American History since 1865

What was the Free Silver issue? In the aftermath of 2008 financial crisis, it becomes increasingly clear to more and more Americans that it is specifically the proper functioning of America’s financial system, which should be considered the foremost key to ensuring this country’s economic well-being.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on American History since 1865 specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Therefore, making inquiries into the history of this system’s functioning appears especially important – by learning about the past, we will be in a position to have a better understanding of what may account for the financial challenges of the future. In my essay, I will aim to substantiate the validity of this suggestion at length in regards to the so-called Free Silver issue, which used to define the essence of American socio-economic discourse during the course of late 19th and early 20th centu ries. The Free Silver issue is best defined in terms of the debate, which taken place between the supporters of maintaining a single Gold standard, as the mean of ensuring the buying power of U.S. Dollar, on the one hand, and the advocates of monetary bimetallism, which promoted the institutionalization of an additional Silver standard, on the other. The reason why bimetallists pursued with promoting their monetary agenda is that they believed that without being provided with the sufficient ‘monetary mass’, the American economy will not be able to maintain its functional vitality.1 Given the fact that at the end of 19th century America’s gold reserves were severely limited and the fact that at that time, U.S. Dollar enjoyed the status of a freely converted currency (in a sense that it could be converted into gold upon demand), the only way to increase the amount of U.S. Dollars in circulation, which in turn would stimulate the American economy, was adopting silve r as yet another precious metal, which could be exchanged for paper money in banks.Advertising Looking for essay on history? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The monetary initiatives, on the part of advocates of Free Silver (associated with Democratic Party) were particularly supported by American farmers in the Midwest and the South, as the adoption of a Silver monetary standard would naturally result in increasing the prices for their agricultural products. These initiatives, however, used to be strongly opposed by the Republican Party, affiliated with the majority of American bankers. By 1913, the Free Silver debate effectively ended due to the passing of Federal Reserve Act, which introduced an entirely new principle for the functioning of the country’s financial system. From today’s perspective, it appears that the adoption of Silver standard would indeed prove rather beneficial to the American economy at the time, as it would result in increasing the commercial effectiveness of American manufacturing and agricultural enterprises, which in turn would lead to the creation of many new jobs. It is understood, of course, that one of the consequences of adopting such a standard would be the significant increase of the inflation rate. Nevertheless, the earlier mentioned positive aspects of allowing Silver coinage would overweigh this negative consequence.2 At the same time, however, the very principle of increasing the sheer amount of money in circulation, as the only mean of revitalizing the economy’s functioning, has been proven conceptually deficient during the course of Great Depression and during the course of 2008 financial crisis. This is because this practice necessarily results in making the specifically speculative sectors of national economy particularly profitable (banking), which in turn creates objective preconditions for triggering the outbreaks of financial crises.Adver tising We will write a custom essay sample on American History since 1865 specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Therefore, just as it was implied initially – the studying of Free Silver issue should not only be referred to in terms of a historical inquiry, but also in terms of a contemporarily relevant discursive inquiry. Why was the Versailles Treaty ultimately a failure? After the outbreak of WW1, this war used to be commonly referred to by Allies as the ‘war to end all wars’. Yet, as we are being well aware of, WW1 did not only fail to result in ‘ending all wars’, but this war’s actual consequence (the signing of Versailles Treaty) established objective preconditions for the outbreak of WW2 twenty one years later. The reason for this is quite apparent – The Treaty of Versailles had nothing do to with the notion of justice. The foremost provision of the Versailles Treaty was the recogni tion of Germany as the only guilty party for the outbreak of WW1.3 Yet, it were France, Britain and Russia that declared war on Germany initially. As of today, there is a plenty of historical evidence as to the fact that ever since the beginning of 20th century, Britain and France were looking for an excuse to declare war on Germany, because these countries felt threatened by the process of Germany growing ever more economically powerful. Instead of competing with Germany fairly, these countries decided to simply destroy Germany militarily. However, the Allies failed even at that – right until the signing of the Versailles Treaty in 1919, no enemy soldier had ever set its foot onto German territory.Advertising Looking for essay on history? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More By 1918, German Army had defeated Russia (the whole territory of Ukraine was occupied by Germany) and was about to defeat France (German troops were only 100 km away from Paris). In other words, there were no objective reasons for Germany to consider signing the Versailles Treaty, in the first place. The worst thing about the Versailles Treaty, however, was the fact that due to its harsh terms, German people rightly perceived it as nothing less of the mechanism of depriving Germany of a chance of normal development.4 For example, according to the Treaty, Germany was forced to pay $442 billion in reparations (the equivalent of U.S. Dollar 2011 monetary value) – the sum that could not be repaid until 1988. The German territories of Alsace-Lorraine, Northern Schleswig, East Upper Silesia, Upper Silesia, Saar, Rhineland and the city of Danzig were separated from Germany, with many of them becoming the part of the countries that prior to the outbreak of WW1 did not even exist (Pol and, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania). German colonies in Africa were divided between Britain and France. German army was reduced to the size of 100.000 strong and was forbidden to have tanks, artillery and aviation. German people were declared ‘innately wicked’ and had to be continuously instilled with the complex of historical guilt. The financial assets of German companies abroad were seized. Therefore, it does not come as a particular surprise why during the course of thirties, the overwhelming majority of German voters used to support Hitler’s National-Socialist Party, which proclaimed its foremost political agenda to be concerned with ending to the legacy of the Versailles Treaty’s injustices. Apparently, they considered Hitler a right person to effectively address the shame of Versailles. In other words, had the Treaty of Versailles been perceived by Germans as being even moderately fair, the phenomenon of Hitler rising to power in the post-WW1 Germany would never take place. Therefore, just as it is was stated earlier, the failure of the Versailles Treaty came as result of the Allied signatories having been endowed with the hypertrophied sense of greed and irrational vindictiveness, which in turn prevented them from adjusting this Treaty to correspond to the notion of sanity. What was the ‘Germany first’ strategy? In the light of what now became known to the general public in America about the circumstances that surrounded the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, there can be very few doubts as to the fact that it is not only that, contrary to his promises to the voters, Franklin Roosevelt did actively strive to get America involved into the WW2, but he also never hesitated lying to Americans as to what were his real intentions, in this respect. The so-called ‘Germany first’ strategy, adopted by the Roosevelt’s administration through 1940-1942, illustrates the validity of this statement. The ‘Germany first’ was the 1940 secret agreement between Roosevelt and Churchill to have the American army primarily committed towards supporting the British military cause against Germany at the expense of adopting a defensive stance towards Japan in the Pacific, extrapolated by Roosevelt’s willingness to simply abandon American troops to the west of Hawaiian islands, in case of war with Japan. The agreement partially explains why throughout the course of 1940, the American Navy has been participating in a full-scale war against German submarines, without having the American government declared the state of hostilities with Germany, and also why Hitler did end up declaring war on U.S. in 1941 – de facto speaking, America has been fighting Germans ever since 1940, when the ‘Germany first’ strategy was adopted by Roosevelt.5 One of the foremost aspects of this strategy was Roosevelt’s insistence on keeping it in secret from the American ord inary citizens, whom he promised to work hard on keeping America non-involved into another European war, â€Å"The American people were unaware that their President and his military chiefs had secretly committed the United States to defeating Germany as its top priority†.6 Roosevelt desperately sought a legitimate excuse to became a ‘war-time President’, which is why despite having been fully aware of the Japanese impending attack on Pearl Harbor (British intelligence had cracked the Japanese JN-25 naval code as early as in 1939), he nevertheless did not even move a finger to have the American troops in Hawaii prepared for this attack, which in turn would have resulted in admiral Yamamoto returning his carriers back to Japan, without having attacked Pearl Harbor. After all, he was only allowed to proceed with the attack if his attack-preparations were kept in a complete secrecy from Americans.7 Therefore, the â€Å"Germany first’ strategy can be well disc ussed as yet another example of Britain’s ability to fight its own wars with foreign-born men. Just as it used to be the case with Indians, Malayans, Canadians, Australians, South-Africans, etc., in the eyes of Churchill, Americans were nothing but expendable ‘cannon meat’. In this respect, Roosevelt proved himself being nothing less of the Churchill’s puppet. Contrary to his obligation to act on behalf of American people, Roosevelt did not only forsake such his obligation, but he intentionally allowed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to proceeded unopposed, so that his good ‘buddy’ Churchill would be appeased. Thus, just as it was implied out earlier, the ‘Germany first’ strategy may be well considered as yet an additional proof to the validity of a suggestion that, contrary to what they would like for the ordinary citizens to think of themselves, American high-ranking politicians do not always prove themselves ‘peopleâ €™s servants’. On the contrary – as the secret and utterly unconstitutional adoption of ‘Germany first’ policy indicates, these politicians are being quite capable of assuming the role of ‘people’s enemies’. What was the Space Race? Nowadays, it became a commonplace practice among many people to discuss the Space Race, which took place between U.S. and USSR during the course of the Cold War, as the proof that it is the matter of time, before humanity will begin sending spaceships to the distant stars, as seen in Star Trek films. Yet, it has been a while now, since humanity accomplished any significant breakthroughs, while exploring cosmos. The reason for is quite apparent – as of today, there are no ideologically opposite and technologically competing superpowers in the world, which would consider making investments into space exploration as the foremost mean of maintaining their geopolitical prestige. The term Space Race is being concerned with what used to account for the ongoing competition between U.S. and Soviet Union on the way of exploring space. In the aftermath of WW2, both: U.S. and USSR had captured German V-2 rockets and German rocket scientists, who designed them. In its turn, this eventually allowed both countries to develop a qualitatively new weapon – Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM).8 Given the fact that Soviets never ceased being concerned with trying to expose the advantages of Socialism over Capitalism, they were the first upon which it had dawned to use ICBMs as not the actual weapon but rather as the propaganda weapon, by the mean of launching Sputnik (1957) and the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (1961) into space.9 This alarmed Americans rather substantially, as the Soviet presumed superiority in space exploration negatively affected the America’s prestige in the world. In 1969, Americans succeeded in landing two astronauts on the Moon and bringing them safel y back to the Earth. As a result, USSR sustained a huge blow to its reputation the as leading space-exploring state. Soviet space-prestige sustained even more damage in 1981, when Americans had launched their first space-shuttle Columbia. There can be few doubts as to the fact that these both blows to the Soviet space-reputation did contribute rather significantly to the country’s eventual collapse in 1991. The accomplishments of Space Race are too numerous to be mentioned in this essay in their entirety. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to define the most important of them: people had physically reached the Moon; a number of telecommunication technologies were developed and perfected; humanity has gained a qualitatively new insight into the very essence of celestial laws. The reason why the process of space exploration appears to have stalled (the cancelation of space-shuttle mission may alone cause one to come to such a conclusion) is that, in order for people to be capab le of exploring space, they must be capable of deriving pleasure out of overcoming different obstacles and out of sacrificing their personal well-being for the sake of some higher cause. It is turn; this would require them to profess essentially masculine existential virtues.10 Yet, in the today’s feminized Western countries, affected by the ideological plague of political correctness, citizens are not being encouraged profess these virtues, as it would make them less enthusiastic about ‘celebrating diversity’. Just as it was the case with degenerate Romans in the 5th century, a growing number of contemporary Americans become increasingly preoccupied with experiencing sensual pleasures, while ceasing to care about such rather abstract categories as space-exploration altogether. What adds even more to the problem is the fact that, as of today, the only superpower in the world (U.S.) is simply being in no position to continue investing heavily into space exploratio n, because its geopolitical dominance in the world remains undisputed. I believe that this conclusion fully correlates with the initially articulated thesis. Bibliography Bowen, James. â€Å"Despite Pearl Harbor, America Adopts a ‘Germany first’ Strategy.† http://www.pacificwar.org.au/GermanyFirst/GermanyFirst.html Brzezinski, Matthew. Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that  Ignited the Space Race. New York: Times Books – Henry Holt and Co., 2007. Crouch, Tom. Aiming for the Stars: The Dreamers and Doers of the Space Age. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999. DeCanio, Samuel. â€Å"Populism, Paranoia, and the Politics of Free Silver.† Studies  in American Political Development 25, no. 1 (2011): 1-26. Gramm, Marshall Gramm, Phil. â€Å"The Free Silver Movement in America: A Reinterpretation.† The Journal of Economic History 64, no. 4 (2004): 1108-1129. Nelson, Graig. Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men o n the Moon. New York: Viking, 2009. Rasmussen, Mikkel. â€Å"The History of a Lesson: Versailles, Munich and the Social Construction of the Past.†Review of International Studies 29, no.5 (2003): 499–519. Rusbridger, James Nave, Eric. Betrayal at Pearl Harbor: How Churchill Lured  Roosevelt into War. London: Michael O’Mara, 1991. Toland, John. Infamy: Pearl Harbor und It’s Aftermath. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1982. Trachtenberg, Marc. â€Å"Versailles after Sixty Years.† Journal of Contemporary  History 17, no. 3 (1982): 487-506. Footnotes 1 Samuel DeCanio, â€Å"Populism, Paranoia, and the Politics of Free Silver.† Studies in American Political Development 25, no. 1 (2011): 3. 2 Marshall Gramm Phil.Gramm, â€Å"The Free Silver Movement in America: A Reinterpretation.† The Journal of Economic History 64, no. 4 (2004): 1127. 3 Marc Trachtenberg, â€Å"Versailles after Sixty Years.†Journal of Contemporary History 17, no. 3 (1982): 493. 4 Mikkel Rasmussen, â€Å"The History of a Lesson: Versailles, Munich and the Social Construction of the Past.† Review of International Studies 29, no.5 (2003): 508. 5 John Toland, Infamy: Pearl Harbor and it’s Aftermath (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1982), 32. 6 James Bowen, Despite Pearl Harbor, America Adopts a ‘Germany first’ Strategy. 7 James Rusbridger Eric Nave, Betrayal at Pearl Harbor: How Churchill Lured Roosvelt into War (London: Michael O’Mara, 1991), 45. 8 Graig Nelson, Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon (New York: Viking, 2009), 13. 9 Matthew, Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Race (New York: Times Books – Henry Holt and Co., 2007), 92. 10 Tom Crouch. Aiming for the Stars: The Dreamers and Doers of the Space Age (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999), 310. This essay on American History since 1865 was written and submitted by user Rodolfo O. to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

