Author: bkibet (Page 2 of 2)

Pealing The Onion

November 25, 2017 / / 0 Comments

 

Professor Arnout Van Der Meer had a lot of knowledge of the Southeast Asia and more so Indonesia and his research on Soemarson. Professor Van Der Meer said he is interested in continuity and change of cultures and wanted to see how it changed overtime. This was an interesting aspect of his study. He introduced us into Southeast by giving us the background information, back before the colonial time, into the struggle for their independence from the Dutch. His model of passing his information using pealing of an onion and lighting the lamp were great ways of communicating with the audience. What then makes a nation’s or world’s history? This were interesting questions that were going through my mind during the two sessions we had with him.

 

The identity of the region had a lot from the interaction of the region with the outside world, through religion and maritime trade. In the 1300s the two universal religions, Theravada Buddhism and Islam, got into the region. From the assigned readings, we saw that around the 14th century, Muslim merchants, mostly Arabs and Indians, spread Islam along the Indian Ocean along their trading routes. This period of trade and religious network, Southeast Asia became more connected to the Southern and Western Asia, Europe and Africa. All these interactions with the outside world lead into the European conquest in the region.

 

 

How is the identity of a nation made? Professor Van Der Meer introduced the metaphor of pealing the onion. It is evident from Southeast Asia that there are a lot of layers of each region or a country. To know much about any country or a nation, we need to peal each part of the onion and find out what happened at a given time. Pealing the onion of the Indonesian struggle for independence and its independence, we see that Soemarsono played a big role in it. There were a lot of layers that made Soemarsono an influential person in driving for the independence. From the pictures that Professor Van Der Meer showed us, Soemarsono got European education as he was the only non-white person in the school picture. This then made him an educated individual and could stay on the same table with the White because he could understand them better. He embraced the western knowledge and science but maintained the Indonesian identity. Through the Western knowledge that Soemarsono had, he lit the oil lamp for the Indonesian struggle for independence.

 

This brings me to how my country, Kenya, as well got independence. Kenya was colonized by the British from the late 19th century until mid 20th century. During the struggle for independence, people who had opportunity to learn the European education were at the front line fighting for independence. The British had provided education to these people with an aim of getting better governance of their colonies by using people who understood the language and cultural practices of the communities from all the Kenyan regions. The British choose educated people from the eight provinces to represent each province in the legislative council. These people, later lead in the struggle for independence and even the first president being one of the person whom the British wanted to help in heading their colonies. Like Soemarsono, Kenya’s independence was fostered by the colonialist themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Origins of Superheros

November 24, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Superman

This week we had assistant professor Chris Gavaler from Washington and Lee University who lead us in the discussion on origin of superheroes. This was an interesting topic which I related to some of the oral traditions that our grandfather used to tell us when we were young in the evening around fire places in my home. The superhero in the context of my grandfather’s stories, were mostly of men who were able to raid neighboring communities for cattle, as my community was a cattle keeping tribe, and mostly would come home victorious with lost of cattle.

We read two chapters of Gavaler book, Origins of Superheroes, which introduced us to the connection of evolution, eugenics and superheroes. In this readings, superheroes we mostly depicted as good people who were defending the less fortunate in the society from the harm by others. This was interesting considering nation’s organization in the present, which I will handle later. The drive to have desirable heritable characteristics in the late 19th and early 20th century lead to eugenic in the United stated. This was a move by the white and rich people who thought interbreeding with non-white would dilute the white desired characteristics. This also was thought to lead to degenerating of the desired characteristics in the white people. The ideology of eugenic was that a superman would be produced after a generations of selective breeding. What was more interesting was the thought that ending crime, poverty, and undesired human behaviors was to preventing unfit parents from giving birth to unfit babies though inheritance of those unfit characteristics from their parents. Later in the early 20th century, Hitler using the same ideology, perpetrated by the US earlier, wanted to cleanse Europe of ethnic diversity with an aim of returning the greatness of the ancient Greece and Rome which lead to many people dying in the Nazi Germany.

