I remember when the film version of the da Vinci Code for a number of reasons. I remember how my friends and I tried to get tickets for it, only to realize right before the film started that my online ticket purchase didn’t go through, which caused us to high-tail it to the other end of town to catch it in-progress. I remember the trauma I experienced due to Tom Hank’s hair, from which I’m still recovering. And I also remember the backlash at my university’s foreign language department.
I have to chuckle about it now, because it’s a very small but telling example between European and American mentalities. Most of the language staff was composed of Europeans who scoffed at Dan Brown’s simplified style. “Da Vinci Code? Try a real book like Foucault’s Pendulum,” they said. Even the books mirrored the difference between European intellectualism and American simplicity: most obviously simplicity in writing style and content as well as accessibility. Foucault’s Pendulum is an infinitely more difficult and trying read than The da Vinci Code, but the rewards are greater.
The novel, at a bulky 525 pages, definitely counts as something I never would have made time to read at home. At times, you wonder what Umberto Eco, the philosopher, professor, semiotics specialist, aesthetician and author of the book, is doing. The book itself is like one long semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, lesson. Eco overdoes the primary source documents that introduce each chapter and delves far too deeply into people and events that often don’t return. This is something I love about Roberto Bolano, because this technique enriches your reading. With Eco, it just feels like a bombardment of constant figures and facts that disappear as quickly as they appear.
Page after page of background information aside, the plot and characters make it possible to continue reading these hundreds of pages. Three brilliant editors at a small publishing company spend their time reviewing manuscripts largely focused on the occult. In the beginning, these manuscripts are generally pretty ridiculous to them. One day, a mysterious man comes into the office and tells them a story about the Knights Templar and their plan for world domination. It is then that “the Plan” begins: the editors begin putting information into a computer that then scrambles and connects the bits, creating a whole different story about the Knights, secret societies, plots for world power, and the interconnectedness of some of history’s largest figures. All kinds of mysterious characters come out of the woodwork as the Plan becomes less a work of random fiction and more a plausible version of reality. It crosses the line from a man-made creation to an obsession.
Although largely focused on the development of the Plan, Foucault’s Pendulum has a number of themes relevant not only to Italy during and after World War II but also to the world of publishing. All three of the main characters are editors, and one of them in particular is tormented by this fact. In his private writings, Jacapo Belbo agonizes that editors, although they leave a strong mark on published materials, still are not the original authors of what they edit. He is tormented that he cannot produce his own material, but instead must sift through the works of others. That private suffering is part of what makes Belbo the most interesting character in the book. Eco occasionally gives us small glimpses into what makes Belbo Belbo, but I always found myself wanting to explore Belbo more deeply. For one, he laments about being born at the wrong time; a feeling he shares with another editor, Casaubon, who was too late to participate in the upheaval of 1968. Belbo, who was too young to fight in World War II, spends his whole life wondering if he would have been brave enough and made the right decision to fight for the Resistance during the war. He feels that he is a coward, and this self-loathing leads him to his death. I think it is easy to identify and sympathize with Belbo because he is easily identifiable with others of his generation, one that was shaped by the horrors of war. Perhaps it was just me, but as Eco peels the layers off of the Belbo onion, it seems so realistic that you have to wonder how much is autobiographical. Maybe each of the editors, all so different, are all parts of Eco?
What makes the novel so difficult is its scope, which is clearly what differentiates it from da Vinci Code. I took about ten pages of notes just to figure out which end was up, including the following topics: Alex Nevsky; Picatrix; Borges’ Aleph and Golem; Aleister Crowley; Rosicrucians; Marcel Proust; Templars; Sefirah; Saracens; Temurah; Abraham Abulafia; the Piedmont; Tales of Hoffman; Parsifal; Cathars; Kabbalah; Golden Fleece; reliquaries; Alessandro Cagliostro; Caiaphas and the Tetragrammaton. Not even an education could prepare me for reading this book because I had to look a lot of things up. What can be said is that Eco’s knowledge and the information in the book necessitates a very active reading experience, which is already something out of the ordinary in our relatively mindless world.
Favorite quotes:
“Once I know that I can remember whenever I like, I forget.”
“Revealing to me that the thing that I desired, I feared.”
“You spend life seeking the Opportunity, without realizing that the decisive moment, the moment that justifies birth and death, has already passed. It will not return, but it was – full, dazzling, generous as every revelation.”
Next up: The Joke, by that despiser of women, Milan Kundera.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Brave New World
Brave New World
A debate always raged between my former roommate Josh and I. He would ask me why I didn’t read Brave New World, given that I liked 1984 so much. And I would counter to him: “How can you not have read 1984 if you like Brave New World?” We were in a Mexican standoff for years, but now I can finally claim the upper hand. A few months ago, I read Brave New World and am therefore the winner of the Josh/Sofie books about failed utopias battle.