WTO Trade Agreements

WTO Trade Agreements Are WTO trade agreements unjust? With its membership of 163 states and with its ability to affect the process of policy-making in these countries, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is considered one of the most influential international organisations. The main conceptual premise, which justifies this Organisation’s continual existence, is that the removal of trade barriers on the way of a free flow of goods and services throughout the world does contribute to the facilitation of global prosperity (Walton 2013; Stiglitz Charlton 2005).Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on WTO Trade Agreements specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More In its turn, the mentioned assumption helps to establish the Organization’s legitimacy, as such that has the principle of bilateral beneficence embedded into the very philosophy of its functioning, and to promote the idea that by applying for the membership in the WTO, the developing co untries will be able to revitalize their economies. As Sutherland (2008) noted, â€Å"In an era of broadening and deepening globalization, small or struggling economies thrive only in an environment that generates opportunity and supports entrepreneurship. Much of what the WTO does is, in fact, about helping achieve good or better governance† (p. 19). It is understood, of course, that such an idea is hardly consistent with the suggestion what the Organization’s trade-agreements can be unjust, by definition. Nevertheless, once subjected to an analytical inquiry, these agreements will be indeed exposed utterly inequitable, in the sense that they make it impossible for the developing country-members to become fully developed. In my paper, I will explore the validity of this statement at length while explaining what accounts for the Organization’s true (and rather unsightly) agenda. Even though the WTO top-officials never cease stressing out the Organisation’ s apolitical and ideologically neutral nature, this is far from being the actual case. The reason for this is apparent the manner, in which the WTO settles trade-disputes between country-members and provides the sets of recommendations, with respect to what should be the essence of economic reforms in these countries, is reflective of the foremost provisions of the ideology of Neoliberalism. They are as follows, â€Å"The state needs to reduce its interventionism in economic and social activities†¦ labour and financial markets should be deregulated†¦ Commerce and investments should be stimulated by eliminating borders and barriers† (Navarro 2006, p. 18). The actual logic behind these discursive assumptions that it is namely the ‘invisible hand of the market’, which should be made solely responsible for defining the socio-economic dynamics in just about every country on this planet – the main key to prosperity. The WTO is there to merely provide an additional momentum to this process (Walton 2010). However, the Organisation’s continual functioning implies that the mentioned ‘invisible market-hand’ is not quite as unseen and impartial as the advocates of free-trade would like us to believe, because it does not represent much of a challenge defining the place from where this ‘hand’ actually extends – the West.Advertising Looking for essay on international relations? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Therefore, there is nothing too surprising about the fact that if anything, the WTO was able to succeed only in one thing – enforcing the so-called ‘Matthew effect’ (the rich get richer and the poor get poorer) on a global scale. This simply could not be otherwise – since the time of its founding in 1994, the WTO was conceptualised to serve the purpose of allowing the West to pursue with the policy of neo-colonialism in the Third and Second world countries, without having to invade them militarily. In this respect, Irogbe (2013) came up with the insightful observation, â€Å"The developed, former imperial powers have simply converted themselves into power brokers within the WTO. Mostly they do not have to send troops in to open up a countrys economy for foreign investment and privatization Today, they can simply threaten the country with economic collapse† (p. 190). The fact that the Organisation’s spokesmen often do express their concern with such issues as ‘global poverty’ or ‘global hunger’ is nothing but a publicity stunt, on these people’s part the WTO’s very existence contributes to the sheer acuteness of the mentioned issues more than anything else does. This simply could not be otherwise. The concerned Organisation functions as a huge vacuum machine – ensuring the steady flow of valuable natural and human reso urces out of the Second and Third world countries to the West, which in turn makes it quite impossible for these nations to be able to get out of poverty. The fact that this is indeed the case can be illustrated, in regard to the following The WTO prescribes its newly joined members (consisting of the underdeveloped countries) to refrain from enacting the policies of economic protectionism. The Organisation’s official explanation for this is that the concerned practice â€Å"ultimately leads to bloated, inefficient producers supplying consumers with outdated, unattractive products† (The case for open trade 2016, para. 7). However, the actual rationale behind such an anti-protectionist policy, on the part of the WTO, is much more unsightly – the Organisation’s stance, in this respect, is meant to eliminate any chances for the countries ‘underdogs’ to be able to ensure the proper functioning of the industrial sector of their economies. After al l, it has been well proven throughout the history that no country is able to develop an industrial/manufacturing capacity, unless having enacted the policy of economic protectionism throughout the process’s initial phase. The example of the so-called ‘Asian tigers’ (Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) proves the validity of this suggestion perfectly well.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on WTO Trade Agreements specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Once stripped of the politically-correct rhetoric, the Organisation’s anti-protectionist policy becomes fully explainable – while acting on behalf of the ‘collective West’, the WTO strives to suppress even a hypothetical possibility for the Western-based industries to end up facing too much competition from abroad. As Hart-Landsberg (2006) aptly pointed out, â€Å"The WTO is the vehicle used by the imperial powers to crush the infant industries in the underdeveloped countries in the interests of their MNCs† (p. 8). To illustrate the full soundness of this idea even further, one can refer to what accounted for the actual consequences of joining the WTO, on the part of such Baltic countries as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Prior to the development in question, there were many properly functioning industries in these countries, concerned with the production of cars, electronics, and heavy industrial equipment. Moreover, these countries used to be considered the major producers of electrical power in Europe. However, once members of the EU (and consequently WTO), Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have been effectively stripped of their industrial capacities, which in turn resulted in the dramatic rise of the unemployment-rate and consequently in bringing about the situation that, as of 2013, 60% of these countries’ citizens ended up having no choice but to seek seasonal (and often illegal) employment i n Europe (Hansson Randveer 2013). While settling trade-disputes between country-members, the WTO usually takes the side of the most economically developed ones – even at the expense of violating the very principle of ‘free trade’. To exemplify the legitimacy of this suggestion, we can refer to the Organisation’s 1999 decision to order some countries of the EU to stop purchasing bananas from the Caribbean region – all because the concerned practice was inconsistent with the interests of the U.S.-based Chiquita Corporation. The way in which the WTO handled the matter shows once again that, contrary to what its representatives proclaim, the Organisation never ceases to be driven by the essentially political considerations while trying to ensure ‘economic fairness’ across the world – something that implies the actual absence of the latter, in the first place. There are a number of indications that this is indeed the case. For exampl e, the WTO refused to take any action against the U.S., on the account of this country’s continual attempts to apply much political pressure on European nations to persist with imposing economic sanctions against Russia (another WTO-member). After all, the mentioned activity, on the part of the U.S., stands in striking contradiction to the most basic provisions of the WTO statute – yet, the Organisation’s top-officials prefer to turn a blind eye on it. This simply could not be otherwise – in order for the WTO bureaucrats to retain their chairs within the Organisation, they must make ‘proper’ (that is, Western-friendly) decisions.Advertising Looking for essay on international relations? