Civilization or Society?

I think that now days we find it hard to differentiate a civilization from a community or society for many reasons. One reason is that we get confused because of the word uncivilized. We think of uncivilized to be barbaric and rude but some of the things that the Romans did were barbaric. For example gladiator fights. They would make people fight each other and just for the fun of it they would through in some lions and things in order to make it extra fun. That can make people believe that they weren’t one of the most advanced civilizations of all time because of the fact that some things they did that were considered uncivilized. The definition of civilization is: the stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced of its time. So 500 years ago their might be a society that is most advanced of its time but now it wouldn’t be considered a civilization because right now we wouldn’t consider it highly advanced.

I think it is hard to understand what a civilization is because we use it so often that it is almost a synonym for society or community. I think that a civilization is a self- sustaining community that has surpassed its basic needs for survival. If there is a group of people who have formed a community that are only meeting their basic needs then they don’t have a civilization because they are only focusing on eating where as in civilizations there are also focuses on things like art and music. Also most civilizations have a governmental structure so the people need to be well fed and have access to water in order to care about government or be able to create a structure of government. I feel most civilizations have a sense of harmony within itself. If they had to many conflicts then they wouldn’t be able to keep going. Also they have to have some type of justice system so that people can’t just go around murdering people. Also I think that a civilization has borders and has a distinct place that is their land where as a society or a community might have loose borders or just live in a forest. I think in many ways a civilization is up to interpretation but there are still basic guidelines that separate a civilization from other terms about groups of people. 

What makes a good thesis?

What is a thesis? To us, it is made up of one sentence in which the author must get the reader to understand what the paper tries to prove through well done research. A thesis is more than just a sentence used, if you have a bad thesis statement to start with, your reader will most likely stop reading. Your thesis must be short, sweet, and to the point. Avoid using big words just to sound smart because in the end, you will end up sounding as if you don't know what you are talking about.

A thesis cannot be made if you don't have a good question to set your research off of. You must first find what you wish to look for, source it, and based on all the information found, you can then do the thesis. It is very hard and incorrect to make a thesis and then look for proof to back it up. That's not how thesis work, your research should not reflect your thesis, it’s your thesis that should reflect your research.

It is difficult to have a good paper if what basically introduces your paper/ research, your thesis, is badly structured and fails to get your point across. Is it possible to later recover from a bad thesis statement? I think that most of the time, it's very difficult but still possible. While the thesis does set the basic path you must follow throughout your paper, you can still recover from a bad thesis and by the time you reach the conclusion paragraph, you have the chance to modify your thesis some what and chance to change the overall wording of your thesis and summarizeso that it makes more sense than the one given for the thesis.

What makes you part of a culture??

As we mentioned in class, it's difficult for us to really think of what it is that makes us part of culture. In my mind, you don't become part of a culture, you are born into it. The culture develops through the interaction between people and the infusion of common ideals and differing opinions, all people are born in some kind of community. Culture is something that all communities/civilization contain and rely on as a way of life and incorporate into their daily lives.

How did people living hundreds of years ago know if they were part of a culture? Well, considering that the geographical location of a "Civilization" was not as easy to know as it is now that we have maps, knowing exact limits of a civilization without some kind of mapping is difficult. Like I said before, if someone lives in a community, the community/ civilization is bound to have a set culture so they are born into it. It doesn't really matter if later in their lives, they decide that they disagree with the culture's ideology, but the point is they are born into it and grow up with the customs.

When not born into the culture, at what point do you know that you're part of it? I don't think that this is a question of time and how long you live in a place. You could spend you're whole life somewhere and not adopt the culture. How? Well, it could be that if the culture involves a different language from yours, you don't try to, or never learn the language, therefore setting a language barrier between you and those part of the culture and the culture itself. There are many ways to be excluded from a culture and the process of becoming part of one varies in circumstances and is different depending on the customs if it. So better, what are ways to become of one? It is a better question because while it still varies, it easier to explain. Assimilation and complacency are key factors. You mimic those around you and follow certain rules set by the society.

What process of acceptance can be the most closely related to that of a culture's? I think society. A civilization's society reflects and is built upon the culture, so why is there a difference? There isn't. To be part of a culture you have to be part of their society and abide by their rules, more often than not, to be accepted by society, you must know of their culture.

