This is the first book to show the psychology behind these explorers and conquerers, but it does not change my view of these enterprises. While it makes me understand the motives behind the individual people, it does not justify their actions.
When people try to escape part of themselves, their vision is clouded. Leopold had a troubled family life and felt a loss of political power in his own country. He turned this into brutal conquer of the Congo. Stanley has been troubled by rejection his entire life. He takes power in physical brutal conquer in the Congo. In the modern world, I think of Wall Street being controlled by a bunch of people who probably feel they need to always be on top, and who knows the stories that lead them to those feelings that cause corruption.
But when people try to escape part of their external situation, the result is better. Sheppard may have gone to the Congo to escape segregation, and he did the most good in the Congo that we have seen so far in the book. Because he was escaping an external problem, not something part of himself, the results were not a disaster.
These people problems are being pushed on to colonial exploitation. People who have emotional problems should not be in charge of these exploits. I don't know if people used therapists at this time, but Leopold and Stanley definitely should have talked to some instead of taking it out on the Congo.
People having problems does not make me change my views of exploitation - it just makes me sad that society allows such people to be in charge.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
The Wood That Weeps
Chapter 10
The chapter begins by describing Stanley's marriage to Dorothy Tennant and his psychological struggles with women and intimacy. Hochschild notes how there is sometimes "psychological fuel" behind imperial expansion and says that explorers are many times troubled men in flight of some part of themselves. Stanley flees from intimacy, and Leopold also has put all of his efforts into the Congo as a distraction from his troubles with his family and his gradual loss of power to the elected government in his country.
The story then shifts to black Reverend William Sheppard, who is sent to Africa with white Reverend Samuel Lapsley to build a Southern Presbyterian mission near the Kasai River as part of the American Back to Africa movement. Sheppard and Lapsley encounter Joseph Conrad soon after their arrival in the Congo. Lapsley speaks very highly of Sheppard, and Sheppard acts as the leader, a twist to the supposed roles of whites and blacks in Western society. Lapsley takes trip away from the mission and dies of disease. More whites are sent to take over the mission because they Presbyterians are embarassed to have a black man in control. Nevertheless, when they arrive, they find that Sheppard is very well suited to his environment. His knowledge, personality, and attempts to speak the native language are appreciated by whites and blacks alike.
Sheppard learns to speak the Bakuba language. He is the first foreigner to reach Ifuca, the capital of the Kuba kingdom. The king used threats to keep foreigners from finding his kingdom and planned on beheading any intruders. But since Sheppard was black and partly spoke the native language, the king accepted him as the reincarnation of Bope Mekabe, who was once a king of the Bakuba. Sheppard explores the Kuba culture with a curious and friendly tone unseen by the writings of previous explorers. The Kuba kingdom appears to an extremely civilized kingdom with wonderful art and a possible court system, but Hochschild then states that the Kuba capital will be looted by Leopold eight years later.
We find that the rush for rubber is the facilitator of the looting. When Dunlop tires is founded, a large rubber economy develops. The Congo holds many wild rubber plants. Hochschild notes that Leopold acts like the CEO of a company when he discovers the vast amounts of rubber his lands in the Congo hold. A quota system developed that causes hostages held to force labor, severed hands of those who rebel, and the destroying of many rubber plants to quickly meet quotas. Leopold wants to get the most rubber he can from the wild plants before rubber plantations elsewhere begin to mature.
The French word for rubber, caoutchouc, comes from the meaning "the wood that weeps." This is the physical description of the rubber, which oozes from the trees, but Hochschild's inclusion of the fact has a double meaning for the despair the rubber boom causes. The Congo soon becomes synonymous with severed hands. At the end of the chapter, Hochschild states how the myth about black cannibalism has reversed: blacks now think that the cans of corned beef at whites' houses are made from chopped human hands.
This cartoon, shown in the pictures before page 121 in the book, shows Congo is wrapped and destroyed by the rubber coils of the greed in the rubber boom:
1. What is the significance of the title?
2. How does Lapsley treat Sheppard differently than the norm and how is this treatment similar to or different from whites leaving behind their bourgeois mentality as mentioned earlier in the novel?
3. Why is the juxtaposition of Sheppard's efforts and the rubber boom significant?
4. How was Sheppard able to be accepted the people and king of the Bakuba kingdom?
5. Why did Leopold want to harvest rubber so quickly and what types of problems and atrocities did his quotas lead to?
The chapter begins by describing Stanley's marriage to Dorothy Tennant and his psychological struggles with women and intimacy. Hochschild notes how there is sometimes "psychological fuel" behind imperial expansion and says that explorers are many times troubled men in flight of some part of themselves. Stanley flees from intimacy, and Leopold also has put all of his efforts into the Congo as a distraction from his troubles with his family and his gradual loss of power to the elected government in his country.
