La Vida de Fernando Botero :: Papers

La Vida de Fernando Botero Fernando Botero llevado en Colombia en 1932. En 1951, à ©l viajà ³ a Bogotà ¡, donde à ©l tenà ­a su primera exposicià ³n individual en la galerà ­a de Matiz. Él estudià ³ en Madrid en la academia del San Fernando y en Florencia, donde à ©l aprendià ³ las tà ©cnicas del fresco de los italianos. En 1956 à ©l trabajà ³ en la escuela de los artes finos de la universidad en Bogotà ¡ y viajà ³ a Ciudad de Mà ©xico para estudiar el trabajo de Rivera y de Orozco. Durante los aà ±os sesentas en Nueva York, Botero empiezà ³ una forma de pintura figurada del renacimiento y de pintura barroca con la tradicià ³n colonial de Amà ©rica latina. En 1969 su obras bellos fueron en el museo del arte moderno en Nueva York. Seises de sus trabajos de arte famosos son el cuarto de baà ±o, pares, una familia, hombre con el perro, los mà ºsicos, y un naturaleza muerta de la sandà ­a. Sus pinturas casi siempre son comentarios sociales con las polà ­ticas. Sus retratos satà ­ricos carà ¡cter en susn pinutras. La tà ©cnica del fresco y la historia estudiadas Botero del arte en Florencia a partir de 1953 a 1955 y à ©sta ha influenciado su pintura desde que. Durante este perà ­odo en Nueva York, à ©l comenzà ³ a experimentar con crear el volumen en sus pinturas y comprimiendo el espacio alrededor de ellas. En la pagina ciento en el libro de Paso A Paso, hay una pintura de Botero, la familia social polà ­tica. El tà ­tulo es ?La familia presidencial?, pintado en 1967. La pintura representa a una familia presidencial faimily quià ©nes parecen cerdos. Las siete personas en la pintura son todas gordos, el gato son gordo tambià ©n. Esta vida polà ­tica del satire. Una mujer gorda en el centro con un bolso y una ropa animal en un brazo. El sacerdote y el comandante està ¡n detrà ¡s de la mujer con el bolso y en el primero plano està ¡ una serpiente.

Todays Drug Laws Essay -- Papers Society Laws Drugs Narcotics Essays

Today's Drug Laws Today?s drug laws seem to do more harm than good. The so-called drug war hasn?t seemed to be as effective as it was intended to be. Its original intent lies in its name, to attack the drug problem in America. Nixon started the war on drugs in the late sixties to stop drug abuse at the source, the distributors. Another intention for the war on drugs was to show individuals taking part in this illegal activity that their participation would cause serious consequences. The government has taken drastic measures to keep drugs out of our nations streets, from attacking the frontline in The Columbian drug fields, to making numerous drug busts in urban cities across the United States. However, these harsh but well- intentioned laws have been accused of infringing on America?s freedom. Some believe the people have a natural right to use drugs if they perfectly well chose to do so. Although the war on drugs has been going on for many years, drugs still remain a big problem in the lives of many Americans. Drug offenders as well as abusers are being punished with extreme penalties. Innocent people are suffering because of this. And finally, all the tax dollars going into this war seems to be in vain because its not progressing like it should. The American Government saw that drugs were repressing its citizens, which made them spring into action. The Government wanted to do whatever it took to rid its streets from drugs and crime, which in time the War on Drugs was created. Nixon launched programs with efforts to crackdown on illegal drug use. He created the Office of Drug Abuse and Law Enforcement (ODALE) and the Office of National Narcotics Intelligence (ONNI). In 1973, he also initiated Reorganization... ...tes these laws. Whether or not they are on the right track in solving the problem makes their intentions invalid. Harsh laws and the treat of jail will not stop drug abuse. We learned this from History. When the Prohibition law was passed in 1920, innocent people suffered, organized crime grew, government officials (police, court, politicians, ect.) became corrupt, disrespect for the law grew, and the consumption of prohibited substance increased. If America has learned anything from it?s past, prohibiting people in a democratic society causes more and more problems. Legalization also brings on a bunch of other problems, which makes this issue more complicated. The answers aren?t going to fall into place. It is going to take arguments from both sides to come to an agreeable decision, and then and only then is this war on drugs will come to an inevitable end.

Sustainable Design Essay -- Sustainability

The definition of Sustainability in the Merriam Webster Dictionary is simply ‘involving methods that do not completely use up or destroy natural resources (Merriam Webster, 2014)’. In design we consider sustainability in two different ways: †¢ The functional and financial sustainability of a product, design or even a design process †¢ The impact of resources or renewability of a product, design or process (University, 2014) Designers today have a social responsibility with what they produce as our products are the future and we can have a massive impact on sustainability by making our business decisions based on the environment. White and Stewart note that â€Å"The diverse set of risks and opportunities that now confront companies make consideration of environmental and social impacts in design more than a nice thing to do. Increasingly, it is becoming a matter of remaining relevant and viable in domestic and global economies.† (White & Stewart 2008, p. 5) Sustainability is not a new topic it is how humans have evolved. It’s humans that have undermined their own planet over time that have made it a contemporary issue. EVOLUTION AND RECOGNITION Whilst sustainability did not become a noticeable issue in design until the 1970’s, we can see the evolution over time. The American Indian back in the 1800’s would hunt buffalo, however they knew this was their main resource for survival so they greatly respected it. The way they hunted and utilized the whole animal meant there was no waste and never a threat of extinction. The hide was used for clothing, blankets and smeared with smashed buffalo brains as waterproofing and then used to make teepee’s (History Learning Site, 2014). Native people (first designers) of our planet knew that... ...ch 29). Buffalo and the Native American. Retrieved from History Learning State: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/buffalo.htm Knight, A. (2009). Hidden Histories: the story of sustainable design. Proquest Discovery Guides, 3. Merriam Webster. (2014, March 29). Sustainability. Retrieved from Merriam Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sustainable Nations, U. (2014, March 28). Kyoto Protocol. Retrieved from United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: https://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php University, F. (2014). Contemporary Design Issues - Course Learning Materials Week 2. Ballarat: Federation University. Valluzzo, A. (2014, March 29). A Tale of Two Chairs. Retrieved from Antiques and the Arts Weekly: http://antiquesandtheartsweekly.wordpress.com/ Woodham, J. M. (2005). A Dictionary of Modern Design. New York: Oxford Press. Sustainable Design Essay -- Sustainability The definition of Sustainability in the Merriam Webster Dictionary is simply ‘involving methods that do not completely use up or destroy natural resources (Merriam Webster, 2014)’. In design we consider sustainability in two different ways: †¢ The functional and financial sustainability of a product, design or even a design process †¢ The impact of resources or renewability of a product, design or process (University, 2014) Designers today have a social responsibility with what they produce as our products are the future and we can have a massive impact on sustainability by making our business decisions based on the environment. White and Stewart note that â€Å"The diverse set of risks and opportunities that now confront companies make consideration of environmental and social impacts in design more than a nice thing to do. Increasingly, it is becoming a matter of remaining relevant and viable in domestic and global economies.† (White & Stewart 2008, p. 5) Sustainability is not a new topic it is how humans have evolved. It’s humans that have undermined their own planet over time that have made it a contemporary issue. EVOLUTION AND RECOGNITION Whilst sustainability did not become a noticeable issue in design until the 1970’s, we can see the evolution over time. The American Indian back in the 1800’s would hunt buffalo, however they knew this was their main resource for survival so they greatly respected it. The way they hunted and utilized the whole animal meant there was no waste and never a threat of extinction. The hide was used for clothing, blankets and smeared with smashed buffalo brains as waterproofing and then used to make teepee’s (History Learning Site, 2014). Native people (first designers) of our planet knew that... ...ch 29). Buffalo and the Native American. Retrieved from History Learning State: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/buffalo.htm Knight, A. (2009). Hidden Histories: the story of sustainable design. Proquest Discovery Guides, 3. Merriam Webster. (2014, March 29). Sustainability. Retrieved from Merriam Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sustainable Nations, U. (2014, March 28). Kyoto Protocol. Retrieved from United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: https://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php University, F. (2014). Contemporary Design Issues - Course Learning Materials Week 2. Ballarat: Federation University. Valluzzo, A. (2014, March 29). A Tale of Two Chairs. Retrieved from Antiques and the Arts Weekly: http://antiquesandtheartsweekly.wordpress.com/ Woodham, J. M. (2005). A Dictionary of Modern Design. New York: Oxford Press.

