The Enslavement of African Americans- Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

By: Emily Dickinson


    I have always thought that that is an amazing poems. It tells us that hope is eternal and can be found anywhere, not matter what the situation or location. You might even say that it gives us hope about hope. I think that the thought that hope is eternal is true. It is always present, we just need to realize it and recognize it.
    Every generation and civilization has recognized this, because it is simply human. What was the only thing caught in Pandora's box? HOPE! What does the bible say? He will bring HOPE unto the world. I think that this idea of hope can be described well when put into the context of the enslavement of African Americans.
    Have you ever heard the song Free At Last? It was an inspirational soul song created by African cotton farmers during when they were not being watched.

Free at last, free at last
I thank God I'm free at last
Free at last, free at last 

I thank God I'm free at last

Way down yonder in the graveyard walk
I thank God I'm free at last
Me and my Jesus going to meet and talk
I thank God I'm free at last

On my knees when the light pass'd by
I thank God I'm free at last
Tho't my soul would rise and fly
I thank God I'm free at last

Some of these mornings, bright and fair
I thank God I'm free at last
Goin' meet King Jesus in the air
I thank God I'm free at last

   I love that song. It reflects the hope that African Americans had for a better future. A future where they could. The lyrics are a little wrong though. The chorus is "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I'm free at last"! Also, the lines between every different line should be "Thank God Almighty I'm free at last"!, and it is actually a background song for the rest of the song.

   African Americans never gave up the hope that some day, they may be able to walk free, talk free, and live free. And they achieved that and more.

   Martin Luther King Junior Quoted this song in his "I have a Dream" speech. The speech was a huge victory, and definitely helped the civil rights movement to happen. 

   All of these examples could never have happened without hope. Hope for a better tomorrow. I think that hope being eternal is a good thing. It can lead to the saving of the self, and those around you.

The Triumphs of the British Empire- Courage

   The British Empire once controlled almost all of Europe. No country could defeat them, and only a few strong countries like France, Spain, and Portugal could fend off the British. The British Isles is a very, very small place. It is only about 3/4 the size of France, and only a little more heavily populated. Very few people can claim that they defeated the British. Joan of Arc was one, and even George Washington was an example of that. Britain being so small, it is surprising how it could even take over a single country. It wasn't the diversity of the army, as France had the most advanced technology. It wasn't the population, because Britain was such a small place.

    There is really only two reasons that historians and scholars have been able to reason could be the explanation of the huge expansion of the British Empire. The first and probably less great one was that Britain certainly was lucky. A fair few battles were won on chance mostly. The second was the true way that Britain was able to win all of those wars. It was the soldiers they had. They had some of the most die-hard courage in the entire world. They would fling themselves right into enemy lines and fire, and though many of them were killed, they killed more of the enemy. The sheer bravery of the people shattered carefully laid battle plans, and won all of the wars they faced. There was, however, a downside to such courage.

    This wasn't regular courage that the army is always advertising. It was cold, heartless courage. It caused much unnecessarily death among the enemies of Britain. The cold courage would make you kill your own family if the king or the government so commanded it.

     So thus, Britain was the ultimate power of the world, at least until the discovery of America. I am not going to lie to you. The American Revolution was won 90% on sheer dumb luck. Lucky reactions that stopped the British, and ultimately spelled their demise. Luck aside, there is something to be said about the courage of the American people. They didn't fight for a country, but for a cause. There is no greater force than that of a man with a cause. That courage, along with luck and the introduction of Guerrilla warfare, was what won us that war, and gave the British their first real defeat for generations.

The Imprisonment of Japanese Americans- Fear

     Fear is a major emotion. Technically, it is the response your body has to something that will possibly hurt or damage you in any way, both physically and mentally. It helps us to avoid harmful and irritating things. It can also hurt you (ever been afraid to do a project or speak publicly, because fear makes it harder). It can be fear of a bear, or fear of embarrassment, or even fear of fear. No one likes to be afraid, but it is just a part of life.

    I will now show the fear in the event of The Imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War 2. There are two sides of the issue. I will start with the side against the Japanese Americans. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the people and the government began to be suspicious of Japanese products and people. In fact, the government was afraid that citizens of Japanese heritage would be disloyal to America, and favor Japan in the war. They were afraid that they would become spies or conspirators or vigilantes. A pointless fear, but a fear nonetheless.

