The pacing of these blog posts is hard to pull off when I have so much to do everyday but I want to keep you guys updated anyway, so here goes.
In the past three days we have had an overwhelming amount of awesome stuff we've been able to mark off of our bucket lists. The biggest one being the Taj Mahal, and I guess the point of this post will be to try and convey the feeling(s) I had standing there in front of one of the proclaimed "wonders of the world."
So the first thing to know about the Taj is that in India it is actually pronounced the Taj Mehell - we look like US rednecks when we pronounce it Taj Mah Hall. The building was built by Shah Jahan in 1653 for his wife. Think of the Taj Mahal as an Egyptian pyramid - its primary purpose was a burial site. The Taj Mahal has both Hindu and Muslim symbolism built into the structure in both design and artwork that is embedded into the marble on the inside of the structure.
When I first saw the Taj I actually got a chill - I never get chills, and my thought process at the time was that the Taj is a timeless artifact. Millions have visited it since 300 years before my birth and will continue to visit it centuries after I am no longer here. I'm not religious by any means but there was a religiosity in reverence for what I was seeing and experiencing in my mind at that moment, and I couldn't move.
The thoughts that permeated along with timelessness were that of awe of construction processes of the era. The magnitude of such a project in comparison with how things are handled now isn’t even worth comparing. We live in an age of metal materials that will decay and fade away in the blink of an eye, but for the earth to swallow the Taj Mahal it will take thousands of years of slow erosion and even then the marble slabs would hold fast for possibly a million or so years.
Incredible. Mind-rocked.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Day 1-2: Delhi
So I know this first post has been a couple of days coming now, and I'm sure a few of you were a little anxious to see what I would post. The thing is, when I got off of the plane I realized nothing I thought I knew from what I had read or watched could have prepared me for the world I am in now. There is just too much going on for any one author to put down everything in words. Even though the Indian people all look and sound the same to us Americans, it truly is a melting pot of culture and societal norms that vary as wildly as they do in the states. But unlike the states, it's a different melting pot - a different brew. Instead of adding western ideas in the batch they have a whole slew of eastern ideas with western ideas as the spice in the mix. So I had to reconsider the things I'd originally wanted to blog about as I want to be oppinionated, but I want everything to be factual. I'd hate to reverberate my usual garbage at you clowns.
So the first cultural difference I encountered was the outrageous disorder on the streets. These guys make Memphis drivers look like chumps. I'm saying if you held your arm out the window of your vehicle it's be in the passengers face of the car next to you, and they aren't wheeling around in shitty cars either. I saw a beamer cruising these streets. The intersections have lights but they don't always work, and somehow the traffic knows when they can go and when they should stop. But it looks like chaos - I kinda like it.
It's neat that, for a society and culture often wrapped up in minimalistic ideas how infatuated with capitalism they've become. There are more businesses than there are cars on the street - and motorcycles included, thats a lot. When we were circling the city of Delhi you could see big business surrounded by massive poverty. There are large clean skyscrapers at on end of the city's skyline and those buildings are forefronted by a mass of tight living conditions - slums. Think.. Alladins view from his little room in the Disney flick.
Only recently has the government in India allowed big business to start monopolizing on products - even walmart was halted for many years from entering the country until recently with its Indian franchise "BestPrice Modern Wholesale," named so to keep the Bentonville haters at bay.
Oh, and it's neat reading about America in their newspapers - it's kinda like listening in on someone's conversation when they're talking about you. In an article I read this morning in the India: Times, they referred to the "unhappy Americans" being upset about their not pitching in on a defense agreement that would involve them dishing out.. $50 billion? I think.
More to come...
So the first cultural difference I encountered was the outrageous disorder on the streets. These guys make Memphis drivers look like chumps. I'm saying if you held your arm out the window of your vehicle it's be in the passengers face of the car next to you, and they aren't wheeling around in shitty cars either. I saw a beamer cruising these streets. The intersections have lights but they don't always work, and somehow the traffic knows when they can go and when they should stop. But it looks like chaos - I kinda like it.
It's neat that, for a society and culture often wrapped up in minimalistic ideas how infatuated with capitalism they've become. There are more businesses than there are cars on the street - and motorcycles included, thats a lot. When we were circling the city of Delhi you could see big business surrounded by massive poverty. There are large clean skyscrapers at on end of the city's skyline and those buildings are forefronted by a mass of tight living conditions - slums. Think.. Alladins view from his little room in the Disney flick.
Only recently has the government in India allowed big business to start monopolizing on products - even walmart was halted for many years from entering the country until recently with its Indian franchise "BestPrice Modern Wholesale," named so to keep the Bentonville haters at bay.
Oh, and it's neat reading about America in their newspapers - it's kinda like listening in on someone's conversation when they're talking about you. In an article I read this morning in the India: Times, they referred to the "unhappy Americans" being upset about their not pitching in on a defense agreement that would involve them dishing out.. $50 billion? I think.
More to come...
Monday, February 21, 2011
Partisan Shmartisan
The HBO miniseries on John Adams had examples of political jargon used in American Politics and Government Today's first chapters. John Adams struggled through every political vice imaginable, and truly defined many political ideologies that citizens of the United States have come to both love and hate. From the inalienable rights structured in writing for the declaration of independence by Jefferson to the fight and clever balance of freedom vs. equality, this series revealed partisan struggles with a lucidity and historical accuracy that is not only commendable for a television series but is also worth noting. Though the terms are not rigidly outlined in the series, a viewer could easily come to realize - or understand, the concepts by watching this series and that is an interesting thing to see.
