Communist Manifesto-Karl Marx

"It has resolved personal worth into exchange value..."

The above is an excerpt from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. In this paragraph, he is describing in his view how the bourgeiousie has exploited personal worth into an economic means. According to Karl Marx, whenever the bourgeiousie have gained the upper hand in the attempt to create a better life, all they ended up doing was create a capitalist system where personal worth was bought and sold on the market place. The Communist Manifesto outlines what is percieved to be wrong with the aristocracy and capitalism based economies.

I would have to say that I agree with this statement to an extent. All to often do we see a person's sense of worth plumet in the pursuit of capitalistic gains. Simply put, money can't buy everything. However, we see this trend most often in the visible minority. By this I mean the small amount of people that are visible only because of their gains. Celebrities, CEO's, bankers, and the generally wealthy are the few in the public eye because of their money. That being said, I am still in support of a capitalist based economy and government, which is ironic because in my younger days I was a staunch supporter of socialist/communist system. However, through numerous history courses, readings, movies, and all other matter on the subject consumed between then and now I have seen the light. A purely socialist/communist country can not exixt on the scale that America does on the world stage. China is becoming a capitalist sate little by little each day. North Korea's economy is in shambles as well as Cuba's. The Soviet Union collapsed because of the rampant corruption that ran through the system, and now today Russia and old Soviet Bloc countries are a gold mine for any business minded capitalist with a dream. But this does not mean that socialist and/or communist principles can be applied to certain aspects to how a country is run. Say what you will about the new health care reforms, but a generalized health care system is the way of the future. Everyone should have the right to the same healthcare as everyone else, and medical aid should not be resereved for the priveleged.

But I digress. To say that personal worth has been resolved into economic value is right only in the cases of industrialists and businessmen run amok.

"Colombe" Poem

For this assignment, I was supposed to write a stanza of a poem that followed the form of Kamau Braithwaite's "Colombe". Here it is:

I

once walked up

A mountain, to see what I would find

I saw ships, seas and flying machines

From every age, and

Every Time

T

ools of war from empire' past

All rusted and burnt out

Hulks, Trojan horses tanks and guns

I sat and started to

sulk

God ask-

ed why I was crying so

i turned to him and said

"These ruins of man for struggle and trying

Whats the the use if they're all dead?"

A testament to the glory of man?

Voodoo

Vodun, also known as Voodoo, is a polytheistic West African religion. Vodun is actually the word for spirit in the African Gbe Language. Vodun concentrates on the worship of the elments and otherwise devine spirits that reign over the earth. There is a central Creator, who has a twins, which are believed to be the Sun and the Moon. The rest of the spirits or vudon are dieties that range in power for elemtents that have a dilay impact on human life, such as rivers, oceans, storms etc. It is along the same veign as other polytheistic relgions, such as those of the ancient egyptians and greeks. where it differs however, is that there are many offshoots of Vodun, such as Haitian Voodo and Lousiana Voodoo, where traditional Vodun carried over by slaves is modified and incorporates Catholic Christian themes into tradtional Vudon ceremony and practice. Vodun also utlizes fetishim, that is attaching spiritual qualities to inanimate objects such as icons or dried and mumified remains of animals.

Own Poem

For this post, I'm supposed to share a poem of my own that I wrote. I decided to share a poem that I wrote for another class of mine, Poetry Workshop with Prof. Peary. Here it is:


An Observation

Who are you?
What is this conflict, in the heart
Of the interior, of Nature?
Beneath the green canopies
And above the mineral floors?
Does Nature balance itself out,
By some unseen scale,
Veritas, Aequitas, Libertas.
It's the law that we must abide.

Why are we afraid to die?
The only things that are absolute
Are God and death.
No one knows what lies yonder,
On the other side of the dark waters.
It is the only and last adventure

I have bore witness to a man dying
Living out his last days.
He knows it is coming but we don't speak
There's nothing appealing about it.
I see no excitement,
Watching his journey back to God.

It;s hard not to wonder
What it is going to be like,
Knowing that these breaths,
And these faces
Are the last you'll take, and the last you'll see.
I only hope that it's as easy as it seems.

In many forms we exist
From the earth we sprang
And to the earth we revisit.
I'll be able to feel you in the wind,
In rain cascading from roof edges
Grass that tickles ankles,
And sun warmed skin on cool spring afternoons.

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers"-Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when the dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers

-Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"


It seems kind of weird that a white kid from Connecticut would choose a poem called "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" as his favorite Langston Hughes poem. I will admit that this is the first Langston Hughes poem that I'ave actually looked at. I'll also admit that I do not know very much about Hughes besides the fact that he was black, wrote this poem when he was in his late teens or early 20's, and was a key figure in what is referred to as the "Jazz Age" of America.

I probably shouldn't have said that this was my favorite Hughes poem since I have not read very many of them. We read this one in class, and when I went to choose a favorite for this post, I liked this one more than the others that Iread.

What I like about this poem is that all the rivers mentioned in the poem have in some way impacted the course of human history. The Euphrates is considered part of what is called the Cradle of Civilization, where humanity and civilized culture as we know it today first started. The Congo is the second largest river in Africa. It's inclusion in the poem could serve as a reference to Hughes's African heritage, as the Congo winds its way through multiple countries in the African interior. The inclusion of the Nile is notable, because contrary to conventional knowledge, one of the longest Ancient Egyptian dynasties consisted of darker skinned Africans.

Current Even Headline

When I woke up this morning, this was one of the first headlines that I saw on my Windows Dashboard MSNBC News Ticker: "Kyrgyz Opposition: We've Taken Over." Yesterday while we were all in classes and going about our daily lives, the people in one of the former Eastern Bloc " 'stan" countries decided to over thrown their government. Last night, through the internet tool StumbleUpon, I came across raw uploaded Youtube footage of riots in the Kyrgyzstan capital of Bishek. The riots were in repsonse to increasing disatisfaction of the economic sink hole that the country is in the the governments failure to resolve the issue. So it basically all hit the fan yesterday when a few Kyrgyzs said, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore."

The footage that I viewed consisted of this: the inevitable Cops With Riot Shields, rocks being thrown at said cops, the same cops being chased down and beaten with their own riot shields and batons, cars with broken windows that may or may not be flipped over, burning or both. You're probably saying to yourself, sure this what you might expect when viewing riot footage in another country, but what stood out to me was the fact that there was actual live firearms fire between both protesters and police. As the riots progressed and the mobs increased in strength, people started taking weapons and ammuntion from police and security forces. This included less-lethal weaponry such as tear gas launchers as well as assualt rifles and RPGs. Casualties were inflicted on both sides, casualties that include deaths.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I am completely amazed that in this day and age we can witness history as it happens. We can watch a revolution from the safety of our own homes as all hell breaks looses in a previously unknown country. I'm kind of glad that I could bear witness to something few people outside of Kyrgzstan know about.