   So the government forced the Japanese Americans people to give everything they owned to them for resale, and shipped the people out to what are often referred to as Japanese Concentration Camps.  They were forced to live in sloppily made, unpainted, uninsulated, unsealed bunkers that a rat wouldn't choose to sleep in. They were forced to eat low-grade rations that the army provided for them. They had little freedom, and they suffered greatly. All of this because of an unreasonable fear. This shows that fear can make people do very terrible things. But, it can also inspire greatness, which is what I will explain with the other side of the story.

   When the Japanese Americans were forced into the camps, they were confused, and they feared the government. It was a fear of destruction, and a fear that their lives may never be returned. This fear which bound their hearts, also opened them. They aided each other, helping everyone in the community finish bunkers, plant flowers, care for children, and lived as best as they could. It unified them against a common enemy: The Government. Traces of these feelings remain, but today they do not unify, they only agitate. Fear can be a good or bad thing, but it should never remain in your heart after it is needed.

   People are always saying that love comes from the heart. Where does fear come from? I always imagine fear coming from the back of my eyes to the back of my throat. That is what it feels like at first. Then it numbs the mind. Where do you think fear comes from?

What Is The Human Spirit

     Simply put, it is the way that human beings feel about and interact with other humans. In reality, it is a huge, complex subject you can't put into one sentence. How do you describe joy? Hate? Sorrow? You can't do anything but say vague statements like "It feels good." Although you can't explain it, you can show it. That is a major part of the Human Spirit.
    There are three main parts to the Human Spirit. Emotion, Conscience, and Interaction. Emotion, like mentioned above, is not explainable, but it is show-able. It is our instinctive reaction to change, whether it be good, bad, or somewhere in the middle. It is the way to relieve stress, to communicate, and to clear our minds and spark conscious thought.
    Conscience is the way we actively and manually think, and also the way we tell right from wrong. We make decisions with our conscience, using both facts and the bias from emotions and the interactions we have had. It allows us to create, plan, and discover new ways to do things and facts to help us make decisions.
     Interaction combines both of the others into a way to communicate ideas and feelings. Whether it be physically (fighting, donating, imprisoning, etc...) or mentally/emotionally. It allows humans to work together happily and harmoniously, as well as working against each other and spreading discord and suffering. In these few posts, I will go through various events in human history, and will identify the Human Spirit in all of them.
     I would like to thank Mr. Gant for this whole part of my blog. He gave me the term Human Spirit, and the understanding I have of it. Thank you Mr. Gant!!!

Environment:The Final Post

    I know that Environment was only a few posts long, but like in politics, there are too many problems to count. So, I addressed the overall theme, gave you some warnings, and a few examples to give you a glimpse of the world around you. I will leave you all to research and record findings relevant to this topic, and spread the word of the actions that need to be taken to save the precious resources that support us so well today.
 
    What a fragile world we live in. Millions of years of creating coal, oil, and all of the creatures we know, love, eat, and kill today, and finally, with one species of super-brainy human beings, we wipe out most of the resources in only about a thousand. What an immense step in Earth's history, the creation of humans, but also the most weathering and changing. Soon, our world will break, unable to support all of the human lives that we have a high chance of generating.

   And how deceiving and petty many humans are, willing to take advantage of the concern and the compassion of others, not caring who or what they hurt, just for their own personal gain. Whether it be for money, fame, power, or other shallow desires, they do not care for the future of humanity as a whole, but just for them.

   In the next section of this blog, I will address the cruel and wonderful aspects of the lives of humans. I hope to to help others to understand who we are and what we do. Many things I will bring up. The incarceration of the Japanese and the Slavery of the African Americans. The various emotions and motives we have for doing things, and their effects on other. I am proud to present my next section: "The Human Spirit."

Ice Age or Global Warming?

   Which one would you want? Many of those that hate the hot will say Ice Age, while the majority would be Global Warming. But why does it even matter? Since the closest you will ever be to an Ice Age or an extreme Global Warming is your science textbook, why would anyone think like this?
   
    Well, the answer would be that we need to be prepared. Even if we never face it or if our children never face it or if our childrens' children never face it, preparations for either would have to be made very early, which requires planning, thinking, and reasoning with this thought pattern.
    
   In our preparations, we need to consider what is the most dangerous occurrence. Many would say Global Warming because of all of the years of hearing how terrible it is etc. from people like Al Gore. That is not true. Think about it. Can a harvest of tomatoes and peas survive an extra extra hot day? Obviously, they may be a little damaged, but nothing more than that. Now consider the opposite. Can a crop survive a frost? What if it came in the middle of the growing season? That would kill all of your crops, and leave you hungry.
   