Basically, you must be willing to become part of a society and accept their traditions and customs and all that is part of it. Answering the initial question, how did people living hundreds of years ago know if they were part of a culture? The answer I have come to after all this thinking is that they don't. They don't really know when they do, they just feel comfortable with the people who they share the culture with or they realize that they were after they no longer are. Its something complicated to explain. If its a person who lives in the middle of two, they might just have their own sectional culture created by the merge of the ones surrounding.

The concept of "Civilization"

The reading, "What is a Civilization?" confused me very much. I understood what it was taking about but it made me confused on what word I should really use. I think that finding the correct words for things such as 'civilizations' is something very hard and tricky to actually do. There are many things that can be said are wrong in a word used to describe or name something.

To me, the idea of having a right or wrong word for things is something almost unrealistic for someone to pick. I mean, one individual can think a word is perfect and can have multiple explanations as to why it is, and then another could find many things wrong with it and why it shouldn't be used. I think it really just depends on the people who have opinions on the word used. The point brought up in the reading was really interesting. The things that were being said about the word civilization made sense to me. Why is it that the word civilization is used to describe other.... Communities? Populations? When most of the time, the ones talked about are in one way or another considered a bit more primitive? Civilization has the word civilized in it, and to be civilized is to be more advanced, more modern while the opposite or lesser of civilized is almost considered an insult and means you are Uncivilized, a savage, one who lacks the communal intelligence or who isn't very up to date on technology, yet when we, the more “advanced” civilizations look back in time, we realize that we owe much of our advancement to these uncivilized civilizations.

I found it thought provoking when I read the quote by Marvin Harris that said, “Human beings learned for the first time how to bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow.” Its true. With all the advancements brought to us by those previous to us, we also inherited a type of oppression that came from a kind of slavery/ captivity of ideology. We received many negatives from them and morphed them into worst version. These could be things easily seen as uncivilized actions, so I understand why it would create uneasiness to use civilizations as a word to describe them. It sounds better as complex societies. Complex, as in something hard to describe because every civilization has had good and bad, right and wrong, and having to explain them would be a very complex thing.

How do you know when something has become a civilization, or better said, a complex society? Do you know this by the amount of time it has been around, the population, or the advancements it has made? Does it not become clear until the complex society collapses and marks it’s end or is there a list it must fill before it can be considered one? In our world now, are we all just one big civilization/ complex society, or are we multiple small ones? I think its hard to actually know because we are living in it, the world as a whole is very connected to each other, but areas still have their own cultures, languages, etc. Is this what separates each group into their own complex society or is there something much more to it?

The Pyramid of Hierarchy

After the discussion on the way that the pyramid of hierarchy works, i found myself agreeing with what molly had briefly mentioned, or rather said, asked during that discussion. What happens when the two bases are cut off? This was asked in relation to another question as to how the pyramid connected with what had happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina had hit. The discussion led to talking about the way in which the culture was still intact even after people were struggling with the basic necessities like food and water, and soon after, safety. This got me thinking, if the bases of the pyramid of hierarchy are basically chopped off and taken completely out of the picture, how long is it before we can see significant damage in the structure of the societies/communities affected? I think maybe a few ways of seeing this is when chaos breaks out. To me, chaos is caused by the sudden removal of something found or thought of as necessary to a group of people. When some people get chaotic, it spreads. Fast. The speed in which it spreads also determines the amount of damage the community/society will suffer because it has less time to try to build it's bases up again.

This subject of quick recovery after a tragedy is essentially what every government nowadays aims at after a disaster hits. But I think it's like the idea of Janga, the pyramid can have many holes in it and still be there, but it is no longer strong and at any moment, a change of balance can knock it all down. I think this was what molly was trying to explain.  Now, when a country is in need, and it’s bases are destroyed, other countries help create a temporary hold, they do this by sending in resources. Receiving resources is not the same as getting them your self, at some point, you have to find a way to provide for yourself, and this is what helps us maintain the pyramid without our whole civilization collapsing. But even with all this thinking, I’m still unsure, Is it possible for a civilization to survive without the two base levels, not necessarily long term but for a substantial amount of time?

Creating a First Civilization

In class, we were given the project of creating/ inventing our very own first civilization. While many might think it is something that comes very easily, there were many factors that we had to consider while making our civilization. Just coming up with the area in which it would be placed in was difficult. We had to think of things such as to what environment would be the most convenient to our civilization based on it's fertility, access, and available resources, primarily water. We also had to think of what we would have to face in such environments. Would this civilization be affected by hurricanes? Could it receive significant damage if it was hit by an earthquake? If a disease came to the community, what type of resources would the civilization have to be able to overcome it? Were floods a possibility?