First off, I kept thinking about how odd the whole book was. Even odder when you consider that it was published in 1932 and Huxley had no idea of the totalitarianism and insanity that was yet to come. I think there are also a lot of parallels and topics addressed in the book that mirror existence in today’s world or the possibilities that could exist in the world of the future.
A few points:
1. Man’s ability to control science and human life renders the idea of a God unnecessary.
2. There is a parallel between the mindless entertainment generated in the technological age and the drug “soma,” which people take to remove themselves from the world.
3. Social conditioning teaches people how to interact with others. They identify and organize themselves into hierarchies based on the social level they were bred into. Isn’t that also similar to class differences?
4. Not only does genetic engineering in Huxley’s dystopia determine social level, but it even determines the jobs that people do throughout their lives. These jobs and classes never change. Isn’t this relevant to today’s seeming lack of social mobility?
5. People are produced in factories, which was one of the most distressing concepts in the book for me. Being “decanted” out of a jar makes family life obsolete and anything referring to it profane. In this world, there is no loyalty or ties to anyone. Not to families, and not to other people. People become products produced in factories; they are created just like the consumer goods that the state wants them to buy.
6. Babies are trained and socially conditioned from a very early age using hypnopedia, or sleep-learning. The learning gives them all the instructions they will ever need in life, and instills passivity and an aversion to learning on one’s own.
7. The emphasis on collective life makes solitude impossible. Those individuals wishing to be on their own are regarded with contempt, because individualistic behavior is strange, even suspect.
8. The situation that created the Brave New World (BNW) sprung from previous wars. The wars were so bad that people were willing to give up anything: tradition, culture, knowledge, love, family for a peaceful existence.
9. In BNW, permanent happiness is the ultimate goal. Happiness is more important to the citizens of BNW than even ideals like truth and beauty. The reason is that truth and beauty are painful.
10. Everything that is old is useless. BNW is a world without the Bible and a world without Shakespeare. These items eventually surface in a powerful man’s library as reminders of what the world used to be like. Contrary to the lack of intellectualism in BNW, these old books have a character that the new and shallow discourse of the BNW doesn’t have.
11. The eternal question of comparison. What is happiness if you have never known sadness? What is hate if you’ve never known love? These dualities mean that understanding one term is impossible without understanding the other. You always need something to compare something else with. Towards the end of the book, John the Savage laments that nothing costs enough in BNW. For example, to have ideas like truth and beauty, you have to be willing to pay for them with an eventual feeling of pain they might cause. Because these two ideals are averted, it renders happiness meaningless.
12. Youth and old age / live and death. BNW is fixated on superficiality and appearances. For this reason, all people are youthful in appearance until sixty, when they die. When Linda comes to BNW, people are appalled at her signs of age. In reality, I’ve always consider signs of aging to signify that you have lived. Whether one’s life has been full of hardships or success, or love and hate, wrinkles and scars are signs that you’ve survived. This idea would never occur to someone in BNW, because aging is profane even if it’s a part of normal human life. Because family and other relations are non-existent, no one mourns and death is seen as something unimportant.
So as the next decade of the 21st century begins, are we any closer to Huxley’s vision of a Brave New World?
We don’t have the feelies or scent organs, but we have television and internet. In BNW, the feelies are movies that you can feel and scent organs are machines that spew scents. They are both forms of mindless entertainment and distractions, largely meant to keep people from thinking and to keep them together in a large group. Now think about things like Twitter and the idiocy of 140 character Tweets or the entire gestalt of Facebook. Is there a connection there? If that weren’t enough, popular television continues to become more and more infantile. Shows about bad children and their nannies; swapping wives or people living on an island. In my opinion, reality television has been the largest step backwards on the public discourse level I’ve seen in my short life (aside from Sarah Palin’s FaceBook page). Why are people watching “reality” on television when reality is right there in their homes? Why spend so much time watching others’ lives when we all have our own? Because it’s meant as a distraction and not meant to provoke thought. It is the most passive of passive experiences and the general public eats it right up. Besides, television has always been less about content and more about selling consumption. In BNW, consumption is embedded in citizens by the state with clever slogans in their sleep training. To that end, what can we say of our own “conditioning”?
We don’t have soma, but we have over-medicated Americans and their doctors that believe the answer to every problem is solved by a pill.
And books? The statistics, and the internet is loaded with them, speak for themselves. A recent article in the German science magazine GEO speculates the end of the book, at least in the format we know it (more on that later). In BNW, books are old and are banned for that reason. Only technical books about the BNW are available, there is nothing that is aged. Literature is a product of the environment where it was generated, and as such, it is timeless. BNW, through its lack of written history, its populace’s willing ignorance, and its subversion of the most basic of human natures (curiosity), is a cultureless world. Given that there are so many similarities between BNW and our current way of life, I tend to be a bit pessimistic and think that in some ways we are headed in the same direction. Will there be a time when we find ourselves in the same line of thinking as the World Controller when he says, “what is aged is no longer relevant, we have these things now.”?