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More According to Irogbe (2013), â€Å"The unelected three-panel of bureaucrats as dispute judges (in the WTO), are appointed by the director-general†¦ who must have the blessings of the Quads (US, EU, Japan, and Canada)† (p. 177). It is understood, of course, that this undermines the prospect for WTO trade-agreements to be just, by definition. The WTO erects obstacles on the way of the free circulation of scientific knowledge throughout the world by the mean of coercing every country-member to sign the so-called Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIP) agreement. This is being done to enable the overwhelmingly Western patent-holders to charge high royalties for just about every line of the internationally manufactured hi-tech products (Correa 2000). The mentioned Agreement, however, does not take into account the fact that throughout the course of the last few decades, the seemingly fast pace of scientific progress in the West has been achieved by the mean of ensuri ng the drainage of ‘brain power’ out of the developing countries in the Westward direction. Moreover, the Agreement’s advocates prefer to remain arrogant as to the fact that just about any type of scientific knowledge cannot be discussed in terms of a ‘thing in itself’ – the new scientific discoveries take place because of the earlier achievements in the various fields of science. What it means is that scientific knowledge belongs to the public and not corporate domain – something the WTO simply refuses to acknowledge. One of the negative consequences of this is that many people in the Second and Third world are denied the chance to receive a life-saving medical treatment. After all, it is namely due to South Africa’s membership in the WTO that this country is forbidden to produce drugs for alleviating the symptoms of AIDS in patients – despite the fact that this country is affected by the concerned disease more than any o ther, and the fact South Africa has a developed pharmaceutical industry. As noted by Curti (2001), â€Å"The WTO unreasonably restricts the trade of pharmaceuticals in order to protect the profit margin of Western drug producers at the expense of infected populations in developing countries† (p. 369). This alone raises a certain doubt as to the Organisation’s ability to serve the cause of progress and development. The WTO encourages country-members to eliminate the economically ‘unfeasible’ social programs/services, meant to facilitate the fair distribution of national wealth and to ensure the uninterrupted pace of social progress in these countries. According to Esty (2002), â€Å"The WTO seeks to privatize education, healthcare, energy, and water. Privatization means the selling off public assets†¦ to private, often foreign, corporations, to be run for profit instead of the public good† (p. 15). Therefore, there is nothing too surprising abou t the fact that the drastic lowering of living standards usually follows the implementation of the ‘free-market’ reforms, recommended by the WTO. One does not have to go far to prove the validity of this idea, because the illustrating examples are all around us. Probably the most convincing of them has to do with the ‘progress’ made by Ukraine, in the aftermath of having joined the WTO. It is not only that Ukraine’s ‘smart move’, in this respect, resulted in the country’s complete deindustrialisation, but also in the fact that, as of today, Ukraine’s systems of healthcare and education have de facto ceased to exist (Yurchenko 2012). According to the WTO, such a situation makes perfectly good sense. Why should the Ukrainian government invest in healthcare and education, if no short-term profit can be gained from it? As seen by the WTO bureaucrats, the country’s population is too large and ‘useless’, as it is. Therefore, it will only be logical to expect that, for as long as the Ukrainian government continues to cooperate with the WTO, the likelihood for this country to disappear from the world map in the near future (due to depopulation) will remain thoroughly realistic. After all, such a development would be thoroughly consistent with yet another officially proclaimed goal of the WTO – to enable the unrestricted repositioning of ‘workforce’ throughout the world (Armstrong 2012). In light of what has been mentioned earlier, WTO trade-agreements do seem utterly unjust – at least when assessed from the point of view of the developing (or underdeveloped) countries. The reason for this is quite apparent – the Organisation’s approach to facilitating free trade exposes the agenda of Western countries to conserve the current situation with the ‘division of labour’ on this planet. On one hand, there are the ‘privileged’ WTO members (Western countries), allowed enact a number of the clearly protectionist policies (such as providing farmers with heavy subsidies). On the other, however, there are the Organisation’s ‘underdogs’ (such as the earlier mentioned Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Ukraine), which are forbidden to even think of doing the same – all because their membership in the WTO assigns them with the informal status of Western colonies, at least in the economic sense of this word. It is true, of course, that due to being concerned with the removal of trade barriers across the world, the Organisation allows the most expedient accumulation of wealth on a global scale. This, however, does not necessarily mean that all the affiliated contributors are entitled to a fair share of it. Quite to the contrary – the WTO is there to help the West to maintain its neo-colonial grip on the developing countries, which is detrimental to the interests of the latter. It is under stood, of course, that this hardly contributes towards helping the Organisation’s policies to be perceived thoroughly fair by the underprivileged majority of its members. As Kapstein (1999) noted, â€Å"(Economic) institutions that discriminate against some players or fail to provide equal opportunity to the least advantaged cannot be considered just, though of course they might be efficient† (p. 533). However, there is even more to the issue – the fact that most of WTO trade-agreements are blatantly unjust, does not merely indicate the Organisation’s commitment to strengthening the Western economic dominance on this planet. Apparently, it is also something that exposes the conceptual erroneousness of the Neoliberal assumption that free (unregulated) trade is the key to richness. Yet, this specific idea defines the essence of the Organisation’s operant principles. After all, before they are made available in their segment of the market, the commerc ial goods and services must come into existence first, which in turn presupposes the (planned) creation of the objective preconditions such an eventual development to take place. And, it is specifically the enactment of the interventionist/protectionist economic policies by the government that has proven the only effective contributing factor, in this respect – especially in the case of those countries that have only recently been put on the path of industrialisation. Moreover, the WTO’s implicit insistence that people’s consumerist instincts alone define the quality of social dynamics in just about any country simply does not stand any ground, especially if assessed systemically. Even many supporters of Neoliberalism, such as James (2005), do recognise this fact, â€Å"Markets generally have large-scale effects that cannot be brought about by particular acts of buying or selling, or by the sole efforts of any particular economic agent† (p. 539). The reas on for this is that the mentioned dynamics never cease to remain highly societal (systemically complex) – even if appear to be solely affected by the supposedly unregulated fluctuations of supply and demand in the ‘free’ market. What this means is that, even if the WTO’s actual agenda was indeed concerned with helping the underdeveloped countries to become economically competitive, the Organisation would still not be able to progress far pursuing it. The reason for this is that, due to being ideologically driven (Neoliberlaism is as much of an oppressive ideology as Communism); the WTO is very reluctant to allow impartial scientific knowledge to have any effect on the quintessence of its currently deployed approaches for eliminating trade-barriers/settling trade-disputes between nations. This, in turn, removes even a hypothetical possibility for WTO trade-agreements to be just – even if it does appear to be the case on the outside. I believe that th e used line of argumentation, in defence of the idea that WTO trade-agreements are unfair, is consistent with the initially provided thesis. Therefore, it will only be logical to conclude this paper by suggesting that the very existence of the WTO confirms that the workings of the world economy are politically/ideologically charged and that the West continues to benefit from being able to exploit the ‘global periphery’, under the disguise of helping the associated countries to attain ‘economic efficiency’. References Armstrong, C 2012, Global distributive justice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Correa, C 2000, Intellectual property rights, the WTO and developing countries: the TRIPS agreement and policy options, Zed Books, London and New York. Curti, A 2001, ‘The WTO dispute settlement understanding: an unlikely weapon in the fight against AIDS’, American Journal of Law and Medicine, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 469-485. Esty, D 2002, ‘The World Trade Organizations legitimacy crisis’, World Trade Review, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 7-22. Hansson, A Randveer, M 2013, Economic adjustment in the Baltic countries, Working Papers of Eesti Pank, vol. 1, pp. 3-21. Hart-Landsberg, M 2006, ‘Neoliberalism: myths and reality’, Monthly Review, vol. 57, no. 11, pp. 1-17. Irogbe, K 2013, ‘Globalization and the World Trade Organization from the perspective of the underdeveloped world, The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 174-202. James, A 2005, ‘Distributive justice without sovereign rule: the case of trade’, Social Theory and Practice, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 533-559. Kapstein, E 1999, ‘Distributing the gains: justice and international trade’, Journal of International Affairs, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 533-555. Navarro, V 2006, ‘The worldwide class struggle’, Monthly Review, vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 18-33. Stiglitz, J Charlton, A 2005, Fair trade for all: how trade can promote development, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Sutherland, P 2008, Transforming nations, Foreign Affairs, vol. 87, no. 2, pp. 125-136. The case for open trade 2016, https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact3_e.htm. Walton, A 2010, ‘What is fair trade?’, Third World Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 431-447. Walton, A 2013, The common arguments for fair trade, Political Studies, vol. 61, no. 3, pp. 691-706. Yurchenko, Y 2012, ‘†Black holes† in the political economy of Ukraine: the neoliberalization of Europe’s â€Å"wild east†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢, Debatte: Review of Contemporary German Affairs, vol. 20, no. 2/3, pp. 125-149.