Considering the fact that as a primitive, first civilization, it possibly had no real way of accessing water easily as we do now, my group thought the best way to have access would be for this civilization to be placed near some kind of body of water, preferably a fresh body of water. We chose a river because unlike a lake, it has a constant flowage of water passing by which would be good for us since it would serve as a place where we could bathe and also get clean water out of without risk of having to ingest what was used to be cleaned and also avoiding the ingestion of dirty water due to accumulation of animal's waste.

With the idea of a river, we then came to trees and vegetation if any. We thought of various possibilities and settled on a lush green forest, to be precise, a rain forest. It is said that the rain forests are one of the most diverse places both when it comes to plants and also animals/ insects. This would be a positive thing for us because it would provide our civilization with a great amount of food already there, it could avoid the need to farm, and to storage large amounts of food. This doesnt mean that we decided it wouldn't farm. There are many things that can go wrong with the forest's food so farming would be something needed, not in a large amount but more of a small amount in which way the civilization wouldn't have to be dependent upon the environment's production patterns and possible tragedies/disasters.

All in all, we used this type of critical thinking to come up with our civilization. While in this process, i wondered, Would it be as simple a thing to just die out and fail as a civilization if those settling in the area, who planned to grow later as a civilization, made the wrong decision or forgot to factor something in while choosing a place? Did this happen often, or where there some that found ways to overcome their mistakes?

Our love for animals

For some reason after I had finished the reading due, I could not think of what exactly to write about. But I had two points that I wanted to talk about. One point was more spoken of than the other, but to me, they were equally interesting. My first point was the role that the need of love and belonging played in the structure of our advancement as humans. My other point was referencing the domestication of animals and the impact it had on Humanity. Love and belonging were mentioned on the pyramid of hierarchy mentioned in the beginning. It was not directly talked about but in the image provided, I noticed it. It was interesting that it was placed as the third level, right after the security level but before the esteem level.

According to the image provided of the pyramid of the hierarchy needs, love and belonging is only somewhat important, that’s why it has been placed right in the middle of it. As was said in the reading, the pyramid was originally made to describe the process of a single human. It’s difficult to see how this could apply to civilizations of people and what was required of them. To me, it’s very hard to understand how the safety needs come before the needs of love and belonging. Every person has a family, whether they choose to be recognized or not, they are born into it and receive some love, while every civilization doesn’t really have a solid origin, it develops over time into something big or they perish. If a civilization is made up of people, I don’t understand how this level could be included in the advancement of humanity in general if not everybody develops in the same way. How is the advancement of humanity similar to the development of an individual when compared using the pyramid of hierarchy and analyzing with prior knowledge? Well, to me, the pyramid actually seems more relative to the process of advancement that humanity and each civilization is required to go through if it is wished to continue and not die out. The pyramid goes from basics needs to optional needs. The true basics that are food, water, and shelter, the basics needed for survival such as finding safety. It makes sense for humanity to need to find these first before seeking a higher level of thinking because it is hard to look for something that it needed but mostly just wanted without first taking care of what is more immediately needed.

My other point was the domestication of animals. What caused humanity to feel the need or want to domesticate animals? Why did this process affect our population so much and could this step in advancing been avoided completely or was it necessary sooner or later?  This process and it’s affects were talked about in the reading and I still found myself wondering why these things happened. I think that it could have been that humanity was lonely and felt the need to connect more with nature and the environment by interacting with the animals around them. In the hunter-gatherer societies and ever since that, humans hunted animals and interaction with them happened at a certain level, why did the domestication of some of these animals result in the decrease of population and the spread of diseases? 

The Environment and Humans

 Why is it that humans and the environment have such a strong connection?

In this environmental unit, I came to learn a lot about the way that the environment often affects humanity and how the environment is affected by humanity's decisions and choices. As the reading said, the natural world relies on balance to stay alive and healthy. Everything in the world must have balance. In history, the environment often seeks balance and humanity seeks advancement. 

This advancement that is seeked by us is not necessarily always done so in a way that helps the environment maintain it's balance. It tends to usually affect the environment’s balance, which then forces the environment to seek balance and change a few things that most of the time, seem to affect us. This is the connection that we have. From the information that I gathered, as humans, we have more of a connection to our environments than the environments themselves have to us because our physiological needs, basic needs, such as food and water sources and shelter are highly dependent on the environment. But if we make a bad choice, it is then forced to change and search for balance again. So for things to stop changing we would either have to stop advancing or make good decisions such as choosing the sustainable option that will make the balance shift to help us continue advancing.