The story then shifts to black Reverend William Sheppard, who is sent to Africa with white Reverend Samuel Lapsley to build a Southern Presbyterian mission near the Kasai River as part of the American Back to Africa movement. Sheppard and Lapsley encounter Joseph Conrad soon after their arrival in the Congo. Lapsley speaks very highly of Sheppard, and Sheppard acts as the leader, a twist to the supposed roles of whites and blacks in Western society. Lapsley takes trip away from the mission and dies of disease. More whites are sent to take over the mission because they Presbyterians are embarassed to have a black man in control. Nevertheless, when they arrive, they find that Sheppard is very well suited to his environment. His knowledge, personality, and attempts to speak the native language are appreciated by whites and blacks alike.
Sheppard learns to speak the Bakuba language. He is the first foreigner to reach Ifuca, the capital of the Kuba kingdom. The king used threats to keep foreigners from finding his kingdom and planned on beheading any intruders. But since Sheppard was black and partly spoke the native language, the king accepted him as the reincarnation of Bope Mekabe, who was once a king of the Bakuba. Sheppard explores the Kuba culture with a curious and friendly tone unseen by the writings of previous explorers. The Kuba kingdom appears to an extremely civilized kingdom with wonderful art and a possible court system, but Hochschild then states that the Kuba capital will be looted by Leopold eight years later.
We find that the rush for rubber is the facilitator of the looting. When Dunlop tires is founded, a large rubber economy develops. The Congo holds many wild rubber plants. Hochschild notes that Leopold acts like the CEO of a company when he discovers the vast amounts of rubber his lands in the Congo hold. A quota system developed that causes hostages held to force labor, severed hands of those who rebel, and the destroying of many rubber plants to quickly meet quotas. Leopold wants to get the most rubber he can from the wild plants before rubber plantations elsewhere begin to mature.
The French word for rubber, caoutchouc, comes from the meaning "the wood that weeps." This is the physical description of the rubber, which oozes from the trees, but Hochschild's inclusion of the fact has a double meaning for the despair the rubber boom causes. The Congo soon becomes synonymous with severed hands. At the end of the chapter, Hochschild states how the myth about black cannibalism has reversed: blacks now think that the cans of corned beef at whites' houses are made from chopped human hands.
This cartoon, shown in the pictures before page 121 in the book, shows Congo is wrapped and destroyed by the rubber coils of the greed in the rubber boom:
Punch, 1906.
Quiz Questions1. What is the significance of the title?
2. How does Lapsley treat Sheppard differently than the norm and how is this treatment similar to or different from whites leaving behind their bourgeois mentality as mentioned earlier in the novel?
3. Why is the juxtaposition of Sheppard's efforts and the rubber boom significant?
4. How was Sheppard able to be accepted the people and king of the Bakuba kingdom?
5. Why did Leopold want to harvest rubber so quickly and what types of problems and atrocities did his quotas lead to?
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Brutality, Fear, and Conquest
(answer to question #4: Why is brutality a necessary part of conquest?)
Any conquer is brutal; one is forced to submit to another. Any creation of this circumstance cultivates brutality. Brutality is put in place to create fear and to remind those who have been conquered that they must remain compliant.
Brutality in war is seen as opposite to the peace that comes after. Lyndon B. Johnson said it was in our nature that peace could only come after fighting, stating that "the infirmities of man are such that force must often preceded reason, and the waste of war, the works of peace." Thomas Hobbes believed that it was human nature be in a constant state of war. Some justify war by saying that it is fighting for future peace. But while many pin war down to human nature and peace, war is also about winning. Henri Rousseau said that in international politics, states must be aggressive or they will deteriorate. The rule is to be the most aggressive, and most brutal, or to submit - to conquer or be conquered.
The peace that follows conquest collides with the fear of another war. And this fear, sometimes terribly, further encourages peace, as well as submission. Fear is the primary reason for brutality in war. In a psychological study of fear, it was said that fear was "anticipation of pain," and that it was created by a circumstance that left a trace of suffering. When one encounters brutality in conquest, the trace of suffering is left behind. This creates a fear of another conquer and convinces one to submit to the current conqueror. FDR stated that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor to create fear and scare us into changing our military path. This kind of brutality has a purpose to create fear. Fear and conquer, created by brutality, enforce the obedience that conquest desires.
Any conquer is brutal; one is forced to submit to another. Any creation of this circumstance cultivates brutality. Brutality is put in place to create fear and to remind those who have been conquered that they must remain compliant.
