Leaver Baby

Try not to forget or delay my blog posting :P

I want to talk about myself and nature! I have wrote about this for our fast write and my paper, but  I want to expand the topic little more.

I have naturally absorbed into the Takers' culture from a baby to now and feel that nature is not really my close friend. I was born and grew up in Seoul, the capital city of South Korea. Seoul is considered as one of biggest and busiest cities in the world. There are so many tall buildings and apartments that look like almost touching sky, so many different people on the streets that are covered with neon signs, and so many cars on roads and highways that connect everywhere in Korea.  When I go to rural sides of Korea, there are green mountains and blue beaches. I feel like I am in another country, and it is interesting to see how the country with small lands has diverse geography views. Even though I moved to several places, a small city, Bournemouth, with a beautiful beach in England and a small or medium sized city, Anchorage, with lots of mountains and wild weather in Alaska, I could not easily connect myself to nature.

I would like to imagine that if I am "a Leaver baby," which was one of our fast writes. If I am a baby who lives in a Leaver society, nature would be my playground and home. I will be going out every day to reach a deep deep part of forest, chasing butterflies and bothering other animals, climbing up to trees and eating various fruits, swimming and fishing in rivers, and having naps on bouncy grass. These activities seem so different from my childhood activities, which I played with my brother , watched cartoons on TV, and draw random pictures, and more fun that playing with nature is limitless. However, even though I know that nature could provide children good, exciting activities, would I let my children to run and play around nature wildly? I might say no... which is a sad answer. I would bring them to  parks or playgrounds to let them play crazily but not forest ... may be just to walk with them together. This is because I know there would be some dangers and try to avoid injuries or deaths of my loved children...like other Taker mothers think and do. I am not sure what would be best solution for children, but for sure I want to them to see beautiful, amazing nature out in the world for them to experience and learn from nature something that could not find in books, internet, and TV. Is the idea of Leaver baby  possible in the Taker society?

Pictures from:

Seoul:http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lbYvIqH_XEE/TDDsS83I1cI/AAAAAAAAACs/qphV44mFACc/S760/seoul.png
Bournemouth: http://www.travelguideengland.net/bournemouth-sightseeings-united-kingdom.html
Anchorage: http://www.mushinn.com/

Quote Quote

Expanding our class discussion...
7 quotes about morality from influential people:

1.    A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a throughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
Socrates

2. A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.
John F. Kennedy

3. Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.
Mark Twain

4. The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Mahatma Gandhi

5. If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality.
C.S. Lewis

6. About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

7.  Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.
Thomas Jefferson

Some quotes are similar ideas that people said about morality in the class. Whose idea is the one you like the most or can you agree with?
After we discussed in the class, and I look up these quotes, I think morality is not easy topic to make people to agree with one idea but interesting to hear what other think about how they determine right or wrong.




-Idea and action have consequence-

Captivity

I think I am going to backward that my post will be from the first chapter. I have planned to put it together for few days, but I just delay posting...

I got one of these quotations as the first chapter class active, and at that time, I was not really thinking about it and just passed it; but later, I read it and its page again. I think these quotations made me to review myself and would be worthy to post on the blogJ

All of these quotations are from page 25.

“‘You’re captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.’”

“‘So. You are captives--and you have made a captive of the world itself. That’s what’s at stake, isn’t it? – your captivity and the captivity of the world.’”

“‘And you yourself are a captive in a personal way, are you not?’”

“‘… They [young people of this country] made an ingenuous and disorganize effort to escape from captivity but ultimately failed, because they were unable to find the bars of the cage. If you can’t discover what’s keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual.’”

I found the definition of captivity from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captivity).
Captivity: Imprisonment or hostage, the state of being confined to a space from which it is difficult or impossible to escape

When I first read the page, I agreed with the student that how many people would think they are the “captive” of the world’s civilizational system or in their personal way. However, if I think deeper about myself and my life, I might be a captive in various ways. Even though there are no “bars of the cage,” I am in some cages or frames that I could not escape easily.

First one is captivity of educational system. Education is necessary for all people that most countries in the world provide free public education to kids till middle or high school years.  However, I think education sometimes make kids to be unified and force to learn them things without interest or desire. Education becomes very important because people want to get better, high paying jobs, not because they want to learn and expand their studies. This could relate to the video we watch in the class in this week that as students get higher education, they lose their divergent thinking processes and their creativities.

Second one would be captivity of what other people thinking. Everyone wants to be unique and individualized, but at the same time she or he cares how other view and think about himself or herself. Sometimes one person chooses a right thing, but because the majority of a group chooses wrong things, he or she follows them with peer pressure.

Last one is captivity of money. Today, many people would say that I will do anything to earn a lot of money. It is true that people need money to pay things like food, cloth, and education. However, people want money more than they actually need.  People work and work without enjoying their life or do things they should not do to make money.  Money becomes one of the crucial factors that make people happy; if you have money, you can do anything you want.  I like what Benjamin Franklin said about money: “Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants” (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/money.html#ixzz1m1ZrwZBV).

Think hard about in what other ways people are captives... and who or what are the captors...

This cute picture is by Andy Kennedy from http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2011/sep/30/weekend-readers-pictures-captive#/?picture=379642664&index=0.  

Silent or peaceful captivity? 

The Uncontacted People

This would be my first post on this blog!

On Wednesday, we had choices to write about why we should protect the uncontacted people or what we will do if we encounter them. In our class, we discussed about protecting them or not. The topic was interesting, and it was not easy to think why we have to protect them. One reason I came up with was protecting not only the uncontacted people as keeping cultural diversity in the world but also the natural resources that belong to them. These uncontacted people know how to use as well as preserve the nature around them. Without protections for these people, there would be some “takers,” who want to steal the resources more than harm the uncontacted people and destroy their culture. As the takers have consumed more and more their natural resources, they believe that they need to get more from somewhere and someone before they spend all and have nothing left. Therefore, the takers will eye on the “leavers” and plan to take over the resources. When this happens, the takers will kill the uncontacted people as a process to get the resources. The protection is needed as the control the takers and their greedy mind.   \
   
However, I wrote the other topic and thought about it more after the class. In my fast-writing, I said that if I have a chance to visit a village with uncontacted people, first I would greet and show respect to them. If I also can speak their language, I am going to explain why I am there and get a permission to experience their life and culture. I hope that they would welcome me like Arawak people, the native Indians introduced in Howard Znn’s “Columbus, the Indians, and Human Process”. Yet, as we have seen in the videos of the uncontacted people, they are no longer to be nice to foreigners, people with high technology. When civilized people have videotaped the uncontacted people, the uncontacted people look and try to threaten the foreigners by pointing their arrows on the video camera. This made me think why the uncontacted people’s attitudes toward strangers have changed. In the past, the uncontacted people welcomed them and tried to give their things to the strangers; but today, these people try to be isolated themselves from others and express hostility. These people might have experienced threatening in the past directly or indirectly by hearing from their ancestors. Therefore, the takers are the one who have made the leavers to hate the takers. In the history, if takers did not look their own benefits when they met the leavers and helped the leavers to keep their culture and resources, how the leavers’ attitudes and reactions toward the takers would be different?  

The link below has some more information about the uncontacted people. I think we watched video about them in the class. I think it is interesting to look! :)       

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2095978/Guess-I-saw-holiday-Tourist-captures-incredible-images-previously-unrecorded-South-American-tribe-including-curious-boy-bushes.html?ito=feeds-newsxml