Hi
Verons!
Social
justice activist and visionary Eduardo Galeano died Monday (April 13) at age 74.
Galeano wrote: “…we
have the right to imagine the future we want,” and urges his readers to
exercise “the never-proclaimed right to
dream.” He also offers 30 visions of a new world in the essay we sent you. In
thinking about Galeano’s words in “The Right to Rave” and the activist
exhibit—what people envisioned, what they dreamt, what future they imagined—use
the following start of a paragraph and fill in the rest with your own ideas:
My own dream, my own
vision for the future of the world is….
11 comments:
Dear All,
Hopefully, you all enjoyed the site-visit as much as I did. Even though at some point, I was thinking that I am reading a book instead of being in the museum, I did educate myself a lot about the history of activism in New York. That was helpful to determine alternative ways of thinking.
My own dream, my own vision for the future of the world is the universal appreciation for the sanctity of human life.
Perhaps, we might find out that everything that has been done by human beings up until now is directed towards everything else but the appreciation of other human beings. Today, it is very popular for people to take care about themselves. The individualistic point of view that has been fostered by Western civilization and spreads around the world quickly. Some people volunteer or donate, not for the purpose of helping others. Instead, their motives are individualistic. Can it be assumed that the American government has ever been thinking about civilians while conducting airstrikes in the Middle East? Can that be stated with certainty that someone can volunteer in nursing homes just because they do care about people in these homes? The majority of people are doing certain things for some kind of profit. Penelope Keith said once that “shyness is just egoism out of its depth.” Therefore, the major problem of society today is its lack of commitment to the sanctity of human life and the lack of commitment to provide all of the essentials of life to every individual.
For me, the commitment to the sanctity of life means that human life should be protected and respected at all times. This concept should force everyone to combat all forms of injustice and evil that are perpetuated against human life.
In my dreams, people of the future would have a universal commitment to appreciate the sanctity of human life without racial, ethnical, physical, sexual, and other distinctions based on the following ideals:
a) people value other people's freedoms (the person has to understand that it should be a sanctions for restricting other people’s freedom, which might include restriction of perpetrator’s freedoms);
b) people cooperate with each other in new evolutionary forms that are not limited by the sense of competition (competition serves only for improvement, not for playing “market games”);
c) people value the needs of each other equally (people are ready to limit their needs if there is certainty that other person’s needs improvement in order to achieve balance).
In order to achieve this goal, I believe people should be afraid of something. One would never attack the other if he appreciated the sanctity of the other person’s life. One would never try to bribe the judge in a murder trial if he would appreciate the life of the person killed.
However, it will not happen any time soon. Unfortunately.
My own dream, my own vision for the future world is a world without poverty. As Eduardo Galeano says in "The Right to Rave," "the world shall wage war not on the poor but rather on poverty..." I believe this statement is very powerful, as my dream is a dream that many individuals have shared. However, it is a common misconception that poor individuals are poor because of their own dispositions and choices, not because of the situations they find themselves in. This theory is known as the Fundamental Attribution Error, and I believe this view of individuals as the reason for their own poverty allows well-off individuals to disregard those who are born into bad situations. It is easy to disregard the lives of others when we put them at fault for their own fates.
I would like to see a world where it is recognized that poverty is reinforced by the society we created, not by the individuals who find themselves in the unfortunate circumstance of being poor. Poverty is a systemic issue, not a personal problem. For my dream to become a reality, we must accept that there is something wrong with the society, not with the individuals who fall victim to it.
My own dream, my own vision for the future of the world is people to enjoy the little things in life. My favorite line from the readings is "People shall work for a living instead of living for work". I know many people both rich and poor who spend most of their time focused on work, distracted by emails, answering phone calls and not focusing on themselves and their loved ones. Many times we force our minds and bodies too far to the brink of meltdowns and exhaustion. People should be able to take time off from work without the fear of being fired.
My own dream, my own vision for the future of the world is for people respect the land the live on and the plants and animals who also share this earth. --To not exploit mother nature and life.
Thinking about what Lauren said, I have a question: How should we empower people with the bad faith? If we imagine that entire planet has $1000 to share. How are we making those people with $950 to share their faith with those who have $50???? Even in the so-called developed world, wealth inequality is growing year on year and millions exist in desperate circumstances on the margins of society.
