Dumb, but intelligent humor.

In short, some girls got together and found a way to waste time by taking current political topics and pairing them with pictures of the present it man in Hollywood. I spend my procrastination hours thumbing through them. I don’t see any other way of getting through the current news coverage.

http://heypoliscigirl.tumblr.com/

Hate and Racism

Research for the thesis continued…

In This American Life: “Reap What You Sow,” Ira Glass takes a look into the new law of HB56, or “Self Deportation.” In the state of Alabama, following the example of Arizona, the so-called alien experiment is to make life so unpleasant for illegal immigrants that they themselves choose to leave the United States. In short, the law makes it illegal to do business with (or help in any way) those suspected of living illegally in the state. Its political advocates call it a sort of “attrition through enforcement,” which most commonly uses fear as its motivational tactic.

Those speaking out against the law use a fundamental argument: It is furthering racism and causing “something hateful in the air.” To expose its effect: everyday, legal citizens have begun to take law enforcement into their own hands to “check” the status of immigrants. This can be anything from asking for citizen verification while the person in question is checking out at the supermarket, to requiring proof of citizenship for obtaining an apartment (both of which are not legally required in these sorts of transactions.) In short, a new culture of racism seemingly backed by law has taken hold in two states, and has a probable future of spreading elsewhere such as in Texas, and North Carolina.

There is certainly not a genocide occurring in the U.S. and the threat of one is undoubtedly minute, but there is the reality of macro (political support through law) and micro (ordinary citizens) levels of involvement for the deportation of Latinos. What is key to the issue is the breeding of a culture with hatred towards a specific group. Because after all, tell me, how can you “know by looking” at the difference between an American Latino and an illegal Latino.

At its root, the cry for deportation is brought with the argument that if illegal immigrants leave, the economic problems (i.e. unemployment) will subside. This need for additional availability of work, lawful support through the government, and the everyday citizen taking enforcement into their own hands, are strikingly similar themes running throughout the initial hatred and thereby disposal of Armenians.

The Ottoman Empire ruled impressive amounts of land and people for roughly 500 years. At the end of the Balkan Wars 1912/13, thousands of Turks were forced to move back to Turkey as they were no longer welcome in the former countries they had occupied. Upon arrival, the Ottoman government had to find a place to house and support these refugees. The Armenians living in Turkey, with no state of their own, were the largest minority.

Though the exact dates are debated, the Armenian Genocide occurred in the second decade of the 20th century.  To this day, the Turkish government denies it happened and instead refers to it as a civil war. If you were to travel to Turkey today and request access to their archives, you would be denied. France recently passed a law in its own country which makes it illegal to deny its occurrence. On April 24 Obama will address its Day of Remembrance. Listen, will he use the word genocide in talks of our Turkish ally? 

“Who, after all, speaks today about the annihilation of the Armenians?” – Adolf Hitler

Four Days in Cologne

This is well past due, and if you use Facebook you’ve seen a majority of these.

I had a break in school and took a trip to maximize my time in W. Europe. I had three rules for the vacation: 1. Go alone. 2. Don’t take my computer. 3. Don’t return to the hostel until dark each day. I managed to keep the promises.

When I stepped off the train, the Dom was the first thing in site. It’s at the center of the city. I’ve gotten into this habit of lighting candles in places that offer such. I don’t see it so much as spiritual and definitely not religious, but as therapeutic. I lit a candle for my nieces and sisters, but only one. We stand together.

After going inside, and below, I climbed the Bell Tower. I wish you could have seen the arduous journey. It must have been because I did not have a friend with me, but I almost had a panic attack. And I do write this with honesty. Not in exaggeration. The first leg of the climb was manageable. There were many people doing the same and the stairs were what I have grown accustomed to inside castles and cathedrals. Although in the second leg of the journey I was completely alone and the stairs were “new”; metal with small holes so that you could see the ground below you. Though I knew I was completely safe, I was literally hugging the pole the stairs wrapped around. Several times I thought of turning back, but then I’d be writing about regret instead of accomplishment. So I carried on.  The pictures that follow are the Dom, the top of the Dom, and views of the surrounding city from inside the top.

