This
quarter in Humanities, we moved into our final unit: Power and Peace: When Powers
Collide. To explore this theme, we evaluated three main sources: Teach TCI
passages on ancient conflicts (The Persian Wars, The Fall of the Roman Empire),
Watership Down (a novel by Richard
Adams), and our own research on a modern conflict. Amongst these sources, we
were able to identify some main branches that are required to develop an
understanding about the unit tile: Power, Conflict, and Peace. Three words that
are very common in the English language that is supposedly so easily
understood. However, soon after breaking them down, it is evident that these
three words have more to them than just letters.
Power.
By definition, it is explained to be the capacity or ability to direct or influence the
behavior of others or the course of events. Power is so strong it can
control and even come to greater circumstances that could potentially overcome
one. We are always worried about other humans harming us, killing us, but it is
false belief. It hides the hidden common enemy, the one we all share: our love
for power, attention.
Power
makes people ugly. It makes them fight their own friends and love their own
foes. In Watership Down, the novel, we meet a character called General
Woundwort. He is a victim of power, is overcome by it. Being Chief rabbit of
Efrafa, he treats his rabbits as prisoners. He lets his best friend (power)
make all his choices, no matter how devastating they are. The same traits that
this rabbit has are portrayed in a
modern day president, Bashar
al-Assad, leader of Syria. He allowed power to bomb and torture his own
citizens. That is what power does; makes such distinctive species into savages,
both as deadly as the other.
Sadly, it
is true to say humans have not learned yet. After having people like Assad in
this world, it should be common sense that we should not fight ourselves; we
should fight against power. Instead of having leaders control the people, it
should each person controlling their own hearts, and doing what each believes
is best for themselves. Many make the same mistake that whatever they yearn for
is the same as others. That is why we are different.
Power
is not something we can merely obtain and control. It is fight that involves
endurance, strength, and will. And this fight is not one that can be silenced
by the flick of a knife; it is a constant fight that never, ever, ends. The
first phase of this endless fight is conflict.
Conflicts
vary from picking what shirt to wear to school up to an army shooting at
citizens. That is, so many conflicts occur around the world, it would be an
understatement to suggest that conflicts could ever come to an end. However, it is not negative, as conflict
changes us in a different way than power does.
Depending
on how we understand it, conflict can make us better people. Think back to the
very first discoveries of the earth. For example, before it became knowledge
that the Earth was not round, sailors were conflicted that they could fall of
the face of the Earth by sailing too far. Their worries led them to discovering
that this was a false statement. Without conflict, the task of learning would
become a difficult one. We could evaluate this with a more modern conflict, one
that I researched more in depth about; the Middle East. It first started with the
Arab Spring, which started revolution between the people and dictators. It then
became a huge problem in Iraq, in where a civil war began, with inspiration
from the Arab Spring. To aid Iraq, the US intervened and established a better
political party, or so they thought. The situation in Iraq became complicated
and started involving religions. The old dictator, (add name), was a terrible
man. He committed terrible crimes, and harmed his people in ways words cannot
describe. However, the one thing he accomplished was to maintain religions under
control, even so by using threats. He made sure that religious groups did not
harm each other. Therefore, when the new government was established, this fell
out of place. Chaos erupted once again, and terrorist groups like ISIS began to
form. The conflict then moved on to Syria, a nation under stress, and a
terrible regime. Unlike other nations, the Syrian rebels were unsuccessful in
defeating their current government, ruled by an unethical man named Bashar
al-Assad. The same civil war was repeating itself in Syria as it did in Iraq.
But this time, unlike in Iraq, the US took precautions, and based on the last
outcomes, decided not to intervene. It might have been a poor idea, in were
many people claim the opposite should have been done (in which the US should
have intervened in Syria and not Iraq). However, it’s the lesson that counts.
It shows us how people have started to evaluate what has already been done.
This
is how past conflicts have helped our understanding and increased our progress
in society. A passage from Teach TCI describes about The Persian Wars, and how
the Greeks, even though being smaller, overcame the Persians by using unity and
logistics. The Spartans and the Athens, not great partners, joined and became
one to fight against the common enemy. We have used this understanding ever
since, that we have established that unity is strength, not power. Unity is
what can overcome power. This is one-step closer to realizing that Power is the
common enemy, in where we all have to unite and use strength to overcome it. A
main source that evolves around the theme of unity is Richard Adam’s Watership Down. It tells us a story
about rabbits who leave there dangered warren. At first, the relationship
between characters is weak, especially trust levels. Many rabbits feel
misplaced and confused. However, when they start encountering their first signs
of conflict, they start changing, in positive ways. Here are a few conflicts
and how it inflicted change amongst the rabbits:
The River Crossing: This by far is one
of the most important challenges they face, as it is one of the first natural
obstacles. It was easy at first, but then they came across a river. It was not
easy to cross it, as rabbits do not favor the idea of swimming, as well as some
were too small or hurt and the current could be strong for them. At first, it
becomes a fight between each other, but then they start brainstorming together.