A debate always raged between my former roommate Josh and I. He would ask me why I didn’t read Brave New World, given that I liked 1984 so much. And I would counter to him: “How can you not have read 1984 if you like Brave New World?” We were in a Mexican standoff for years, but now I can finally claim the upper hand. A few months ago, I read Brave New World and am therefore the winner of the Josh/Sofie books about failed utopias battle.
First off, I kept thinking about how odd the whole book was. Even odder when you consider that it was published in 1932 and Huxley had no idea of the totalitarianism and insanity that was yet to come. I think there are also a lot of parallels and topics addressed in the book that mirror existence in today’s world or the possibilities that could exist in the world of the future.
A few points:
1. Man’s ability to control science and human life renders the idea of a God unnecessary.
2. There is a parallel between the mindless entertainment generated in the technological age and the drug “soma,” which people take to remove themselves from the world.
3. Social conditioning teaches people how to interact with others. They identify and organize themselves into hierarchies based on the social level they were bred into. Isn’t that also similar to class differences?
4. Not only does genetic engineering in Huxley’s dystopia determine social level, but it even determines the jobs that people do throughout their lives. These jobs and classes never change. Isn’t this relevant to today’s seeming lack of social mobility?
5. People are produced in factories, which was one of the most distressing concepts in the book for me. Being “decanted” out of a jar makes family life obsolete and anything referring to it profane. In this world, there is no loyalty or ties to anyone. Not to families, and not to other people. People become products produced in factories; they are created just like the consumer goods that the state wants them to buy.
6. Babies are trained and socially conditioned from a very early age using hypnopedia, or sleep-learning. The learning gives them all the instructions they will ever need in life, and instills passivity and an aversion to learning on one’s own.
7. The emphasis on collective life makes solitude impossible. Those individuals wishing to be on their own are regarded with contempt, because individualistic behavior is strange, even suspect.
8. The situation that created the Brave New World (BNW) sprung from previous wars. The wars were so bad that people were willing to give up anything: tradition, culture, knowledge, love, family for a peaceful existence.
9. In BNW, permanent happiness is the ultimate goal. Happiness is more important to the citizens of BNW than even ideals like truth and beauty. The reason is that truth and beauty are painful.
10. Everything that is old is useless. BNW is a world without the Bible and a world without Shakespeare. These items eventually surface in a powerful man’s library as reminders of what the world used to be like. Contrary to the lack of intellectualism in BNW, these old books have a character that the new and shallow discourse of the BNW doesn’t have.
11. The eternal question of comparison. What is happiness if you have never known sadness? What is hate if you’ve never known love? These dualities mean that understanding one term is impossible without understanding the other. You always need something to compare something else with. Towards the end of the book, John the Savage laments that nothing costs enough in BNW. For example, to have ideas like truth and beauty, you have to be willing to pay for them with an eventual feeling of pain they might cause. Because these two ideals are averted, it renders happiness meaningless.
12. Youth and old age / live and death. BNW is fixated on superficiality and appearances. For this reason, all people are youthful in appearance until sixty, when they die. When Linda comes to BNW, people are appalled at her signs of age. In reality, I’ve always consider signs of aging to signify that you have lived. Whether one’s life has been full of hardships or success, or love and hate, wrinkles and scars are signs that you’ve survived. This idea would never occur to someone in BNW, because aging is profane even if it’s a part of normal human life. Because family and other relations are non-existent, no one mourns and death is seen as something unimportant.
So as the next decade of the 21st century begins, are we any closer to Huxley’s vision of a Brave New World?
We don’t have the feelies or scent organs, but we have television and internet. In BNW, the feelies are movies that you can feel and scent organs are machines that spew scents. They are both forms of mindless entertainment and distractions, largely meant to keep people from thinking and to keep them together in a large group. Now think about things like Twitter and the idiocy of 140 character Tweets or the entire gestalt of Facebook. Is there a connection there? If that weren’t enough, popular television continues to become more and more infantile. Shows about bad children and their nannies; swapping wives or people living on an island. In my opinion, reality television has been the largest step backwards on the public discourse level I’ve seen in my short life (aside from Sarah Palin’s FaceBook page). Why are people watching “reality” on television when reality is right there in their homes? Why spend so much time watching others’ lives when we all have our own? Because it’s meant as a distraction and not meant to provoke thought. It is the most passive of passive experiences and the general public eats it right up. Besides, television has always been less about content and more about selling consumption. In BNW, consumption is embedded in citizens by the state with clever slogans in their sleep training. To that end, what can we say of our own “conditioning”?
We don’t have soma, but we have over-medicated Americans and their doctors that believe the answer to every problem is solved by a pill.
