Beruflich Dokumente
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My life in Japan As I realize that I will not be here on this land much longer, I am glad that I have learned to value the simple things. Like the way that the sun caresses the lay of the land or how the shadows creep out from behind. When I was young, I was taught to appreciate the simple things, the unaltered beauty of natural things. It pains me to know that my descendants will not know of these things as I do. They rely too heavily on Western influences and seem to be abandoning our way of life. I was taught an education that instilled moral values. This included stoic heroism, simplicity, intellectual refinement, and a self-sacrificing spirit. My father taught me that sentiment, valor, and chivalry was what it meant to be a man; much unlike the western idea of manhood. My generation simply lacked the new scientific, technical, and materialistic side of modern civilization. I would like to think of life as better this way. Before long, many of our Japanese traditions and values will have disappeared under the plague that is the western culture and moral. In western cultures, the people take the natural beauty of life for granted. One of the most abundant and simplest beauties of the world comes in the form of light, and shadows. Sunlight should not beam off the side of the tall rectangular building improperly named as a house, it would much rather glisten off of the sides of a Japanese uhi. Light enters a Japanese room with such grace gently casting shadows from the few objects it
caresses. I have come to find the beauty and simplicity in such shadows. I much prefer this type of light to electricity, bulbs, and cords. Light also appears in greater magnificence when shining through paper rather than glass. Glass makes the light appear unclear, murky, and cloudy. However, paper dims the light and gives it a gentle subtleness. The light gleaming through this paper it seems emits a calming, reposing affect for us. I can say the same for our dishes and pottery. Westerners attempt to expose every speck of grime and eradicate it. We carefully preserve it in a way that is not too hard to understand. Although we love the darkness engrained into laquerware, we use it only for formal occasions. Ceramics are used for every day purposes. We value the elegance of age and do not polish silver because the value of things after the luster has worn off is so much more to us. One of the things that I found most appalling is the invention of the western toilet. In Japan, a toilet is a place of spiritual repose. It is a place where one can be alone and really think about life. Although it is not easy to clean, the toilet is one of the most beautiful of Japanese architecture. It is generally made out of wood with black lacquer and retains more beauty as it ages. Western toilets are all made out of white sparkling porcelain and shiny metal handles. This draws attention to what is clean and what is dirty. The western toilet is not a place of physiological delight or repose; it has been made into a place of dirtiness and execration. In my time I have seen much more industry come into and go out of Japan. Japan has recently begun exporting more goods that we would normally sell here. These goods include raw silk, tea, cotton, buttons, and wood block prints. Since we have more contact with the west, we try to control the western image of Japan. I hope that we maintain our own image. I am not fond of the many architectural styles of the west. There are far too many shiny metals and bulky
excessive qualities when it comes to western architecture, and even appliances for the home for my taste. Mainly, we want to adapt to the needs of our country and industrialize but we do not want to lose our heritage and our culture. Our traditions and way of life are so important to us and engrained in our way of being that I would find it very difficult to assimilate into a western lifestyle. 15 years later looking back on the past concerning the new constitution Many people that I know have completely denied the integration of western culture into our lives. They will not trade, nor associate with people of a different descent. These people are worried however, about losing their ways of life and wish to stay separate from the rest of the world. I know a few that were against the formation of a new constitution as well. Peculiarities had to be taken into account when writing our constitution. The constitution was drawn and approved by his majesty and then approved by the Privy Council. There are large undercurrents of the conservative nature in the council and in our country so many people were surprised of the acceptance of these new western ideas. They accepted the change and are now living their lives without thinking it treason. I believe that the new constitution was a good thing. After the war, it is good for the people of Japan. It protects our individual rights. Though, I wish that more people would emphasize our traditional ways and values in their households instead of settling for the convenience of a western lifestyle. Just as the west eroticized Islams culture as the other and therefore justified their colonial conquest, they have done to us in Japan. The west has feminized us believing that we require western correction, but we cannot absorb this type of lifestyle
without performing our own cultural suicide. It is for this reason that we had had a pendulum of emotions towards the west; we have a history of openness and isolation. We were intimidated into self-determined modernization. Many people desired to modernize and enlighten themselves in these new western practices such as converting to Catholicism. Eventually, the United States gave us what has been called the peace constitution. It in many ways reflects the constitution of the United States. Included in its articles are statements of mutual marriages, human and property rights, and the statement life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that is so famous in the US constitution. The Western people justify their actions this way because they believe that it is the correct way of life. They greatly desire to spread their values and ideals to other cultures such as ours. Although the United States will end the occupation of Japan in 1952, Japan will keep the constitution and make no amendments to it to the present day. The people among the younger generations in my family claim that there is an importance to integrating western technologies into our lifestyle. They say that using these things will not hurt us or change the fact that we are Japanese. Regardless of legal documents and declarations, I would rather things stay the same, simple way that I know them, and have known my entire life. I would like to see life in all of its beauty, all of its luster, and all of its tarnish.