Firing an Employee

Week One Assignment Terrence Rice In any situation when it comes to a supervision position it takes face to face communication with the employee. From previous experience I have done all the things described in the assignment. There was an employee named David I had to terminate because of cutbacks in the company. Here is how I handled that situation; David can you come to my office please? When he arrived I told him, you remember in the staff meeting we discussed how many jobs were going to be cut from the company and it would go by hire date.So your number came up during the time frame so due to company policy I have to give you your pink slip take it to the unemployment office and you can get your unemployment. I also remember when the economy was in good shape and I welcomed David to the company. Jennifer the main secretary presented him to me and I said, Welcome to R & R transportation, my name is Terrence Rice and I am your supervisor.David paused as I held my hand out as we sh ook hands I told him what he was responsible for and how we did things. I personally trained him and released him to be on his own. When they told us the company was selling out to another company I wrote due to the process the company is going through and my disagreement with the process I must submit my two week notice and advise the owners of my resignation effective Oct. 12th, 2002.

Technology, Human Beings and the Fate of the Earth: a Social Critique of Modern Life

It’s both funny and sad that as soon as people leave their familiar comfort zone, when they are alone, say at a coffee shop or waiting in line for a bus, they automatically, almost reactively, reach for the cell phone to call or text someone who will reconnect them with the safe and familiar world from which they have momentarily wandered away.The average persons’ lack of ability, or willingness, to encounter an unknown situation or territory reveals their lack of tolerance for being alone, as well as their lack of curiosity or propensity to simply notice and appreciate their surroundings – as if their bodily senses had been nullified into a potential danger zone in which their very stability of self would quickly fragment should they let go a little, observe and potentially interact with the unfolding world around them.Yes, we’ve learned to live in little bubbles of safety which cut us off from our fellow-humans – we no longer live in the actual wo rld, but in our own self-created worlds, via the latest form of technology. I suspect that our modern sense of security has been entrained to operate in collusion with these technological devices that have slyly entrapped our minds even as they have offered us incredible new possibilities.Our reliance on new and ever-advancing technologies, such as the mobile phone – which in a few short years has also become a mobile photo album, mobile internet, camera, video machine and multi-media entertainment center – has developed into quite a habit, an unconscious addiction that is shaping the very nature of our personalities, both personal and collective, and even, God forbid, our souls. What need have we, the general public, for an imagination when so many limitlessly stimulating devices are available in our world?Who needs an inner world at all when the outer world of our own creations has become so evocative, so seducing, so ever-demanding, evasive and totalitarian? We are continually inundated with advertisements and societal pressures to acquire new technological distractions and modes of external stimulus. Living under such conditions, how is it possible for us to maintain or cultivate much of an inner world, or a soul, whatsoever?The underlying message of our media is commercial; in enforcing the demands of commerce upon us, we are defined primarily as consumers, persuaded not to think for ourselves, but to join in the latest collective frenzy of technological adventures that continually reinterpret the purpose of our lives. This never ending flood of media proclamations, while appearing as a material liberation, serves as a psychological oppression of the individual soul. Capitalism sells new versions of reality that may have nothing to do with one’s own true needs or sensibilities. However, it is the advertisers’ job to convince us otherwise.So far they are doing a pretty good job! The natural world, the earth itself; the air, the trees, the vast realms of animals, plants, oceans, deserts and mountains are increasingly losing meaning and value in the self-hypnotized, narcissistic lives of mechanized human beings. Although it is certainly an abomination of our essential heritage, we are ever-entrained to focus less and less on the natural world in which we live, and of which we are but one aspect – lest we forget – and more and more to focus on the world as fashioned through the minds and hands of men.It’s sad indeed when we ignore what is right before our eyes, i. e. our actual surrounding environment, and instead remain culled to a collective techno-vision of the ideal man-made life. It’s also sad when we ignore those human beings who are standing right in front of us because we’d prefer to text or talk with someone miles away, when we must remain overly-attached to those we know because we’ve lost our human capacity for interrelationship with our expanded world of f ellow citizens who we now dismiss as strangers.Our advance in technology has engendered a compensating inversion in our capacity for compassion and community – which is to say, the further we develop our technology, the less we appear to maintain the qualities of a loving, caring and attentive human society. Being aware in the mystery of the present moment, tolerating the unknown, and tolerating states of non-stimulation is the first phase in moving towards a more attuned state of openness and potential interaction with the actual, non-virtual, world around us.However, we have been so conditioned by a perpetual bombardment of electronic stimuli – radio, television, computers, video games, mobile phones/entertainment centers, etc – that it has become difficult, albeit unappealing, for us to re-focus our attention on our actual physical, natural environment. A parallel outcome of our desensitization to the physical, natural world in which we live, is the subsequen t degradation of our ecology, which entails our lack of emphasis or awareness on its living/breathing/fragile/organic nature.The danger of this, as many of us recognize, is potentially catastrophic; as we create and live in an increasingly human-made and virtual reality – wherein we believe we are safer, happier, more satisfied, etc – we also increasingly ignore the actual and natural reality in which we are encompassed, and risk the extinction of the environment through the excessive pollution, raiding and deforestation of the planet that we have witnessed since the rise of the industrial-technological age.The degradation of the natural world is problematic in many ways. Firstly, it appears to be morally and ethically wrong – at least to those of us whose ethics and morals outweigh our imperialistic drives – to destructively impact the earth, its ecosystems, i. e. rivers, oceans and forests, as well as animals, plants, trees, etc. One might ask, â€Å"W hat right have we humans to destroy the earth, simply for our own benefit? Is this not selfish and unnecessary? Many of us have asked this question, though it seems that the overall progress of our technologically based capitalism remains unwilling to curtail its invasions and usurpations of nature, or to halt its path of destruction for the sake of morals or ethics. Where the dollar bill is concerned, questions of right and wrong become thin and ineffectual, nearly meaningless. Secondly, the degradation of the natural environment is increasingly affecting the balance of the planet itself, which in turn contaminates our own quality of life.For a thorough overview of how human technology is damaging the planet, one has only to search through a plethora of books, TV specials, or movies on this topic (i. e. â€Å"An Inconvenient Truth†, by Al Gore). I will here mention only a few ways in which planetary degradation affects human life. In a recent trip to Lima, Peru I learned tha t Peruvians predominantly drive older used cars, from the 80s or 70s, which emit high levels of visible exhaust fumes making the air both toxic and putrid to breathe.Driving around town there is often no escape from these fumes which pour out of the car just in front of you. The situation is just as bad in many other developing â€Å"third world† countries around the globe. Even here in the United States, where we have increasingly stricter emissions controls on our vehicles, the air quality in some cities is very poor, and on certain days people are advised to avoid going â€Å"out of doors,† or allowing their children to play outside at all.In many countries, air pollution is severe and debilitating, and only getting worse. In addition to increasing the risk of respiratory disease, the eroding of the ozone layer has also increased the risk of skin cancer, and it’s become customary to slather on gobs of sunscreen lotion before going outside on a sunny day for a ny length of time. Industrial pollution has made our water supplies dirty, so they are zapped with chlorine, making our water not really enjoyable, or many would say, healthy to drink.As for our food, as genetic engineering takes hold, what we eat becomes increasingly tasteless and less nutritious. Although these are only a very few examples of the many problems made by technology, there is no denying that the degradation of the natural world leads to our own degradation. The third major impact of the degradation of nature is spiritual. As we become less attuned to the world of nature, which is gradually breaking down, our inherent connection to the earth dissipates.We become less the â€Å"caretakers of the earth,† or participants in Her splendor of glory, and moreover the survivors of a man-made holocaust inflicted upon nature. We rationalize our disconnect from nature – those of us who are aware of it – with the heralding of a new age of technological transce ndence. In comparison with all our own amazing discoveries, inventions and developments, we cannot believe that the earth is all that important. How can a handful of dirt compare to the glory of an I-phone?Our attitudes reveal a consensual belief that we are superior to and above the earth – as also evidenced by our scientific investigations into creating hospitable conditions on other planets, as well as expanded, city-size space stations in which we could begin to populate the greater universe, where we would, even more so, live in human-made, virtual reality realms. The bigger question is whether our spirits can survive – or thrive – in states of stark disconnection from the earth, our origin and planetary source of being†¦ This sort of fantastic