The Industrial Revolution

As we've talked about the industrial revolution in class, I've remembered how much I enjoy that period in history. It's slightly strange that I find a lot of new machines interesting, but then again I wanted to be a train conductor in the wild west when I was little, so apparently steam and coal power naturally fit into my interests.

I think one of the most interesting things to look at involving the industrial revolution is the complete change of lifestyle that it caused. We've talked about how populations didn't appear in cities overnight, but the long term consequences of the I.R. are very profound and extend beyond pollution and noise. To me, I see the creation of a lot of values and trends that still exist in our society today.

Here are 4 things that I feel like we can trace to the Industrial Revolution that are still relevant in our society today:

1. The idea that you can get ahead by working hard and that people are poor because they're lazy is still around (just ask Neal Boortz). While many people today may say calling poor people lazy may be an extreme view in today's culture, I know plenty of people who still cling to the idea that if you work hard you can get ahead in life.
2. The separation of work time and personal time is still very much in existence today. I remember my sixth grade teacher told my class (on more than one occasion) that there is work time and there is play time, and you have to work during work time and you can play during play time. That's just a watered down version of work v. personal time. And just like Office Space shows us, there are plenty of people out there who hate their jobs but can't just walk away from them.
3. The concept of alienation of labor is second nature to us. The closest we are to the people who make our Nike shoes are when we complain about how little Nike pays them in Malaysia or Indonesia. I work at Chick-fil-a, and while I get to see a product cooked and delivered to customers, I don't raise and kill the chickens that we prepare. I pull them out of a refrigerator, and they're already cut up and go from there. Virtually no one actually works on something start to finish anymore, unless you visit a foreign country and buy something that families make in their homes to sell to tourists.
4. The disparity of wealth is still startling and eye-popping today. I found this article online earlier this week and the numbers are kind of astounding. There have always been haves and have nots, but when we look at the process of wealth concentration that started in the Industrial Revolution we can see in a lot of places that hasn't been significantly reversed. I think the worst offender is China. If my math serves me right (which it may not-feel free to correct me), .05% of China's population holds 50% of the country's wealth. And the US, Hong Kong, India, and Saudi Arabia are close behind on those types of numbers. But wow, that's absolutely astounding.

Those Radical French...

So this week we've spent some time talking about the French Revolution in class. On Monday and Wednesday we discussed how the revolution went from having more moderate goals and ideas to becoming incredibly radical in nature. Dissent was crushed, opposing viewpoints, even from within the revolutionary party, were purged and put down, churches were vandalized, and a lot of people died.

This radicalization left no real middle ground for rational, reasoned discussions in French politics. You were either for or against, in or out, supporter or traitor. Part of the reason that the Thermidorian government never stabilized was because it had no center or moderate middle ground.

In my opinion, part of the power of history is being able to compare what happened in the past with what is happening now, so without bringing in some ugly political comments, my question is are seeing something similar happening in the politics of our own time? Let me be clear, I do not think that we're going to see someone in D.C. set up a guillotine and start axing opposition voices, and I don't think a Reign of Terror is coming in the U.S. But in a serious thought, is the U.S. losing its middle ground of rational political discussions? More Americans identify themselves as moderate than any other ideological grouping, but yet the major political parties seem to be swinging further away from the middle. When was the last time some bill passed Congress with so much as moderate bipartisan support? Let's be honest, the obstinate and stubborn bickering has come from both sides of the isle too. Each party tends to claim that the other's platform is going to lead to the end of the world in some way, shape, or form. It's almost as if politicians would rather us vote on some emotional reaction than really reason things out and say, "hey both of you make some sense, why can't we find a compromise?"

And reflecting back on France, how many years did it take to regain that moderate influence in politics once it was purged out during the Revolution? Sure Napoleon brought a little bit of sense in to the mix, but he was by no means democratic, or even in favor of a republic, and he certainly had his own censorship laws on the books as well. It took some seismic events in French history and a lot of time to restore political stability in Paris.

So that brings me to my three questions:
1) Do you think American politics are headed away from a more moderate center based around rational discussion?
2) Are their any similarities between what's going on in U.S. politics and what happened when the French Revolution turned radical?
3) If politics are becoming more polarized, what types of things do you think would need to happen in order to restore some sort of middle ground in our political system? To play devil's advocate, do we need a Napoleon to hit a sort of "reset button" for us and allow us to rebuild from the ground up?

Comment away, but please keep it clean. I understand I'm inviting conversation on a subject that many hold dear to their hearts, but this is for a college course and I expect mature comments. I'll let you know upfront I have no problem removing comments I view as over the line. With that said, I don't anticipate any problems :)

Shut up and fish!

I feel like a little bit of personal background is needed to understand why I'm writing about the things I do. I'm a social studies education and history double major; so the concept of learning is incredibly fascinating to me, and I tend to see education as a tool to help address the problems we face in society. With that said, here we launch into my thoughts on the enlightenment:

I think Kant's concept of immaturity is very interesting. The idea that people are afraid or do not have the courage to use their own intelligence is an idea that I think is still relevant today. I've taken a few psychology and childhood and family development classes, and one of the interesting things that those instructors pointed out was that children who come from families with higher socioecomic (SES) backgrounds tend to be more willing to ask questions in life and school such as, "Why is this rule this way." But students from families with lower socioecomic backgrounds tend to more or less accept the rules that are presented before them without seeking to truly understand the logic behind them.

So while the motto of "Have the courage to use your own intelligence!" is still relevant today because people do still accept what is fed to them, I disagree with Kant when he says, "Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature" (p. 55). For me, when you look at it in a very practical sense, people from lower SES backgrounds tend to have jobs that require doing without asking questions. Have you ever watched Deadliest Catch? Being a greenhorn on a crabbing boat is not the right place ask, "why is this rule this way?" or "why do we do things x-way when y-way seems more efficient?" because your boss is going to tell you, "Because I said so! Shut up and fish!"

I think being able to ask questions is an essential part of learning. As John Bronowski said, "It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it." I feel like getting people to the point where they are able to ask questions, to seek understanding, and to move past passive acceptance could be an idea Kant is really driving at here, and I think that if we emphasized that concept today over time it could help to end, or at least change, the cyclical nature of poverty.

First Post/Test

Being new to this blogging thing reminds me a bit of Xanga from when I was in middle school.

Hopefully this will be more informative and have less of that pre-teen feel we all love to put far away from our memory.