Stranger in the Village

Reading this essay was somewhat painful. I mean no offense to Baldwin; he seems to be a great man with a plethora of deep thoughts and incredible insight. However, the sheer abundance of thoughts is somewhat off-putting when you look at a single paragraph and see about 3-4 impressive ideas, all of which could easily sidetrack you for an entire hour.
Still, once you wind your way down to the conclusion of his essay, his intention is made clear in a single sentence.

"This worlds white no longer, and it will never be white again."

Throughout the entire essay, he has been pressing on us the way he has been set apart from this isolated Swiss village, all due to his dark skin, his Negro background. He talks about how the villagers would subtly, unwittingly in the cases of some, mark him as something unnatural, something foreign, alien thing that happened to drop in their town.

We note his bitterness towards such treatment, wince sympathetically when a bistro owner's wife tells him how the village had 'bought' some of his kinsmen in Africa to save their souls. We nod in understanding when he explains to us the contrast of heritages between the blacks and whites, in which the white, with "...Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aeschylus, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Racine...", is unfailingly superior to the ancient Africans of the past who were "...watching the conquerors arrive."

All of this comes to a head when, finally, Baldwin makes his point. (By this point, you might have developed a slight headache from the overabundance of deep ideas.)

In my opinion, after reading the last two passages of his essay, Baldwin is attempting to make the white Americans see that ignoring, subjugating, oppressing the black Americans will not make them go away. No matter how the whites may wish to erase the black existence from American society, Negroes are there to stay. They are a part of America now. Even if the whites wish to return to a society free of blacks, they cannot, for even the whites have been irrevocably changed, as have the black Americans. Their attempts to erase the blacks from American society only serve to nail in the fact that blacks are an unchangeable part of America, that they feel threatened enough to try and destroy them.

Do we want to be conscious of the rules of a place where we live?

I would say yes, if only so that I could offending someone accidentally. It doesn't matter if the rules were right or wrong, only that I know what they are. That way, if I break a rule, it will be deliberately, because I viewed the rules, looked them over, compared them to the words of my heart and found them wanting.
Yes, you could go your whole life blind, but ignorance does not pave the way for a society of free-thinkers. I would rather know what my world is like so that I would know if there is injustice about.

Scars and Mothers

I was thinking back to my childhood, and I realized just how hard I was on my mom. As a child, all I (and my mother) have ever heard was "Oh, such a pretty child!", "Oh, she takes after her beautiful mother.", "She's so pretty; I wonder what she'll look like when she grows up."

Looking back at my old photos, I really was. The little kid me glowed even through the old picture with cheery precociousness, with that intangible feel of standing out of the crowd. My mother's old photos of herself as a girl are the same way. Both of us stand out in that strange way, just too different, too unique to blur into nothing in a crowd.

Now, when I look over myself, I realize to my own shock that I did inherit a lot of my mother's good features. My complexion is smooth, my hair is thick, my features are somewhat European, despite my obvious Asian descent.

And yet...I wonder if she's still haunted somewhat by my scars?

When I was seven, I received a gash on my chin, 6 stitches in total. She was there with me in the emergency room, but I wasn't the one who needed comforting. Then, when I was in 5th grade, a large collie bit me squarely in the face. My nose, my cheek was torn, and the doctor said worriedly that the gashes were uneven.

That time, it was my brother who stood with me as the doctor sewed up the wounds, while my mother sobbed outside the door, unable to bear the sight of bright blood, flashing needle, and her own child lying on the bed, pale and shell-shocked. I forget how many stitches there were. All I can remember was pain due to the fact that the doctor couldn't put in so much anethsia on my brain, and my brother's hand growing numb and fingernail-marked as I gripped onto him like a lifeline. I guess...he was, of a sort. He really is my brother, despite our vastly different souls.

After that, my mother seemed to go somewhat mad in my child's eyes. She spent money here and there, buying products promising smooth skin, blemish removal. She got this strange silicon patch that I was to wear to bed, and even through the day if I could manage it. There were powders, creams, and even, to my utter disbelief, a plastic surgeon. I never did actually undergo surgery to remove my scars, but it stuck in my head for a long time. Was my mother ashamed of my scars?

I know now that she was only scared for me. She had given birth to what was like a model of future beauty, a perfect girl child. And now, scars would rip away her daughter's beauty and steal from her something material, but precious all the same. She gave me lectures, tried to impress on me the importance of taking care of my skin, my face, my scars. I rebelled. I was a wild child, not to be bound by rules of physical beauty.

My scars are faint now, hardly visible, but every so often the light will show strange rises and falls on my skin. I wonder sometimes...

Does my mother still wish that I was a quieter child, still unmarred and perfect?

Different Cultures

I think its such a pity that so many languages and cultures are dying out. Like Emerson was saying, it may go against the convention, but the thoughts your own brain creates are your own personal genius. Well, these indigenous people thought up this entire culture, language, beliefs, values. It is their personal genius, and now it's dying out with them. It's not remembered, it's not recorded, and it's most certainly not being valued enough, if we aren't trying to preserve their thoughts in some way.

For the question of whether or not I would go and live with these kinds of people for a year...I would say, yes. Yes, I would. It would be hard, for the first few days, maybe even a few weeks, but the knowledge that it would give me of myself would be of far more value than the ability to go on FaceBook to send virtual flowers to a person I barely know.

Gorilla: Forest to Zoo

"What aspects of human life over the past several thousand years could be likened to a gorilla going from a forest to a zoo?"

Before, a human's life was relatively simple, at least, in terms of thinking. They only hunted, mated, and died. There wasn't a need for them to think deep thoughts, or contemplate the universe, or why things were as they were.

However, once technology came, it, in a way, trapped them with time. Humans were given a period of time in which they had nothing to do, because tools had cut down the time needed to work to survive. Because of it, humans were sort of caged, given plentiful amount of time to just sit and ponder.

If life were just hunting, eating, sleeping, with no time to think, or contemplate, humans wouldn't have the time, or energy to worry or hate. To worry, one has to have the free time to worry, and if technology hadn't given us that free time, I don't think humans would have even had the energy to think about anything other that food, sleep, and sex.

So, a gorilla is taken from the simple, untroubled life of the forest, in which he only need think about food, and would then not even comprehend that there were other matters to worry about. He is then put in a place where food is no longer the problem, but he is now unable to do anything. He is trapped to sit there and do nothing, except *Drum roll*....think.

Humans were once just animals, comprehending only that they needed food. Then, technology came, advanced, and gave them a period of time in which they could just sit. Do nothing. Think.

Choices

What choices have led to our current global situation?

This question is REALLY general, because there are so many things going on around our world that could be defined as a ‘global situation’.

One choice, or rather, one problem is the lack of specific information. Without the information needed to make a real decision, people are forced to make a choice they might not have chosen had they had the necessary understanding of the situation.

For example, the water shortage in Taiwan. The people of the village knew only that the water prices had gone up and that the river was no longer a viable option for their needs. However, when a person gave them the details of their new water situation, the people were shocked and affirmed that they probably would not have chosen this ‘solution’.

So, many of the choices that have led to negative global situations are ones made without knowledge and understanding.

Other choices that resulted in a negative global situation are the ones made without proper planning, like the hurried construction of factories in China. Because people did not plan properly for the waste and for the environmental destruction, China’s rivers were made unusable for drinking, or even irrigating. Now, they have this huge problem with clean water.