and futuristic evolution is in line with our reigning eligion of Christianity, in which our sinful earthbound lives are to be potentially transformed through belief in Christ, when, upon the moment of our death, we are to ascend high into the heavens, into a cloud-like dimension above and beyond all the messy entanglements of this planet earth. With such a cosmo-vision, such a context of the goal of life, it’s no wonder the sanctity of the earth has lost its power to impel our actions. It seems only the portended threat of our own extinction will suffice to encourage us to behave differently.For if we are only to inhabit this earth for such a brief span of time – until our transcendence into a perfect eternity in another dimension – then what’s the big deal if we just abuse Her until we’re gone, because in the grand scheme of things She doesn’t matter much anyways. Christianity also teaches that, of all the creatures and life-forms upon this planet, only human beings have souls â€Å"that can be saved,† and thus make the transmigration beyond a mortal death into an immortal and eternal after-life.Since, in the Christian view, nothing else up on this planet has a soul, or is capable of redemption, we justify our own paramount importance, and it becomes completely plausible to view all things as merely our own resources. In this way, we lose a perspective of value and veneration for the natural world around us while worshipping our own agendas. It becomes evident that many areas of our lives – our economy, our technology and industry, our religion, and our general philosophy of living – depict our own implicit superiority complex over the natural world of creation.And yet, by and by, we get glimpses of the truth that it is impossible for humanity to become superior to nature, because we are really an intrinsic part of the earth which we seek to dominate and control. In actuality, the world of nature is indeed superior to humankind, as we are merely one aspect of its grand panorama. However, we continue to ignore our interconnectedness with nature, our true identity as an outgrowth or expression of nature, an d behave as if we have the right and ability to continue dominating the earth without eventually destroying ourselves.But â€Å"what goes around comes around,† and sooner or later you get what you give, or to put it in technological terms: you â€Å"input† what you â€Å"output. † Why have we continued on in this, less than intelligent, manner? You could say that we modern-day humans are simply dumb and indifferent, which is partially true from a holistic perspective. But beneath that we are really out of control, so fascinated by our own invented civilization that we fail to recognize the greater organic and historical context in which we live.Over the past 500 years or so, the peoples of Europe have invaded, conquered, colonized and converted virtually every other continent, people and culture upon the planet – we’re currently working steadfast on the Middle East – with our imperialistic inquisitions, our Christianity and our capitalism. I n the words of Martin Prechtel, author of Secrets Of The Talking Jaguar, and an initiate of the Mayan shamanic mysteries: Over the last two or three centuries, a heartless culture-crushing mentality has incremented its progress on the earth, devouring all peoples, nature, imagination, and spiritual knowledge.Like a big mechanized slug, it has left behind a flat, homogenized steak of civilization wherever it passed. Every human on this earth – African, Asian, European, Islanders, or from the Americas – has ancestors who at some point in their history had their stories, rituals, ingenuity, language and lifeways taken away, enslaved, banned, exploited, twisted or destroyed by this force. Our modern technological way of life is a vast and dramatic change from the vastly more earth-friendly modes of human existence that preceded this rapid â€Å"global development† for thousands of years.It is a sad and unpopular fact that, as Western civilization has progressed, cou ntless other civilizations have regressed, have indeed been ravaged and undone by the coercion of our own ideas and powers upon them. To this day, we either disregard their suffering and continue on our own path to global domination, or we view them through the eyes of sympathetic charity, regarding ourselves, our own culture, as the superior and dominant people who will now help, aide and assist these less fortunate people – whom we devastated in the first place – to acquire the modes of our own elevated survival and sustenance.The deceptive hypocrisy of our impact upon, and subsequent response to, â€Å"third world† countries is confounded by our own apparent lack of responsibility for our actions, both past and present, that debilitate these people. For instance, in the countries of Central & South America, our oil production facilities lead to massive destruction of both the land and the lives of the indigenous peoples. In the mid 1990? s, author Joe Kane do cumented the horrific impacts of corporate oil companies upon native cultures and the pristine Amazonian rainforest of Ecuador in his superbly written book, Savages.In the book, Kane describes the struggle of one of the last remaining indigenous tribes – the Huaorani – who consider themselves to have not been conquered by modern Western culture, against the impending invasion of corporate oil. Referencing his colleague Judith Kimerling from her book Amazon Crude, Kane states: â€Å"In 1967 Texaco discovered commercial oil in the Oriente [the Ecuadorian rainforest]. In 1972 it completed a 312-mile pipeline from the Oriente to Ecuador’s Pacific coast. From its inception until just 1989, â€Å"the Texaco pipeline had ruptured at least twenty seven times, spilling 16. 8 million gallons of raw crude †¦ most of it into the Oriente’s delicate web of rivers, creeks and lagoons. † As a witness himself to a colossal oil spill into the native Ecuadorian rainforest, Kane writes, â€Å"While I was in Tonampare a valve in an oil well near the Napo broke, or was left open, and for two days and a night raw crude streamed into the river – at least 21,000 gallons and perhaps as many as 80,000, creating a slick that stretched from bank to bank for forty miles. Due to this oil spill, a state of emergency was declared downstream in both Peru and Brazil, although, according to Kane, the oil company responsible for the spill disregarded the incident and did nothing to improve the situation. While in Ecuador, Kane visited various Huaorani communities and received further firsthand reports of extensive and extreme contamination, via oil spills, of their water supplies resulting in unruly health epidemics, severe illnesses and deaths.However, the problems of oil drilling extend beyond the awful impacts upon Huaorani and Indian health in general, as the settlements made by the oil companies result in drastic disruption, deviation and dese cration of traditional Indian culture. It is a complicated process, because the imperialistic thrust of big oil coincides with all sorts of modern Western byproducts including colonization, conversion to Christianity, and ‘re-education’ of native Indians – in which â€Å"no element of Huaorani culture was allowed to enter the curriculum. This enforced process of acculturation to Western ways results in the obliteration of the value, the history, and the very existence of traditional culture for all Indians affected. During the months that Kane spent roaming through Ecuador, mainly with the Huaorani tribe, he experienced the traditional self-sufficient way of life that the Huaorani – as well as many other indigenous South American tribes – have lived for millennia. After visiting colonized areas as well, he reports that Indians who have succumbed to a conversion to Western ways appear much worse off than those who have held to their traditional ways .Of these colonized Huaorani, Kane writes â€Å"the people were dependent on goods brought in from outside, and many of them had become wage slaves to a culture they could never hope to be truly a part of – to a culture that, in fact, considered them little more than animals. † The convergence of the diverse aspects of capitalism, colonization and conversion to Western ways and Christianity upon the various Indian tribes who are impacted all amount to ethnocide.The fact that such corruption – initiated by Western imperialistic drives based on capitalistic gains – is still going on, only reveals that we have not progressed very far, at least globally speaking, in our path to becoming a more humane society. But the typical modern world citizen doesn’t care about any of this and has very little knowledge of the historical European conquests that have transformed spiritually and functionally intact cultures into materially indigent, chaotic and violent third world countries. Most of us are more or less plodding along our own enlightened paths of self-serving materialism.When we do give any consideration to cultures of a lesser material status, we judge and compare their â€Å"shabby† way of life to ours, in which running water, electricity, cars, central heating, air conditioning and 24 hour grocery stores are essential. We devalue their modes of living through our own ignorance and ingrained sense of superiority, as we seek to save them, not by helping them to regain their own valued way of life, but by converting them to ours – which only reinforces our own paradigm of economic, technological and religious superiority. We frequently fail to realize that not every human being on this planet wants r needs to be hooked into the wave of technological progress with which we are so completely mesmerized. Not only does our enchantment with technology threaten our humanity, our society, and our planet, it also – th rough our continued pressures upon non-Western, non-technologically-based cultures to convert to the ways of the modern Western world – threatens to destroy the few remaining earth-based, indigenous peoples on this planet who would rather not be bothered by us or our materialistic ways. Do we really need to continue to conquer the earth with our capitalism until there is a 7-11 and McDonalds in every corner of the world?Until there are freeways chomping through every area of pristine land? Until all the forests have been chopped down and transformed into urban and industrial sprawl? Can’t we contain ourselves with a little respect for the rest of the world? There are still people on this planet who enjoy living in the organic environment of nature, where electricity, motor vehicles, cells phones and I-pods aren’t a necessary aspect of life. They are able to survive, and thrive, quite well without all the modern accoutrements of modern life that we so desire, and many of them would like to remain as they are.And yet our attitude reveals an inner conviction that we have discovered â€Å"the way of the future† and must deliver