Posts by JamesC:
Hegemony’s Role in The Import of Discovery
February 21st, 2015
By James O’Connor.
Oftentimes, our perceptions of what influences us undermine perceptions of what could influence us, and this phenomenon works to our detriment – let me explain:
In 243 B.C.E., a man stooped awkwardly over a well for days beneath the searing Egyptian sun. He scribed notes in his codex, toiling over them as if the moon would cease its orbit and crash into Earth upon failing to find the object of his search. He garnered the attention of many bemused onlookers, who assumed his behavior was too bizarre to result in something noteworthy. Nobody stoops over a well to peer at his own reflection for days; perhaps he had gone mad.
After several more nights at work, Eratosthenes departed the water well with a codex containing possibly the purest display of brilliance in all history. He had measured the circumference of the Earth using nothing more than sunlight and an old water well, discovering the spherical shape of the planet we inhabit today.
Eratosthenes faced many barriers in attempting to share his discovery: He had no phones, transcontinental mail, radios or ships with proper equipment. If he had had methods of communicating with others, and most importantly, others’ willingness to survey the way knowledge is acquired cross-culturally, Christopher Columbus would not have feared falling off what he believed to be a flat surface nearly two thousand years after Eratosthenes’ display of brilliance.
Today, many indigenous cultures face the same barriers to communication. However, the barriers that America creates between itself and other cultures’ forms of knowledge are not forged by lack of interconnectedness – they are self-imposed at our own peril. For this reason, we are subject to many unknown unknowns.
Globalization of Western ideology, science and thought only contribute to the waning relevance of various knowledge forms developed in more remote parts of our world. If globalization meant what the term implied, it would facilitate symbiotic interaction and education among cultures. However, the term functions as a euphemism for westernization. Granting so much credence to the empiricism of our own thought hinders our ability to accept and explore other forms of knowledge. In other words, a mindset deluded by industrializing and producing to the brink of oblivion precludes the invaluable, yet elusive worldwide imagination in which understanding and therefore influence guided by innovation are boundless.
Recently, the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada fell victim to this pervasive ideology: oil riggers destroyed international ecosystems that are just as important to this locale’s understanding as our metropolises and the oil that runs them are to our understanding. In this context, there is linguistic and epistemological dissension – one group views the river and its surrounding forests as a mode of oil transportation and untapped revenue, while the other group views it as an ecosystem sustaining valuable human and animal life. Neither party is wrong, but the latter of the two groups’ beliefs are jettisoned. Since the 15th century, when Pilgrims infiltrated the Native American’s land and claimed it their own, this pattern has engendered and sustained western behavior as we presently know it – behavior that champions economic imperialism and one-dimensional ways of knowing.
Even worse, in rare yet still unethical circumstances, indigenous peoples are unable to showcase their brilliance to the masses through their own means, and westerners take advantage of the indigenous cultures’ ideas – portraying them as their own. Many of the indigenous world’s ideas are not only brilliant; they are cost-efficient. Meanwhile, it is more desirable in our culture to possess items that serve no purpose beyond the fulfillment of ego than it is to display resourcefulness with little belongings – a skill many entrepreneurs could stand to learn. We must observe and consult the indigenous before, as we always have, attempting to colonize their land through America’s hegemonic order.
GDP, or ‘Gross Domestic Product’ has become the West’s injurious, yet golden metric of national progress. It does not matter what we produce, why we produce it or whether what we produce hurts the environment, our mental and physical health, or our life expectancy. As long as the number is growing, newspapers are littered with accolades of America’s economic ‘success.’ We are hopelessly lost within our own world, and it may continue proving the ruin of us.
For these reasons I cannot help but look at my country, America, through a lens of nostalgia and homesickness. We are shipwrecked from collective origin of thought and culture as a human species – cast adrift by the paradigms we ascribe to not just other cultures, but other people as well. In the thought of individuality we are natives, but in the thought of humanity we are foreigners. As a nation, we are more equipped to learn about the world and its marvels than anyone, but we must reach outside our present knowledge boundary to accomplish this objective and reap the benefits it can facilitate.
I encourage our American leaders to dispatch a message in a bottle; one replete with not only a call for help, but also a call for understanding. Upon setting it adrift in the sea of global thought, America’s message may intersect with the messages of others at the unbridled origin of worldwide understanding.
It is only then that rescue will prove itself possible.
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General Education Requirements Perpetuate Financial Subservience in Graduates
January 18th, 2015
By James O’Connor.
The advent of liberal arts education 2,000 years ago during Hellenistic Greece spurned an educational philosophy that many believe is nobly upheld in contemporary higher education’s coursework. However, this is not the case – for the philosophy that only a well-rounded education can prepare people to effectively partake in civic duties and responsibilities oftentimes does not require coursework in personal finance.
Yes, upholding civic responsibilities requires an individual to be responsible for not just the community to which they belong, but to themselves as well.
For instance, colleges do not require each individual student to learn about how he or she can reach financial independence – perhaps due to an oversight, or perhaps colleges and universities do not want their foremost source of revenue – college students – to finally learn how a college degree is becoming a poorer investment with each passing year.
Consequently, a four-year college degree is labeled a ‘necessary credential,’ inasmuch as it is a ‘unnecessary credential,’ and this paradox is facilitated by how universities do not require students to learn basic skills that will keep them afloat financially.
Many recent graduates, including me, will share this sentiment. As a marketing major, I spent seemingly innumerable hours studying biology, physics and math – none of which contributed to my professional toolkit today.
Furthermore, I’ve spent an equal amount of time learning about personal finance outside the classroom, without help, and it gave financial independence a steeper learning curve than expected. Imagine how recent graduates who did not take it upon themselves to learn about personal finance during their college years (the majority) are impacted by universities’ inconsideration of their financial lives post-college.
It is this lack of instruction in personal finance and the steep learning curve it creates for recent graduates that ensure poor financial decisions and financial dependence – both of which contribute to the existence of waning economic output and inability to uphold civic duty: two of education’s foremost indices for effectiveness.
The average home costs anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000 to build. However, it costs $500,000 to buy these homes not solely because of labor expenditures, but solely because of consumer credit. This line of credit, especially for our generation and much like the generation that fell during the great depression, creates credit bondage and financial subservience, a bondage not understood by recent graduates.
Arguably, this bondage also contributed to the great recession of 2008. People may blame advertising and culture for the greed they imbue within the population, and the credit bondage they place upon young graduates, but it is not advertising’s responsibility to teach us how to handle our money – it is education’s responsibility.
However, education is not inherently binding. In fact, its purpose is to give its participants freedom, and for more young adults than ever, freedom necessitates financial literacy – financial literacy which should become higher education’s staple of responsibility.
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