What is power?

If the history of the world is a play, then power is the main character of the plot. Everything in history has changed according to power. Power has many definitions that lead in to one result which is; ability to change. The one who has power can change the view of the society and change the lives of other people. There has been some major events relating to the usage of power and the one who had the power and it started in the 1800’s as the Industrial Revolution began, followed by imperialism and conflicts such as the Russian Revolution

When people realized that key to success was education, their lives changed from slow motion to fast motion. Inventions were created and new ideas were developed. Instead of cottage industry, people started working in factories for more profit and efficiency. Systems such as assembly line and division of labor were developed for commodities. Soon, capitalism came into existence. According to Adam Smith, who wrote The Wealth of the Nations, capitalism is when people act in own self interest and rewarded on what your job is. Even though the wealthy though that the idea was logical, the poor got poorer as the working condition worsened and the wages lowered.

As the competition between the wealthy and powerful countries increased, imperialism began. Imperialism was the policy by a stronger nation to attempt to create an empire by dominating weaker nations. To become more powerful than other countries, the European countries exploited Africa to spread their religion, the steal raw materials and for cheap labor. The term “scramble for Africa” was used when the Europeans started dividing Africa between them, redrawing the boundary lines between countries without asking the natives who lived in the land. The lives of the people living in Africa were completely changed as they had to change their culture and lives according the European countries. The idea of slavery increased along with hatred for each other that had been unsolved by the imperialists still remain in parts of Africa.

However, the competition between the powerful countries never ended. Each country had high nationalism for their own country and made alliances in order to decrease the number of competitors. Sooner or later, World War 1 and 2 started between the two sides; countries that supported capitalism and the countries that supported communism. Unlike capitalism where one is allowed to have personal property, communism demands for equality and no personal property. The capitalists countries ended up winning. After all, communism was found to be full of flaws as even though the main purpose of communism was for equality, Stalin, the powerful leader of Soviet Union who helped the people of Russia to get rid of the Czar, became rich even though the laborers were still suffering from harsh conditions.

What is now is all thanks to power that had changed the course of history along the way. Its capacity to change the value of the society and the view of the world has impacted the world more than anything else. Even though the effects may have been negative, there still were positive effects. The result in power depends on the one who uses it and how it is balanced out.

Power and Control

Power and control are two different things that are actually related to each other. However, I think that control is the big theme for power. In the novel I read called, The House of The Scorpion, the story begins with the procedure of cloning a powerful drug lord called El Patron. During his youth, El Patron had a hard time trying to survive in harsh conditions and poverty. Out of 8 siblings, El Patron was the only one to survive and grow up. However, as he started selling and trading opium all over the world, he became rich and powerful enough to have control over people although it may be illegal and brutal. To live longer, he also cloned himself for 8 times, the main character, Matt is the 8th clone, killing the clones and using their young, healthy body whenever he needed one. Later on his book, El Patron tells Matt the reason why he must sacrifice himself for El Patron which is: he feels that he owed the lives of his siblings and ought to live longer for them but also for his own greed. Even though all these reasons seem bizarre, no one dare try to disobey him and his evil orders. All this is due to the control El Patron has over the people and the workers. He uses eejits to do all the harvesting of opium, who are not able to think but only listen to instructions. Some of the "alive" workers and body guards know that this is not right and know that El Patron's way of thinking is absolutely wrong. However, they have no right to tell El Patron what they think of him and his rules because they "owe" him. In the book, one of the body guards of El Patron tells Matt that he can't help craving for his power and that most of the body guards El Patron has gathered owe him for not sending them to jails. He knows how to gain control over people by making them feel quilty and obliged to serve him.

Feedback - April 27 - May 1 - 7. Most valuable things learned from Population Project

What are the three most valuable things you have learned during the Population Project process? How will they help you in the future?

Firstly, I learned to plan ahead to make sure that you get the tasks accomplished and be organized. By planning, I learned to finish my tasks in time so that I can work on other tasks at the same time. If I hadn't planned what to finish and what to work more on, I could have made big mistakes that could have been solved earlier on. Also, it was a good idea to keep on looking at the calender attached to the Population folder because if I hadn't looked at the due dates and the events happening during the project, it was possible that I had forgot to hand something in or to do something.

Secondly, I learned to use the time wisely; for example when to research my topic, when to stay after school for further research and lastly when to finish each parts of the project. If I hadn't wasted time on researching for more information for my research paper and just looked through what I already had, I could have finished my research paper earlier and could have worked more on my raise-an-awareness poster.

Thirdly, besides the point that I was not well organized, I hadn't really thought about how to design my poster so I had to put on my thinking cap and make sure to finish each task given to me in a short period. I also hadn't thought about how to organize my information that I had already collected and possibly wrote the same things down again ans again. I should have also looked back at what I already had so that I could collect more data that I still did not have.

Net Effect of Globalization

In a minimum of two “good” paragraphs explain the net effect of globalization. Use information from class lectures and discussions, videos, websites and “The World is Flat” as evidence to support your opinion.

Globalization is a new word in the English dictionary which has brought a huge impact around the world after imperialism. Globalization can be referred to “the growing integration of economics and societies around the world” according to the World Banks. According to Thomas Friedman, from year 2000, “the world shrank from a size small to a size tiny and flattened the playing field at the same time.” As described, globalization connects people from different locations and make sharing of ideas and informational over the world. This is one of the positive effects of globalization; communication around the globe. Some of the other positive effects are opportunities for other people around the world to get the jobs through outsourcing, and increase the profit between the countries. For example, most of the companies in America produce their products in China and India where there is cheap labor therefore lowering the price of the products even though the quality may be the same.

Even though globalization seems to be a solution to many of the world problems that can open up the opportunities to people around the world who are desperate for jobs, globalization has its own downsides too One of the negative effects of globalization is that even though outsourcing opens up more jobs to people in other parts of the world, the jobs used to belong to someone else. For example, while people in India get the job that people in America had, more and more Americans are becoming jobless. Also, so-called “monoculture”, which means one culture, is mixing unique cultures around the world. It could mean a positive situation but actually it is the opposite. Because of the impact Western countries have on countries like India, people are losing their own culture and becoming “westernized”. To focus on India, due to globalization, there is less stability in economics due to outsourcing because they rely on outsourcing too much. When there are strikes going on in India, people might have to stop from working for at least a day. However, the days missed out due to little obstacles cost a lot of money therefore crashing the economy. Lastly, even though globalization boosts up the economy forcing countries like India to change fast like other rich counties when they are not ready, it creates a big gap between the rich and the poor. The rich get richer as they get more access to new information while the poor have to always be poor working for only minor jobs. As one can see, it is not a matter of deciding rather globalization is bad or not, it is a matter of how to benefit from globalization.