Critical incident management operations based on an actual disaster Research Paper

Critical incident management operations based on an actual disaster event - Research Paper Example A disaster is an accidental and devastating event that occurs suddenly, causing adverse social and economic impacts in the population or environment it occurs. The effects may include physical injury, deaths, loss and damage on property, emotional and physical hardship, and obliteration of physical infrastructure as well as failure of operational and administrative systems. Before and during a disaster, emergency responders have to intervene to save lives, property and minimize the adverse effects caused by the disaster. However, the uncertainty or infrequency of disasters poses very great challenge for these responders to ascertain the effectiveness of their response strategies (Donahue & o’Keefe, 2007). Consequently, responders usually use various methods and experiences to enhance the manner they respond to similar disasters in the future. This paper will examine aspects of planning, response, recovery as well as mitigation during disasters and the manner the country can improve its response capabilities. The Three Mile high nuclear accident and Hurricane Agnes in the 1979 prompted President Carter and the Congress to establish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as well as the Emergency Management Council (EMC). This aimed at consolidating the responsibilities for disaster preparedness performed by the different federal agencies to one single agency (Mener, 2007). This came out of the belief that it was going to eliminate the communication and the fragmentation difficulties seen during the earlier disasters. With this order from the executive, all federal agencies that had responsibilities and capabilities of providing response during disasters to co-operate with FEMA. It also provided FEMA with the task of ensuring co-ordination in disaster preparedness and aid operations. Nevertheless, the

Inroduction-Conclusion-Abstract Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Inroduction-Conclusion-Abstract - Essay Example This had detrimental effects on learners’ ability to develop critical thinking skills that were beyond their level of knowledge and comprehension. Moreover, Magolda (2000) stated that previously the teaching strategy seemingly favored learners who had high level of intelligence, as compared to those who required their intelligence level to be sharpened through the educational approach (learning). This is mainly because the previous education system did not focus on enabling learners to construct their own knowledge but rather it focused on constructing learners’ knowledge on their behalf (Bain, 2004). However, there has been increased advocacy for empowering learners with the skills to manage their own learning process, which sufficiently prepares them to tackle real-life case problems. In this regard, Moskal and Keneman (2011) stated that it was indeed necessary to develop learning and teaching strategies that give learners an active role in the learning process thereb y enabling learners to construct their own knowledge and make the learning process more exciting. In the application of these strategies, it will be necessary for the teachers to realign the strategies with the intelligence level of each student in order to ensure that learning is effective. This present dissertation focuses on a particular teaching strategy/ tool that has being introduced in schools in order to make the learning process enjoyable, and engage the learners whilst enabling them to construct their own knowledge. Therefore, the teaching strategy/ tool that will be discussed in the paper offers a remedy to the flaws that had been noted about the traditional teaching strategy/ tool. The teaching strategy/ tool that will be the focal point of this study is the interactive whiteboard technology (IWB), which has been described by Cuthell (2006), as a tool that enable computer images to a appear on a board. The interactive whiteboard contains a digital projector and touch-scr een technology that has been incorporated onto the board, which enable teachers to manipulate the figures and/ or words that are appearing on the board by either using a mouse or their fingers. This is to say that a teacher is able to click, copy, and drag the figures, words, and numbers that appear on the board whilst he or she is teaching. Because of the fact that the interactive whiteboard has an internal memory, it means that teachers are able to save the notes or instructions they have written on the board. Then using the network connections that are available on the board the teacher can transfer these notes to the students’ personal computers, so that they can use it for further reading and revisions (Gage, 2006). According to Marzano and Haystead (2010), the ability of the board to display pictures and even stream live videos from a site such as YouTube, enables the teacher to improve the learning experience for learners and ensure they remain active in the learning p rocess as well as fully engaged. 1.2 Research questions Based on the interactive whiteboard technology, this research study intends to investigate teachers’ use and their own evaluation of the interactive whiteboard in second language classroom. This infers that the research study will focus on investigating how teachers at the research center are using the interactive whiteboard to teach English as a second language. Secondly, the research study will aim at discovering what teachers who are using the board

Gift of Fear, Just 2 Seconds, and On Combat Essay

Gift of Fear, Just 2 Seconds, and On Combat - Essay Example The book incorporates a couple of ideas. It provides tactics that seek to help readers, especially women, to avoid violence and trauma by educating them on a variety of warning signs as well as precursors to hostility. The novel presents a paradox of genre. Becker seeks to emphasize the inherent predictability of brutality by setting patterns of abuse and violence in his book. The book looks at various settings where violent behavior may occur. These places are the workplace, school, home, and dating venues (Becker 1). Just 2 Seconds, on the other hand, incorporates four critical lessons for protectors. These four ideas are categorized as how to evade attacks, how to evade close attacks, how to evade incidents that imperil other persons, and additional resources that could keep protectors from violent behaviors. The book is based on more than 1,400 violent attacks, especially assassinations of many world prominent people. Hence, the author’s aim is to try to ease these cases and create awareness of how people could avoid them (Becker 1). Finally, On Combat explores, thoroughly, what happens mentally and physically to most people when they meet a deadly threat. The book speaks of coping with the diverse aspects of combat, although from the perception of how people cope with combat. The main ideas of the book comprise the physiology of combat, perceptual distortions that take place during a fatal force encounter, metal attitudes as well as the aftermaths of combats (Becker 1). According to The Gift of Fear, the most powerful tool of preventing violence is through focusing on the verbal as well as non-verbal clues a person gives off. This could predict whether or not the individual or circumstances will lead to violence. The author demonstrates that people who keep to themselves are clearly boiling time bombs waiting to blow up. If SSAs could keep this in mind, then it would help them avoid future violent cases (Becker 1). Just 2 Seconds, on the other

