POEM
Non-Violence Essay
you
look for acceptance in that faces around you but fact is that absence surrounds
you
you
can’t find a place in culture unless you find a place in your self
that’s
a note to put on your shelf, anchor your inner self
we
look for the thoughts of others but what really counts are the thoughts of our
mother and fathers our sisters and brothers
like
an axe cutting a handle,
we
are formed by the candle of love from each other
the
wars were fought for your country so you can take the time to find your
identity
you
think that the privilege was just the syrup on your pancakes at day break
look
at your namesake, who were your ancestors taken with force by?
suffering
endorsed by? unhorsed by? why are you so sure you can’t die?
look
into your eye, what is in this moment that keeps your heart ticking and the
stream
trickling? power of the unseen? enjoy life without a
green screen
if
this moment was your last would you want to enjoy it or look at the past?
longing
for another chance to watch another car crash?
action
packed or would you want more human contact?
watching
the credits scroll over a sunset, does anyone really watch?
or
are they just caught in the fishnet of forget?
anyone
can play that duet but is it really worth the sweat being an actor in your own
life?
don’t
get upset, you place your own bets.
it’s
your life you make the choices you live with.
political
excitement television excrement social indictment fear of confinement can you
say that you would trade it all for this moment?
so
that you can live without a monument Of shame on your shoulders?
I’m
still running and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for but I have seen a
glimpse and it is worth all the misconception
A
free life without misdirection is true perfection.
Artist statement
My poem was inspired by an Omlas
seminar we did in class. Also I was thinking a lot about how I wanted to live
my life and what kind of person I wanted to be. I wanted my poem to make people
think about how they are living and if they will want to live with the choices
they make now. I want to impart how privileged we are as Americans and how we
should enjoy life every day and not care so much about social norms and
opinions.
I really like the rap by Flo Rida
“good feeling” I like that it sends a positive message instead of all the
horrible messages that most rap sends. I wanted to create something like that.
I have always thought of poetry as boring and old, uninteresting writing that
was only enjoyed by moldy old professors. So when I was deciding what kind of
poem I wanted to write I choose something as far from that stereotype as
possible. Also I have always liked the culture that goes along with rap and hip
hop and wanted to see if I could actually pull off rapping.
Last year I saw a performance
from a student using kinetic text, and I really liked how it emphasis the
words. I also really like the band Flo Bots and they did a song with kinetic
text, they actual incorporated pictures into it as well. The picture actually
helped clarify the poem as it was read so that you got the whole message the
first time it was watched. The message I think will be clearer and I feel that
if I were to recite with scrip I would not be able to impart the same message
as I could if I didn’t have accompanying music.
Non-Violence Essay
Jasper Graves
When looking at the way to change an oppressive system one must decide if the oppressors are willing to negotiate or if you have enough support in numbers to force oppressors to negotiate. No one can lead without support. Nonviolent protests work if the oppressors are in some way bound to a standard, for example the Indian peace movement. The British are considered a civilized nation; it was not easy for them to justify killing thousands of oppressed civilians. The other alternative is to have enough people supporting you, forcing the people in power to listen and negotiate with you, because they do not have a choice. For instance, if employees working in a countries’ electric power stations stop working, a dictator would need to listen to the people or try and rule without electricity. Non violence brings about revolution with fewer human casualties, but it can only be implemented in certain situations.
It is argued that nonviolence does not actually save as many lives as it boasts to do, I disagree. The Indian peace movement was a nonviolent movement with the goal of driving the British from their homeland without killing anyone. Even when the British killed protesters, the Indian revolutionaries remained peaceful. In the largest massacre, 1,500 people were killed. During the violent Libyan revolution of 2011, as many as 30,000 people were killed (Chivers & Schmitt). Of course these situations are drastically different in their time period and government, but it does suggest that if Libya had gone about their revolution in a non-violent manor than there may have been less casualties. In a situation like this where the dictator has no qualms killing citizens the revolutionaries would need almost 100% support from the population. We do not have many situations to use for comparison, there have not been very many non-violent revolutions.
