Taking Paths Less Traveled

Today, as I reviewed the classes I am signed up for Fall Quarter my sister commented on how “intense” they were. Transnational Feminist Film, The Exceptional Child (Education), The Conditions of Education for Chicanos, and Religion & Violence are the names of the studies I will begin grappling with in just two short weeks. Over the summer I struggled with Third World Literature where we learned about the horrors of human body trafficking, and the destructive affects of colonialism and neo-colonialism. We watched futuristic videos of worlds where the bad medical practices of the government led to a world wide epidemic of infertility, and critiqued the use of Black bodies in these films and the underlying meanings associated with People of Color. We watched real time documentaries of the devastation of global competition on agricultural community of Jamaica and learned about “free-zones”, or extraction-zones, where workers are allowed to work, but no taxes are collected for the local community.  Each class left me exhausted emotionally as I the world I thought I knew and understood began to turn even darker than I had wanted to know about.

I sometimes like this little bubble that I cozily snuggle into… The bubble where I pretend that things like that don’t exist… Or if they ‘did’ exist, it was long ago, in a far away land, once upon a time.

Unfortunately, too many people like this cozy bubble in which they can close their eyes and sleep soundly each night. Many people are focusing on their own micro-lives, whether for purely survival purposes or by choice, looking out for number one,  or just making sure their kids stay alive long enough to have the opportunity to apply to college. So, it leaves me to wonder, what am I to do with all this knowledge of the horrors of the world. How can my knowledge make a difference? The world feels so vast, yet so close at the same time. So, I ask you, cyber-space, what do we do with the knowledge we acquire of the horrors of the world?

Related articles

• ‘World Literature Certainly Sounds Like a Nice Idea’ (arablit.wordpress.com)
• 500 Years of Resistance – Daniel Osuna, Chicano Activist (promoteliberty.wordpress.com)
• Philippines: Sovereignty and Neo-colonialism (veeskyememoire.wordpress.com)
• George Lakoff: Systemic Causation and Syria: Obama’s Framing Problem (huffingtonpost.com)
• Not confined to distant lands (marciemole.wordpress.com)