this message in force to the rest of the world. Rather than continuing on our present course of a global takeover, we need to ask ourselves what we can learn from non-Westernized cultures that still live in ancient and earth-honoring ways, cultures that we tend to brutalize and greedily destroy. We need to learn to interact with these other cultures respectfully and humanely, allowing them their own way of life and sustenance upon this planet without interfering and coercing our interests and values upon them.Not everyone needs to drive a car on a freeway, to work in an office and live in a house in the city – if the 7,000,000,000 human beings now alive on the planet lived like this, our environmental devastation would likely expand exponentially. To expect a global conversion of all peoples in all places into an assimilation of our unique modern, technological way of life is stupid, insane and supremely unreasonable. However, like a big, proud, arrogant peacock strutting itself all over the planet, the United States continues making moves to engulf the globe with the gluttony of our own capitalistic enterprises, all the while disregarding nd disrupting the dignity of other countries, cultures and peoples. Reflecting upon the impact of our very recent civilization upon other, much older, traditional and earth-based civilizations, as well as the planet itself, we should notice and consider the damages we have done, the violences we have perpetrated, and the miseries we have created †¦ We need to move beyond the Christian fantasy that we are a completely good and benign presence on the planet, that we are somehow â€Å"God’s chosen people† with a free pass to do whatever we want regardless of the consequences.We should think about how we can be less ego-centric, and seek to balance our technological advances with tending to the well-being of the earth, other cultures and one another. We should consider how to create more harmony in the world, and a little less profit. Indeed, many individuals and organizations are becoming increasingly devoted to a greater consciousness of how to live in ways that are â€Å"earth friendly. The overall pro-environmental movements are coming to be known as â€Å"green† movements, and they provide good and necessary developments toward a future in which humans could be of greater benefit than detriment to the planet. However, very much work and change remains to be done in this area. One problem inherent with these movements is that when we think about â€Å"saving the planet,† or â€Å"saving the polar bears,† we are still thinking abstractly. In truth, the planet was doing just fine before the advent of modern industry and technological society. Save the planet! † really means â€Å" Stop the humans from destroying the planet! † because we are only saving the planet from ourselves. Living our urban, fast-paced and machine-based lives, very few of us have time, energy or ability to keep gardens, raise livestock, hunt for our sustenance or otherwise live in any kind of experiential symbiosis with the planet. We live in suburban and citified concrete jungles where the animals have become cars, and the trees and forests are now banks, department stores and high rise apartment complexes.Because we have created our own processed environment of roads, cars, industry, buildings, malls, homes: an endless â€Å"urban sprawl† that houses an endless supply of manmade things; because we live in a world designed by capitalism, a world of incessant advertising, sales and the desperate, frantic pursuit of material things – of production and products – a world molded and defined by television, radio and the chronic bombardment of salesmen; we rarely, i f ever, experience an intimate connection with the natural world, with â€Å"the planet† we are hoping to save.Sure we can learn all about the planet, discovering the marvels of the earth in science magazines or through viewing compelling video footage of nature, we can learn all about the planet in schools, in laboratories or other second hand means, but until we have a sustained, direct encounter with the earth and nature itself, how can we truly know it, and what will it ever really mean to us? And how few of us will ever accomplish this?Indeed, as it now stands our â€Å"civilization† is composed of a people, and a culture, that have moved out of nature into man-created worlds based upon the destruction of nature †¦ and they call this evolution. Ultimately, it’s up to us to change the story, to write a new script, to realize who we are, what we have become, and to simply wake up to the realization of how we want our lives, and the life of our entire pla net, to unfold †¦ So think about it, and let your thoughts permeate all that you do, for the existence of yourself and every other being around you may depend upon it.It’s both funny and sad that as soon as people leave their familiar comfort zone, when they are alone, say at a coffee shop or waiting in line for a bus, they automatically, almost reactively, reach for the cell phone to call or text someone who will reconnect them with the safe and familiar world from which they have momentarily wandered away.The average persons’ lack of ability, or willingness, to encounter an unknown situation or territory reveals their lack of tolerance for being alone, as well as their lack of curiosity or propensity to simply notice and appreciate their surroundings – as if their bodily senses had been nullified into a potential danger zone in which their very stability of self would quickly fragment should they let go a little, observe and potentially interact with the unfolding world around them.Yes, we’ve learned to live in little bubbles of safety which cut us off from our fellow-humans – we no longer live in the actual world, but in our own self-created worlds, via the latest form of technology. I suspect that our modern sense of security has been entrained to operate in collusion with these technological devices that have slyly entrapped our minds even as they have offered us incredible new possibilities.Our reliance on new and ever-advancing technologies, such as the mobile phone – which in a few short years has also become a mobile photo album, mobile internet, camera, video machine and multi-media entertainment center – has developed into quite a habit, an unconscious addiction that is shaping the very nature of our personalities, both personal and collective, and even, God forbid, our souls. What need have we, the general public, for an imagination when so many limitlessly stimulating devices are available in o ur world?Who needs an inner world at all when the outer world of our own creations has become so evocative, so seducing, so ever-demanding, evasive and totalitarian? We are continually inundated with advertisements and societal pressures to acquire new technological distractions and modes of external stimulus. Living under such conditions, how is it possible for us to maintain or cultivate much of an inner world, or a soul, whatsoever?The underlying message of our media is commercial; in enforcing the demands of commerce upon us, we are defined primarily as consumers, persuaded not to think for ourselves, but to join in the latest collective frenzy of technological adventures that continually reinterpret the purpose of our lives. This never ending flood of media proclamations, while appearing as a material liberation, serves as a psychological oppression of the individual soul. Capitalism sells new versions of reality that may have nothing to do with one’s own true needs or s ensibilities.However, it is the advertisers’ job to convince us otherwise. So far they are doing a pretty good job! The natural world, the earth itself; the air, the trees, the vast realms of animals, plants, oceans, deserts and mountains are increasingly losing meaning and value in the self-hypnotized, narcissistic lives of mechanized human beings. Although it is certainly an abomination of our essential heritage, we are ever-entrained to focus less and less on the natural world in which we live, and of which we are but one aspect – lest we forget – and more and more to focus on the world as fashioned through the minds and hands f men. It’s sad indeed when we ignore what is right before our eyes, i. e. our actual surrounding environment, and instead remain culled to a collective techno-vision of the ideal man-made life. It’s also sad when we ignore those human beings who are standing right in front of us because we’d prefer to text or talk with someone miles away, when we must remain overly-attached to those we know because we’ve lost our human capacity for interrelationship with our expanded world of fellow citizens who we now dismiss as strangers.Our advance in technology has engendered a compensating inversion in our capacity for compassion and community – which is to say, the further we develop our technology, the less we appear to maintain the qualities of a loving, caring and attentive human society. Being aware in the mystery of the present moment, tolerating the unknown, and tolerating states of non-stimulation is the first phase in moving towards a more attuned state of openness and potential interaction with the actual, non-virtual, world around us.However, we have been so conditioned by a perpetual bombardment of electronic stimuli – radio, television, computers, video games, mobile phones/entertainment centers, etc – that it has become difficult, albeit unappealing, for us to re -focus our attention on our actual physical, natural environment. A parallel outcome of our desensitization to the physical, natural world in which we live, is the subsequent degradation of our ecology, which entails our lack of emphasis or awareness on its living/breathing/fragile/organic nature.The danger of this, as many of us recognize, is potentially catastrophic; as we create and live in an increasingly human-made and virtual reality – wherein we believe we are safer, happier, more satisfied, etc – we also increasingly ignore the actual and natural reality in which we are encompassed, and risk the extinction of the environment through the excessive pollution, raiding and deforestation of the planet that we have witnessed since the rise of the industrial-technological age.The degradation of the natural world is problematic in many ways. Firstly, it appears to be morally and ethically wrong – at least to those of us whose ethics and morals outweigh our imper ialistic drives – to destructively impact the earth, its ecosystems, i. e. rivers, oceans and forests, as well as animals, plants, trees, etc. One might ask, â€Å"What right have we humans to destroy the earth, simply for our own benefit? Is this not selfish and unnecessary? Many of us have asked this question, though it seems that the overall progress of our technologically based capitalism remains unwilling to curtail its invasions and usurpations of nature, or to halt its path of