Non-violence requires commitment, in many ways it is much harder to be non-violent than it is to simply allow anger, frustration and hatred in the name of revolution to kill people. “Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.”~Martin Luther King, Jr. To not hate someone who has killed a loved one, possibly your whole family, is defiantly one the hardest things someone can do. In addition, people have become accustomed to having the right to ask for exactly what they want, unless in very great peril, people will not join one cooperative force. This is why I think non-violence is hard to follow.
Non-violence does not work in every situation, and should not be considered the best path out of every violent situation. In Nazi Germany, Hitler would not have listened to a nonviolent movement. Oppression had advanced to the point where Jews were being murdered because of their faith, eliminating the likely hood of a successful non-violent demonstration. “Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.” ~ Adolf Hitler. In a country completely controlled by a man with these ethics, only organised and efficient violence would have any effect. Hitler was also a master of propaganda which would make it much harder to gain the support of the entire population, non-violence would not have support in this atmosphere.
Another variable that must be considered when deciding what method should be used is the out come, Gandhi said “If we win our freedom with blood shed than I want no part of it.” This is something that many revolutionaries over look when caught up in the heat of the moment. the United States were freed from the British empire using violent means. It may be argued that because of our violent revolutionary history the United States (U.S.) is one of the largest arms dealers in the world. If the U.S. had been founded using non-violent means would we be the country we are today or would we be a more peaceful and cooperative nation? India is an example of how non-violent revolution can lead to a more peaceful country. India only spends 2.5% of there GDP on the military compared to the US who spends currently 4.79% (and during the 1980s spent nearly 6%) (CIA). Also the Indian economy has a growth rate of 7.8 compared to the US witch only grows at 3% each year (CIA). The reason that India is more peaceful and has a more stable economy could relate to the peaceful nature of their revolution. Over the last year and a half there has been great turmoil in the middle east, and the first county to fall to the “Arab Uprising” was Libya. The old government in Libya was destroyed using violence, currently the new Libyan government is implementing the same Internet monitoring law that was one of the original issues the rebels fought to remove (Cherry). This is another perfect example of how the outcomes of one type of revolution do not always bring about what is expected or necessarily desired.
Overall if nonviolence is implemented fewer people will be killed. Not only in the uprising itself but afterwards when a country decides how much support they want to put into there military. Non-violence is a hard doctrine to follow and cannot be used in every situation, but, when implemented with care and determination, can bring about change in the a healthy and nondestructive manor.
citations:
Cherry, Steven. "Libya: Censorship in the Internet Age." IEEE. N.p., 9 Mar. 2011. google.com. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/telecom/internet/libya-censorship-in-the-internet-age>.
Chivers, C.J., and Eric Schmitt. "In Strikes on Libya by NATO, an Unspoken Civilian Toll." The New York Times. N.p., 17 Dec. 2011. google.com. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/world/africa/scores-of-unintended-casualties-in-nato-war-in-libya.html?pagewanted=all>.
Central Intelligence Agency. USA, n.d. google.com. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html>.
Veterans History Project
In this project we interviewed vietnam veterans in short documentarys that we eventualy want to send to the library of congress and have archived so that historians can wach them and learn aout the vietnam war.
1.
The interview only enforced my original perspective;
our veteran was a pilot so he never actually had to do any fighting. Because my
truth of war essay stated that as technology advanced people would become more
and more separated from the people they killed, this ties in directly to what
the veteran did in the war, he would be given coordinates for an attack and
then would bomb that area from above the clouds. This is almost exactly like
what I was saying in my essay, the fighter pilot never sees the people he kills
and does not have to face the guilt.
2.
The friend of the veteran died by crashing his
plain into a mountain, its possible this happened because he was chasing
another plain at low altitudes. I thought this was interesting because you
never hear about the people who die in war from just accidents.
3.
If I was a historian I could use this interview
to gain perspective about the air force of the Vietnam era army, I could also
use it to understand the effects of the war on pilots. This interview is less informative
than an interview that focused more on the soldiers on the ground.