   Prolonged cold causes more damage to plants and animals, and may even kill much of them. With our huge projected population in 2050, and in hundreds of years, if we lost our crops, we would have a terrible starvation. Just because glaciers melt an a few Arctic species suffer doesn't mean that Global Warming is the worst thing that can happen to the planet.
   
    So how would we be prepared for any one of these occurrences? By creating weather-resistant strains of plants. By making things available to the poor that will allow them to work and prosper in colder or warmer temperatures. By making things like Eco-friendly pesticides available to areas that have insect surges due to rising temperatures. It is all common sense. 

   We need to realize and start to plan a preparation for such occurrences so that we do not get caught with our hands tied behind our backs. And who knows? Maybe there is a way for humanity to cause Global Warming or other climate change. We need to be ready and willing.

Empty Oceans

   I was late in making this entry, so I have written a thousand words to make up for being a day late, and I will not count a single word of this for this week.

   Have you ever seen the Little Mermaid? Or perhaps an Animal Planet program on sea life? You see before you thousands upon thousands of fish and other creatures of the deep. It is no wonder that little see a problem in the amount of fishing we do. Such films working over our entire lives will definitely make us a little biased against the scientists who try to spread the word about the destruction we do.

   Such movies and influences have made us think that the ocean is a huge, bountiful place. They think that since the ocean is so vast, it will never run out of life and food. Not so. Most scientists will tell you that the ocean is like a desert. There are so little places to hide, so little food, and so little nourishment, that although there is a lot of life, it is concentrated in a few areas.

    We call these areas reefs. They are comparable to an oasis in a desert, for they hold a huge abundance of life. The structure of a reef is made up of bony coral. These corals provide several key things for the survival of many species of sea life. They provide shelter, food, and a place to do things such as farm algae and perform symbiosis (two species interacting with each other).

   So with all of those traits, we get several algae and coral and other life forms near the  bottom of the food chain. That, of course, brings in predators, producing a thriving ecosystem which can be as large as a few square feet, to the huge Great Barrier Reef, which can be seen from space.

   Reefs were few and far apart already before man ever came to be, and they were fairly safe from harm even when we just started throwing in a pole. It has only been in the last few decades, when technology has began to catch up with them, and start to deplete them. Not only this, but destructive devices and practices (such as bottom trawling) destroy reefs and waste unwanted animals that will not be used and will just become debris in the bottom when they dump them overboard.

    There is a certain point when nature cannot replenish itself from what we take. We have more than passed that point with our motor boats and detection technology. The ocean is starting to look more barren than it even used to look. If we don't do something, we may end up with an extreme crisis.

    Government officials have made regulations, restrictions, and rules, but although they exist, there is no one to enforce them. The coast guard is not responsible, and there is no man-power to make sure that all fishermen and women use the ocean in a good, renewable way. So, if they took out the regulations now, it really wouldn't make much difference. Our government still does not care about the environment and making sure it stays replenish-able and healthy.

   If you want much more detailed account of our problems with the over-fishing, I would recommend either renting or finding on Youtube a movie called Empty Oceans, Empty Nets. It really explains well what some people are doing right, and what a lot more are doing wrong. It shows technologies that we could use to replenish Ocean and Sea life, and prevent them from ever happening again.

   If we were to lose the ocean life, it would be disastrous for the entire human race. No more sea food. To you and me, we might not care, because in the land-locked U.S.A, we don't need fish very much, for we have other main sources of food. Some countries around the world, however, depend almost one hundred percent on seafood to feed the people. Millions would die, and millions more would go hungry. All because we are wasteful and destructive.

   This is a much more serious problem than Global Warming or even Oil shortages, for very few people know how much is gone and how much is truly at stake. We are risking what will be the biggest food crisis in the history of humanity. Imagine the Irish potato famine across the whole world. A large percent of the population will die, and here we are indulging and not listening to the facts.

   We as a people must act. We must spread the word, and help to make sure that we can save the creatures of the ocean for the good of our fellow men. We must act, or have the deaths of millions occur because of the short-sightedness of others.

   My biggest fear is that we will be the most villanized generation in all of the history of mankind if we don't act on this and other things. We could also be known as the greatest, if we solved these problems and fixed our government and environment. Unfortunately, we are all human, so the chance of that are small. Please help to make that dream a reality.