destruction for the sake of morals or ethics. Where the dollar bill is concerned, questions of right and wrong become thin and ineffectual, nearly meaningless. Secondly, the degradation of the natural environment is increasingly affecting the balance of the planet itself, which in turn contaminates our own quality of life.For a thorough overview of how human technology is damaging the planet, one has only to search through a plethora of books, TV specials, or movies on this topic (i. e. â€Å"A n Inconvenient Truth†, by Al Gore). I will here mention only a few ways in which planetary degradation affects human life. In a recent trip to Lima, Peru I learned that Peruvians predominantly drive older used cars, from the 80s or 70s, which emit high levels of visible exhaust fumes making the air both toxic and putrid to breathe.Driving around town there is often no escape from these fumes which pour out of the car just in front of you. The situation is just as bad in many other developing â€Å"third world† countries around the globe. Even here in the United States, where we have increasingly stricter emissions controls on our vehicles, the air quality in some cities is very poor, and on certain days people are advised to avoid going â€Å"out of doors,† or allowing their children to play outside at all.In many countries, air pollution is severe and debilitating, and only getting worse. In addition to increasing the risk of respiratory disease, the eroding of the ozone layer has also increased the risk of skin cancer, and it’s become customary to slather on gobs of sunscreen lotion before going outside on a sunny day for any length of time. Industrial pollution has made our water supplies dirty, so they are zapped with chlorine, making our water not really enjoyable, or many would say, healthy to drink.As for our food, as genetic engineering takes hold, what we eat becomes increasingly tasteless and less nutritious. Although these are only a very few examples of the many problems made by technology, there is no denying that the degradation of the natural world leads to our own degradation. The third major impact of the degradation of nature is spiritual. As we become less attuned to the world of nature, which is gradually breaking down, our inherent connection to the earth dissipates.We become less the â€Å"caretakers of the earth,† or participants in Her splendor of glory, and moreover the survivors of a man-made holocaus t inflicted upon nature. We rationalize our disconnect from nature – those of us who are aware of it – with the heralding of a new age of technological transcendence. In comparison with all our own amazing discoveries, inventions and developments, we cannot believe that the earth is all that important. How can a handful of dirt compare to the glory of an I-phone?Our attitudes reveal a consensual belief that we are superior to and above the earth – as also evidenced by our scientific investigations into creating hospitable conditions on other planets, as well as expanded, city-size space stations in which we could begin to populate the greater universe, where we would, even more so, live in human-made, virtual reality realms. The bigger question is whether our spirits can survive – or thrive – in states of stark disconnection from the earth, our origin and planetary source of being†¦This sort of fantastic and futuristic evolution is in line wit h our reigning religion of Christianity, in which our sinful earthbound lives are to be potentially transformed through belief in Christ, when, upon the moment of our death, we are to ascend high into the heavens, into a cloud-like dimension above and beyond all the messy entanglements of this planet earth. With such a cosmo-vision, such a context of the goal of life, it’s no wonder the sanctity of the earth has lost its power to impel our actions.It seems only the portended threat of our own extinction will suffice to encourage us to behave differently. For if we are only to inhabit this earth for such a brief span of time – until our transcendence into a perfect eternity in another dimension – then what’s the big deal if we just abuse Her until we’re gone, because in the grand scheme of things She doesn’t matter much anyways. Christianity also teaches that, of all the creatures and life-forms upon this planet, only human beings have souls â€Å"that can be saved,† and thus make the transmigration beyond a mortal death into an immortal and eternal fter-life. Since, in the Christian view, nothing else upon this planet has a soul, or is capable of redemption, we justify our own paramount importance, and it becomes completely plausible to view all things as merely our own resources. In this way, we lose a perspective of value and veneration for the natural world around us while worshipping our own agendas. It becomes evident that many areas of our lives – our economy, our technology and industry, our religion, and our general philosophy of living – depict our own implicit superiority complex over the natural world of creation.And yet, by and by, we get glimpses of the truth that it is impossible for humanity to become superior to nature, because we are really an intrinsic part of the earth which we seek to dominate and control. In actuality, the world of nature is indeed superior to humankind, as we are merely one aspect of its grand panorama. However, we continue to ignore our interconnectedness with nature, our true identity as an outgrowth or expression of nature, and behave as if we have the right and ability to continue dominating the earth without eventually destroying ourselves.But â€Å"what goes around comes around,† and sooner or later you get what you give, or to put it in technological terms: you â€Å"input† what you â€Å"output. † Why have we continued on in this, less than intelligent, manner? You could say that we modern-day humans are simply dumb and indifferent, which is partially true from a holistic perspective. But beneath that we are really out of control, so fascinated by our own invented civilization that we fail to recognize the greater organic and historical context in which we live.Over the past 500 years or so, the peoples of Europe have invaded, conquered, colonized and converted virtually every other continent, people and cult ure upon the planet – we’re currently working steadfast on the Middle East – with our imperialistic inquisitions, our Christianity and our capitalism. In the words of Martin Prechtel, author of Secrets Of The Talking Jaguar, and an initiate of the Mayan shamanic mysteries: Over the last two or three centuries, a heartless culture-crushing mentality has incremented its progress on the earth, devouring all peoples, nature, imagination, and spiritual knowledge.Like a big mechanized slug, it has left behind a flat, homogenized steak of civilization wherever it passed. Every human on this earth – African, Asian, European, Islanders, or from the Americas – has ancestors who at some point in their history had their stories, rituals, ingenuity, language and lifeways taken away, enslaved, banned, exploited, twisted or destroyed by this force. Our modern technological way of life is a vast and dramatic change from the vastly more earth-friendly modes of huma n existence that preceded this rapid â€Å"global development† for thousands of years.It is a sad and unpopular fact that, as Western civilization has progressed, countless other civilizations have regressed, have indeed been ravaged and undone by the coercion of our own ideas and powers upon them. To this day, we either disregard their suffering and continue on our own path to global domination, or we view them through the eyes of sympathetic charity, regarding ourselves, our own culture, as the superior and dominant people who will now help, aide and assist these less fortunate people – whom we devastated in the first place – to acquire the modes of our own elevated survival and sustenance.The deceptive hypocrisy of our impact upon, and subsequent response to, â€Å"third world† countries is confounded by our own apparent lack of responsibility for our actions, both past and present, that debilitate these people. For instance, in the countries of Centra l & South America, our oil production facilities lead to massive destruction of both the land and the lives of the indigenous peoples. In the mid 1990? s, author Joe Kane documented the horrific impacts of corporate oil companies upon native cultures and the pristine Amazonian rainforest of Ecuador in his superbly written book, Savages.In the book, Kane describes the struggle of one of the last remaining indigenous tribes – the Huaorani – who consider themselves to have not been conquered by modern Western culture, against the impending invasion of corporate oil. Referencing his colleague Judith Kimerling from her book Amazon Crude, Kane states: â€Å"In 1967 Texaco discovered commercial oil in the Oriente [the Ecuadorian rainforest]. In 1972 it completed a 312-mile pipeline from the Oriente to Ecuador’s Pacific coast. From its inception until just 1989, â€Å"the Texaco pipeline had ruptured at least twenty seven times, spilling 16. 8 million gallons of raw c rude †¦ most of it into the Oriente’s delicate web of rivers, creeks and lagoons. † As a witness himself to a colossal oil spill into the native Ecuadorian rainforest, Kane writes, â€Å"While I was in Tonampare a valve in an oil well near the Napo broke, or was left open, and for two days and a night raw crude streamed into the river – at least 21,000 gallons and perhaps as many as 80,000, creating a slick that stretched from bank to bank for forty miles. Due to this oil spill, a state of emergency was declared downstream in both Peru and Brazil, although, according to Kane, the oil company responsible for the spill disregarded the incident and did nothing to improve the situation. While in Ecuador, Kane visited various Huaorani communities and received further firsthand reports of extensive and extreme contamination, via oil spills, of their water supplies resulting in unruly health epidemics, severe illnesses and deaths.However, the problems of oil drill ing extend beyond the awful impacts upon Huaorani and Indian health in general, as the settlements made by the oil companies result in drastic disruption, deviation and desecration of traditional Indian culture. It is a complicated process, because the imperialistic thrust of big oil coincides with all sorts of modern Western byproducts including colonization, conversion to Christianity, and ‘re-education’ of native Indians – in which â€Å"no element of Huaorani culture was allowed to enter the curriculum. This enforced process of acculturation to Western ways results in the obliteration of the value, the history, and the very existence of traditional culture for all Indians affected. During the months that Kane spent roaming through Ecuador, mainly with the Huaorani tribe, he experienced the traditional self-sufficient way of life