this is my chatty post responding to a friend's post in my politics class. She was expressing how depressed and frustrated she is everytime she left the lectures and seminars in which we are studying about governance and globalization, struggles for democracythroughout history.
My responding post is quite spontaneous and reflecting my current mood and feelings right now. I have done some positive things that make me feel good over the last few month but i will write about those stuff in another post when i feel in mood. Excuse my grammar and stuff, im just tired to proof read it.
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Hey there
this is a long rambling or emotional outburst whatever you call it
------------I used to think my country is paradise. Its a communist country controlled by
one party. But so what? is it a compulsary pre-requisite for a country to have democracy
in order to have human rights and economic growth and living standard improvement
and all that? Also what human rights mean to us ? are they something universial or just
western ideologies ?
-----------And then i learnt that my country is not a paradise. Even though i live in a
educated family in a nice city, my country as the whole is considered developing with a
whole bunch of problems and so many people living under poverty lines. Then reading a
lot of alternative media stuff, I started to blame the Northern countries for the
sweatshops, child labour,unfair trade and many other problems of third world countries. I
imagined people in the North living in a care-free atmosphere... oh well,not totally
carefree they have preoccupations like getting fatter cuz of eating too much or stress
because of overworking... but hey those problems were ridiculous for us in the south..
you can always eat less and work less, arent you rich enough? arent you having
everything you need for a good life? Look , your problems are none in compared to
ours .. some of us dont even have enough food, education and all that. I found no way to
relate our problems with yours. You live in damn far places complaining about things we
can not even call " problems".
---------I look out for the others and find no where a paradise on earth exists. And i
moved to Canada with this curiosity to live in "capitalist atmosphere" and see how it
really is... it shouldnt be that bad if media say so much good stuff about it. But look,
Aramak Strike, workers living in freaking cold canada without heater, students protesting
against corporations but after few days still resumed to digest Aramak food.. ironically
enough i found myself among these cogs in the wheel. I feel guilty and at points
ashamed. At the same time, i m kind of " umm they do have problems too.. real ones...
not just silly little thing like what diet to take to have flat belly.."
---------- thanks [name of the student] ! finally somebody starts it... yes this first year in university
makes me feel sooo frustrated especially if you take IDS 100 which talks a lot about
global inequalities and POst 100 which focus on struggles for democracy and Econs 102
where they teach you stuff like "theres nothing called free lunch" ,as someone better
off,someone would be worse off is the nature of market... All these stuff make me feel
both guilty of my ignorance on certain disturbing realities, and at the same time offended
by having to study a whole new sets of values that are different from my own.
--------of course you can come to classes, listening to all those stuff and once you get out
of the door, you can forget them all...why do we have to care anyway?we have good
food, good education what else do we want?... i guess our problem is we choose not to
forget. We choose to carry on this frustration. We choose to think too much.We choose
to live beyond ourselves.
---------But , being frustrated doesnt mean being pessimistic. I remember a story teller
from the Catalyst center said " positive changes can only happen once our hearts are
broken."While this heart breaking experience is not very pleasant, i am somehow glad
that i have it. This course make me think a lot about the people i met, experiences that i
had. I used to work for a youth media Ngos. We did interviews and features stories about
child labour and child victims of American war in Vietnam. I attended conferences where
i made friends from hot spots like palestines, cambodia,bosnia etc . Some of them are
indigenious, lesbians, others are exploited or disabled ...They told me disturbing stories
of their lives. I felt touched and angry. But so what? after all these we went to our
corners of the world, worrying about our own pieces of life. But when i think about it,
theres so much i can related from all these people stories and experiences with the
ideologies and theories and forces introduced in this course that running the systems . it
helps me to connect pieces of puzzles to see things bigger and more clearly. It confirm
my previous assumption that our pieces of life no matter where we live are so much
inter-connected. It make me thinks i am being both a victim and contributor to the
problems of the world.
----------So yea alll my rambling up there is just to say i am as much frustrated as you
are... and things that ive studied in this first year make mel so breathlessly small at
times ... but i also appreciate that I chose to come to Trent instead of York ... studying
in a very left wing, social conscious environment where i have space to think critically...
which is such a rare opportunity if you look around the world...
---- and even though i am so frustrated , i somehow do not feel that pessimistic..
------------“Each time [one] stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or
strikes out against injustice, [s/he] sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each
other from a million different centers of energy of daring, those ripples build a current
that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” by John Kennedy
i believe (but can be wrong, my brain is gonna be temporarily shutting down in few
seconds.)
------ so yea im very frustrated too
But i like to think that even how small i am i can do something helping making this world
a bit better, if not the whole than at least the pieces of world that i will be travelling
through.
Sorry for long post
im soooo tired and soooo frustrated but feeling in love and engaged with life that i
wouldnt want to give it up easily.
=)
Lan Anh