And books? The statistics, and the internet is loaded with them, speak for themselves. A recent article in the German science magazine GEO speculates the end of the book, at least in the format we know it (more on that later). In BNW, books are old and are banned for that reason. Only technical books about the BNW are available, there is nothing that is aged. Literature is a product of the environment where it was generated, and as such, it is timeless. BNW, through its lack of written history, its populace’s willing ignorance, and its subversion of the most basic of human natures (curiosity), is a cultureless world. Given that there are so many similarities between BNW and our current way of life, I tend to be a bit pessimistic and think that in some ways we are headed in the same direction. Will there be a time when we find ourselves in the same line of thinking as the World Controller when he says, “what is aged is no longer relevant, we have these things now.”?
1.5 Liters of Fun!
This week, the Austrian specialists are at our school once again. Tomorrow I’m going on another field trip to our partner school to see them make some cheese. Not having had the experience of growing up on a farm, I take a real interest in what the Austrians instruct. I always learn something new and interesting when they are here.
One of my favorite things in the whole world is anything that has to do with dairy. I pretty much love it all, and since I’m 5 years old, chocolate milk is my absolute favorite. Anyhow, imagine my surprise working at an agricultural school and living in Albania when I learned about the milk process here.
Anyhow, one thing that interests me is milk production here. As a Westerner, I’m blown away when I leave for school in the morning and see a 1.5 Liter plastic Coca Cola bottle filled with milk sitting by our gate. Those two things rarely go together where I’m from. What usually happens is my host mom strains and boils the milk, then uses it to make homemade yogurt.
When I first got here, my first host mom asked me if I liked milk. I replied with an emphatic “Yes!” But I was disappointed when the milk had a scab on the top because it had been boiled and when the taste was very different from what I was used to. Top this all off by seeing that it is sold on the street in a cola bottle and my dairy buzz was quickly killed.
In the meantime, I’ve gotten used to the taste. Luckily I have access to “milk in a box,” a phenomenon that is rapidly becoming more popular. For the longest time, “farmer milk” (or rather, “milk in a cola bottle”) has been the standard. It is “fresh” and inexpensive compared to boxed milk. Traditions are also hard to break, considering that people have their own ideas about what is best.
But the problems are also numerous. Unlike boxed milk, the average Albanian can really only guess about where farmer milk comes from. What are the cows eating? Are they healthy? Are they on any medication? How long has this milk been sitting? Was it chilled properly after milking to eliminate bacteria? And what about anything that is in the milk that can’t be seen with the naked eye? There is no set way to assure quality control. Current television commercials in favor of boxed milk frequently site these issues and do their best to label farmer milk as “unhealthy.”
At this point, maybe I’m going too in-depth about Albanian milk, but it’s part of a much larger picture. Albania is on the road to the European Union and will certainly get there at some point in time, perhaps within the next ten years. The most important thing about the European Union is its laws and organization. As I learned today, agriculture is a very difficult area for countries entering the EU given the extent of laws and procedures that the EU requires of its member states. The EU has laws about how to milk cows, specific temperatures for cooling milk, the number of microbes allowed in parts per million, etc. So the laws, extensive and strict, become costly if they aren’t followed.
Where does this leave Albania? One thing I’ve seen in some of my interactions with Albanians, as well as the Austrians’ interactions with them, is sometimes a difficulty in the idea exchange process. Sometimes, expert advice isn’t considered if it flies in the face of tradition and other cultural practices, which is a huge developmental problem. The Westerners here might not have all the answers, and we certainly have a lot we can learn from Albanians, but part of the reason we are here is to help the country develop. To do that, a country not only needs outside help but it needs the will to do so (including the desire to consider other methods and procedures of doing things). Development is a long process that includes a change in mentality, not just a change in things you can measure like living standards and GDP. Those of us working here try our best to do what we can with what we’ve got, but the process is not without its challenges.
One of my favorite things in the whole world is anything that has to do with dairy. I pretty much love it all, and since I’m 5 years old, chocolate milk is my absolute favorite. Anyhow, imagine my surprise working at an agricultural school and living in Albania when I learned about the milk process here.
Anyhow, one thing that interests me is milk production here. As a Westerner, I’m blown away when I leave for school in the morning and see a 1.5 Liter plastic Coca Cola bottle filled with milk sitting by our gate. Those two things rarely go together where I’m from. What usually happens is my host mom strains and boils the milk, then uses it to make homemade yogurt.
When I first got here, my first host mom asked me if I liked milk. I replied with an emphatic “Yes!” But I was disappointed when the milk had a scab on the top because it had been boiled and when the taste was very different from what I was used to. Top this all off by seeing that it is sold on the street in a cola bottle and my dairy buzz was quickly killed.
In the meantime, I’ve gotten used to the taste. Luckily I have access to “milk in a box,” a phenomenon that is rapidly becoming more popular. For the longest time, “farmer milk” (or rather, “milk in a cola bottle”) has been the standard. It is “fresh” and inexpensive compared to boxed milk. Traditions are also hard to break, considering that people have their own ideas about what is best.