Probably, the communism has not a bad idea that government has to get all the money and spread it equally among people. However, it is hard to make those people in charge of sharing money unbiased. Additionally, the ideas of capitalism sit so deep in our minds, so, we can barely understand the equal shareholding concept.
My own vision of this world is one in which all the people and the earth we inhabit are treated unilaterally and universally with respect. I cannot emphasize enough the importance that Marx's quotation would have in the formation of my perfect world: "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need". I would love to see a world where, as audre lorde says "divide and conquer becomes define and empower", we are all diverse and unique in our thoughts and skills and to have a world where those differences are acknowledged in a healthy way--- that is my ideal.
Hello Everyone,
The trip to the museum was an amazing experience. This is something I will do more often. I don’t know about other States, but New York has a vast history of activism. The museum shows a vast number of activist movement that took place in NY and keep motivating people. One of the things I like the most is the fact that there is some movement that are still going on.
My own dream for the future of the world is to live in a world where we don’t judge individuals based on how they look, how they speak, or how we perceive them. I would like to live in a world in which countries don’t fight for land, resources, and issues based on religion. On the article Remembering Eduardo Galeano, Champion of Social Justice & Chronicler of Latin America’s Open Veins, Mr. Galeano shares his desire of celebrating September 11 as “a day against terrorism.” However, the way he wanted to celebrate may be different than how some people would think. He wanted to paste posters highlighting all the crimes/terrorist acts that the USA has committed. For instance, “kidnapping countries, raping the land, poisoning the water, and stealing the air” (P. 7).
My own dream, my own vision for the future of the world is to live in equal consideration for the rights of others. Often people are to focused on their own beliefs of what is right or fair, so they do not take the rights of others in to consideration. The majority of the exhibits touched on the fact that one population decided that another populations was less worthy of the same rights as other populations. I dream of a society that has equal rights for all despite the different ideological or religious beliefs that people have. I think this is just a more definitive separation between church and state. At the moment religious organizations do not have direct pull within governments, but politicians bring their own religious and ideological beliefs into the laws that are created and upheld. I believe in order for equality to exist people must put aside their preconceptions of what is moral to consider other perspectives when deciding what is right and wrong.
My own dream, my own vision for the future of the world is to see every human beings live with the respect of one another’s life. The world is no longer safe for humankind. We are becoming our own predators by killing one another over matters that are not even worth much important. Look at the Middle East, look at the US, look at Ukraine and Africa today, the human life has no value in these places, perhaps in the entire planet. People are being killed almost every day and our response has not been effective enough in stopping such things from happening again.
I would like to see human live without the pressure of materials that is currently dominating the world. My dream is to see the human life live in coalition with one another and build a positive future for the next generation.
I will leave you with the following quote by Haile Selassie:
“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war and until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained... now everywhere is war.”
My own dream, my own vision for the future of the world is one where we value humans not on the social category he/she belongs to but on the content of their character and their spirit. We would not focus on a balance between collective good & individual needs. There would be peace attached to justice and we would rely on negative implicit biases. A world with awareness and integrity. A world where material goods and unattainable standards aren't life goals, & in channeling Dr.Waterston, Bekah & Marx "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"
My own dream, my own vision for the future of the world is one where we empathize before we judge, whereby we replace the urge to condemn the "sinner" or shun the "enemy" in whatever shape or form they make come, with the instinct to suspend any judgment in order to understand the circumstances that make this entity behave/act in this particular manner. I feel in today's context, it is so easy to be misled by polarizing debates, and when we side with a particular opinion, we deprive ourselves of understanding the "other". Yes, there are evil deeds out there and yes, there is evil intent that motivates the commission of evil, yet much remains to be understood about the complexities behind any one particular instance of evil.
For instance, justifiable homicide by the police has been prominently featured in the news. And yet, among, the public, the police are viewed as evil. No doubt the act was deplorable, but there remains much more to be understood about what makes it possible for a police officer to get away with killing unarmed men of color that deserve much more of our time and energy rather than simply demonizing the police.
If only the world were run by Verons...one cohort at a time. 20/20 vision Verons!
Post a Comment