Blackberry came up with the idea to use a raft, to float over the rabbits that
cannot swim, and it worked. This event made the rabbits trust Blackberry more,
and believe in his knowledge. They start respecting him more often, and asking
for his help throughout the rest of the journey. However, it did not only
create respect for Blackberry, but it made the other rabbits more united. They
all helped each other cross the river together. It also made them more
developed, and showed us how connected they are to humans, by using a boat. They realize their strengths and
weaknesses.
Bigwig Caught in a Snare: This
challenge teaches the rabbits about trust, and whom they should trust. Fiver
states that they should leave Cowslip’s warren because it is “weird”and
unnatural. Bigwig gets mad and says that he is being selfish, since they
finally find a nice warren and he decides to “ruin”it. After having a fight,
Bigwig leaves, and gets stuck in a wire, or a snare. It definitely man-made and
giver Bigwig a lot of trouble. Fiver goes to warn Cowslip, but they are
ignorant of it. This tells them that the rabbits do know about it, but just try
to not mind it, and not question it. It proves that Fiver is right Fiver does
end up saving Bigwig with Pipkins help, because they were the smallest and best
option that could help. They also used Blackberries brains to solve it. This
proves once again how smart Blackberry is. This event also made them more
united as a team, as they share a common enemy: Cowslip’s warren. It makes them
believe in each other with greater respect. Finally, it thought them that maybe
following their first instinct to run from things might not always be smart.
They help Bigwig get out of the snare, and leave together. Not in fright, but in courage and wiseness.
Conflict can also teach us how Power
influences Peace. If we proceed back to the Syrian Civil War, we can evaluate
this at a modern scale. In this conflict, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), or the
rebels, represent Peace (or at least started). The FSA is a group of Syrian
rebels or defected soldiers finally raised their voices after years under a
tyrannian government. The FSA, once a group, of spirited Syrian citizens
wanting to end the regime. Fought for the rights of the people, to achieve
freedom and dignity, most of all, bring the government down, to surpass their
leaders. However, soon enough, the FSA’s intentions started changing. Instead
of fighting for the citizens, they began to fight for themselves, misplacing
and sacrificing, as they called it, civilians under the name of revolution.
They also extended their focus and opposition to not only the government, but
also those who had any relations with the government, mainly religion. In the
Middle East, the two main opposing religions are the Sunnis and Shiite (Shia).
They are both Muslim, but believe different people should take the throne after
the prophet Muhammad, to lead the Muslim state. Syria has a majority of
Shiite (Shia), and is controlled by an Alawite, a branch of Shiite, government.
Sunnis who felt discriminated and powerless joined the FSA for wrong
intentions. However, the more rebels made their military force stronger,
especially with the help of the US’s ongoing aid. The FSA was a positive
outcome for the rebels, but disastrous for the government and citizens. The
rebels began to make significant gains, capturing large pieces of land. Syrian
citizens started questioning the army that claimed to be protecting them, and
came to realizing that the war had shifted to “bad guys” fighting on both
sides, or, as stated by the guardian, started “wondering if the cure is worse than
the disease”. Power made Peace into greed and attention. It made people believe
that peace could not be found, and the only way to win is to imitate.
Nevertheless, it is as pointless as fighting fire with fire. Power with Power
cannot win over the other, but simply make each other bigger and worse.
Then comes the final phase of when Powers collide: Peace or Resolutions.
Peace can be different in many situations. It could be the end of a war,
silence, awareness, etc. For The Syrian Civil War, it sadly ended up being more
of a setback and failure to society, even though still having positive points. It
Influenced bad behavior
(ISIS), killed many strong and wise citizens, created a greater inequality
between religions, made other nations suffer because of the lack of natural
resources and downfall in trade, and hurt international relations.
During the project,
I believe I was a successful individual that represented growth for the group.
I was always revising my peers’ work, and even adding extra information I thought
was interesting. The main strength I portrayed was in my writing skills. I believe
my contribution to the speech was something that made our group progress.
Because I am familiar with MUN, I was already able to right informative formal
speeches. However, this was a new skill to my partners, which I hope I have
taught well. A setback I faced
was prioritizing the work. I was usually so worried about my peers work, I
sometimes forgot to work on mine, and then had to do it last minute. I realized
this after having filled in our informational chart. After bringing this to my interests,
I decided to finalize my work before assisting my peers in finishing theirs.
The fact that I overcame this challenge made my group more productive and
proactive. Conflicts are
divided into two categories: internal and external. I my group, we faced one
internal conflict: choosing roles. We all wanted to contribute in the video,
and started picking on who got to “say more”. It was more or less related to
the experience the Romans had when opposing groups wanted power. However, instead
of using violence, my group found a way to concisely split up the roles in a
way of allowing everyone to speak evenly.
Overall, this Unit
has been an amazing way to conclude my seventh grade humanities experience. A
future question that still lingers in my thoughts is: How would our
perspectives change if we evaluated positive acts of power? Power is usually
seen as negative in the sources we evaluated. But what if we were in a
situation in were power was potentially positive?
Power makes people ugly.
Conflict makes people wiser.
Peace makes people hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for commenting! :)