Motivation Of Employees In The Hotel Industry Tourism Essay

Motivation Of Employees In The Hotel Industry Tourism Essay The last few decades have been characterised by a radical change in management perceptions about the importance of the work force in achievement of strategic objectives of business organisations. Management experts agree that in situations where competitors have similar financial resources and organisational infrastructures, competitive edge can be achieved only through well trained and intensely motivated employee forces. The hotel industry has grown remarkably in the last two decades. With the industry expanding exponentially, capacity builds ups in business and tourism centres have created enormous competition in all its segments. Whilst hotel managers strive to provide good physical facilities to their clients, it is widely accepted that excellence in service quality is best achieved through the efforts of employees to meet customer needs. Motivating employees is thus seen to be a critical task of hotel managers. The dissertation project aims to examine the importance of motivating employees in the hotel industry for the achievement of competitive advantage and the best possible ways and means of doing so. The last few decades, especially the period that commenced from the 1970s, have been characterised by radical changes in management perceptions about the importance of the work force in achieving the strategic objectives of business organisations.  [1]   Whilst traditional management theory treated workers, along with capital, land and machinery, as just one of the four important inputs of business enterprises, current management thought and practice, influenced on one hand by the opinions of experts like Drucker, Porter, Maslow and McGregor, and on the other by dramatically altered business conditions, perceive employees to be critical to organisational success and growth.  [2]   Contemporary developments like globalisation, economic liberalisation, the deconstruction of trade and physical barriers, technological advances, the spread of the internet, instantaneous communication technology, cheaper travel costs and the emergence of China and India as economic power houses have made the world intensely competitive and diminished the superiority of Western business organisations.  [3]  Management experts agree that in economic scenarios where competitors have the same sort of financial resources and organisational infrastructures, competitive edge is mainly achieved through well trained and intensely motivated employee forces.  [4]   The hotel industry has grown remarkably in the last two decades. Globalisation along with greater discretionary incomes in the populations of advanced and developing countries, cheaper travel, open borders and the opening of numerous business and tourists destinations have led to substantial increases in business travel and domestic and international tourism and created enormous opportunities for hotels. Aims and Objectives With the hotel industry expanding exponentially, capacity builds ups in business and tourism centres have created enormous competition in all sectors of the hotel industry.  [5]  Being service oriented in nature, hotels work towards achievement of service quality and improvement of customer satisfaction for achievement of competitive advantage.  [6]   Whilst hotel ownerships strive to provide good physical facilities to their clients, it is widely accepted that excellence in service quality is best achieved through the efforts of employees to meet customer needs  [7]  Motivating employees is thus seen to be a critical task of hotel managements.  [8]   This proposal aims to investigate the contribution of employees in achievement of profitability and competitive advantage in the hotel industry, the importance of motivation in improving employee performance, and the role of managers in motivating employees to improve their performance and commitment. Its objectives are elaborated as follows: To examine the ways and means in which employees can add to the service quality, efficiency, profitability and competitive advantage of the hotel industry. To examine the impact of motivation on the performance of hotel employees. To examine and assess the various ways of motivating employees. To examine the roles of managers in motivating hotel employees. 2. Literature Review Human resource management theory has changed radically over the past few decades. Whilst traditional HR theory was influenced and shaped by scientific management principles embodied in the approaches of Henry Ford and Fredrick Taylor for improvement of worker productivity, the post Second World War period saw the emergence of behavioural experts and psychologists like Maslow, McGregor, Herzberg and Vroom, who discarded Fordist and Taylorist principles and emphasised that worker performance could be much better enhanced by meeting the various needs of workers, training and developing them and empowering them to do their work to the best of their ability.  [9]   Experts like Maslow and Herzberg stress that worker motivation is critical to worker performance and organisational managements need to motivate members of their work force in carefully thought out, well planned and deliberately implemented ways. Maslowà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢s theory of needs, McGregorà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢s exposition of theory X and theory Y, Herzbergà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢s detailing of hygiene and motivating factors, and Vroomà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢s work on motivating employees deal with the various needs of workers and how they can best be motivated by organisational managements.  [10]   Extant HR theory also places great stress on the need of managers to know methods of motivation and use them appropriately in the work place.  [11]  The evolution of human resources as a management discipline has been characterised by numerous academic and research work on the best possible methods of motivating employees.  [12]   Employees are seen as key inputs in the hotel industry and most well known hotel chains like The Marriot, The Mandarin Orient and The Ritz Carlton are known to have very carefully thought out and well implemented employee performance improvement programmes.  [13]  Motivation plays a key role in such programmes and is a key responsibility of hotel managers.  [14]   The Ritz Carlton, the only two time winner of the famous Malcolm Baldridge awards for quality, is known to have an excellent employee training, development and motivation programme.  [15]  Employees at the Ritz Carlton are motivated through a complex system of policies and procedures that deal with remuneration, training, involvement, responsibility allocation, employee respect and empowerment.  [16]   Employee motivation and the responsibilities of managers in motivating employees are key areas of focus in hotel management theory.  [17]   3. Research Methodology Research Hypotheses The aims and objectives of the project, along with the information obtained during the course of review of available literature, lead to the following research hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: Employees are critical for the achievement of service quality, profitability and competitive advantage in the hotel industry Hypothesis 2: Employee motivation leads to improvement in employee performance Hypothesis 3: Managers can motivate hotel employees in various ways. Research Methods The choice and adoption of appropriate research methods for projects are essentially decided by the nature of the project and the resources available with the researcher.  [18]  With there being two basic methods of social research, namely the quantitative and qualitative approaches, the choice of an appropriate method for this assignment will be shaped by the research hypotheses elaborated above.  [19]   The research hypotheses essentially deal with issues and questions that are how, why and what in nature, and are thus best tackled by use of interpretative qualitative methods, rather than through analysis of the results of number based quantitative surveys.  [20]   Information for the project will be obtained from primary and secondary sources.  [21]  Primary information sources are those that provide information directly from people and organisations who form the subject of research, whereas secondary information is obtained from sources created by people, (e.g. authors, researchers, or media publications), who are unconnected with the research subject.  [22]   It is proposed to use both primary and secondary sources for this research project.  [23]  Whilst substantial information from secondary sources on human resource management, motivational theory, service quality, managerial responsibility and the responsibilities and methods of managers for motivating employees is available in the public domain, primary information can be obtained through study of hotel websites and interviews of people associated with the research subject.  [24]  With the hospitality industry now a globally important industry, a number of academic publications and research studies are available on different aspects of hotel management.  [25]  The study of such sources will enable the researcher to obtain accurate and extensive information on the subject under study.  [26]   The methodology entails the collection of primary and secondary data from the sources elaborated earlier, the qualitative interpretation of obtained information, and its detailed analysis for the purpose of examining the validity of the hypothesis.  [27]   Ethics Care will be taken to ensure that all ethical requirements regarding the conduct of research projects are followed, especially with regard to protection of the rights and confidentiality of primary respondents. Adequate care will be taken to ensure that appropriate credit is given to all information sources.  [28]   Constraints and Limitations The study will be limited by the amount of primary and secondary information accessed by the researcher, as well as the amount of cooperation provided by the primary respondents from the hotel industry. It is envisaged that obtaining appointments with hotel managers may be a difficult task and could delay the gathering of information and data. The researcher plans to start taking appointments with managers in the hotel industry at the earliest in order to maintain the research schedule. 4. Timeline The research is expected to take six months to complete. The timeline of the project is provided below. Function Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4 Month 5 Month 6 Determining of Secondary Information Sources * Study of Secondary Information Sources * * * Determination of Primary Information Sources * * Study of Primary Information Sources * Fixing of Appointments with Primary Respondents * * Conducting of Interviews * Collation of Secondary Information * Compilation of Literature Review * * Compilation of Primary Information * Collation of Data * Data Analysis and Interpretation * Preparation of Rough Draft of Dissertation * Discussion with Tutor * Preparation of Final Dissertation * Word Count: 1610 without Tables

Early America :: essays research papers

Everyone always talks about the early America, how it started the thinking of people today. Throughout this report you will understand more about early America. People always say America is a land of beginnings, well after Europeans discovered America, the New World became peoples hope for a new life. They tried to escape from poverty and just to start over. So we know that America started with hope but does the American writers? In order for something to begin there needs to have experiences. So the writers looked back on American history. They even had to go as far as before Christopher Columbus, and even before the year 1000. At that time the Native Americans lived here. They each had a tribe and their writings were very personal to how they lived their life and how they knew of America. They also had to think about all their fears and even the excitement in life itself. Some of the people lived and died horrible lives so the ones that survived it told others all about it. Some unforgettable and some hard to even believe, but that's how the people of the early America lived. The New World had lots of experiences for the new writers to tell. Some of the new writers included John Smith; he only spent two in a half years in America. Jonathan Edward's, he thought that a revolution would create a world of literature. He was the first major writer to be educated and lived his whole life in the New World. When he was eleven he wrote science essays on insects. Then when he was thirteen we went to Yale for religious experience. He wrote Sinners in the Hands of an angry God and still is one of the most famous literary monuments to the "great Awakenings" The first book published in America was the Bay Psalm Book; it was a translation of the biblical psalms. Many of the puritans kept journals to help they with their relationship with god. The journals and diaries were usually meant to be private. But somehow they got out to the public. Even when it did get out to the public the puritans said that none of it had ever happened. They did not write to entertai n the public they wrote for themselves, and for God. They wrote no fiction, and they didn't even want to read it.