Kendra Custer 3/25/2014 Hum 324 Washington vs. DuBois Booker T. Washington has overcome personal obstacles due to his race in his past. He was subjected to dehumanizing work as a coal miner and salt-furnace operator. As a child, he taught himself to read and went on to attend the Hampton Institute in Virginia. He later became a teacher and established what is now Tuskegee University. The curriculum was centered around vocational training. This training was in effort to free African Americans from the sharecropper system of the South. Washington wants to encourage former slaves to take advantage of the things that they already know. This meant working in manual labor practices, and training in fields such as farming, mechanical industry, and construction. He states that African Americans should accommodate to the current views of the white population so that they can have economic opportunity. He thinks that the social equality and acceptance will come after African Americans prove to the white race that they are capable of economic progress. He asked the white race to give African Americans a chance to progress in society and economics. He asked them to be tolerant and embrace friendships among each other. He reminded the white race how African Americans have been loyal to them in the past and will continue to do so in the future. He made a resounding statement when he claimed that No race
can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. The fact that they needed to start from the bottom up was discussed in detail. Washington advocated for the interlacing of the white and African American lifestyles and business affairs. He stated that they did not have to be friends if they did not wish to, but business interactions could only greater benefit everyone in the South. He claimed that they [the African American race] may not meet up to expectations at first because of their background of education and experience. It is important that everyone have the same privileges, but that they needed to be prepared to exercise such privilege, and this came through opportunity and experience. He protested that by working together, the African Americans and the whites could further progress the South economically and in all good hopes, socially as well. W. E. B. Du Bois was familiar with the cast out feeling resulting from racism and unacceptance from childhood age on. He longed to be like the white people. He longed to have the same opportunities and advantages. Despite this, he grew up to be the first African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard. He was a scholar in history with a broad background in the social sciences. He emphasized how African Americans strived to learn. Unlike Booker T. Washington, Du Bois believed that a direct political response was necessary to help African Americans. Protesting racial inequality was pertinent. He claimed that the dominant racist culture would always expect African Americans to perform manual labor under white supervision. He claimed that the goal of integration is not to make whites like African Americans nor make African Americans like whites. The idea is to embrace and accept the difference for the good of society and progress. He discussed how African Americans can see themselves from two different perspectives. These are the perspectives from themselves, and from the perspective of
the white man. He emphasizes how African Americans are looked at with pity and amused contempt. He longs to attain self-conscious manhood and to make himself into a better and more acceptable person especially in the eyes of the white man which has degraded African Americans for so long. The freed man has not yet found his place among the primarily white dominating society. He integrated the bastardy inflicted by white society and African American women in result disrupting the Negro home. He could not accept Du Bois social segregation and restricted educational program, even if it was thought to have only been until African Americans proved themselves economically. Du Bois advocated for political freedom. He stated that African Americans wanted to work, indulge in cultures, and lead meaningful lives in coherence with white society. He believed that African Americans needed to develop the higher meaning of themselves, and develop their own personal traits and talents while still abiding by the law. He wanted African Americans to develop these traits and talents so that they might contribute to society, along with the white man in bettering life for everyone. He claimed that direct political action and acceptance is the way for human opportunity. Booker T. Washington wanted a gradual approach to equality. He thought that getting African Americans out of poverty first was best. He concentrated the teachings of Tuskegee University around farming, mechanical industry, and construction for this purpose. He claimed that through economic progress and contribution, African Americans would receive equality. W E B DuBois however believed the opposite. He was for an immediate equality for African Americans through direct political action. African Americans had long strived for liberty and wanted to demand it. He claimed that economic prosperity was not enough and wanted African
Americans to be educated and to become leaders and advocates for equality in their race. Du Bois wanted African Americans to have opportunities as well as be equal to whites.