But the problems are also numerous. Unlike boxed milk, the average Albanian can really only guess about where farmer milk comes from. What are the cows eating? Are they healthy? Are they on any medication? How long has this milk been sitting? Was it chilled properly after milking to eliminate bacteria? And what about anything that is in the milk that can’t be seen with the naked eye? There is no set way to assure quality control. Current television commercials in favor of boxed milk frequently site these issues and do their best to label farmer milk as “unhealthy.”
At this point, maybe I’m going too in-depth about Albanian milk, but it’s part of a much larger picture. Albania is on the road to the European Union and will certainly get there at some point in time, perhaps within the next ten years. The most important thing about the European Union is its laws and organization. As I learned today, agriculture is a very difficult area for countries entering the EU given the extent of laws and procedures that the EU requires of its member states. The EU has laws about how to milk cows, specific temperatures for cooling milk, the number of microbes allowed in parts per million, etc. So the laws, extensive and strict, become costly if they aren’t followed.
Where does this leave Albania? One thing I’ve seen in some of my interactions with Albanians, as well as the Austrians’ interactions with them, is sometimes a difficulty in the idea exchange process. Sometimes, expert advice isn’t considered if it flies in the face of tradition and other cultural practices, which is a huge developmental problem. The Westerners here might not have all the answers, and we certainly have a lot we can learn from Albanians, but part of the reason we are here is to help the country develop. To do that, a country not only needs outside help but it needs the will to do so (including the desire to consider other methods and procedures of doing things). Development is a long process that includes a change in mentality, not just a change in things you can measure like living standards and GDP. Those of us working here try our best to do what we can with what we’ve got, but the process is not without its challenges.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Egypt
For those of you not in the know, I’ve always wanted to go to Egypt. I remember how it all started. Probably when I was around five, we got a sample children’s magazine in the mail. I don’t remember the specific title of it, but I can still almost see what the cover looked like. Inevitably, it had a picture of Tut’s burial mask on it and an article about Ancient Egypt and mummification. Yes, I was that nerdy kid that would tell you about pulling brains out through the nose and talk about weighing hearts against a feather. Ever since then, I’ve been captivated with it. This appreciation only grew when I took art history later in college.
At the end of this month, that dream will come true when I spend two weeks in Cairo with my friend Zayne who is studying there. I love traveling and experiencing the world. I have a long bucket list of places I want to go, but Egypt and the Transsiberian have always been at the top. I’ll do Egypt now and perhaps the Transib later (the question for that trip is if I want to go all the way through to Vladivostok or detour into China or India. Decisions, decisions). Everyone is really happy that I’ll be able to realize this lifelong dream which started over twenty years ago. And I’m lucky to have such an awesome tour guide who is willing to do the touristy camel-ride stuff. It’s early, but I think this will be one of the highlights of my life. Good thing this month will be busy, because I don’t know how much I can wait. Luckily throughout March, I have lots of Peace Corps work, lessons at school and privately, and, oh yeah, the Foreign Service Test coming up this Saturday.
At the end of this month, that dream will come true when I spend two weeks in Cairo with my friend Zayne who is studying there. I love traveling and experiencing the world. I have a long bucket list of places I want to go, but Egypt and the Transsiberian have always been at the top. I’ll do Egypt now and perhaps the Transib later (the question for that trip is if I want to go all the way through to Vladivostok or detour into China or India. Decisions, decisions). Everyone is really happy that I’ll be able to realize this lifelong dream which started over twenty years ago. And I’m lucky to have such an awesome tour guide who is willing to do the touristy camel-ride stuff. It’s early, but I think this will be one of the highlights of my life. Good thing this month will be busy, because I don’t know how much I can wait. Luckily throughout March, I have lots of Peace Corps work, lessons at school and privately, and, oh yeah, the Foreign Service Test coming up this Saturday.
What climate change?
Let’s see: earthquakes, floods and droughts. It seems that every day there is some new disaster being sensationalized on television. I’ve never quite seen anything like it and can honestly say that it’s worrisome.
The events are seemingly non-stop. A few months ago, there was the 7.0 quake in Haiti. Last week, an 8.8, 90 second earthquake struck Chile. The Portuguese island of Madeira flooded two weeks ago due to heavy rains, to which a hotel worker commented: “People think these storms happen all the time here, but this is the first time I've ever seen anything like this.” Meanwhile, a drought on the Me Kong river has caused it to be “much lower than we’ve got records on in the last 20 years,” according to Jeremy Bird, the chief executive officer of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) secretariat. He continued that “it is difficult to say whether global warming is responsible but the wet season in Vientiane last year was one of the worst on record, and was followed by much lower than average rain late in 2009 and early this year.” We can’t forget the snow storms that have pummeled the east coast. A winter storm in New York City over two days broke a monthly record for snowfall in Central Park that stood for 114 years, according to the National Weather Service.