Kolb Learning Styles Essay

David Kolb’s theory of learning styles is one of the best known and widely applied and it suggest that learning is a cyclic process which involves an individual proceeding through each of the following four stages and will eventually prefer and rely upon one style more than the others. The four styles are: Divergers, Convergers, Accommodators and Assimilators. Research has shown that these four styles have different names along with the ones mentioned above, they are: Divergers is also called Reflective observation Convergers is also called Active experimentation Accommodators is also called Concrete experience Assimilators is also called Abstract conceptualization   Let us take a look and see how the knowledge of each one can be applied to the role of being students working individually and as a group. Divergers/Reflective observation – Divergers like to think before they talk and they research and analyze a situation before giving their own personal opinion. They like to investigate and are able to view situations from many angles which allows them to recognize problems. A lot of times a Diverger would rather sit back, listen and watch, be imaginative and open to xperience, being very thoughtful of everyone’s ideas. Convergers/Active experimentation – Convergers think about things, use theories to solve problems and then try out their ideas to see if they work in practice. They like to ask ‘how’ about a situation, understanding how things work in practice. They like facts and will seek to make things efficient by making small and careful changes and look at alternative ways of doing something. They prefer to work by themselves, thinking carefully and acting independently. They learn through interaction and computer-based learning is more effective with them than other methods. Accommodators/Concrete experience – Accommodators prefer to be involved in new experiences, have a hands-on approach and learn through trial and error. They like a practical experimental approach, are able to adapt to circumstances and like to set objectives and schedules. Assimilators/Abstract conceptualization – Assimilators want to be more logical, they really see no need to give their own personal views, they would rather think it through and do research. They will also learn through conversation that takes a logical and thoughtful approach. They prefer lectures for learning, with demonstrations where possible, will respect the knowledge of experts. In addition they often have a strong control need and prefer the clean and simple predictability of internal models to external messiness. This style is used in schools most of the time along with corporations. After researching these four different styles I was able to compare them to four different individual experiences. One of my friends likes the assimilator approach for her school work, she likes to know the facts before she does anything. She is also going to share the knowledge she has gained from this assignment with her cousin who falls into the category of a Converger and tends to fail with her experiments. Another one of my friends believes that she is a Diverger, she would rather listen, gather data and analyze a situation and give feedback. She is very thoughtful of everyone’s ideas and puts their feelings and thoughts into consideration. I also onsider myself a combination of the Accommodator and Converger, I learn best by the hands-on experience and looking at different ways of doing things. In conclusion, I feel that it is very beneficial for a person to know their style of learning for the following reasons: if you know this about yourself you are able to pinpoint your weaknesses so that you may work on them to help better your studying habits, you can apply your specific style to the task at hand whether it would be finding a book or article to read, a video to watch, a tape to listen to or solve it by trial and error. You may also notice how others work differently and understand that individual more so that it will be a better work and study environment. Not only does this help when studying individually, it is a great benefit when participating in a group or team because when working in a group or team you have a combination of styles so the participants will have a different opinion of the topic depending on how they view the topic. Along with different views of a topic, if you know your learning style you could share that with them and they may be able to make adjustments to accomodate you style of learning, especially if you are having problems grasping the topic, idea or concept. The importance of learning style stems from the notion that teaching, if it is to be effective, should be tailored to the preferred learning style of the learner(s). If teaching is not aligned to the learning preferences of learners, it is unlikely that the teaching will be effective, or at least not as effective as it could be.