"I hear that we are called Federalists now, because we believe in strong central government?"
(John Adams, John Adams Mini-series)
John Adams and many of the delegates of the early congress were concerned with the growing partisan groups - or factions as I'd like to refer to them as that's what they really are. People seemed more concerned with bickering and yammering with someone's minute differences of opinion rather than seeking compromise and union; concessions to their problems. This might have been caused more by the fact that all the American people had ever known was dispute. The founding of the early colonies in the Americas had always been in dispute with one superpower or another - namely those overbearing British jerks. And now just when they had won their battle for independence and could decide on their own business, they could not decide their own business.
John Adams preferred order because he didn't see many people as being competent enough to make their own decisions; he thought they needed a hand to move their pieces and be a guiding influence. How could John Adams' dreams become a reality? Well through big American government, of course! This thought pattern placed John Adams in the 'Federalist' camp - whether or not any of his other ideas fell into the boundaries outlined by the principal 'federalist,' ideologies. And then there were others like Thomas Jefferson that were caught up with the rights of the individuals and this view would group him with the 'anti-federalists' or the 'republicans.'
"You [John Adams] have a disconcerting lack of faith in your fellow man"
(Thomas Jefferson, John Adams Mini-series)
There are two sides to this coin though, it can be perceived as an outright detriment towards the progress of the early continental congress or this could be viewed as a necessary evil that helped shape the undeniably stable government that was kind to many viewpoints and stood the test of time. The constitution was a result of the bickering and its ambiguity has been its muscle in longevity.
"I dread a division of our republic into parties."
(John Adams, John Adams Mini-series)
The important thing to remember - and what John Adams understood, is that these arguments of belief came from individuals not from their parties. Political ideological points are too rigidly outlined to be grouping such large numbers of people into one group or another. To oversimplify, one might look at modern United States politics. Constituents either fall into the democratic or republican grouping when voting on presidential or state governmental candidates. But one of two parties can in no way hold each and every belief specific to its constituents - especially in the presidential races simply because of the broad base that they are to stand on.
These problems wrecked the career of the late John Adams as he was unable to find consensus on either side of the partisan fence. During this period is when politicians began taking seats in the continental congress, not the educated well meaning minds of that first congress. And one might find that to be one of the most strikingly interesting facts if they didn't already know it when watching this series; just how fast the congress was controlled by money/power hungry businessmen with agendas that fell far from their constituents.
Perhaps things would have been fairer if the government had worked as Jefferson saw it should have. Jefferson perceived the best working government to be one that would make radical adjustments every generation or so to fit the will and the needs of its constituents. A government for the union of every mind, a direct democracy. But there is no way to know how that might have turned out because the United States has chosen it's government archetype, or maybe it was chosen for them. Either way it's here to stay, and it's pretty solid even with its flaws.
"I hear that we are called Federalists now, because we believe in strong central government?"
(John Adams, John Adams Mini-series)
John Adams and many of the delegates of the early congress were concerned with the growing partisan groups - or factions as I'd like to refer to them as that's what they really are. People seemed more concerned with bickering and yammering with someone's minute differences of opinion rather than seeking compromise and union; concessions to their problems. This might have been caused more by the fact that all the American people had ever known was dispute. The founding of the early colonies in the Americas had always been in dispute with one superpower or another - namely those overbearing British jerks. And now just when they had won their battle for independence and could decide on their own business, they could not decide their own business.
John Adams preferred order because he didn't see many people as being competent enough to make their own decisions; he thought they needed a hand to move their pieces and be a guiding influence. How could John Adams' dreams become a reality? Well through big American government, of course! This thought pattern placed John Adams in the 'Federalist' camp - whether or not any of his other ideas fell into the boundaries outlined by the principal 'federalist,' ideologies. And then there were others like Thomas Jefferson that were caught up with the rights of the individuals and this view would group him with the 'anti-federalists' or the 'republicans.'
"You [John Adams] have a disconcerting lack of faith in your fellow man"
(Thomas Jefferson, John Adams Mini-series)
There are two sides to this coin though, it can be perceived as an outright detriment towards the progress of the early continental congress or this could be viewed as a necessary evil that helped shape the undeniably stable government that was kind to many viewpoints and stood the test of time. The constitution was a result of the bickering and its ambiguity has been its muscle in longevity.
"I dread a division of our republic into parties."
(John Adams, John Adams Mini-series)
The important thing to remember - and what John Adams understood, is that these arguments of belief came from individuals not from their parties. Political ideological points are too rigidly outlined to be grouping such large numbers of people into one group or another. To oversimplify, one might look at modern United States politics. Constituents either fall into the democratic or republican grouping when voting on presidential or state governmental candidates. But one of two parties can in no way hold each and every belief specific to its constituents - especially in the presidential races simply because of the broad base that they are to stand on.
These problems wrecked the career of the late John Adams as he was unable to find consensus on either side of the partisan fence. During this period is when politicians began taking seats in the continental congress, not the educated well meaning minds of that first congress. And one might find that to be one of the most strikingly interesting facts if they didn't already know it when watching this series; just how fast the congress was controlled by money/power hungry businessmen with agendas that fell far from their constituents.
Perhaps things would have been fairer if the government had worked as Jefferson saw it should have. Jefferson perceived the best working government to be one that would make radical adjustments every generation or so to fit the will and the needs of its constituents. A government for the union of every mind, a direct democracy. But there is no way to know how that might have turned out because the United States has chosen it's government archetype, or maybe it was chosen for them. Either way it's here to stay, and it's pretty solid even with its flaws.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
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