Ubuntu and the Holidays

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!! 

This is the time to be happy, jolly, and all that good stuff that usually follows the month of December. Even if the holidays aren’t celebrated by your family, it’s hard to avoid all the festivities of this time of year and not get caught up in other’s happiness. You might tip your waiter extra and help out a person in need. You feel their pain and hope and want to help. And essentially, that’s Ubuntu. It’s a Southern African word from the Bantu language that has no direct translation to English. It’s close to, “I am what I am because of who we all are.” The closest meaning is that we are human through our connections to other people.  It’s “the essence of being human,” of not being able to be human alone and the need of others and interconnectedness to survive. It’s empathy and experiencing others emotions as your own to understand them as mentioned in the Rifkin RSA video. And it’s not the just the survival of one, it’s the survival of the entire world and how one thing is going to affect everyone. In short, it’s the bond that unites the human race through every possible barrier.

To me, Ubuntu took on a “united we stand and we divided we fall” kind of aspect. Taking it to extreme measures, or not so extreme since the world already seems to be in a dire situation, we could say that without mankind uniting as one, without Ubuntu, there is no hope for the human race. There is too much hatred and bloodshed. However, there is always the desire, the hope for change. And in fact the world experienced a recent increase in empathy when the whole world rushed to the disaster in Haiti. Humans are capable of empathy and if we can reach out to everyone as a family, it could change the world. This thought is from the Rifkin RSA video which illustrates that that we need to comes together as a biosphere to truly help the world. The boundaries that people have put up about politics, religion and race have to taken down to consider each other as fellow humans. To an extent there is Ubuntu, but it needs to widen significantly to remove those barriers.

From the beginning of this Humanity Unit, I’ve wanted to learn what makes certain people hopeful in the face of death and loneliness. And now I’ve discovered that Ubuntu is that one “can't exist as a human being in isolation.”  We need interconnectedness to survive as humans and to make the world a better place full of hope. We can spread the holiday cheer to the needy and show that they are part of this extended family. That they’re cared for and not alone. Happy Holidays.

The Virtual Life

I like the Internet.

I really like my laptop, which is my connection to everything. It's an escape, a distraction, entertainment, everything I need when there isn't another human to occupy me. But I don't think I would suffer too terribly if I missed it for a couple of days. However, there are people that depend so completely on the Internet that their life would be incomplete without it. I recently read a post by Ezra Klein and later a post by Roger Ebert that revealed to me something I never really thought about before: That sometimes someone's complete loneliness can only be relieved by the computer. There are unique situations where, as mentioned in Ezra Klein's article and Roger Eberts', a disability or just personal issues and loneliness that  forces the Internet to be "their window to the real world." It's true that loneliness could be helped by the anonymity of the Internet but there also people who argue that one can't be "fully human" through the Internet. There are conflicting emotions with this line of thinking. On one hand, there are some circumstances beyond our grasp that definitely require on the complete dependence on the computer. I'm referring to the man, Jason Rowe, written about in Klein's article who can live a virtual life through a game. On the other hand, human beings are social creatures that need interactions with others.


For me, I need to talk to people on a regular basis, and that's the truth for most of us. Then there will be those periods where I want to be by myself, in my room, with no one to disturb me. But that's not loneliness, it's a desire to be alone.

Personally, I can relate to Roger Ebert's article which states that lonely people desire companionship, love and recognition, etc. from other people. Actually, everyone desires these things from other people  but lonely people don't have much interaction with others. Their portal to the world is through the Internet where there's somewhat of a fulfillment of that need to be recognized. There are some times in my life where I feel I can talk to no one. But the truth is, I could talk to anyone, I just choose not to. So what is loneliness? A self-inflicted choice or something else entirely?

Never Stop Smiling

From the beginning I knew this was going to be a hard unit to tackle. It was going to involve so much thinking and analyzing of other people but most importantly, myself. I'm going to make some important discoveries about myself and probably put my whole life into perspective.

            For example, you know those everyday things we do that we take for granted, like eating, talking, smiling, yelling, frowning and anything involving our lower jaw? Imagine you couldn’t do any of that. Yeah, it’s pretty hard to imagine but that’s what Roger Ebert has to go through for the rest of his life. If you’re not familiar with him or his struggles, this article has everything about him. You may remember him as the famous movie critic but right now his life is completely different. Even after numerous surgeries and the eventual loss of his lower jaw along with his ability to eat, talk, and show any kind of emotion, he’s still doing what he does best: writing.


He's lost the muscles to frown, so it looks like he's always smiling.

            After reading this article, I was left with a mess of emotions. In made me realize that we worry over petty things in life and this article put things into perspective. In short, it’s easy to say he’s an amazing man but he’s lost so many things we do easily. In his shoes I don’t know if I could continue living like he does. He lives through rudimentary sign language and his laptop, using it as his mouthpiece. His connection to the world is the Internet and he has to depend on other people for simple things.  His wife helps him so much and the love they for each other is incredible.

        In fact, the way he takes everything is stride makes me a little jealous. He has no choice but to smile each day and to accept his lifestyle. Of course he’s still living though the pain every day, but it seems like he’s come to a sort of peace with it and accepts it. I don’t know how to explain it but his will to survive is so strong and he’s happy with what he has. I admire him so much for that and the inspiration he brings to move forward through anything is phenomenal.
           

Live everyday like it's your last...

Humanity, Hope, Human Spirit

When this unit began, I wasn't sure what to expect but this one quote kept running through my mind, "Live everyday like it's your last." It's completely cliched, but it got me thinking. Honestly, we don't know what's going to happen each day and what surprises it's going to bring. Not many people actually live this way, including me. We have excuses for that like, "I can't" or "I can't afford to." Very few people live like this and that's the kind of people that I would like to focus on.

 I knew we would be talking about how some people find their best in the darkest of times, but I'm glad to see we'll be looking at old and young people both. When death is right around the corner and you know it, it's amazing how some people find hope to do incredible things in the time they have left. In the same vein, it's also amazing to see how devastating disabilities don't stop the strongest human spirits. There's so many different directions that I could take but I want to look at all types of inspirational people in this unit.

Hello!

Let's start with a little intro, shall we?

My name is Anushiya and I'm a 10th grader with an unhealthy obsession with books. I'll read anything from biographies to fantasy and once I start, I can't seem to stop. Actually, my life consists of friends and family, books, food and music in that order.  Living without music and food is impossible for me and I'm usually quite happy. I hate to see others upset and I love to make them laugh. Future outside of school is a little bit away and I'd like to keep myself firmly in the present.

And as of right now, the present involves my Gifted and Talented class in my High School. It's a challenging class but it provides us, the students, with more freedom to do what we want to do and how we want to do it. Right now we're starting a new unit on humanity and hope and how some humans find the best of themselves in their darkest hour. It's unusual that a person who knows that their end is near lives their life much more to it's potential than a person who doesn't know their end. What makes it so?

I'm going to be finding my own way through this extremely confusing journey with this blog to document all of my thoughts. So... join me!