4.
I think that group work was the most helpful
part of this project if our group did not work well together we would not even
be able to prepare for the interview in the first place. I think that our group
worked well enough to accomplish the goals but in the future I will want to
work even more on working well together.
Maddox Document
The general public believe that the
Maddox was attacked unprovoked simply because the government said so, the
evidence shows that the Maddox was actually put in the ocean to try and provoke
the Vietnamese into attacking.
When the Maddox event was announced
to the public the reason that the Vietnamese attacked was not specified. Much
of the media would only talk about how unprovoked the attack was and what we
were going to do about it. There was only one time when a news reporter really questioned
the motivations for the attacks; the only response given by Secretary of State
Dean Rusk was “There is a great gulf of understanding between that world and
our world, ideological in character. They see what we think of as the real
world in wholly different terms.” (Doc. 2) When looking at this statement
critically you have to come to the conclusion that there is something missing,
the Vietnamese are not stupid, there is no reason why they would simply attack
an unoffensive ship unless it somehow made them believe it was a threat.
I believe that the USS Maddox was
either purposefully harassing the coastline or was attempting some other
undercover operation that was harmful to the Vietnamese. There has to be some reason for what
happened, in a phone conversation between the president and President
Eisenhower’s former Secretary of the treasury Robert Anderson, LBJ says “What
happened was we've been playing around up there and they came out and gave us a
warning and we knocked hell out of 'em” (Doc. 3) So obviously some thing was
going on, we weren't just siting there doing nothing. And further to add more
evidence to my argument, in the same phone call LBJ says, “There have been some
covert operations in that area that we have been carrying on-blowing up some
bridges and things of that kind, roads and so forth.” (Doc. 3) Blowing up roads
and bridges is not something that a ship usually dose, it would not have very
good range inland so much of this “pestering” would be done on the coat line,
never infecting much damage. Form the perspective of the Vietnamese this would
look like harassment intent on provoking a response.
With the information we have so far
it would be unlikely for the Vietnamese to take such obvious bate. I have come to the conclusion
that we never got that attack we wanted so much, and that the captain,
pressured to deliver, made up an attack altogether. In the report from the
captain he is very vague on the details of the attack, he says “ the first boat
to close with the Maddox probably launched a torpedo at the Maddox witch was
heard but not seen. All subsequent Maddox torpedo reports are doubtful.” Not
only did the US government start a war with such little evidence to back it up
but it convinced millions of Americans that the Vietnamese were to blame.
Truth of War
Project Reflection
The assignment for this project was to write an essay that described the truth of war for a solider and then make a project that reflected the views of the essay. Before doing the essay we read All Quiet on the Western Front and slaughter house five. We learned about the trauma solders had to go through and the pain endured.
In my project I used a habit of heart and mind, my habit was perseverance. Because when I was writing my essay I had a lot of trouble relating it to what the project required. Lori gave me a lot of helpful feedback and I rewrote much of my essay. After working on it for a long time I finished with a good paper.
The first major revision I made to my essay was cutting much of the sentences I wrote on the weapons used in the wars I was discussing. Even though I liked talking about them it was not relevant to the topic sentence, or to the idea I was trying to get across. These revisions made my paper easer for my reader without being bogged down with unimportant information. The other thing that was hard for me in this assignment was my terrible grammar and spelling; in an essay this long it took me a long time to fix all of my errors.
One thing I think I would change would be to add another paragraph about another current war. Demonstrating how past was led to why much of the war technology of the past now is used in every day citizen life.
Truth of War Essay
Jasper Graves
Over the past nine thousand years, war has been the leading cause of technological advancement in engineering, medicine, and weaponry. These advances in technology affect the soldiers in the field of combat; often people only look at what technology has done for them, computers, airplanes and inexpensive food. But they may neglect to look at what these advances have done to the common soldier. The truth of war for a soldier is that as the technology advances the experience of war becomes both more traumatic and more humane.
