Both Walzer’s theory and Fukuyama’s “End of History” theory fail to convince me. A big part of this is because, as we discussed in class, they are very difficult to falsify (which I think is totally intentional in this case). I am wary of believing any theory that cannot be proven or disproven until years later – it seems as though such theories aren’t based in anything solid enough to truly convince. In Fukuyama’s case specifically, the final line of his essay (which suggests that when this end of history comes, “boredom” may lead us to restart history) is somewhat contradictory to the rest of his thesis and makes it even more impossible to falsify, which gives it less credibility in my eyes. Attributing something like this to “boredom” also seems a little silly, and definitely unconvincing.

Beyond these difficulties with falsification, I am also generally unconvinced by the idea of an end to history. As he have been saying in class all year, democracy is a second-best solution. I think that, while democracy is the best system of governance around today, it is just a stepping stone in our political evolution – it is a system we can, and I think will, improve upon eventually, and it is for this reason that I am 1) doubtful that it will ever be adopted universally, and 2) sure that humankind will move on from democracy at some point.

Lawrence Weschler’s A Miracle, A Universe argues against a society forgetting the hardships and injustices of the past and living in a state of blissful ignorance, suggesting instead that these issues must not be removed from public consciousness; that they should be talked about and remedied as much as possible.

I would like to echo Weschler’s feelings about mass forgetting using my personal experience growing up in a society that refused to speak about its past and under a government that still discourages them to. The situation does not quite match the South American cases we have looked at in class, but I feel it could provide an interesting perspective on what forgetting can do to a society years later.

In Lebanon, the country maintains a silence over the civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990, and the result is a stubborn resentment over the atrocities of that conflict. Many Christians resent Palestinians (and those that fought with them) for massacring Christian villages up and down the country, while many Muslims and Palestinians resent the Christian party as traitors for its brief alliance with Israel that allowed Israel to enter the country and wipe out the PLO, massacring Palestinians and bombing major cities in the process.

After the conclusion of the civil war, the government didn’t do anything to give either side any closure, preferring instead to discourage talk of the conflict (for example by not teaching it in history classes) and making talk of the civil war a taboo. The government forced the people to forget when they didn’t want to, and the result, to this day, is a community divided along sectarian lines, silently resenting the hardships they were put through and the war crimes committed against them – all the while holding onto their hatred of those responsible.

In Lebanon, the policy of forgetting the past has broken a people that could have been saved with a sustained attempt at reconciliation, and so I totally share Weschler’s opinion: divisions created in times of crisis need to be fixed through acceptance and reconciliation, and forgetting doesn’t help.

The Evergreen elementary school classroom election documented in “Please Vote For Me” shows us democracy in its most rudimentary form: candidates for a leadership position and a classroom full of voters with an equal say on the election outcome. Despite these basic conditions being met, the election nevertheless strays from the theoretical ideal of democracy.

Firstly, the students are poorly informed about democracy and its practices. At the beginning of the documentary, Xiaofei even asks what it means to vote. In an ideal democracy, the voters are well-informed about both the system and the candidates. Still, the election had the potential to provide a demonstration of what happens when democracy is introduced to an uninitiated group of voters. Unfortunately, the heavy involvement of the candidates’ parents means that their preconceptions of democracy influenced the election.

Additionally, Karl and Schmitter emphasize that truly democratic elections are fair, which the class monitor election was not. This is most evident in the bribery Luo Lei uses to collect votes. Despite seemingly being disliked by much of the class because of his strictness as class monitor and tendency for violence, he wins the election by a large margin because he takes the class on a field trip and hands out gifts at the end of his speech. Luo Lei’s history of violent behavior also likely implicitly threatened the class, who may very well have thought he would react violently to losing. This perceived lack of safety to vote as one pleases, coupled with Luo Lei’s blatant bribery, make the election unfair and thus undemocratic.