These events are all facts, because they happened. Their causes, as well as the debate about global warming or climate change, is disputed. I get disappointed with the people in today’s world and the role that politics plays in everything. People read something in the news and take it completely as fact. They don’t think about the source, they don’t follow the money… nothing. We live in an age where mankind’s access to information is at an all-time high, yet it seems that technology has created a generation of passivity. It’s easier to be told something than to really think about it. How else can people look at record snowfall and automatically take it as a scientific, unquestionable fact that global warming doesn’t exist? Global warming and climate change is largely a semantic debate about defining terms. People hear “warming,” and think that the opposite is happening if snow is falling. To those people, I have to ask: isn’t there at least something odd in the drastic amount of storms? Setting record after record, whether it’s for the intensity of an earthquake, a dramatic drop in water level, or snow in Central Park? How can you look at all these numbers and think that nothing is wrong with them? Because I look at them and feel pretty disturbed. We can fight all day and all night about who caused what, but it’s clear that something is wrong. And it might be too late to fix it. Not that anyone would care though, since by the time the news tells them it’s time to worry, it’s going to be too late.
The events are seemingly non-stop. A few months ago, there was the 7.0 quake in Haiti. Last week, an 8.8, 90 second earthquake struck Chile. The Portuguese island of Madeira flooded two weeks ago due to heavy rains, to which a hotel worker commented: “People think these storms happen all the time here, but this is the first time I've ever seen anything like this.” Meanwhile, a drought on the Me Kong river has caused it to be “much lower than we’ve got records on in the last 20 years,” according to Jeremy Bird, the chief executive officer of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) secretariat. He continued that “it is difficult to say whether global warming is responsible but the wet season in Vientiane last year was one of the worst on record, and was followed by much lower than average rain late in 2009 and early this year.” We can’t forget the snow storms that have pummeled the east coast. A winter storm in New York City over two days broke a monthly record for snowfall in Central Park that stood for 114 years, according to the National Weather Service.
These events are all facts, because they happened. Their causes, as well as the debate about global warming or climate change, is disputed. I get disappointed with the people in today’s world and the role that politics plays in everything. People read something in the news and take it completely as fact. They don’t think about the source, they don’t follow the money… nothing. We live in an age where mankind’s access to information is at an all-time high, yet it seems that technology has created a generation of passivity. It’s easier to be told something than to really think about it. How else can people look at record snowfall and automatically take it as a scientific, unquestionable fact that global warming doesn’t exist? Global warming and climate change is largely a semantic debate about defining terms. People hear “warming,” and think that the opposite is happening if snow is falling. To those people, I have to ask: isn’t there at least something odd in the drastic amount of storms? Setting record after record, whether it’s for the intensity of an earthquake, a dramatic drop in water level, or snow in Central Park? How can you look at all these numbers and think that nothing is wrong with them? Because I look at them and feel pretty disturbed. We can fight all day and all night about who caused what, but it’s clear that something is wrong. And it might be too late to fix it. Not that anyone would care though, since by the time the news tells them it’s time to worry, it’s going to be too late.
Nearing a Year
In two weeks, a new group of Peace Corps volunteers will arrive and I’ll be celebrating a year in-country. The second half of my service is rapidly approaching and the questions are starting to come. What have I accomplished? What do I need to improve? What do I need to get done before I go home? I’m not the only one considering all these points. The reality that our service is almost half complete is starting to sink in to other volunteers. For most of us, it’s a little scary to think about what comes next. Grad school? More development work? Foreign Service? Where are we going “home” to after these two years are over? How much will everything, everyone and ourselves have changed?
I’ve said before that you spend so much time counting up to the half way mark, and now that count-up will turn into a countdown. This experience has gone by in an instant, and given all the unanswered questions that need to be answered, I know the second year will go even faster. Now that the sun is setting within view of my window again as the days grow longer and longer, I take a moment each day to watch it slip into the sea. In those last rays of light, I think about my day. What did I learn today? What do I need to improve for tomorrow?
So what have I learned, now that I’m at the year mark?
Two weeks ago, I had my first genuinely bad day at work. Given that we’re already six months into the school year, I don’t feel too bad about that. Maybe for the first time, I realized just how hard it is to be a teacher here. I honestly don’t know how my Albanian colleagues do it—let alone how most of them are career teachers that have been in the system since I learned how to walk. Students are usually varying degrees of impossible to manage and the lack of interest in learning is astounding. Today I had finally had enough as I waited ten minutes for the class to settle down enough to even start the lesson and then had to shout over students to teach. In the middle of a sentence, I stopped, went over to my materials and plans, picked them up and walked out of the room. My counterpart later told me not to take it personally and that it happens to everyone. When it comes down to it, I don’t care what general classes of high schoolers think of me or my lessons. I just want them to learn something and to make an effort, not for my sake but for their own. They are the ones that will have to go to university and find jobs.