             This is the idea of human flourishing through the successful process of satisfying the basic needs. Each time that a level of the pyramid is successfully satisfied, we develop and advance more. The process of the environment seeking balance is something that speeds this process up or slows it down depending our choices before the balance is altered again. Taking into consideration the altering of balance and our advancements after each one, would it be possible that in the future, our pyramid grows to add things that we don’t have now? I think that this idea is mind blowing. I wonder if it’s actually possible. In the past, did they have knowledge of the things that are further up on the pyramid and just didn’t do it or were they completely unknown? It would make sense for them to not know of the levels we have now but I cant imagine there being more to it than there is now because we are very thoughtful people and have gotten down all the basics and emotional necessities, we are just focusing now on intellectual things. But if this process does continue, I think that it could be possible for new levels to develop because we are never really done learning, at least not yet.

Haiti Thesis Statement

One Sentence Thesis Statement:

There are numerous natural disasters that have severely affected Haiti yet the country’s infrastructure has not yet improved and the lack of a construction code that would provide with a building guideline, affects the safety of the Haitian people and keeps Haiti’s economy from advancing.

Looking back can be productive

While reading the report on Haiti and the earthquake, I took various notes. Just today I looked back at what I wrote down and noticed things I hadn’t noticed before. I think looking back to notes taken is a really good way to formulate questions because through your notes not only do you remember more clearly what it was that you were reading about but also you come up with new questions and things such as events to connect it with. When taking notes, you use prior knowledge to make connections and inferences to later formulate questions. When you look back and read previous notes on a subject you’ve been working on, you use prior knowledge and the things that you’ve learned to then think more and to analyze what you thought before. You can then come up with even more questions that will help you learn more.

So when I was looking at my notes, I saw that I quoted a part of the reading and next to it wrote: Why had the aid taken longer than it should have? But after reading it again I made a connection.

The part of the text that I quoted was:

“Delays in aid distribution led to angry appeals from aid workers and survivors, and some looting and sporadic violence were observed. There were also accounts of looters wounded or killed by vigilantes and neighborhoods that had constructed their own roadblock barricades.” It reminded me of what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina left them in devastation and while private organizations provided aid, the federal government took a long time doing their job and providing aid. Looting became a really big problem in New Orleans and looters were also shot. Even though, in my opinion, New Orleans had much more of a reason to turn chaotic because they were in need of resources just like Haiti but in New Orleans, they went far longer than they should have without them. It’s true, Haiti also suffered very much with the earthquake and the aftershocks but aid arrived relatively quickly compared to New Orleans, but I think it should have arrived even earlier than it did.

Would have chaos and violent measures been able to be avoided if international aid had arrived earlier to Haiti? Its difficult to say but taking into account the circumstances in which things turned chaotic, it could be that the level of it could have been much lower and it would have lasted less. Also, the way in which aid was given, by dropping it from airplanes, throwing it out in the streets, it just made the people more desperate to get the resources provided. I think some kind of rationing should have taken place.

Bibliography card

         We have been learning about the proper ways to research and find sources through questions made to help us find certain information that we believe will help us in our research question/topic. My question in the previous post was... Given the fact that Haiti has experienced numerous Earthquakes in the past, why weren't all or at least most of their structures earthquake-proof? I would like to make a few adjustments to that question since I found I few things that pointed at disasters in general. Haiti's overall infrastructure lacks the strength to withstand most of the natural disasters with which it has been faced with and with which it is currently and predicted to face.
The following information is what would go in my bibliography card for my sources....


Primary- Newspaper Article
Delva, Joseph Guyler. "Collapse 'was like an earthquake'; Haitian school. At least 50 dead; many still trapped." The Gazette (Montreal) sec. News. (November 8, 2008), 19
ProQuest Advanced Search
Keywords:
Haiti AND earthquakes. Destruction OR destroyed. Before Jan. 1, 2010.
(this source helps me with information of what the consequences of not having a standardized building/construction code has been).


Secondary- Reflective Report
Van Belle, Douglas A. "New York Times and network TV news coverage of foreign disasters: The significance of the insignificant variables." Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly vol. 77, no.1 (Spring 2000), 50-70
ProQuest Advanced Search (or Scholarly Journals- Columbia Publications)
Keywords:
Haiti AND earthquakes. Standardized building. Before Jan. 1, 2010.
(This source helps me with information that demonstrates why standardized building/contruction would be useful to do in Haiti).


