What’s Your Education Story?

We all have an education story. These stories tell much than details of the drone inside the four walls of a classroom. These stories paint pictures of different phases in our lives. These stories explain who we are today.

Some stumble upon an educational path ridden with thorn bushes and thunderstorms. Some fly into their educational path in an all-expense paid for fighter jet with gilded wings. Some are encouraged, and led onto their educational path being told that their future will be grand and full of success. And unfortunately, some are discouraged from the moment they step into the light of their path. Some are told they are not capable, that theirs is a lost cause.

Connection in the Flat World

I find it interesting that in this new era of technology, some argue that we seem to be far more “disconnected” then ever before. Texting has replaced phone calls, the computer screen has replaced faces of real life people. But perhaps this assumption is incorrect. Friedman points out that in the flat world, we are more interconnected to more people than ever before. We have to be to survive in the global marketplace:

“Think about the whole mind-set of bin Ladenism. It is to ‘purge’ Saudi Arabia of all foreigners and foreign influences. That is exactly the opposite of glocalizing and collaborating. Tribal culture and thinking still dominate in many Arab countries, and the tribal mind-set is also anathema to collaboration. What is the motto of the tribalist? ‘Me and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother, and my cousin against the outsider.’ And what is the motto of the globalists, those who build collaborative supply chains? “Me and my brother and my cousin, three friends from childhood, four people in Australia, two in Beijing, six in Bangalore, three from Germany, and four people we’ve met only over the Internet all make up a single global supply chain.’ In the flat world, the division of labor is steadily becoming more and more complex, with a lot more people interacting with a lot of other people they don’t know and may never meet. If you want to have a modern complex division of labor, you have to be able to put more trust in strangers.

In the Arab-Muslim world, argues David Landes, certain cultural attitudes have in many ways become a barrier to development, particularly the tendency to still treat women as a source of danger or pollution to be cut off from the public space and denied entry into economic activities. When a culture believes that, it loses a large portion of potential productivity of the society. A system that privileges the men from birth on, Landes also argues, simply because they are male, and gives them power over their sisters and other female members of society, is bad for the men. It builds in them a sense of entitlement that discourages what it takes to improve, to advance, and to achieve. This sort of discrimination, he notes, is not something limited to the Arab Middle East, of course. Indeed, strains of it are found in different degrees all around the world, even in so-called advanced industrial societies.”

It seems that in the flat world, we need to be even more embracing and open to gender and ethnicity than ever before.

Gender Roles in America

Prop 8: The Musical

This is freaking amazing. And has two of my favorite actors in it.

One Step Forward, One Step Back

America, I think you are pretty cool right about now.

California, you have disappointed me. You call yourself a progressive Blue State? You might as well go hang out in the Bible Belt for all I care.

::sigh::

Eve Ensler: Security and Insecurity

Palin, Eve and Polar Bears

The Buddhist in me wants to accept the fact that no matter who wins in November, suffering will continue. We must remember that grand change does not occur in four years, or eight years, or one-hundred. Real long-standing change is called evolution, and that only occurs throughout thousands of years. We are humans, and we have been making the exact same mistakes over and over again since the dawn of civilization. Can one elected president really stir up that much change?

The optimist in me wants to believe in hope and change, and that the American public is smart enough to vote for the best candidate. And that good will overcome evil, that things can and will get better.  But the cynic realist in me is beginning to accept more and more that McCain has a very good chance of winning, and if he does things could continue to get worse: my rights as a woman and a human being will be stripped away, the Judeo-Christian god will rule the land, national ID cards will be established, and unnecessary death, war, and destruction will continue.

All I know is that the stakes have never been higher. And never before has a presidential nominee used such a backhanded, conniving, and calculated choice for their VP. Choosing Palin was a strategic choice to rally the feminists, the Hillary enthusiasts, and the right-wing religious fundamentalists. This choice has lit McCain’s campaign on fire; he has effectively upstaged Obama.

Eve Ensler re-awoke me to the atrocities of this political theatre, with this essay which hits the crux of the issue:

Gay Marriage Legal in California

Today I am happy to say that I live in California!

V to the Tenth

10th year anniversary of “The Vagina Monologues.” A weekend I will never forget.

Hamletmachine

“I am Ophelia. The one the river didn’t keep. The woman dangling from the rope. The woman with her arteries cut open. The woman with the overdose. SNOW ON HER LIPS. The woman with her head in the gas stove. Yesterday I stopped killing myself. I’m alone with my breasts my thighs my womb. I smash the tools of my captivity, the chair the table the bed. I destroy the battlefield that was my home. I fling open the doors so the wind gets in and the scream of the world. I smash the window. With my bleeding hands I tear the photos of the men I loved and who used me on the bed on the table on the chair on the ground. I set fire to my prison. I throw my clothes into the fire. I wrench the clock that was my heart out of my breast. I walk into the street clothed in my blood.”
– Heiner Muller, Hamletmachine

I love how art inspires art which inspires art which inspires art…it is a never-ending process. There is no such thing as an original idea, only inspiration.

And post-modernism is kind of weird, by-the-way.