It is hard for me to understand students and their mentalities because I can’t comprehend the idea of not wanting to learn. I do not understand it. They sit in class, talk louder than the teachers, and laugh a lot. Will they be laughing as much in the future when they have nothing to do with their lives because they lack the education? I don’t understand how lightly education is taken. If I had to guess, I’d say a severe lack of parental discipline is partly to blame as well as a consequence free environment that seems to be the norm at most schools I’ve seen. We certainly have discipline problems in the US, but at least we always knew what would happen if we did something. Here, I’m not exactly sure. The worst thing that happens to students is that they are thrown out of class—after which they go drink a coffee with their friends. Hardly an effective punishment, but what else can we really do?
General apathy is probably the biggest problem that I see in these students, and for that we have no real answers. It becomes a game of teaching to the three or four students in each class that want to learn and trying to encourage interested students to try. Maybe that’s all we can do.
I’ve also learned to accept that my pants will never, ever fit. As soon as I find a pair that fits me, they soon become too big and I’m right back where I started from with either my crotch at my knees, my belt needing new holes and/or having to roll my pant legs up. At least you can find a lot of great shirts at the used clothing market. I’m still holding out on a retro Team Germany jersey before the World Cup in 2010.
Most of us have become junior Albanian economists. Why? Well, not all stores have everything and not all prices are the same. Like most Albanians, we memorize prices and stock. For example, I know that in Lushnje, a town an hour away from me, they have powdered sugar imported from Italy. I know that the Durres EuroMax grocery store has soy sauce for 890Lek. I know that a grocery store in Berat has decaffeinated Lavazza espresso. It’s foolish to think that by walking into any store you’ll easily find whatever you’re looking for.
I’ve realized how much I love teaching and how much I love explaining and clarifying things. Recently, I checked the Olympic medal count every day at my school. My host mom, the school secretary, would always ask me what I was looking at (and why I was clapping when I would see the US leading). That led to a discussion about the Olympics and the sporting events. My Albanian is good enough to explain more complex things, for example, luge being “like an ice road and that’s 130KMH.” So eloquent.
But most importantly, it’s been 9 months of not being burned by my host family’s fry-o-lator. It’s a kitchen machine that I respect and fear, being both a useful instrument to preparing artery-clogging food faster, as well as being similar to the machine in “Night Shift” that has a penchant for blood. So far it hasn’t gotten me… but I know it’s lying in wait.
I’ve said before that you spend so much time counting up to the half way mark, and now that count-up will turn into a countdown. This experience has gone by in an instant, and given all the unanswered questions that need to be answered, I know the second year will go even faster. Now that the sun is setting within view of my window again as the days grow longer and longer, I take a moment each day to watch it slip into the sea. In those last rays of light, I think about my day. What did I learn today? What do I need to improve for tomorrow?
So what have I learned, now that I’m at the year mark?
Two weeks ago, I had my first genuinely bad day at work. Given that we’re already six months into the school year, I don’t feel too bad about that. Maybe for the first time, I realized just how hard it is to be a teacher here. I honestly don’t know how my Albanian colleagues do it—let alone how most of them are career teachers that have been in the system since I learned how to walk. Students are usually varying degrees of impossible to manage and the lack of interest in learning is astounding. Today I had finally had enough as I waited ten minutes for the class to settle down enough to even start the lesson and then had to shout over students to teach. In the middle of a sentence, I stopped, went over to my materials and plans, picked them up and walked out of the room. My counterpart later told me not to take it personally and that it happens to everyone. When it comes down to it, I don’t care what general classes of high schoolers think of me or my lessons. I just want them to learn something and to make an effort, not for my sake but for their own. They are the ones that will have to go to university and find jobs.
It is hard for me to understand students and their mentalities because I can’t comprehend the idea of not wanting to learn. I do not understand it. They sit in class, talk louder than the teachers, and laugh a lot. Will they be laughing as much in the future when they have nothing to do with their lives because they lack the education? I don’t understand how lightly education is taken. If I had to guess, I’d say a severe lack of parental discipline is partly to blame as well as a consequence free environment that seems to be the norm at most schools I’ve seen. We certainly have discipline problems in the US, but at least we always knew what would happen if we did something. Here, I’m not exactly sure. The worst thing that happens to students is that they are thrown out of class—after which they go drink a coffee with their friends. Hardly an effective punishment, but what else can we really do?
General apathy is probably the biggest problem that I see in these students, and for that we have no real answers. It becomes a game of teaching to the three or four students in each class that want to learn and trying to encourage interested students to try. Maybe that’s all we can do.
I’ve also learned to accept that my pants will never, ever fit. As soon as I find a pair that fits me, they soon become too big and I’m right back where I started from with either my crotch at my knees, my belt needing new holes and/or having to roll my pant legs up. At least you can find a lot of great shirts at the used clothing market. I’m still holding out on a retro Team Germany jersey before the World Cup in 2010.
Most of us have become junior Albanian economists. Why? Well, not all stores have everything and not all prices are the same. Like most Albanians, we memorize prices and stock. For example, I know that in Lushnje, a town an hour away from me, they have powdered sugar imported from Italy. I know that the Durres EuroMax grocery store has soy sauce for 890Lek. I know that a grocery store in Berat has decaffeinated Lavazza espresso. It’s foolish to think that by walking into any store you’ll easily find whatever you’re looking for.