Kahlil Gibran Essay

But Gibran was primarily a poet and a mystic in whom thought, as in every good poet and good mystic, is a state of being rather than a state of mind. A student of Gibran’s philosophy, therefore, finds himself more concerned not with his ideas but with his disposition; not with his theory of love but with Gibran the lover. That Gibran had started his literary career as a Lebanese emigrant in America, passionately yearning for his homeland, twentieth-century and intellectual may, perhaps give a basic clue to his disposition framework. To be an emigrant is to be an alien. But to be an emigrant mystical alienation is added poet is to be thrice alienated. To geographical from both conventional human society at large, and estrangement also the whole world of spatio-temporal existence. Therefore such a poet is gripped by a triple longing: a longing for the country of his birth, for a utopian human society of the imagination in which he can feel at home, and for a higher world of metaphysical truth. This Gibran with the basis for his artistic creatitriple longing provided vity. Its development from one stage of his work to another is only a variation in emphasis and not in kind; three strings of his harp re always to be detected and towards the end of his life they achieve * Al-Majm? ‘ah al K? milahli Mu’allaf? t Gibr? nKhal? lGibr? n,Beirut 1949-50 Sand and Foam, New York 1926 ThePropbet, New York 1923 The Forerunner,New York 1920 Jesus the Sonof Man, New York 1928 The Earth Gods,New York 1931 1 TheProphet, 33. p. 56 almost perfect harmony in his master-piece, The Prophet, where the home country of the prophet Almustafa, the utopian state of human existence and the metaphysical world of higher truth become one and the same. To The Prophet as well as to the rest of Gibran’s works, Music can be considered as a prelude. Published eleven years after Gibran’s emigration to Boston as a youth of eleven, this essay of about thirteen pages marks the author’s debut into the world of letters. Though entitled Music, this booklet is more of a schoolboy’s prosaic ode to on it. As such, it tells us more music than an objective dissertation about Gibran, the emotional boy, than about his subject. The Gibran it reveals is a flowery sentimentalist who, saturated with a vague sees in music a floating sister-spirit, an ethereal nostalgic sadness, of all that a nostalgic heart is not and yet yearns to be. embodiment of the whole essay, both in style and in spirit, is the Representative following quotation, in which he addresses music: â€Å"Oh you, wine of the heart that uplifts its drinker to the heights of the world of imagination;-you ethereal waves bearing the soul’s phantoms; you sea of sensibility and tenderness; to your waves we lend our soul, and to your uttermost depths we trust our hearts. Carry those hearts away beyond the world of matter and show us what is hidden deep in the world of the unknown. â€Å"‘ Between Mztsic of 1905 and The Prophet of 1923, Gibran’s writings as well as his thought seem to have passed through two stages: the youthful period of his early Arabic works, Nymphs of the Wally, Spirits Rebellious, Broken Wings and A Tear and a Smile, published between 1907 and 1914, and the relatively more mature stage of Processions, The Tempests, The Madman, his first work in English, and The Forerunner, his second, all leading up to The Prophet. It is only natural that in his youthful stage Gibran’s longing in Chinatown, Boston, where he first settled, for Lebanon, the country of the first impressionable years of his life, should dominate the two other strings in his harp. Nymphs of the Vallg is a collection of three short stories; Spirits Rebellious consists of another four, while Broken names and Wings can easily pass for a long short story. Overlooking dates, the three books can safely be considered as one volume of eight collected short stories that are similar in both style and conception, even to the point of redundancy; in all of them Lebanon, as the unique 1 See â€Å"al M? ? qa† al-Majm? ‘ah in al-K? milah (The Complete Works), vol. I, p. 57. 57 of mystic natural beauty, provides the setting. The different heroes, though their names and situations vary from story to story, are Khalil Gibran in essence one and the same. They are unmistakably the youth himself, who at times does not even bother to conceal his identity, speaking in the first person singular in Broken Wings and as Khalil in â€Å"Khalil the Heretic† of Spirits Rebellious. This first-person hero is typically to be found challenging pretenders to the possession of the body and soul of his beloved Lebanon. These pretenders in the nineteenth and early twentieth century are, in Gibran’s reckoning, the feudal lords of Lebanese aristocracy and the church order. The stories are therefore almost invariably woven in such a way as to bring Gibran the hero, or a Gibran-modelled hero, into direct conflict with of one or another of those groups. representatives In Broken Wings, Gibran the youth and Salma Karameh fall in love. But the local archbishop frustrates their love by forcibly marrying Salma to his nephew. Thus Gibran finds the opportunity, whilst his love of the virgin beauty of Lebanon, to pour out his singing anger on the church and its hierarchy. In Spirits Rebellious, Iihalil the heretic is expelled from a monastery in Mount Lebanon into a raging winter blizzard, because he was too Christian to be tolerated by the abbot and his fellow monks. Rescued at the last moment by a widow and her beautiful daughter in a Lebanese hamlet and secretly given refuge in their cottage, he soon makes the mother an admirer of his ideals of a primitive anticlerical Christianity and the daughter a disciple and a devoted lover. When he is discovered and captured by the local feudal lord and brought to trial before him as a heretic and an outlaw, he stands among the multitudes of humble Lebanese villagers and tenants and speaks like a Christ at his second coming. Won over by his defence, which he turns into an offensive against the allied despotism of the church and the feudal system, the simple and poverty-stricken villagers rally round him. As a consequence the local lord commits suicide, the priest takes to flight, Khalil marries the daughter of his rescuer, and the whole village lives ever afterwards in a blissful state of natural piety, amity and justice. John the Madman† in Nymphs of the Valley is almost a duplicate of Khalil the heretic. Detained with his calves by the abbot and monks of a monastery simply because the calves have intruded on its property, John, the poor calf-keeper, accuses his persecutors and all other men of the church of being the enemies of Christ, the modern pharisees land 58 on the poverty, misery and goodness of the very people prospering like himself in whom Christ abides. â€Å"Come forth again, o living out of your Christ,† he calls, â€Å"and chase these religion-merchants For they have turned those temples into dungeons where the temples. nakes of their cunning and villainy lie coiled. † 1 Because he was social order uniinspired with sincere truth under a domineering to sincerity and truth, John was dismissed as a formly antagonistic madman. It is easy to label Gibran in this early stage of his career as a social reformer and a rebel, as he was indeed labelled by many students of his works in the Arab world. His heroes, whose main weapons are their eloquent tongues, are always engaged in struggles that are of a social nature. There are almost invariably three factors here: innocent romantic love, frustrated by a society that subjugates love to worldly selfish interests, a church order that claims wealth, power and absolute authority in the name of Christ but is in fact utterly antichrist, and a ruthlessly inhuman feudal system. However, in spite of the apparent climate of social revolt in his stories Gibran remains far from deserving the title of social reformer. To be a reformer in revolt against something is to be in possession of a positive alternative. But nowhere do Gibran’s heroes strike us as having any real alternative. The alternatives, if any, are nothing but the negation of what the heroes revolt against. Thus their alternative for a corrupt love is no corrupt love, the sort of utopian love that we are made to see in Broken Lf/ings; the alternative for a feudal system is no feudal system, or the kind of systemless society we end up with in Spirits Rebellious; and the alternative for a Christless church is a Christ without any kind of church, madman in the kind of role in which John has found himself. Not being in possession of an alternative, a social reformer in revolt is instantly transformed from a hero into a social misfit. Thus Gibran’s heroes have invariably been heretics, madmen, wanderers, and even prophets and Gods. As such they all Boston, drawn represent Gibran the emigrant misfit in Chinatown, in his imagination and longing to Lebanon, his childhood’s fairyland, who is not so much concerned w ith the ills that corrupt its society as with the corrupt society that defiles its beauty. What kind of Lebanon Gibran has in mind becomes clearer in a relatively late essay in Arabic, in which his ideal of Lebanon and that of the antagonists whom he portrays in his stories are set against one another. vol. 1 Al-Majm? ‘ahal-K? mila, I, p. 101. 59 The best that Gibran the rebel could tell those corrupters of Lebanese society in this essay entitled â€Å"You Have Your Lebanon and I have Mine† is not how to make Lebanon a better society, but how beautiful is Lebanon without any society at all. He writes: â€Å"You have your Lebanon and its problems, and I have my Lebanon and its beauty. You have your Lebanon with all that it has of various interests and concerns, while I have my Lebanon with all that it has of aspirations and dreams †¦ Your Lebanon is a political riddle that time to resolve, while my Lebanon is hills rising in awe and attempts Your Lebanon is ports, industry majesty towards the blue sky †¦ and commerce, while my Lebanon is a far removed idea, a burning emotion, and an ethereal word whispered by earth into the ear of heaven †¦ Your Lebanon is religious sects and parties, while my Lebanon is youngsters climbing rocks, running with rivulets and ball in open squares. Your Lebanon is speeches, lectures and playing while my Lebanon is songs of nightingales, discussions, swaying branches of oak and poplar, and echoes of shepherd flutes reverber1 ating in caves and grottoes. † It is no wonder that this kind of rebel should wind up his so-called social revolt at this stage of his career with the publication of a book of collected prose poems entitled A Tear and a Smile. The tears, which are much more abundant here than the smiles, are those of Gibran the misfit rather than of the rebel in Boston, singing in an exceedingly touching way of his frustrated love and estrangement, his loneliness, homesickness and melancholy. The smiles, on the other hand, are the expression of those hitherto intermittent but now more numerous moments in the life of Gibran the emigrant when the land of mystic beauty, ceases to be a geographical Lebanon, in his imagination into expression, and is gradually metamorphosed a metaphysical After such rudimentary as his homeland. ttempts short story â€Å"The Ash of Generations and the Eternal Fire† in Nymphs Gibran has of the Valley, expressive of his belief in reincarnation, managed in his prose poems of A Tear and a Smile to give his homesickness a clear platonic twist. His alienation has become that of the human soul entrapped in the foreign world of physical existence, and his homesickness has become the yearning of t he soul so estranged for rehabilitation in the higher world of metaphysical truth whence it has originally descended. It is for this reason that human life is 1 Ibid. , vol. III, pp. 202-203. 60 expressed by a tear and a smile: a tear for the departure and alienation The historic analogy and a smile for the prospect of a home-coming. of the sea in this respect becomes common from now on in Gibran’s writings: rain is the weeping of water that falls over hills and dales from the mother sea, while running brooks sound the estranged â€Å"Such is the soul†, says Gibran in one of happy song of home-coming. rom the universal soul it takes its his prose poems. â€Å"Separated course in the world of matter passing like a cloud over the mountains of sorrow and the plains of happiness until it is met by the breezes of death, whereby it is brought back to where it originally belongs, to the sea of love and beauty, to god. † 1 When Gibran’s homeland, the object of his longing, was Lebanon, his anger was directed against those who in his view had defiled its beauty. But now that his homeland had gradually assumed a metaphysical Platonic meaning, his attack was no longer centred on local influences clergy, church dogma, feudalism and the other corrupting in Lebanon, but rather on the shamefully defiled image that man, the emigrant in the world of physical existence, has made of the world of God, his original homeland. Not only Lebanese society, but rather human society at large has become the main target of Gibran’s the second stage of his career. isgust and bitterness throughout This kind of disgust constitutes the central theme in Gibran’s long Arabic poem Processions of 1919 and his book of collected Arabic essays The Tempests of 1920, his last work in Arabic, as well as in his first two works in English, The Madman of 1918, and The Forerunner of 1920, both of which are collected parables and prose poems. The hero in Gibran’s poetico-fictional title-piece in The Tempests, Youssof al-Fakhry in his cottage among the forbiddi ng mountains, becomes a mystery to the awe-stricken Only to neighbourhood. Gibran the narrator, seeking refuge in the cottage one stormy evening, does he reveal the secret of his heroic silence and seclusion. â€Å"It is a certain awakening in the uttermost depth of the soul,† he says, â€Å"a certain idea which takes a man’s conscience by surprise at a moment and opens his vision whereby he sees life †¦ projecof forgetfulness, ted like a tower of light between earth and infinity. † 2 Looking at the rest of men from the tower of life, from his giant God-self which he has so recognized at a rare moment of awakening, Youssof al-Fakhry sees them in their forgetful day-to-day earthly 1 Ibid. vol. II, p. 95. 