that the Huaorani – as well as many other indigenous South American tribes – have lived for millennia. After visiting colonized areas as well, he reports that Indians who have succumbed to a conversion to Western ways appear much worse off than those who have held to their traditional ways.Of these colonized Huaorani, Kane writes â€Å"the people were dependent on goods brought in from outside, and many of them had become wage slaves to a culture they could never hope to be truly a part of – to a culture that, in fact, considered them little more than animals. † The convergence of the diverse aspects of capitalism, colonization and conversion to Western ways and Christianity upon the various Indian tribes who are impacted all amount to ethnocide.The fact that such corruption – initiated by Western imperialistic drives based on capitalistic gains – is still going on, only reveals that we have not progressed very far, at least globally speaking, in our path to becoming a more humane society. But the typical modern world citizen doesn’t care about any of this and ha s very little knowledge of the historical European conquests that have transformed spiritually and functionally intact cultures into materially indigent, chaotic and violent third world countries. Most of us are more or less plodding along our own enlightened paths of self-serving materialism.When we do give any consideration to cultures of a lesser material status, we judge and compare their â€Å"shabby† way of life to ours, in which running water, electricity, cars, central heating, air conditioning and 24 hour grocery stores are essential. We devalue their modes of living through our own ignorance and ingrained sense of superiority, as we seek to save them, not by helping them to regain their own valued way of life, but by converting them to ours – which only reinforces our own paradigm of economic, technological and religious superiority.We frequently fail to realize that not every human being on this planet wants or needs to be hooked into the wave of technologic al progress with which we are so completely mesmerized. Not only does our enchantment with technology threaten our humanity, our society, and our planet, it also – through our continued pressures upon non-Western, non-technologically-based cultures to convert to the ways of the modern Western world – threatens to destroy the few remaining earth-based, indigenous peoples on this planet who would rather not be bothered by us or our materialistic ways.Do we really need to continue to conquer the earth with our capitalism until there is a 7-11 and McDonalds in every corner of the world? Until there are freeways chomping through every area of pristine land? Until all the forests have been chopped down and transformed into urban and industrial sprawl? Can’t we contain ourselves with a little respect for the rest of the world? There are still people on this planet who enjoy living in the organic environment of nature, where electricity, motor vehicles, cells phones and I-pods aren’t a necessary aspect of life.They are able to survive, and thrive, quite well without all the modern accoutrements of modern life that we so desire, and many of them would like to remain as they are. And yet our attitude reveals an inner conviction that we have discovered â€Å"the way of the future† and must deliver this message in force to the rest of the world. Rather than continuing on our present course of a global takeover, we need to ask ourselves what we can learn from non-Westernized cultures that still live in ancient and earth-honoring ways, cultures that we tend to brutalize and greedily destroy.We need to learn to interact with these other cultures respectfully and humanely, allowing them their own way of life and sustenance upon this planet without interfering and coercing our interests and values upon them. Not everyone needs to drive a car on a freeway, to work in an office and live in a house in the city – if the 7,000,000,000 human beings now alive on the planet lived like this, our environmental devastation would likely expand exponentially.To expect a global conversion of all peoples in all places into an assimilation of our unique modern, technological way of life is stupid, insane and supremely unreasonable. However, like a big, proud, arrogant peacock strutting itself all over the planet, the United States continues making moves to engulf the globe with the gluttony of our own capitalistic enterprises, all the while disregarding and disrupting the dignity of other countries, cultures and peoples.Reflecting upon the impact of our very recent civilization upon other, much older, traditional and earth-based civilizations, as well as the planet itself, we should notice and consider the damages we have done, the violences we have perpetrated, and the miseries we have created †¦ We need to move beyond the Christian fantasy that we are a completely good and benign presence on the planet, that we are someho w â€Å"God’s chosen people† with a free pass to do whatever we want regardless of the consequences.We should think about how we can be less ego-centric, and seek to balance our technological advances with tending to the well-being of the earth, other cultures and one another. We should consider how to create more harmony in the world, and a little less profit. Indeed, many individuals and organizations are becoming increasingly devoted to a greater consciousness of how to live in ways that are â€Å"earth friendly. The overall pro-environmental movements are coming to be known as â€Å"green† movements, and they provide good and necessary developments toward a future in which humans could be of greater benefit than detriment to the planet. However, very much work and change remains to be done in this area. One problem inherent with these movements is that when we think about â€Å"saving the planet,† or â€Å"saving the polar bears,† we are still thinking abstractly. In truth, the planet was doing just fine before the advent of modern industry and technological society. Save the planet! † really means â€Å"Stop the humans from destroying the planet! † because we are only saving the planet from ourselves. Living our urban, fast-paced and machine-based lives, very few of us have time, energy or ability to keep gardens, raise livestock, hunt for our sustenance or otherwise live in any kind of experiential symbiosis with the planet. We live in suburban and citified concrete jungles where the animals have become cars, and the trees and forests are now banks, department stores and high rise apartment complexes.Because we have created our own processed environment of roads, cars, industry, buildings, malls, homes: an endless â€Å"urban sprawl† that houses an endless supply of manmade things; because we live in a world designed by capitalism, a world of incessant advertising, sales and the desperate, frantic p ursuit of material things – of production and products – a world molded and defined by television, radio and the chronic bombardment of salesmen; we rarely, if ever, experience an intimate connection with the natural world, with â€Å"the planet† we are hoping to save.Sure we can learn all about the planet, discovering the marvels of the earth in science magazines or through viewing compelling video footage of nature, we can learn all about the planet in schools, in laboratories or other second hand means, but until we have a sustained, direct encounter with the earth and nature itself, how can we truly know it, and what will it ever really mean to us? And how few of us will ever accomplish this?Indeed, as it now stands our â€Å"civilization† is composed of a people, and a culture, that have moved out of nature into man-created worlds based upon the destruction of nature †¦ and they call this evolution. Ultimately, it’s up to us to change the story, to write a new script, to realize who we are, what we have become, and to simply wake up to the realization of how we want our lives, and the life of our entire planet, to unfold †¦ So think about it, and let your thoughts permeate all that you do, for the existence of yourself and every other being around you may depend upon it.It’s both funny and sad that as soon as people leave their familiar comfort zone, when they are alone, say at a coffee shop or waiting in line for a bus, they automatically, almost reactively, reach for the cell phone to call or text someone who will reconnect them with the safe and familiar world from which they have momentarily wandered away.The average persons’ lack of ability, or willingness, to encounter an unknown situation or territory reveals their lack of tolerance for being alone, as well as their lack of curiosity or propensity to simply notice and appreciate their surroundings – as if their bodily senses had been nullified into a potential danger zone in which their very stability of self would quickly fragment should they let go a little, observe and potentially interact with the unfolding world around them.Yes, we’ve learned to live in little bubbles of safety which cut us off from our fellow-humans – we no longer live in the actual world, but in our own self-created worlds, via the latest form of technology. I suspect that our modern sense of security has been entrained to operate in collusion with these technological devices that have slyly entrapped our minds even as they have offered us incredible new possibilities.Our reliance on new and ever-advancing technologies, such as the mobile phone – which in a few short years has also become a mobile photo album, mobile internet, camera, video machine and multi-media entertainment center – has developed into quite a habit, an unconscious addiction that is shaping the very nature of our personalities, both persona l and collective, and even, God forbid, our souls. What need have we, the general public, for an imagination when so many limitlessly stimulating devices are available in our world?Who needs an inner world at all when the outer world of our own creations has become so evocative, so seducing, so ever-demanding, evasive and totalitarian? We are continually inundated with advertisements and societal pressures to acquire new technological distractions and modes of external stimulus. Living under such conditions, how is it possible for us to maintain or cultivate much of an inner world, or a soul, whatsoever?The underlying message of our media is commercial; in enforcing the demands of commerce upon us, we are defined primarily as consumers, persuaded not to think for ourselves, but to join in the latest collective frenzy of technological adventures that continually reinterpret the purpose of our lives. This never ending flood of media proclamations, while appearing as a material liberat ion, serves as a psychological oppression of the individual soul. Capitalism sells new versions of reality that may have nothing to do with one’s own true needs or sensibilities. However, it is the