that even today can name 250 stars in the night sky. These are people who can sense the distance of an island beyond the visible horizon, simply by watching the waves of the sea. Their knowledge of the sea is simply incredible. There are people in the amazon who went monkey hunting, and Phil Borges who was with them at the time said that the people can see things he couldn't see, smell things he couldn't smell, and hear things he couldn't hear. To us, it may seem like they are just randomly shooting darts in the air, but they are actaully shooting them at the monkeys. There are Tibetian buddists that are trying to understand the nature of existence. Buddaism is the imperial observation of the mind. The Tibetian buddaists have four nobel truths: 1. All life is suffering. 2. The cause of suffering is ignorance. 3. Ignorance can be over come. 4. The deniniation of a contemplative practice that not only had the possibility of a transformation of the human heart but had 25,000 years of empirical evidence that such a transformation was a certainty. The first one doesn't mean that life is negative, it just means that things happen. The second one means that the Budda meant that clinging to the illusion of life as static and predictable. These are things we should all learn, it's like a different way of seeing life, it must be very good truths, the people who believes it knows how to face life in reality. There are much more incredible things that these people can do, so it's very important to keep them here.

I would be willing to exchange places for a while, I don't think I can stay forever, because I am polluted by the society today, all the technology in everyday life. We should not forget these dying cultures and languages, we should try to protect them. The cultures and languages will never come back once it's gone, it has come, and we have to protect it. After all, no matter what, we all all brothers and sisters, we all share the same intellectual acuity, we are all humans.