Notice the bridge in the picture above. The lockets below are placed on its side.

The tradition goes– You and your lover place a locket on the bridge and throw the key in the river. You are then destined to love one another for all eternity! Recently a group of engineers came out to make sure the bridge could hold the weight that is being accumulated. It’s an incredible sight to see.

The next few pictures are of the “Crane Buildings.” They reminded me of my middle sister and her interest in architecture.

Apart from walking the city, I visited four museums. The museum inside the Dom, a museum on the cultures of the world, a museum about chocolate, and a Pop Art museum. It’s hard to say which was my favorite. While walking the “cultures” museum I went back to thinking on colonization. As the Western  man came in he’d claim these discovered people were barbarians or heathens or Godless. It’s funny to think, maybe we were the Godless ones. With our destruction and blatant theft.

What I love most about art museums will sound pretentious, I must admit. There are two moments I love best. Number one, when I turn a corner inside the museum and see a painting I’ve studied or seen in movies, not realizing I was going to see it in this museum.  I can not tell you how many times that has happened. (Three years ago in the MOMA I came across a Picasso. A replica painted by my roommate’s mother had hung in my house for a year and I had no idea.) Number two, when I see a painting that looks like an artist I know. Before reading the little plaque, I like to guess who I think created it.  I’d say I’m right 30% of the time, I’m somehow not discouraged by the 70% failure rate.  I learned of two new artists I can now identify: Lichtenstein and Rothka. It’s a very fun game. Slightly nerdy.

Let me end my post with this thought– because I know.. you know.. I love my soap boxes. The chocolate museum was strange. I’ll try to give a literary tour.

The first room discusses how cacao is harvested. It briefly explains the lives of those who work the field; who cut the plant and harvest the raw resource. Did you know most of those working in this industry have never even tasted chocolate? CNN is currently doing an informative project on this issue. After you leave this room discussing the misfortune these workers face while working for our pleasure, you enter a green-room of sorts. It’s very humid, but beautiful. There are live plants with a small pond and water misters causing your hair to frizz and your skin to feel heavy. Not only are the laborers (many of which are children) at risk while working with machetes, they are working in unmerciful heat only found in the tropics.

As this room ends you head upstairs into stereotypes of race throughout the history of chocolate. It shows trinkets and advertisements with displays of  black men carrying trays of expensive  and beautiful treats.

Next you enter into the actual process of mass producing the chocolate. The shiny, silver machines, protected by clear glass, are actually working and producing the chocolate. Everywhere there are workers dressed in white busily making sure all is running smoothly. Willy Wonka style.

And alas, the Golden Fountain. I kid you not. I stopped mid-step. It was all I could do to laugh. I looked around me as if I had a nieghbor to discuss my bewilderment. Instead I silently went through this mental process: Wait. What? What happened to all those past rooms about misfortune and heat and bugs and misery and child slavery and race and stereotypes? Is she really standing there in all white? Does it really have to be ALL WHITE? Is that really a Golden Fountain? Am I the only one seeing this? What the hell is going on? I am so confused. But goodness, this chocolate is tasty.

Man’s Search For Meaning, by Victor Frankl

I have been to Auschwitz. I have seen the furnaces, the medical offices, the “wall of death”; the unreal reality that was. I have always secretly felt embarrassed, or strange, or judged by my interest in the atrocities of the world. Who would find this stuff enjoyable to study? More so, who would admit it? However just this past week, in the first day of my thesis tutorial entitled, “Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century” I realized I was not alone.

I have not chosen a specific topic for the 20,000 word essay, but that will come. I’m interested in the psychology behind it all. How did the rulers justify doing this? What propaganda was put in place to allow this to occur? Why did those standing by, the citizen not targeted, allow this to happen? How did those subjected to this hatred, if not ultimately killed, find the will to survive?