advertisers’ job to convince us otherwise.So far they are doing a pretty good job! The natural world, the earth itself; the air, the trees, the vast realms of animals, plants, oceans, deserts and mountains are increasingly losing meaning and value in the self-hypnotized, narcissistic lives of mechanized human beings. Although it is certainly an abomination of our essential heritage, we are ever-entrained to focus less and less on the natural world in which we live, and of which we are but one aspect – lest we forget – and more and more to focus on the world as fashioned through the minds and hands of men.It’s sad indeed when we ignore what is right before our eyes, i. e. our actual surrounding environment, and instead remain culled to a collective techno -vision of the ideal man-made life. It’s also sad when we ignore those human beings who are standing right in front of us because we’d prefer to text or talk with someone miles away, when we must remain overly-attached to those we know because we’ve lost our human capacity for interrelationship with our expanded world of fellow citizens who we now dismiss as strangers.Our advance in technology has engendered a compensating inversion in our capacity for compassion and community – which is to say, the further we develop our technology, the less we appear to maintain the qualities of a loving, caring and attentive human society. Being aware in the mystery of the present moment, tolerating the unknown, and tolerating states of non-stimulation is the first phase in moving towards a more attuned state of openness and potential interaction with the actual, non-virtual, world around us.However, we have been so conditioned by a perpetual bombardment of electronic stimuli – radio, television, computers, video games, mobile phones/entertainment centers, etc – that it has become difficult, albeit unappealing, for us to re-focus our attention on our actual physical, natural environment. A parallel outcome of our desensitization to the physical, natural world in which we live, is the subsequent degradation of our ecology, which entails our lack of emphasis or awareness on its living/breathing/fragile/organic nature.The danger of this, as many of us recognize, is potentially catastrophic; as we create and live in an increasingly human-made and virtual reality – wherein we believe we are safer, happier, more satisfied, etc – we also increasingly ignore the actual and natural reality in which we are encompassed, and risk the extinction of the environment through the excessive pollution, raiding and deforestation of the planet that we have witnessed since the rise of the industrial-technological age.The degradation of the natural world is problematic in many ways. Firstly, it appears to be morally and ethically wrong – at least to those of us whose ethics and morals outweigh our imperialistic drives – to destructively impact the earth, its ecosystems, i. e. rivers, oceans and forests, as well as animals, plants, trees, etc. One might ask, â€Å"What right have we humans to destroy the earth, simply for our own benefit? Is this not selfish and unnecessary? Many of us have asked this question, though it seems that the overall progress of our technologically based capitalism remains unwilling to curtail its invasions and usurpations of nature, or to halt its path of destruction for the sake of morals or ethics. Where the dollar bill is concerned, questions of right and wrong become thin and ineffectual, nearly meaningless. Secondly, the degradation of the natural environment is increasingly affecting the balance of the planet itself, which in turn contaminates our own quality of life.For a thorough overview of how human technology is damaging the planet, one has only to search through a plethora of books, TV specials, or movies on this topic (i. e. â€Å"An Inconvenient Truth†, by Al Gore). I will here mention only a few ways in which planetary degradation affects human life. In a recent trip to Lima, Peru I learned that Peruvians predominantly drive older used cars, from the 80s or 70s, which emit high levels of visible exhaust fumes making the air both toxic and putrid to breathe.Driving around town there is often no escape from these fumes which pour out of the car just in front of you. The situation is just as bad in many other developing â€Å"third world† countries around the globe. Even here in the United States, where we have increasingly stricter emissions controls on our vehicles, the air quality in some cities is very poor, and on certain days people are advised to avoid going â€Å"out of doors,† or allowing their children to play ou tside at all.In many countries, air pollution is severe and debilitating, and only getting worse. In addition to increasing the risk of respiratory disease, the eroding of the ozone layer has also increased the risk of skin cancer, and it’s become customary to slather on gobs of sunscreen lotion before going outside on a sunny day for any length of time. Industrial pollution has made our water supplies dirty, so they are zapped with chlorine, making our water not really enjoyable, or many would say, healthy to drink.As for our food, as genetic engineering takes hold, what we eat becomes increasingly tasteless and less nutritious. Although these are only a very few examples of the many problems made by technology, there is no denying that the degradation of the natural world leads to our own degradation. The third major impact of the degradation of nature is spiritual. As we become less attuned to the world of nature, which is gradually breaking down, our inherent connection t o the earth dissipates.We become less the â€Å"caretakers of the earth,† or participants in Her splendor of glory, and moreover the survivors of a man-made holocaust inflicted upon nature. We rationalize our disconnect from nature – those of us who are aware of it – with the heralding of a new age of technological transcendence. In comparison with all our own amazing discoveries, inventions and developments, we cannot believe that the earth is all that important. How can a handful of dirt compare to the glory of an I-phone?Our attitudes reveal a consensual belief that we are superior to and above the earth – as also evidenced by our scientific investigations into creating hospitable conditions on other planets, as well as expanded, city-size space stations in which we could begin to populate the greater universe, where we would, even more so, live in human-made, virtual reality realms. The bigger question is whether our spirits can survive – or th rive – in states of stark disconnection from the earth, our origin and planetary source of being†¦This sort of fantastic and futuristic evolution is in line with our reigning religion of Christianity, in which our sinful earthbound lives are to be potentially transformed through belief in Christ, when, upon the moment of our death, we are to ascend high into the heavens, into a cloud-like dimension above and beyond all the messy entanglements of this planet earth. With such a cosmo-vision, such a context of the goal of life, it’s no wonder the sanctity of the earth has lost its power to impel our actions.It seems only the portended threat of our own extinction will suffice to encourage us to behave differently. For if we are only to inhabit this earth for such a brief span of time – until our transcendence into a perfect eternity in another dimension – then what’s the big deal if we just abuse Her until we’re gone, because in the grand scheme of things She doesn’t matter much anyways. Christianity also teaches that, of all the creatures and life-forms upon this planet, only human beings have souls â€Å"that can be saved,† and thus make the transmigration beyond a mortal d

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

The play â€Å"A Raisin in the Sun† by Lorraine Hansberry has many intriguing characters. As I would see it, the most interesting character is Ruth Younger, in view of her numerous feelings and dazzling identity. She experiences outrageous feelings in the play, for example, happiness, trouble, outrage, push, and so on. In the play, Ruth is extremely independent, kind, and adoring. Ruth has a captivating identity. She is exceptionally adoring towards her family. She will do all in her capacity to enhance the way of life of her family. Ruth endeavors to make the best of things. As successfully depicted in the film using high contrast, the loft needs daylight and the glow a home needs and individuals hunger for. In the midst of her grim life in the confined flat, she coordinates all her vitality toward the joy of her child and spouse. She is baffled since life has not satisfied her desires. Because of her stale position, she is â€Å"known among her people a ‘settled lady'†. She agrees to fulfillment instead of searching out satisfaction. With lease to pay and a family to think about, she has surrendered any considerations of a superior future for herself. Rather, she raises Travis and backings Walter with an end goal to think about their fantasies. She attempts to veil her own discontent in plans to fortify the family soul and urge them to see the positive qualities in the revolting. Her dynamic commitment to deal with the family is customarily misused and negated by Mama. In their real scene, a significant number of Ruth's activities are addressed by Mama including her treatment of Travis. Having her maternal endeavors overridden by Mama wounds Ruth's mind. Subsequently, she frequently feels uprooted. Her activities appear to be futile in light of the fact that she isn't permitted to totally accept the familial job of mother. In her disappointing cycle of benevolent activities to disregard the unforgiving substances Ruth even thinks about a premature birth to shield her family from another troublesome issue. She leaves herself to the choice on the grounds that â€Å"a woman will do anything for her family† regardless of how revolting it might be. At the point when Mama informs the family concerning the house, Ruth gauges the positives and negatives of the decision, decides this is a change for her family, and endeavors to fortify the great characteristics about the move. It likewise helps that she sees the change as something to be thankful for herself as she cheerfully expresses â€Å"this is my time in life†. Actually, it is, yet she is clashed on the grounds that Walter isn't content with the choice which undermines her objective to guarantee her family satisfaction. For her, development and additionally change of any sort is a change, so she grasps the choice in spite of the fact that it is one that achieves another arrangement of issues because of negative race relations. Gratefully, she can enjoy the house and see Walter cheerful as Mama hands over the job of leader of the family to him. The restored certainty of Walter prompts a retouching of his and Ruth's relationship and her job as guardian, spouse, and mother.