Primary- Newspaper
"EARTHQUAKES IS HAITI.: Houses Destroyed and Damaged at Gonaives, but No Loss of Life." Washington Post (Jan 16, 1908), 2 
ProQuest Advanced Search (or Historical Newpapers- Washinton Post)
Keywords:
Haiti AND earthquakes. Destruction OR destroyed. Before Jan. 1, 2010.
(This source provides me with information and an example of previous earthquakes that have also caused buildings and houses to be damaged or destroyed.)

Using sources in research. Advanced Search-ProQuest

In class we learned ways to come up with sources when researching. Basically, you have your general question, which is what you are trying to base your research on. Then you have your sources, which are what you use to find specific information on the subject you are researching.  
I chose my question to be... Given the fact that Haiti has experienced numerous Earthquakes in the past, why weren't all or at least most of their structures earthquake-proof? Using ProQuest Advanced Search, I would then come up with sources I would need to find out about. For example, I would type into the search: devastating earthquakes in Haiti and limit the dates from 1850-2009. I would put the latest as the last month of 2009 so that I could avoid information on the current earthquake that happened in 2010, I would go only as far back as 1850 because in my opinion, buildings constructed before 1850 would not count as buildings that would be influenced by the environment since standardized earthquake proof structures were not developed until much later.

Haiti does not have any kind of standardized construction requirements that must be followed so what this source proved to me after I searched it was that with all the previous earthquakes they have had, even if in the late 1900’s the country was not economically stable or able to make standardized building plans or requirements that had to be followed in construction, once they entered the twenty first century, an effort to begin making buildings safer should have been made. This effort should have been made at least for important buildings such as the main jail and presidential palace that collapsed during the 2010 earthquake because their foundations were not strong enough to withhold the earthquake’s impact or aftershocks. The effort should have had included at least some kind of remodeling that followed safety building code that made them more stable and capable of withstand stronger earthquakes.

Another source that would help me find more information on the topic question I chose would be to search the annual percentage of houses and buildings that collapse after a natural disaster. When I entered the search, I came out with many different sources to look at but none seemed to give me exactly what I wanted. From this, I would have to either think of another way of phrasing it or another source to search OR, reading as much as I could take notes on things somewhat relevant to what I was looking for and summarize it to come out with something else that was not necessarily what I wanted at first but that could be just as useful.

I think that when doing research, one must keep an open mind. You must have an idea of what you want to learn about but be ready to change and begin to gather different information if what you wanted was something that you either could not find due to lack of searching skills or lack of information on it recorded.

Why was Haiti not prepared for the earthquake?

There's a long history of natural disasters so why was Haiti not prepared for it? The reading on the Haiti earthquake highlighted an issue that exists in many countries around the world. This issue is the lack of a standardized building code. For example, in an area that is often hit with hurricanes and tornadoes, buildings should have shatter proof windows while in a place that often experiences earthquakes, buildings should have standardized structures that guarantee they will withstand the impact of an earthquake. Haiti lacked this kind of preparation and precautions. Before the earthquake, Haiti was already a country with high levels of poverty, the earthquake just made it worse. The fact that Haiti was overall, a poor country, did not help much with the emergency created by the earthquake. It affected a great part of the poor population as well as a big part of the high-class population such as those who worked for the government.

Many were crushed under fallen structures that collapsed due to the lack of stability and strength in their bases to withhold the impact and movement created by the earthquake and aftershocks. In my opinion, the lack of stability in structures such as homes was probably the most devastating and affecting issue caused by the earthquake. It left many people homeless, without shelter and in some cases, left children orphaned. All of these things caused by the loss of homes created disorganization and havoc that later turned into violence and looting. This disorganization was worsened by the destruction of the capital’s presidential palace, which provided as a meeting place for those in charge. But what in my opinion made the most impact was the collapse of the main jail in Haiti’s capital. There were many criminals in that jail that were able to escape. They could have and probably did cause harm to the citizens, creating more chaos.

If Haiti were a wealthy country, they would have been able to provide for themselves in such events. Not only did they lack economic resources as a country but they also lacked the resources to be able to provide for its citizens. I think that the emergency period set by the UN should have been extended until there were enough places set up as the shelter  for those who’s homes had collapsed. In the future, Haiti and other countries should pay attention to previous events that relation with what they would soon face. If long ago, the city’s structures had also been completely destroyed, there should have been plans made to create blueprints that guaranterized the structures stability and by that, making it safe to life in.