“Making America great again,” was one of the statement that dominated President Trump’s camping and has been a common statement that he uses a lot after he was elected as the president. Contrary to greatness of people as it was in the early twentieth century, this greatness is about the country being the first in may development aspects and being seen as the leading country in the world. This brings me to my previous idea of greatness of nations. Each nation on the world today wants to be superior to one another and would want to do anything to keep itself up, where they are, or find ways of lifting itself up on the hierarchy. Each country is trying to get the perfect economy, war machinery and weapons, well trained soldiers perfect alliance among other aspects that makes a country a superior country. My big question that I have kept pondering is why we have to restrict other countries from having certain resources that might make them competitive or even superior to another country. Nuclear weapon is one of thing than countries use to rank themselves in the world. I have been questioning the idea of other countries deciding who can and can not have nuclear weapon. I do not think it is okay for some countries to have the power to decide.

This week’s readings and lecture, made me think about superiority of countries in our present time, how it manifests itself and how prevention of other countries from being superior to another is happening.

 

Charles Darwin

November 17, 2017 / / 0 Comments

It was a great opportunity to Janet Browne this week to Discuss more about Darwin and Origin of his works. With her discussions in class, she seemed to have immersed her life in studying Darwin’s work by writing and reading a lot about Darwin. From reading her book, ‘Origin of Species,’ I got to learn a lot about Darwin from his childhood and his family and how it all influenced who he later became in his life

Darwin’s experience, growing up in a religious background sparked my childhood experiences. I was brought up in a Christian family and went to a Christian high school. In both places, there were emphasize of God creating the earth and all the things in it in six days in the form they are now. It was strange to learn about evolution in Biology classes in high school then move into a Christian Religious Education class that we were required to study as well. The expectation in Victorian Science did not include the possibility of any disprove in their religion and was a challenging a moment for Darwin during his upbringing and his career path.

Janet emphasis was that Darwin’s evolution interest probably originated from the Beagle voyage he had for five years. These five years gave him an opportunity to be away from his family and interact with nature and fellow naturalist. He had an opportunity to see geological activities, like the mountain erupting, experience of earthquake in 1835, and encounter with different groups of people which made him believe that there must be something more than nature. During this time, he kept notes on animal observation, plants, and geology which he sent them back to England for further study. It was impressive how careful Darwin was during this voyage to notice very detailed things and the incident of eating an ostrich when he suspected that that might have been the smallest ostrich and was willing to send the remaining part of the ostrich back home for further study.

When he moved from one region to another during his voyage, he was fascinated by the difference between organisms which were close to each other. He called them, “different varieties” which he later figured out that these those species were in that form because of the adaptation to that place. His experience with the ingenious people was fascinating to him in how those people were different from the Europeans.

 

I think therefore, that the aspect of being independent in life is important.  Darwin leaving home for the voyage, his habit of thinking in silence and walking the sand walk gave him an opportunity to think about his work. I think if he had not gone on that voyage, he would have probably gone on a different career path in life, maybe become a clergy as his parents wanted him to be after Darwin dropped out of medical.

It is encouraging to see how much work has been done now which has roots in Darwin’s work. Medical field has improved a lot in gene modification to have a plants and animals who can adapt well to different places, which can be traced back to Darwin’s work.

Human as an Origin

October 20, 2017 / / 0 Comments

 

Museum originating from Greek form, mouseion, which meant “seat of the muses” was designated as a place of contemplation. When I go to a museum, I wonder what kind of interpretation people give to different piece of art. I would wish there was a way to collect interpretation of specific art and probably origins of their interpretation due to their diverse nature because of cultures, norms and practices.