I’ve realized how much I love teaching and how much I love explaining and clarifying things. Recently, I checked the Olympic medal count every day at my school. My host mom, the school secretary, would always ask me what I was looking at (and why I was clapping when I would see the US leading). That led to a discussion about the Olympics and the sporting events. My Albanian is good enough to explain more complex things, for example, luge being “like an ice road and that’s 130KMH.” So eloquent.
But most importantly, it’s been 9 months of not being burned by my host family’s fry-o-lator. It’s a kitchen machine that I respect and fear, being both a useful instrument to preparing artery-clogging food faster, as well as being similar to the machine in “Night Shift” that has a penchant for blood. So far it hasn’t gotten me… but I know it’s lying in wait.
Green Albania?
A few weeks ago, I did a few lessons on the environment. As usual, I supplemented the material in the books with new and relevant information. It’s a real shame that some of that information from some major reports ended up being false (IPCC report) and in turn gave credence to climate change skeptics.
One of the resources I looked at while putting together my lesson plan was an issue of Deutschland Magazin that my parents sent about the then upcoming Copenhagen conference. We hear so much about global warming and the environment, but most of us know so little. And just like most things in the digital age, it’s difficult to wade through the sea of information written on both sides of the topic.
But one thing really got my interest. The magazine had a section about ways to reduce our carbon footprint and little things you can do to save energy. The article stated that not using a clothes dryer saves 300 kilos of CO2 from the environment. The same amount can be saved by turning the AC off for four hours a day or by buying regional products. The meat production industry also contributes to environmental problems, so eating one less kilo of meat per week prevents 700 kilos of CO2 from harming the environment. Manual cars save 330 kilos annually.
Oddly enough, all of these things apply to Albania. For starters, we don’t have central air or heating. Instead, we have sleeping bags / pajamas / and the necessity to wear several layers in winter. Yes, Albania has its environmental problems, especially with pollution. No one has a clothes dryer, although some are imported from Italy. A popular pastime here in the winter is “wet, or just cold: the Albanian laundry game.” It takes days for clothes to dry because we put them outside… and that’s assuming it goes a few days in a row without rain, which is highly unlikely. The Albanian diet, at least what I’m experiencing, is composed of limited amounts of meat. We have very small pieces of meat with most meals, but nothing at all like what we have at home. It’s very uncommon for me to eat an entire chicken breast in one setting, which is pretty common at home.
That isn’t to say that Albania isn’t without its environmental problems. Pollution runs rampant in developing countries. Problems with infrastructure can also cause problems, like poor engineering that causes flooding and erosion or poor general usage of resources. However, as Westerners, we have a lot we could learn. If one requirement for being called a “developed” country is the amount of available amenities, then isn’t part of what it means to be “developed” is to be wasteful? As “leading” countries in the world with power, wealth and technology in our hands, isn’t it shameful that we can’t set good examples?
One of the resources I looked at while putting together my lesson plan was an issue of Deutschland Magazin that my parents sent about the then upcoming Copenhagen conference. We hear so much about global warming and the environment, but most of us know so little. And just like most things in the digital age, it’s difficult to wade through the sea of information written on both sides of the topic.
But one thing really got my interest. The magazine had a section about ways to reduce our carbon footprint and little things you can do to save energy. The article stated that not using a clothes dryer saves 300 kilos of CO2 from the environment. The same amount can be saved by turning the AC off for four hours a day or by buying regional products. The meat production industry also contributes to environmental problems, so eating one less kilo of meat per week prevents 700 kilos of CO2 from harming the environment. Manual cars save 330 kilos annually.
Oddly enough, all of these things apply to Albania. For starters, we don’t have central air or heating. Instead, we have sleeping bags / pajamas / and the necessity to wear several layers in winter. Yes, Albania has its environmental problems, especially with pollution. No one has a clothes dryer, although some are imported from Italy. A popular pastime here in the winter is “wet, or just cold: the Albanian laundry game.” It takes days for clothes to dry because we put them outside… and that’s assuming it goes a few days in a row without rain, which is highly unlikely. The Albanian diet, at least what I’m experiencing, is composed of limited amounts of meat. We have very small pieces of meat with most meals, but nothing at all like what we have at home. It’s very uncommon for me to eat an entire chicken breast in one setting, which is pretty common at home.
That isn’t to say that Albania isn’t without its environmental problems. Pollution runs rampant in developing countries. Problems with infrastructure can also cause problems, like poor engineering that causes flooding and erosion or poor general usage of resources. However, as Westerners, we have a lot we could learn. If one requirement for being called a “developed” country is the amount of available amenities, then isn’t part of what it means to be “developed” is to be wasteful? As “leading” countries in the world with power, wealth and technology in our hands, isn’t it shameful that we can’t set good examples?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)