As a Holocaust survivor, Victor Frankl was subjected to the atrocities of the concentration camps. Frankl’s book seemed the most logical place to start in my quest for answers. To my surprise, I have found a wealth of ideas which pertain to my personal life.

“Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.  The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.”

To be sure, I do not compare my life to Frankl’s as definitive. I have never known suffering like those in the Holocaust, and I would not want to pretend as such. Instead, as Frankl implies, we have all searched for meaning which can be found even in suffering, and therefore, that is a universal truth we can share in common.

In 2007, I reached a point in Bangkok where seeing an underaged prostitute with a man in his 60s was no longer worth reacting to. It was another shade of grey in the wall. A few days later I realized that was my cue to leave.

“Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second state of the prisoner’s psychological reactions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings.”

Because I could not bear to imagine or understand the pain these prostitutes were going through, my only defense was to grow insensitive, immune. In so doing, I indirectly became the outsider who chose to no longer look in.

Bulgaria was a strange environment for many reasons. It was the unhappiest place I have come to know personally. The people feel defeated, insecure, and tired.* However my Bulgarian mother Galya will remain the great paradox of my life. How was she able to remain happy in a world of negativity? How was she able to stay positive in a daily life of struggle? She lived a fairly comfortable life, materialistically, but she lived  a life of survival by taking it one day at a time. She lived next door to suffering. She lived in a world which worked against her daily happiness.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

The greatest lesson I learned from Galya is that it is my choice of how to respond to the misfortunes around me. When mental illness is at bay, I choose the reaction, I choose the feelings felt.

My friend and I are currently discussing reaching “the end” of our goals. As the last school quarter came to a close, I felt joy for a mere twenty-four hours. I then felt depression, anxiety, and boredom. My friend hit a series of struggles which lasted at least a year. As a result, she is more dynamic, insightful, and motivated. Just the other day when speaking of her job (which she worked hard to nail down as permanent, and succeeded quite successfully) she explained she feels as though she is just “going through the motions” of a day. It, in itself, is not fulfilling.

“Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill.”

I am at my best when challenged and in a sort of tension. I will always find depression at the end of a great success because instead of seeing it as accomplishment, I see it as a burial.

The last quote I will add today, which I think needs no explanation.

“What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.”

*When I say something negative of Bulgaria, I always feel a need to restate: Bulgaria is my home. I love it as I love Texas. And for that reason, I feel I can at times speak of my frustrations there. And you, as the reader, must remember all times I’ve spoken highly of it.

A question posed in class got me thinking.  It is a current theory debated among academics. It is my favorite kind of question. Its topic, its demeanor, its circular path.

 

Does education lead to economic growth, or does economic growth lead to education?

Academics. Ehh.

My professors tell me I need to ease the reader more.  I need to give a better introduction.  But I don’t want to do that.  I want to jump in without sunscreen and two minutes after eating.  I want to cross the road without looking.  I just want to go.  And to map out in writing the journey I’ll be taking?  To commit to a destination?  To an idea?  Don’t these men know I haven’t lived in the same place for more than two years over the past six? What makes them think I have a plan?  Psssh.  Plans are for planners.  And besides, I want you to decide for yourself. To go, to not go, to take a turn as you please.  We can meet later to discuss.  I don’t want you to think what I think.  How boring.  Make up your own mind.  But I’d like to influence it.

Ambiguity is a treasure.  My treasure.

Old memories made new.

As children my mother and father took us ice skating, in what feels like, every year.  We were very Texan about it– in the mall. This made me miss them.  So fun!  Childlike.

(The girl in red is my very best Greek/Palestinian friend.  The two guys are Dutch and quite possibly the most in love couple I have ever met.  Their mutual love,  she and I’s friendship.  I’ll settle for nothing less.)