Brutality in war is seen as opposite to the peace that comes after. Lyndon B. Johnson said it was in our nature that peace could only come after fighting, stating that "the infirmities of man are such that force must often preceded reason, and the waste of war, the works of peace." Thomas Hobbes believed that it was human nature be in a constant state of war. Some justify war by saying that it is fighting for future peace. But while many pin war down to human nature and peace, war is also about winning. Henri Rousseau said that in international politics, states must be aggressive or they will deteriorate. The rule is to be the most aggressive, and most brutal, or to submit - to conquer or be conquered.
The peace that follows conquest collides with the fear of another war. And this fear, sometimes terribly, further encourages peace, as well as submission. Fear is the primary reason for brutality in war. In a psychological study of fear, it was said that fear was "anticipation of pain," and that it was created by a circumstance that left a trace of suffering. When one encounters brutality in conquest, the trace of suffering is left behind. This creates a fear of another conquer and convinces one to submit to the current conqueror. FDR stated that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor to create fear and scare us into changing our military path. This kind of brutality has a purpose to create fear. Fear and conquer, created by brutality, enforce the obedience that conquest desires.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Senior Project Update: Research Paper
I am doing landscaping for my project, and I wrote my research paper on native plants, which I will be using in my garden.
We went over the papers in class before we turned them in, and I had a few minor MLA problems to fix. I only put one space instead of two after every sentence-ending period. And I had Tracy 1 at the top of the first page, and this is supposed to start on the second page. I fixed those and turned it in, and then I passed the format check.
I think I did a decent job on the paper. I did well addressing both the advantages and disadvantages of native plants. The paper wasn't very exciting and it didn't address any ground-breaking material, but it described the history and benefits to native plants accurately.
Happy Friday!
We went over the papers in class before we turned them in, and I had a few minor MLA problems to fix. I only put one space instead of two after every sentence-ending period. And I had Tracy 1 at the top of the first page, and this is supposed to start on the second page. I fixed those and turned it in, and then I passed the format check.
I think I did a decent job on the paper. I did well addressing both the advantages and disadvantages of native plants. The paper wasn't very exciting and it didn't address any ground-breaking material, but it described the history and benefits to native plants accurately.
Happy Friday!
Response to Research Paper Outline
Topic: I am writing my research paper on the presence of racism in international soccer.
Most Useful Item: The studies of job discrimination in my research (from Soccernomics by Kuper and Szymanski) appear the most useful. The discrepancies between job discrimination on the field and behind the scenes were the most interesting. This showed that in a efficient job market, like the market in professional soccer players, where you can easily view the better performances of certain players, racism is driven out by competitive forces. However, in an inefficient job market, like the market for soccer managers, where managers are chosen more for public relations purposes than actual competence at their jobs, racism can sustain itself. This was a very important insight into racism in the sports industry.
Opinion: While racism is still very prevalent in soccer today, I say that this a problem of our culture, not of the game. Critics say that competition and the high emotions of goals can bring out negative parts of society, but they cannot bring out those parts if they are not there. Soccer stadiums have been a place for fans to release their negative energies, but I propose that soccer can become a medium for change. Soccer is great place to bring change to racist behavior because it is always on the international stage, it is the world's game, and it provides hundreds of successful role models in the players themselves.
Presentation to Audience: Presenting this information to a general audience will not be a problem will not really be a problem. While I am talking about soccer, I am more writing about the media, job market, and enthusiasm surrounding soccer, not the intricacies of the game itself.
Whoa!: The most intriguing moments in my research were instances when I saw how soccer was a large symbol for some people. As the world's game, soccer also has the capacity to convey the world's dilemmas. I found this most in these following quotes from Foer's How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization:
"Iranians crave international soccer because the game links them to the advanced, capitalist, un-Islamic West. When they broadcast games from the World Cup, they can't avoid seeing the placards on the side of the pitch that advertise PlayStation, Doritos, and Nike, a way of life that Iranians are forbidden to join." (Foer 230)
Soccer, as a global sport, became the symbol of globalization.There was also an instance of female oppression when women first showed resistance by breaking into a stadium to watch a soccer game.
"Matches between cross-town rivals always make for the most combustible dates on the schedule. These rivalries generate the game's horror stories: jobs denied because of allegiance to the foe; fans murdered for wearing the wrong jersey in the wrong neighborhood. Nobody, it seems, hates like a neighbor. But the Celtics-Rangers rivalry represents something more than the enmity of proximity. It is an unfinished fight over the Protestant Reformation." (Foer 36)
The Celtics were founded as an Irish Catholic club while the Rangers were formed as a Protestant opposition. The clubs' managements continue to build up these identities because they made money off of the hatred.