WWI left more mental scars than any other war in prior history; on the other hand the engagement range grew considerably, which in some ways made it easier to kill someone when you couldn’t see them. This was the first war to use machine guns and grenades. Previously, guns were one shot and required time (up to a whole minute) to reload. The introduction of the machine gun meant that you could effectively kill entire lines of soldiers with just one weapon; this was a horrific thought for a battle hardened soldier, As stated in Erich Maria Remarque’s book All Quiet on the Western Front, “A whole line has gone down before our machine-guns; then we have a lot of stoppages and they come nearer.” (pg.105) The grenade was also considerably devastating. It made the concept of standing in lines and taking a turn to fire at the enemy completely ridiculous when they could just throw a hand grenade and kill the middle of your line. The psychological effect on the soldiers who fought these battles was different from anything experienced prior. These developments changed the concept of war considerably, the fighters had to develop a way to protect themselves from the new weapons, many times they would hide in the holes that were left by mortars, and they would literally dig themselves into the ground to escape the sheets of bullets. This marked the beginning of trench warfare. The strategy would be perfected up until World War II when more advancements in technology ended the use of trenches as a safety barrier.
World War II was the first time the morality of war was argued due to the amount of noncombatant deaths. The airplane, although used in World War I, made its strategic capabilities known around the world in WWII, with the nuclear bomb. The largest contributor to civilian death during WWII was the heavy bomber; aerial bombing changed the strategies of war forever. In the past civilians were not the main target of attacks and had been minimally effected by the dangers of war, often the combat stayed at the front. But now with the ability to attack from far distances civilians became a strategic option to damage a country when you didn’t want to face there military. As Kurt Vonnegut’s main character states in his book Slaughter House Five, “He told her about seeing little logs lying around. There were people who had been caught in the fire storm.”(pg.179) Walking through a city filled with the dead bodies of men, woman and children while being given the order to kill anyone still alive was such a heart rending experience that no matter what the cause, violence seemed disgusting. To the people fighting the war this came as a strong blow to patriotism, how could they support a country that spent billions of dollars to kill innocent civilians? The benefits to the common soldier were that when dropping a bomb out of an airplane, you were much less connected to the people you killed. On the other hand, just the thought of the amount of death you were inflicting would damage the responsible soldiers psychologically for the rest of their lives.
The Vietnam War was the first time war was strongly opposed, in the past there was at least some clear cause behind much of the combat, but in this war the reasons were complex and elusive to the common soldier and their families back home. This war was the most profitable war in prior history for the corporations who invented the technology for the US military; the m16 was invented and used to a significant extent, currently the m16 and its variants are the primary weapons of the US. (I know the great grandson of the man who invented this weapon and his grandmother has a bathroom that is entirely plated with gold). Chemical warfare was also introduced; thousands of gallons of a sticky flammable liquid was sprayed over civilian villages. Thousands of noncombatants were killed in this war for no understandable reason, and that motivated people (College students) to protest. “Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room”. Marshall McLuhan, (1975 states) “Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America--not on the battlefields of Vietnam.” One of the few benefits that came about from this war was helicopters were able to be evacuated directly from the field of combat. Slowly but surely as the technology evolves and soldiers become even more separated from the people they kill, at some point will we be so disconnected that we forget the true costs of war?
Modern warfare is slowly developing into a much more computerized landscape, jet drones are taking over where airplanes one operated, missiles are being shot from thousands of miles away and cyber hackers are the newest weapons military. These advances seem to make fighting a war less of a disturbing experience for the soldier. Drone attacks have been increasing during the wars in the Middle East, at first what appeared to be highly inaccurate attacks were later perfected and now are incredibly precise. Drone warfare may be less psychologically damaging to the soldier disconnected from the damage they inflict. The flip side is the soldiers become insensitive from the death and destruction they deal out. They may become too disconnected and kill without conscience. It can be easier to kill people when you believe they are evil, and by doing so you will save others. Drone pilots are drawn from people who are exceptionally good at first person shooter games. It may feel like a game to these soldiers. Will eventually all the US military be made up of couch potato gamers instead of the rugged soldiers of history?