Interestingly, however, there are many similarities between the “democracy” on show at Evergreen elementary school and what we see in many supposedly democratic countries all over the world. Does this mean that we can’t consider these elections to be truly democratic? And if we do consider them democratic, does that make Luo Lei’s election democratic as well? Considering the corruption, unequal funding distribution among candidates, and/or even violent threats present in many (if not all) of today’s so-called democracies, can we say that any state has achieved anything near the ideal democracy?

Daniel Lerner’s The Grocer and the Chief is a story of perception-shattering change for the Chief and the rest of the villagers, Turkey, and the third world as a whole. A notable element of this radical change is the change in the village’s perception of the Grocer. In Tosun’s original round of interviews, the villagers saw the Grocer as “disreputable” (50) and “even less than the least farmer” (48), due to the clash between his relatively modern ideals and the village’s traditional, poverty-hardened ideals. By the time Lerner actually made his way to Balgat, the original Grocer – now dead – was regarded by some locals who had been there for Balgat’s transformation as “the cleverest of {them} all” and even a “prophet” (56). This conveys the change in rural Turkish – and Middle Eastern, in a broader sense – ideals that occurs in this story. As we see in Tosun’s original portrayal of Balgat, traditional Middle Eastern culture has always said something like, “Work hard, be respectful, and if things aren’t great, tough it out without complaining.” Initially, the other villagers resented the Grocer because he seemed to consciously reject this traditional culture in favor of another. At the end of the piece, however, we see a more habitable Balgat that has, according to Lerner, traded up and embraced the Grocer’s Westernized ideals. Lerner portrays that, once a new, more indulgent, way of living was offered, the residents of Balgat took it without hesitation.

What does this say about the formation of culture? The Grocer and the Chief seems to suggest that poverty-stricken communities develop the aforementioned culture because their living conditions demand it. In short, Tosun’s Balgat was the way it was because it didn’t have a favorable alternative.

Another point of interest for me throughout Lerner’s account was the apparent imposition of his own definition of progress and modernization on the story of Balgat’s transformation. That he says the Grocer was always “[his] man” (54) affirms this, as it is surely no coincidence that he supported the man who shared his progressive ideals. Is this the reason Lerner has written about the benefits of Balgat’s modernization? Not necessarily, but by allowing his own cultural ideals to permeate into his writing, he loses much of his credibility as a cultural researcher in a foreign country. In his defense, it is very difficult – if not impossible – to write without preconceptions (such as his preconceived definition of progress) and at least Lerner is upfront about his biases and opinions. Still, having such a biased account makes me doubt that a researcher from a different culture would produce a similar paper. Certainly, a researcher from somewhere like Balgat would write something very different. For this reason, The Grocer and the Chief is only truly useful if supplemented with other works written from various perspectives.

The claim Masha Gessen makes in The Dying Russians – that Russia is experiencing a depopulation crisis due to the people’s loss of hope – is questionable at best, and nearly impossible to believe at worst. While I’m not fundamentally opposed to the notion that something like a loss of hope can lead to a less healthy population with a consequently higher mortality rate, Gessen doesn’t really manage to convince me that this is what has been happening in Russia.

Gessen starts off on the right foot by citing anthropological works like Michelle Parson’s Dying Unneeded and describing her research. Regrettably, she soon seemingly tries to support her claim by ruling out other potential causes (drinking, smoking, etc. ) of the mortality crisis based on statistical data. I see this as an improper method that has harmed the credibility of her paper. Statistical data alone is arguably insufficient evidence to rule out a cause of Russia’s high mortality Also, any kind of “ruling out” methodology for research requires a much more expansive scope than what Gessen allows. Even if we ignore the faults in her methodology, such a claim will always seem doubtful to many.

If we accept Gessen’s conclusion as correct, then the mortality crisis starts to sound a lot like the protests talked about in texts like Lisa Wedeen’s Acting ‘As If’: Symbolic Politics and Social Control in Syria and James C. Scott’s Normal Exploitation, Normal Resistance. In this case, the Russian population protests a government that gives them nothing with shocking fertility and mortality rates. A notable difference between these protests and those described in the aforementioned texts, however, is that these protests seem to be subconscious – it’s not like Russians are knowingly choosing to get heart attacks. This was a major point of interest in the paper for me, as it got me thinking about how (or if) subconscious protest even exists.