"Emboldened by 100,000 people chanting in unison, safety in numbers, fans seized the opportunity to scream things that could never be said, even furtively, on the street or in the cafe. This is a common enough phenomenon. There's a long history of resistance movements igniting in the soccer stadium. In the Red Star Revolution, Draza, Krle, and the other Belgrade soccer hooligans helped topple Slobodon Milosevic. Celebrations for Romania's 1990 World Cup qualification carried into the Bucharest squares, culminating in a firing squad that trained its rifles on the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife. The movement that toppled the Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner had the same sportive ground zero... to let the Catalan people channel their political energies into a harmless pastime. If Barca let Catalonia blow off steam, it turned out to be a tidy arrangement for all involved. Franco never faced any serious opposition from the Catalans." (Foer 204)
The passion in soccer can help arise the passion of rebellion. But in Spain's case, dictator Franco let FC Barcelona remain as the last Catalonian stronghold. He let the Catalans release their energies to the sport, so that they did not release their energies upon his regime.
Moreover it is just the surprising examples of how soccer can become so involved in so many lives. There was a story of how two men broke out of prison to see the game between their club and their rival, and then they turned themselves in after watching their team win. While studying racism, I found these amazing incidents of soccer as a globalizing and powerful force. By seeing how soccer is a global force, it shows how soccer can be a global model of how racism has developed.
Most Useful Item: The studies of job discrimination in my research (from Soccernomics by Kuper and Szymanski) appear the most useful. The discrepancies between job discrimination on the field and behind the scenes were the most interesting. This showed that in a efficient job market, like the market in professional soccer players, where you can easily view the better performances of certain players, racism is driven out by competitive forces. However, in an inefficient job market, like the market for soccer managers, where managers are chosen more for public relations purposes than actual competence at their jobs, racism can sustain itself. This was a very important insight into racism in the sports industry.
Opinion: While racism is still very prevalent in soccer today, I say that this a problem of our culture, not of the game. Critics say that competition and the high emotions of goals can bring out negative parts of society, but they cannot bring out those parts if they are not there. Soccer stadiums have been a place for fans to release their negative energies, but I propose that soccer can become a medium for change. Soccer is great place to bring change to racist behavior because it is always on the international stage, it is the world's game, and it provides hundreds of successful role models in the players themselves.
Presentation to Audience: Presenting this information to a general audience will not be a problem will not really be a problem. While I am talking about soccer, I am more writing about the media, job market, and enthusiasm surrounding soccer, not the intricacies of the game itself.
Whoa!: The most intriguing moments in my research were instances when I saw how soccer was a large symbol for some people. As the world's game, soccer also has the capacity to convey the world's dilemmas. I found this most in these following quotes from Foer's How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization:
"Iranians crave international soccer because the game links them to the advanced, capitalist, un-Islamic West. When they broadcast games from the World Cup, they can't avoid seeing the placards on the side of the pitch that advertise PlayStation, Doritos, and Nike, a way of life that Iranians are forbidden to join." (Foer 230)
Soccer, as a global sport, became the symbol of globalization.There was also an instance of female oppression when women first showed resistance by breaking into a stadium to watch a soccer game.
"Matches between cross-town rivals always make for the most combustible dates on the schedule. These rivalries generate the game's horror stories: jobs denied because of allegiance to the foe; fans murdered for wearing the wrong jersey in the wrong neighborhood. Nobody, it seems, hates like a neighbor. But the Celtics-Rangers rivalry represents something more than the enmity of proximity. It is an unfinished fight over the Protestant Reformation." (Foer 36)
The Celtics were founded as an Irish Catholic club while the Rangers were formed as a Protestant opposition. The clubs' managements continue to build up these identities because they made money off of the hatred.
"Emboldened by 100,000 people chanting in unison, safety in numbers, fans seized the opportunity to scream things that could never be said, even furtively, on the street or in the cafe. This is a common enough phenomenon. There's a long history of resistance movements igniting in the soccer stadium. In the Red Star Revolution, Draza, Krle, and the other Belgrade soccer hooligans helped topple Slobodon Milosevic. Celebrations for Romania's 1990 World Cup qualification carried into the Bucharest squares, culminating in a firing squad that trained its rifles on the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife. The movement that toppled the Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner had the same sportive ground zero... to let the Catalan people channel their political energies into a harmless pastime. If Barca let Catalonia blow off steam, it turned out to be a tidy arrangement for all involved. Franco never faced any serious opposition from the Catalans." (Foer 204)
The passion in soccer can help arise the passion of rebellion. But in Spain's case, dictator Franco let FC Barcelona remain as the last Catalonian stronghold. He let the Catalans release their energies to the sport, so that they did not release their energies upon his regime.
Moreover it is just the surprising examples of how soccer can become so involved in so many lives. There was a story of how two men broke out of prison to see the game between their club and their rival, and then they turned themselves in after watching their team win. While studying racism, I found these amazing incidents of soccer as a globalizing and powerful force. By seeing how soccer is a global force, it shows how soccer can be a global model of how racism has developed.
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