End of an Empire

As a kid one of the first political images I remember as a kid was this one
http://www.nuttyhistory.com/uploads/1/2/1/5/12150034/9533514_orig.png It shows a British soldier standing across the continent of Africa. I was young maybe 8 or 9 when I first saw it and it intrigued me to learn about history and the dominance Britain had across the world. 
Initially I studied everything I could about the American Revolution.  Then I started to to study how other countries and regions became independent.  India always intrigued me.  I heard  about Ghandi.
Ghandi seems like such a hero to me. He accomplished so much. It wasn't until later I learned about the difficulty India had becoming independent.  The British were brutal against the rebellion. And infighting amongst the different religions made it worse. 
Strayer doesn't cover this much only dedicating a few sentences to the difficulty of creating India and Pakistan as independent countries.
My ex husband grew up in India and he remembers as a young child the tensions and fighting that would occur in India.

Things we seem doomed to repeat

"Those who cannot remember the past are  condemned to repeat it"  George Santayana

  Strayer indicates how difficult that can be when he talks about WW  I and WW II.  He shows how we think we have learned one lesson and then a little while later we need to learn the opposite lesson.  Humans have a whole have a very difficult time learning from their past - individually and as a species.  It seems the only things we actually learn from the past are things that are hardwired into us like  our gag reflex when something tastes bad.  We each feel we can interpret the past to our own advantage and manipulate it to say what ever is most beneficial to us at the time. 

For example the countries that sought to establish trade post empires should teach us that we may need to try a different method to influence the middle east to continue oil trade with us.  The fallen cities of the agricultural neolithic era that depleted all their resources because the great so fast should motivate us to protect our own resources more carefully. 
In our personal lives examining how rulers that were naive , ineffective or dictatorial should influence us to be more careful who we vote for and we should put the effort into finding out exactly what they are capable of. 
There are so many more but sadly I am sure someone somewhere would find evidence in history to dispute even the most common sense of the lessons we can learn

A Union GIrl

Last night while talking to my friend I was listening to her talk about how today she would be on the picket lines. It would be hot, and miserable but she would be there. She works for the county and the union she works for will be on striking to keep their healthcare benefits. 8000 people will be using already maxed out valley med if they do not manage to keep their benefits as part of their compensation package. She tells about people she works with who have cancer and just starting their second round of treatment, the friend who is disabled and dependent on the good medical coverage previously provided. She knows how difficult their lives will be if they have to change their service and the costs they will incur if they no longer have the kind of coverage they need. I can hear her hurt and worry as she discusses how frustrated she is with management for being unwilling to put the needs of their employees before their desire for the almighty dollar. I listen and hold her hand as she talks about how having no pay until the strike is over will effect her family. Nothing she says is new to me. I grew up a union girl.

My dad belonged to a union, AFL-CIO. I remember him going to the meetings to vote on labor relations. I remember my parents hushed tones and the stress and worry in their voices when they discussed striking and how we would not have any income. I remember my mom being worried when he went to picket. She was afraid that a fight would break out between the scabs and the union workers.  I also remember how hard the union worked to make sure that my dad was safe and our family got the things it deserved for his hard work. I remember how relieved we were to hear that they had compromised and found a balance that worked for both the workers and the bosses.

 I knew labor unions originated during the industrial revolution motivated by some of the worst working conditions yet known to man, woman and child. I also believed they were a good thing. But, I had never really thought about why we organized labor unions instead of labor parties like other democratic countries. Strayer addresses this briefly in our text book.  He says that the reasons we organized small labor unions  were that as a group we were adverse to large government and we were also a very diverse population with many different needs.  I think that labor unions are a demonstration of our desire as citizens of the United States to maintain a democratic system.  Unions are a result of our core value as a society of making sure that the power remains in the hands of the people. Which is why I will be bringing my picketing friend a nice cold cup of iced coffee and hanging out with her a bit while she walks the line. I will always be a Union Girl.

The "Logical" Choice

"Africans...were skilled farmers; they had some immunity to both tropical and European diseases; they were not Christians; they were, relatively speaking, close at hand; and they were readily available." (p. 689,690)

This paragraph makes me cringe and laugh a little at the same time. In it Strayer explains why African slaves were the most logical choice.

Sugar production required massive amounts of man power to grow harvest and create a usable product. As the demand for sugar grew and new territories capable of growing sugarcane became available the need for a strong workforce grew along with it. Simultaneously, the previous supply of slaves available in the Mediterranean dried up. This in conjunction with the popes decree that all non Christians should be enslaved perpetually really created the situation in which Africans were the most logical choice.

Submission in the Golden Age of China

During the Song Dynasty women were once again placed under a very strong patriarchal society. Under the Tang dynasty the women of the time had many more freedoms allowed to live outside the house. These dynasties existed one right after the other. Economic changes and a return to Confucianism lead to a  more restricted life style for aristocratic women in China.

