Inquiry Strand Choice: International Relations

For my last semester and colloquium presentation I’m going to focus on public events related to international relations. I made this decision after looking at the public events list, and noticing the high quality and quantity of events brought by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. There are a number of interesting lectures and question and answer sessions with very relevant and cool speakers.  I’m interested in learning about international relations because it will contextualize my time spent in Model United Nations, and let me consider my position in relation to an increasingly connected world.  It also allows for a flexible schedule, and will be a very direct way of engaging with important ideas.  I’m looking forward towards learning!

Feasting on the Earth

I went to the Fall Feast and enjoyed a delicious meal with my classmates. Although it was not the most socially charged event, it was fun to be with my classmates and friends, and it effectively reminded me that environmentalism is important, and it can be fun. It’s surprisingly easy to forget about global warming on a day to day basis. With my mind occupied by school work and social time, I don’t tend to ruminate on the catastrophic failure that this system called earth might be headed towards.  If we haven’t already passed the point of no return, it must be coming soon. We are already in the midst of the sixth great extinction, and who really knows how rising water levels and increased chances of natural disaster will affect our society or the earth at large.  There is such a present bias in our collective consciousness, that if it isn’t trendy, global warming isn’t really talked about in media or in day to day conversation.

The argument against global warming, that this is all a statical anomaly, is clearly naive and flat out wrong, but that means that Humans had the agency and might to, in the span of a century, alter irrevocably the future of the Earth. I’m very conflicted about this reality because on the one hand it feels wrong for us to alter our environment, but if we have the intelligence and sheer power to completely change Earth, maybe we are above and beyond it.   

At the fall feast, I spent a couple hours goofing around with my friends and eating tasty food, but it (and by extension the great work environmental committee did) managed to make me consider more deeply what’s happening on our planet, and indeed what my role is in its destruction. 

I went to the partial Solar Eclipse event at the Planetarium on October 23rd. Though it was cloudy and as a result we couldn't actually see the eclipse, the event was a fun chance to see the planetarium, and they had a live stream of the eclipse in California. I think it is a great idea to have events like these where people can get excited about science and space, even if the event itself isn't such a massive deal.  Solar Eclipses occur between twice and five times a year throughout the world, though they only happen over the United States around once every three years in the United States. This was a partial eclipse, meaning that the moon did not fully obscure views of the Sun, but rather it makes a black dot over the sun. I'm looking forward to August 21st, 2018 because there will be a total solar eclipse that goes from coast to coast in the United States, an event that hasn't happened since the 1800's.  At the event, we sat outside hoping for a view of the eclipse, but once it was clear that it would stay cloudy, we went inside and enjoyed the exhibit on the Eclipse. The exhibit was well done, and there is something very cool about knowing that people thousands of years ago also observed this phenomenon. Historians are able to date events based on recordings of solar eclipses, and some even theorize that religions were formed because of total solar eclipses. This year especially I have felt like there is growing appreciation for and interest in physics and specifically astrophysics. That's an awesome development, and I hope it will mean that NASA and similar projects will receive more funding in future years, because long term space travel is our greatest hope of permanent survival. I hope to attend more public events on science, especially if they are getting more kids interested in the field.

This past Sunday I went to the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center to see Ruth Messinger speak on global civic justice. She was an interesting and thought provoking speaker, although I had a number of issues with what she said, and I suspect with her program more broadly. Ms. Messinger is the head of the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), a not-for-profit dedicated to improving livelihood for the impoverished around the world. The core of her focus was on the importance of humanism and empathy, which is a powerful message.  She clearly cared a lot about effecting positive change in the world, though I found some of her statements/ philosophies complicated her message immensely. To me, the very foundation of AJWS is contradictory. A faith specific organization that preaches total humanism feels hypocritical to me, especially when her rhetoric stems largely from the idea that there is something intrinsic and unique to being Jewish. As a non Jew I do not intend to criticize or demean another religion, but religious belief or not, I find it wrong to distinguish people's quality or character based upon being a part of the same faith. Though she certainly did not criticize other's cultures, the inverse of praising one culture is being derogatory to others.

Despite the issue I had, Ruth clearly does good, important work in countries like Burma, Uganda and Jamaica. Ultimately, I do believe in the mantra of any positive change, and even if I don't agree with her philosophy, I do agree with her actions. From providing small business loans to farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, to building sewers and latrines in the Caribbean, if her emphasis on a Jewish identity gets more people to give back and support each other, then good for her.  I enjoyed thinking about these issues, and I am interested in going to more public events like this.

An Interesting Conversation, and a Dissapointing Walk

Uptown is a neighborhood very near and dear to my heart.  My mom is the State representative for the area, and I've always been intrigued by its diversity and character. Anton, our guide, did an amazing job giving a history of Chicago and Uptown, and framing his history as a fight for affordable housing. Before our discussion in the coffeeshop in Uptown, I'd always thought of gentrification as an inevitable part of the ebb and flow of a city. Anton, on the other hand, sees it as a harmful force to neighborhoods which give lower income families a chance to build a stable community. His view was well voiced and convincing. It made me understand peoples anger towards development, and infrastructure investment aimed towards the upper class. Hearing about the arson that happened in his neighborhood for insurance money, and the fights to stop affordable housing being teared down gave me an appreciation for what its like to love a neighborhood and watch it change. It's proximity to my house also really resonated with me. Maybe its shallow, but its a lot easier to process things going on in a neighborhood that I pass every day on the red line home. I know how badly the wilson and lawrence stops need renovation, and Anton's struggle feels a little like mine. 

So I absolutely loved the discussion we had in the cofeeshop, but then came then came the next hour and a half. For the past couple of weeks in Reel to Real, an English class I'm taking, we've been talking about slum tourism, mostly in the context of third world countries.  Now, Uptown is nowhere near a slum, but that doesn't make it any more right or justified that a bunch of well dressed white kids should parade through a lower income neighborhood. It felt that both sides were being objectified. We objectified the people of Uptown by walking around and staring at dilapidated buildings and homeless people on street corners, and I felt objectified as an outsider rich kid who came to gawk. If we had just had the conversation, I would have considered our fieldwork day the most interesting and engaging of my time in Highschool, but instead I'm left with a stale taste in my mouth, and a sickness in my belly.