Kendra Custer 3/25/2014 Hum 324 The Flowers of Evil The themes discussed are the Individual, Angels, Imagination, Worms, Satan, Twilight and Dawn, Artists, and God. Other themes throughout the collection may interwork in this paper and into the discussion of other themes. Baudelaire, I would love to talk to you about your collection of poems, The Flowers of Evil. If I may ask, what led you to write about the world in such a morbid and twisted way? I quite admire the insight and perspective you have presented in this collection. It seems as if you have rendered the events in your life in this collection to produce a vicious scathing astonishment to those of the liberal or oppressed in mindset. To those of buoyant prosperous lives however, these writings seem somewhat gruesome and diabolical. I know that it is no shock to you that your works are not widely accepted among many people. They criticize the Christian faith and many religious figures in peoples lives. Ive heard people say that you are a great writer, but with this subject you would be your own demise. Drawing from influences from your poems, do you blame God for peoples unacceptance of your works? Or is God and religion the main cause of the literature and the main source of its rejection? You state that misery will end up turning people on God and you pray to Satan on occasion in these works. Claiming that we all want to sin, that we all want to worship Satan and
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indulge in worldly pleasures. You say that you are an artist that a mocking God condemns and that God does not accept you. It would not be out of place to ask If you were in Gods place watching yourself condemn the sacred, would you judge yourself in the same way that youre judging God for? It is clearly evident in this religious society why your works are facing some opposition. Speaking of religious icons, I noticed that angels are mentioned quite often in these poems. Two poems resonate with me clearly, Benediction and Litanies of Satan. From Benediction, Still, with an angel guarding secretly, the misfit child grows drunk on sunny air;his Guardian [angel] must weep to see the gladness of the boy. It seems as if you use the term angel when talking about light and dark concepts. From Litanies of Satan, O Angel, the most brilliant and most wise, A God betrayed by fate The first line of this poem refers to Satan as an angel (he is a fallen angel) but you did not put Satan in a bad light for this. You ended this poem by stating that you would like to let your soul take rest beneath the Tree of Knowledge with Satan. However, something does not make sense to me. Even though your mother states that you should go to hell, you claim that you know that there is a place for you in heaven. If you know that you have a place in heaven, why do you wish to sit with Satan under the tree of knowledge? Does this represent your wanting to go to hell or your wanting to be able to indulge in worldly pleasures here on earth? Or is it earth that you believe is hell, and you are already in it? People seem to have cast you out, just as Satan was cast out of heaven for his actions. Do you feel a similar thing has happened to you that has happened to Satan, and is that why you wish to converse with him about his experiences with the outcast? In your poems, you occasionally project Satan as a more loving figure than God. In The Unforeseen on page 317, you state that O Lord! Your lash is not for our benefit! My soul is not a plaything in your
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hands, Whose providence is infinite. This leads me to ask you if you feel betrayed or abandoned by God because of the circumstances of your life? Do you feel that God has been playing with your life without thinking about the consequences and trials that it has caused you? The imagination could only wonder what you have endured to wish for such things as these. Poem number 3, Elevation, gives me some insight into your imagination. In this poem you write about soaring above the world without worries or troubles, into the silence and peace. This poem no doubt illustrates the desires of many people, a desire of absolute freedom from toil and misery. In Dusk on page 193 you wrote that the sky shuts on itself as though a tomb at twilight. The evening twilight comes with cruel diseases, demons, thieves, hospitals, and gambling. The morning twilight consists of gloomy Paris rising back up to go to work. In talking about your lover in A Carcass, you compare kissing them to kissing worms. This makes me think that you believe that love and relationships are pointless. You believe that relationships are not worth all of the effort, pain, and suffering if they are all for nothing in the end. You think that since you both shall die and become nothing but feed for worms, that love is useless. Am I correct? When thinking about how your poems relate back to your life I have my theories and opinions. I think that there is an underlying theme in your poems, that theme is that of the individual. Undoubtedly in my mind, that individual is you, Baudelaire. These poems are a calling out of your condition to the masses. You believe that life lacks an aspect of actual free will. Everyone likes to think that they are free, but everyone is controlled by something or someone. People can be controlled by God, love, emotions, fear, and many other things as illustrated in these works. You cannot seem to find happiness in this life because you believe that everything is for nothing. God is against you and you indulge in sin, the pleasure of this earth and the specialty of Satan. You find love and relationships pointless and unfulfilling despite your
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many efforts because you are unfulfilled within yourself. With all due respect, these poems are a desperate and deliberate plea for death; for deaths embrace that will take heist your life of despair and wretchedness so that you might vacillating between the gates of heaven and the flames of hell.