The Song dynasty was very economically prosperous. Technological advances lead to increased food and products which allowed them to support their growing population.  Women were removed from the process of making silk cloth, by more industrialized processes being used. This removed women from their position of power in a couple of ways; they no longer had control over the most lucrative part of the silk making process, and more women were working in other industries including the sex trade. That may not seem like a significant influence upon aristocratic women this influenced aristocratic women's influence on their husbands.

Confucianism places women in subordination to males, and emphasizes the need to separate women from men. Women were expected to be "docile" and subservient under Confucianism if there was to be order in the world.  In China during the Golden Age of the Song dynasty women were kept in inner quarters and their beauty was enhanced by the binding of their feet. This binding while supposedly making their feet look beautiful made it difficult if not impossible to walk for long distances. Mothers did this to their children to ensure that they would be attractive to the husbands. I found it interesting that this was also one way in which they tried to compete against the consorts and concubines the husband had. I guess one will resort to all kinds of discomforts when power is removed and you need to do anything you can to regain control of some part of your life.

This portion of our text reminds me of  "The Handmaids Tale" a dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood. She writes about a women in a future society that has removed the rights of women. In her novel Atwood is telling how quickly women's rights were removed by a patriarchal society and how most women just went along with what happened to them.. In this novel only certain women are allowed to have sex and procreate. These  women have a special status, but it is a complicated relationship they are considered holy ( almost) but also despised. They are scorned by other women. I think considering both the actual history of China and the imaginary history of this novel that if we are to ever change into a more egalitarian relationship between men and women we will need to find a way to stop women from competing with each other for the attention of men.

Just my two cents worth.

Inequalities

"Until quite recently, women's subordination in all civilizations has been so widespread and pervasive that historians have been slow to recognize that gender systems had a history, changing over time."
 OOH! That makes my blood boil a little bit.
Inequalities are a fact of civilized life so far, and now that we have recognized them I think many people are working very hard to make things more egalitarian. As a woman when I read the above statement I had to admire Strayers very tactful usage of the English language. I think a more accurate representation would to say  " until quite recently women's subordination has been so widespread and pervasive that historians have been slow to recognize that women have a history at all."

 Strayer does add that "women were often active agents in the histories of their societies, even while largely accepting their overall subordination." There are examples of women who have made changes in history, some good changes some bad, but our overall subordination is very saddening. Even those women are listed as the exception and not the rule.
We as modern day citizens still look back on the great thinkers of the past, Confucius, Socrates Aristotle and Plato. All these men that are so respected for their wisdom and yet they believed in the subjugation of the female gender.  They thought of us as animals, weak and unable of rational thought. Smh. I guess they were not so smart after all, simply pawns of the society and culture they lived in.

Progress

The Paleolithic era accounts for 95% percent of the time that humans have existed on our planet earth. During this time many great things were accomplished including huge migrations which led to humans settling in every environment and continent on earth except for Antarctica. Our Paleolithic Ancestors were adept at adapting new environments. They had a unique capacity for language which allowed them to learn new things and then pass those new ideas or skills onto to their offspring or other humans. Robert Strayer in his book Ways of the world indicates that from this time our evolution became much more of a revolution and that "'culture' defined as learned or invented ways of living became more important than biology in shaping behavior." Humans at this time lived in small hunter/gatherer societies usually a clan that was related by kinship or large family groups consisting of between 25 to 50 people. They were egalitarian for the most part as people needed to work together to provide enough for the group. They were nomadic and would follow the seasons of ripening fruits and nuts or seeds, sometimes they would follow the larger migrations of animals.  They were believed to be a spiritual people with a "rich interior life." Anthropologists now believe that they were the "original affluent society" because of the different social structures that have been studied the hunter gatherers had the most leisure time. In part this was because the need to accrue a lot of excess was counter productive, having many things made a nomadic lifestyle more difficult.

As time went on and they had settled most of the globe the temperature of the earth started to warm as the end of the last Ice Age occurred. The disappearance of the ice took with it many of the large mammals that the early humans had hunted, but rich grasses and other food sources were in abundance and people started to domesticate these resources. They started settling into more permanent locations, this was the  beginning of the agricultural revolution. With this new development many things changed for the early humans. They had to work more, they were exposed to more diseases and they had their first epidemics because of their close proximity to other people. They had poorer health and sometimes even died of malnutrition. For the first time they could store what they had harvested and that led to inequalities among their people. New ways of ruling each other came into being and a class system was born.

Websters dictionary defines progress as "the process of improving or developing something over a period of time. For a long time humans have assigned progress as a measure of success. I think when considering our history we need to examine what value we assign to progress and realize that while progress in one direction may not be indicative of over all success.