Comparing Leonardo Da Vinci with Michelangelo Essay

Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti were, and still are considered to be two of the greatest minds, even geniuses of the Renaissance. But which one is more of a genius than the other? Leonardo Da Vinci was born on April 15th, 1452, son to a notary called Ser Piero. Ser Pier has sex with a woman called Catarina, which resulted in her pregnancy. For a believed reason that Catarina was the Daughter of a farmer, they never got married. Ser Pier later married another woman, when he was 25, which is the time Leonardo was born. As for Michelangelo, he was born on March 6, 1475, to a father called Ludovico, and a mother named Francesca, who was not capable of taking care of him. She sent her son to a family of stone cutters, and whose wife became Michelangelo’s mother. His real mother Francesca died when he was only six years old. Both Michelangelo and Da Vinci lived hard lives, and received little care from their parents. The two distinctive artists, have many things they share in common, amongst background, interests, and accomplishments, however, they also have many differences, which makes each one diverse from the other, and finally confirm that Leonardo Da Vinci has idiosyncratic qualities, making him more of a genius than Michelangelo. Although there is a twenty three year gap between both Italian artists, they both have many common qualities. Leonardo’s first works of art were paintings, and were made at the age of seventeen, one of which is called â€Å"Ginevra de Benci†. In this magnificent painting he drew a portrait a young woman, with an amazing background of a huge trees, and then behind those, a bridge, and an evening-blue sky. He even managed to catch the outlines of the leaves of the trees, which were glowing as the setting sun hit them from the back. As for Michelangelo, his first works of art were mainly sculptures. His first sculpture was the Apollo-David, when he was sixteen years old. This is also a remarkable peace of art, mainly because he was able to turn a peace of rock in to a very realistic model of a human. The minor curves, and bumps an actual man’s body would have in Apollo’s position, were included in the statue. Every body part was in the correct position in relation to the rest of the body. The veins, and every body detail were included in the statue, which makes it significant. These two artists, both painted magnificent paints, and sculpted marvelous statues. Leonardo and Michelangelo were both great poem writers. In his poems, Da  Vinci wrote about exploring his soul, and demonstrated strong critical thinking, as well as intelligence. Michelangelo’s poems were mainly about animals, and his loved ones, one he wrote about called Elizabetha. Their curiosity, and will to improve their arts, gave them the power to dissect human bodies, of criminals, and study them. Although Leonardo studied them more thoroughly, Michelangelo also dissected them to know how the body was assembled. Michelangelo was bisexual and none of his paintings were focused upon one sex. As for Leonardo, he is also believed to be bisexual because he painted many women, and also was convicted twice of sodomizing a young seventeen year old, and spent two years in prison, which probably means he was attracted to men as well. To add to the magnificence of these two people, they were both highly skilled in architecture. Michelangelo invented a new architectural form, which solved the Renaissance problem of combining the classical columns with the modern division of storeys. Michelangelo’s giant orders became widely used. There are eight giant order pilasters on the Palazzo Conservatori, which came from Michelangelo. Also, he came up with the idea of staircases, which were used then, and are still used now. Leonardo Da Vinci however, took his architectural abilities to the edge, and created architectural monuments that surpassed his time period, and were declined in 1502 by engineers because they did not think they would work. However, on the 31st of October, 2001, a bridge was built, based upon Leonardo Da Vinci’s notes, which ere found after he passed away. The bridge worked and has a very modern shape. These two superb artists are so much alike, yet they are very different as well. Michelangelo had his very own aspects which made him a unique person. Michelangelo was a person brilliant in sculptures only. On august 4, 1983, Pope Julius II Della Rovere told Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel. Although never experienced with paint, especially fresco painting, he painted the whole ceiling by himself, standing up while most painters that painted ceilings did it lying on their backs. He asked his old friend Francesco Granacci to help him, as well as four other fresco painters. However, when he saw that they weren’t as good as he thought, and have the imagination he wanted, he dismissed them and continued by himself. All he had was two men that helped make the paint. Michelangelo was very bad at mathematics, and languages. He failed to learn how to speak Latin, which was taught to most nobles in Italy. After being taught by Ghirlandaio, he soon excelled to being even better than his teacher, and walking his own path and trying new things. Rock is one of the hardest objects to work, and craft with. However, for Michelangelo, he turned a piece of dull marble, or other rock, into a work of art. â€Å"It would be impossible to find a body showing greater mastery of art possessing more beautiful members, or a nude with more detail in the muscles. Veins, and nerves †¦Ã¢â‚¬ . His work was so amazing, you could see the veins in the hands, feet, and sometimes neck. You would also notice the areas where the skin folds, like the area behind the knee, and even the natural body curves. Michelangelo was also somewhat an architecture. He designed some monuments, that have not been proven successful, however possibly would be. He also came up with the idea of staircases which we use today. His fascination with the human body, sculpture, to a minimal extent architecture, and his will to try his own ideas, made Michelangelo Buonarroti a one of a kind artist. Leonardo Da Vinci excelled in so many areas of study and work that, unlike Michelangelo, is more like a genius. Leonardo was born twenty-three years before Michelangelo was. By the age of seventeen he was already painting magnificent paintings, and curious in the sciences and mathematic. One way to recognize a painting done by Leonardo is the hair. Leonardo makes the person’s hair angelic, smooth, almost like silk. The hair is given life, it goes through one another, and fades, then comes back. As he studied light, and its affect on how something looked, he fine-tuned his paintings abilities. Using light, he would give his paintings a more three-dimensional effect, making them seem even more alive then before. This exceptional artist also used his knowledge of mathematics to put everything into a scale, and make sure everything would seem normal, in the right size in correspondence to the other items in the paintings, and proportional. Although he might have acquired his knowledge and abilities by studying previous geniuses, he able to hold all that massive amount of knowledge, use it, imply it, research it even further and take it to a high level, and even help mankind. Da Vinci also studied nature. That helped him with his paintings which included a forest, or field or anything of that type, and he  knew what everything had to look like. He used scientific inquiry while running observations and experiments. He observed something closely, then tested that observation over and over till he knew it had to be correct. Then he drew accurately what he needed and wrote notes to himself. He published a book about the Theory of Mechanics. Volumes were written by him on many topics, such as the nature of the sun, moon and stars, and he even wrote volumes about the formation of fossils, and flight. Leonardo used his knowledge of aerodynamics to create the first flying machine, that functioned properly, as far as flying is concerned. He also invented the bicycle, a helicopter, a machine resembling a car, and many weapons for war. While he worked for the Duke of Milan, he took the role of a battle strategist and weapons engineer. His warfare creations include missiles, machine guns, grenades, mortars and tanks, and many more. However, he stopped sharing his inventions after he released the submarine, saying that all these weapons could be used for evil purposes. When his notes, and notebooks were analysed, it showed he had a spirit of scientific inquiry, and mechanical inventiveness, that was centuries ahead of his time. Somehow, he realized that it was not the sun that changed locations, but it is us, the Earth, that turns. Also, Da Vinci saw a possibility of constructing a telescope, which never happened in his lifetime, but did in ours. He called it â€Å"†¦making glasses to see the moon enlarged†. Leonardo excelled in so many things, such as anatomy, zoology, botany, geology, optics, aerodynamics, and many more†¦which is a quite significant amount of topics to be good in, only pushing him closer towards being a genius. Two men, from the same region, each the same, yet unique in their same way. Michelangelo and Leonardo have many differences, yet in the same time have many things which they share in common. Some of their interest areas are the same, yet Da Vinci has more topics which he covered in his lifetime, and stood out in. What makes these men even more outstanding is the fact that they both came from poor families, which could only afford them a regular education, while other, richer children went to better schools, and got a better education. Yet these poor men surpassed these rich people, and shone. Leonardo however was dyslexic, and often wrote backwards, and because he was illegitimate, was not allowed to enter a college. He succeeded in over six  very different topics, and even invented things to help man, and others not very useful yet show his genius. In the last years of his life, he worked for a king, and created a robot which looked like a lion, and with every two steps, its stomach opens and shows a bundle of flowers. Although it sounds simple, it definitely is not, to create a robot. Leonardo could come up with the hardest things, and also the simplest, and it is this quality, which makes him a genius, using his knowledge to help man, and extend the discoveries of proceeding men and women. Da Vinci used his ability to help everyone, not only himself. He shared his magnificent intelligence, and that, in all, makes him a genius.