Depopulation won’t please the government, but how can an action be considered rebellious if it is not even executed consciously? My opinion is that it can’t be – protest requires a mindful decision to defy your oppressor in some way or form. In fact, I think that this decision is the greatest qualifier for protest. Therefore, I can’t interpret the depopulation crisis as some kind of rebellious action or display against the Russian government.

George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant is about how imperialism distributes power between the colonizer and the colony. We intuitively think that the imperial power, as the obviously stronger force, should be able to control the colony and its people. We’d also imagine a British officer (such as Orwell in this story) should dominate his relationship with natives, especially considering the power his position should give him over them.

The dilemma Orwell presents in Shooting an Elephant shows us that the power in an imperial relationship can often lie with the colonized people despite the colonizer holding all the official power: he doesn’t want or need to shoot the elephant, but does so anyway because the Burmese crowd that has gathered expects him to and – as a representative of the British empire – he needs to maintain (or gain) the respect of the natives by appearing resolute. Orwell’s writing makes it clear that the crowd’s expectations of the him control his actions. This is because the leader figure – in this context or any other- must continuously prove that he is worthy of his position.

The events of Shooting an Elephant also emphasize the power of groups. In the story, Orwell shoots the elephant because of the expectant Burmese crowd. Presumably, then, he would have acted differently if there were only a couple of natives watching him. Here, the Burmese show that they have influence and power in numbers. This relates to the notion (discussed in class) that a subjugated population or people have more power over when they form a large group.

A final word on Orwell’s decision to shoot and kill the elephant: I think his actions were arguably necessary and think his reasoning is acceptable. To have word go round that the British imperialists are soft would make the occupation of Burma more difficult. Put in a similar position, I probably would act as he did.

I think Gatto is right to question the generally (and naively) accepted mission of public education. This mission, as Gatto writes on page 35 of his essay, is to help children grow into good people and citizens. I, however, disagree with Gatto’s radical and perhaps excessively cynical view that the government saw mandatory education as an opportunity to produce a “docile” population of “mediocre intellect” (36). Additionally, I reject the proposition that education is intended to keep the young population childish for as long as possible. Granted, Edison and Farragut (neither of whom was educated like we are today) were more accomplished by the time they reached high school age than most people nowadays are as adults – but it’s also true that they were far more accomplished than their peers. These people were exceptional, just like there are exceptional children – and adults – now. I would still say, though, that today’s population is, on average, more intelligent, knowledgeable, and/or accomplished than Edison’s.

I won’t deny that public education creates a more easily governed population. In fact, I think it’s definitely easier to manage a population that has gone through a uniform system of schooling. This part of Gatto’s assessment is fair, and I’d think it likely that this was an incentive for the introduction of a public education system. But I just don’t buy that this and the government-supported dumbing down of young society is the primary purpose of public schooling.

One reason I find Gatto’s proposition so difficult to accept is that I actually think the American system of education is pretty liberal and affords students and teachers a decent amount of freedom. I grew up familiar with the Lebanese Baccalaureate system, which seems more likely to be designed with the goals Gatto refers to in mind than the US system. Kids take a standardized set of classes, with no flexibility within the curriculum, so everyone memorizes the same classical Arabic poetry and learns about the same rivers and mountains. The era-defining civil war of 1975 is not even taught in school because of how it makes the government look. It is perhaps because I’ve been exposed to this kind of educational system – and because I see the American education system as appealing – that I can’t agree with Gatto’s thoughts on the American system.

A final thought on the solution proposed by Gatto, which is basically for parents to teach their kids differently from the public education system. I think the solution is idealistic and likely to do more harm than good. It can’t be taken seriously as a potential solution to the problem he describes.