This week’s museum visit made me think of our vegetation as piece of art that we, human being, have been recreating. From the picture by Gary Green of Prairie fire near Missouri, we see smoke covering the sky in the background and dry grass in the foreground. Fire restructures vegetation we have and I would think this as origin of another type of vegetation that we get after a “fire”. This makes me think human’s role is restructuring of this planet through “fire”, which can be through various human activities. Human beings have played a big role in restructuring our surrounding to suit most of human needs leading to origins of many things surrounding our landscape. From intensification of agriculture, natural vegetation fields are cleared for crop cultivations.  This extensive cultivation is related to an increasing population of people on earth and the limited cultivation lands which do not supply enough food. Therefore, more fields are cleared and the type of vegetation covering that piece of land changes. Slash and burn agricultural practices as well leads to clearing of vegetation which not only change the landscape vegetation but also leads to some of vegetation species completely removed from that place and other type of vegetation growing after the land has lost its fertility.

Scientific revolution as well as created origin of various types of plants and crops leading to restructuring of the type of vegetation cover we have. Going back to food shortage solution of increasing the fields to produce enough crops for the increasing population, science have led to modification of crops to grow faster than usual and increase production capacity. Gregor Mendel, 1800s, an Australian scientist is considered to be the founder of modern genetics due to plant hybridization. His work can be considered as the origin of our present GMO that is increasing used in the world due to it’s father growth, high yield and also due to resistance it ha to drought or to pest and diseases.

Nature as well can respond to human action. Increase in temperatures, for example, can lead to floods due to melting of polar ice and higher evaporations which increases rain fall. From these floods, the coastal areas, or any other water body, changes geography due to depositions by flooded water which creates different physical features, destroy existing vegetation and growing of other type of vegetation there.

Therefore, I think human being has played a big role in creating and reshaping its environment making human a big player in the origin of some vegetation cover on earth by changing its structure or introducing new ones in different places. Human activities as well have lead to response by nature on its activities leading to change some landscapes or vegetation but these activities can be argued to originate from human activities apart from nature controlling itself.

 

 

 

 

                   Unleveled Ground

October 9, 2017 / / 0 Comments

We have made substantial progress in today’s society in including women in most positions in our society. It is unfortunate how late this took our societies to accept then in various positions, which have been mostly dominated by men but also worrying in others societies where acceptance is still low. This would therefore, leads to most of women’s work not known or probably their work taken as achievements of other individuals. Aaron in the evening lecture talked about people who were in the Royal Society meeting in 1666 where Margret Cavendish was the only woman. I really wonder if there were no other women who could have qualified to join that meeting or was it because of exclusion of women in the scientific world.

He talked about the Royal Society being experimental group in science which scholars argue that Cavendish was anti-experimental things. She received a lot of setbacks from the Royal Society members who were experimentally oriented. The following year, she was invited at the Royal Society meeting but was not allow to join because of her stand on scientific study.

This then brings me to the question of how much we have done in our current societies to allow the voice of everyone heard and what is our response to someone different from us? Do we have to only accept people who “sing the same song with us?” Is it because a certain country has different kind of economic policies that we think they are not doing in the “right” way or that they are becoming a threat to us? When I think about the United Nation, I ask myself if it is really for the benefit of whole countries in the world. When a resolution is to be made for the “benefits of all,” who gets the upper hand? It is ironically that it is called “The United Nations,” which one would expect that we get to reach at consensus on the same playing field. However, only five countries can decide for other 188 member states. Is there really importance of being a member when your voice is not heard? I guess it comes to the point of what would happen if you are not on our side then you are probably against us.

It seems that our society is that if you are not part of us you are out and we leave you to pay the cost of not being with us or even get some further sanctions which might force you to change your stand. Accepting to not being yourself in order to survive this kind of societal order can be the only way out.

I therefore, think persistence on what you believe in can involve being an outsider but in the long run, your way might be respected or even accepted as being one of invaluable in various setting. Scholars of women history argue that Cavendish views have real worth and should be taken seriously.  Societies normalize things and takes time to change perspectives once people have it as the ‘’normal” way but with constant stand on your belief, your way might win in the end.

 

Newer posts »

© 2026 Origins: Order vs. Chaos

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