2 Ibid. , vol. III, p. 111. 61 to existence, at the bottom of the tower. In their placid unwillingness lift their eyes to what is divine in their natures, they appear to him as disgusting pigmies, hypocrites and cowards. â€Å"I have deserted people†, he explains to his guest, â€Å"because I have found myself a wheel turnin g he right among wheels invariably turning left. † â€Å"No, my brother,† adds, â€Å"I have not sought seclusion for prayer or hermitic practices. Rather have I sought it in escape from people and their laws, teachings and customs, from their ideas, noises and wailings. I have sought seclusion so as not to see the faces of men selling their souls to buy with the price thereof what is below their souls in value and honour In â€Å"The Grave-Digger†, another poetico-fictional piece in The these men who have sold their souls, and who constitute in Tempests, Gibran’s reckoning the rest of human society, are dismissed as dead, though in the words of the hero, modelled in the lines of Youssof alFakhry, â€Å"finding none to bury them, they remain on the face of the 2 earth in stinking disintegration†. The hero’s advice to Gibran the narrator is that for a man who has awakened to his giant God-self the best service he can render society is digging graves. â€Å"From that hour up to the present†, Gibran concludes, â€Å"I have been digging graves and burying the dead, but the dead are many and I am alone with nobody to help me. † 3 To be the only sane man among fools is to appear as the only fool among sane men. If life, as Youssof al-Fakhry says, is a tower whose bottom is the earth and whose top is the world of the infinite, then to clamour for the infinite in one’s life is to be considered an outcast and a fool by the rest of men clinging to the bottom of the tower. This is first English work, The precisely how the Madman in Gibran’s his title. His masks stolen, he was walking naked, as Madman, gained every traveller from the physical to the metaphysical is bound to be. Seeing his nakedness, someone on a house-top cried: â€Å"He is a madman. Looking up, the sun, his higher self, kissed his naked face for the first time. He fell in love with the sun and wanted his masks, his no longer. Thereafter he was always physical and social attachments, known as the Madman, and as a madman he was at war against human society. Processions, Gibran’s long poem in Arabic, is a dialogue between two voices. Upon close analysis, the two voices seem to belong to one and 1 Ibid. , vol. III, 106. p. 2 Ibid. , vol. III, p. 11. 3 Ibid. , vol. III, 15. p. 62 the same man: another of those Gibranian madmen, or men who have become Gods unto themselves. This man would at one time cast his at people living at the bottom of the tower, and eyes downwards raise his voice in derision and sarcasm, poking fun at consequently their unreality, satirizing their Gods, creeds and practices, and ridiculing their values, ever doomed, blind as they are, to be at loggerheads. At another instant he would turn his eyes to his own sublime world beyond good and evil, where dualities interpenetrate giving way to unity, and then he would raise his voice in praise of life absolute and universal. is to achieve serenity and peace. That To achieve self-fulfilment Gibran and his heroes are still mad Gods, grave-diggers and enemies of mankind, filled with bitterness despite their claim of having arrived at the summit of life’s tower, reveals that Gibran’s self-fulfilment this second stage of his work is still a matter of wishful throughout rather than an accomplished fact. Too thinking and make-believe with his own painful loneliness in his transcendental preoccupied quest, Gibran the madman or superman, it seems, has failed hitherto at the summit, but also to not only to feel the joy of self-realization recognize the ragedy of his fellow-men supposedly lost in the mire instead of love and compassion, down below. Consequently people could only inspire in him bitterness and disgust. The stage of anger and disgust was succeeded in Gibran’s development by a third stage, that of The Prophet, his chef d’? tlvre, Jesus the Son of Man and The Earth Gods. The link is to be found in The Forerun ner of 1920, his book of collected poems and parables. To believe, as Gibran did, that life is a tower whose base is earth and whose summit is the infinite is also to believe that life is one and indivisible. For the man on top of life’s tower to reject those who are beneath, as Gibran had been doing up to this point, is to undermine his own height and become lower than the lowest he rejects. Thus one of Gibran’s poems in The Forerunner says, as though in atonement for all his Nietzschean revolt: â€Å"Too young am I and too outraged to be my freer self. â€Å"And how shall I become my freer self unless I slay my burdened selves, or unless all men become free? † †¦ How shall the eagle in me soar against the sun until my fledglings leave the nest which I with my own beak have built for them. 1 1 TheForerunner,p. 7. 63 Gibran’s belief in the unity of life, which has hitherto made only and at times confused appearances in his writings, has intermittent now become, with all its implications with regard to human life and conduct, the prevailing theme of the rest of his works. If life is one and infinite, then man is the infinite in embryo, just as a seed is in itself the whole tree in embryo. â€Å"Every seed†, says Gibran in one of his later works, â€Å"is a longing. 1 This longing is presumably the longing of the tree in the seed for in the actual tree that it had previously been. Every self-fulfilment seed therefore bears within itself the longing, the self-fulfilment and the means by which this can be achieved. To transfer the analogy to man is to say that every man as a conscious being is a divine seed; is life absolute and infinite in embryo. Every man, therefore, according to Gibran, is a longing : the longing of the divine in man for man the divine whom he had previously been. But, to quote Gibran again, â€Å"No longing remains unfulfilled. † 2 Like the seed, he Therefore every man is destined for Godhood. bears within him the longing, the fulfilment which is God, and the road leading to this fulfilment. It is in this context that Gibran declares in The Forerurcner, â€Å"You are your own forerunner, and the tower have built are but the foundations of your giant self. † 3 you Seeing man in this light, Gibran can no longer afford to be a gravedigger. A new stage has opened in his career. Men are divine and, therefore, deathless. If they remain in the mire of their earthly existence, it is not because they are mean and disgusting, but because the divine in them, like the fire in a piece of wood, is dormant though it needs only a slight spark to be released into a blaze of light. it is not a grave-digger that men need, but an Consequently, a Socratic mid-wife, who would help man release the God in igniter; himself into the self that is one with God. Therefore in this new stage Gibran the grave-digger and the madman gives way to Gibran the and the igniter. rophet In The Prophet of 1923, Almustafa â€Å"who was a dawn unto his own day† sees his ship, for which he had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese, returning to â€Å"bear him back to the isle of his birth†. The people of Orphalese leave their daily work and crowd around him in the city square to bid him farewell and beg for something of his 1 Sandand Foam, p. 16. 1 Ibid. , p. 25. 1 TheForerunner,p. 7. 64 he answers their various befor e he leaves, whereupon knowledge on subjects of their own choosing. uestions It is not hard to see that Almustafa the Prophet is Gibran himself, who in 1923 had already spent almost twelve years in New York city, the city of Orphalese, having moved there from Boston in 1912, and that the isle of his birth is Lebanon to which he had longed to return. But looking deeper still Almustafa can further symbolize the man who, in Gibran’s reckoning, has become his freer self; who has realized the passage in himself from the human to the divine, and is therefore ripe for emancipation and reunion with life absolute. His ship is death that has come to bear him to the isle of his birth, the Platonic world of metaphysical reality. As to the people of Orphalese, they stand for human society at large in which men, exiled in their spatio-temporal existence from their true selves, that is, from God, are in need in their God-ward journey of the guiding prophetic hand that would lead them from what is human in them to the divine. Having made that journey himself, Almustafa presents himself in his sermons the book as that guide. throughout Stripped of its poetical trappings, Gibran’s teaching in The Prophet is found to rest on the single idea that life is one and infinite. As a living being, man in his temporal existence is only a shadow of his real self. To be one’s real self is to be one with the infinite to which man is related. Self-realization, therefore, lies in going out of inseparably one’s spatio-temporal dimensions, so that the self is broadened to the man’s only extent of including everyone and all things. Consequently in self-realization, to his greater self, lies in love. Hence love is the path theme of the opening sermon of Almustafa to the people of Orphalese. No man can say â€Å"I† truly without meaning the totality of things apart from which he cannot be or be conceived. Still less can one love oneself truly without loving everyone and all things. So love is at once an emancipation and a crucifixion: an emancipation because it releases man from his narrow confinement and brings him to that whereby he feels one with the stage of broader self-consciousness with God; a crucifixion because to grow into the broader self infinite, is to shatter the smaller self which was the seed and confinement. For even as Thus true self-assertion is bound to be a self-negation. love crowns you†, says Almustafa to his hearers, â€Å"so shall he crucify 1 you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. † 1 TheProphet, p. 15. 65 love, which is our guide to our larger self, is insepConsequently arable from pain. â€Å"Your pain†, says Almustafa, â€Å"is the breaking of Even as the stone of the the shell that encloses your understanding. fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know 1 pain. † Thus conceived, pain becomes at once a kind of joy. It is the joy of the seed dying as a tree in embryo in a process of becoming a tree in full. and unheeded which is really painful. It is only pain misunderstood self is God, then anything that gives us pain is a witness If our larger that our self is not yet broad enough to contain it. For to contain all is is thus an to be in love and at peace with all. Pain truly understood to growth and therefore to joy. â€Å"Your joy†, says Almustafa, impetus â€Å"is your sorrow unmasked. The deeper that sorrow carves into your 2 being, the more joy you can contain. † If pain and joy are inseparable, so are life and death. In a universe that is infinite nothing can die except the finite, and nothing finite can be other than the infinite in disguise. Death understood is the pouring of the finite into the infinite, the passage of the God in man into the man in God. â€Å"Life and death are one†, says Almustafa, â€Å"even as the And what is to cease breathing, but to river and the sea are one †¦ free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and 3 seek God unencumbered. † If life and death are one even as joy and pain, it must follow that life is not the opposite of death nor death the opposite of life. For to live is to grow and to grow is to exist in a continuous process of dying. Therefore every death is a rebirth into a higher state of being, in the sense of â€Å"the child is father to the man†. Thus in a Wordsworthian chain of birth and rebirth man persists in his God-ward continuous of himself until ascent, gaining at each step a broader consciousness he finally ends at the absolute. â€Å"It is a flame spirit in you†, says Almustafa, â€Å"ever gathering more of itself. † 4 Similarly, nothing can happen to us which is not in fact self-invited, If God is our greater self, then nothing can and self-entertained. efall us from without. Says Almustafa: 1 Ibid. , p. 60. 2 Ibid. , p. 35. 3 Ibid. , pp. 90-91. 4 Ibid. , p. 97. 66 â€Å"The And And And murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder, the robbed is not blameless in being robbed. the righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked, the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon. â⠂¬Å"1 If God is our greater self then there can be no good in the infinite universe which is not the good of every man, nor can there be any â€Å"Like a procession†, evil for which anyone can abjure responsibility. Almustafa, â€Å"you walk together towards your God self. † says â€Å"†¦ even as the holy and righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also. And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all. â€Å"22 It would follow that the spiritual elevation of a Christ is part and parcel of the material villainy of a Judas Iscariot. For in God Christ and Judas are one and inseparable. No man, therefore, no matter how elevated, can be emancipated into his larger self alone. An eagle, however high it can soar, is always bound to come down again to its fledgelings in the nest and is until they too become strong of wing, doomed to remain earthbound and the same is true of an elevated human soul or a prophet. So long as there remains even one speck of bestiality in any man no other human soul, no matter how near to God it may be, can be finally Like the released emancipated and escape the wheel of reincarnation. n Plato’s allegory, he will again return to the philosopher-prisoner cave, so long as his fellows are still there in darkness and in chains. Gibran’s Prophet, as he prepares to board his ship, says: â€Å"Should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again. A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body. A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bea r me. â€Å"3 In literary terms, this moment of rest upon the wind for Almustafa was brief indeed. Only five years elapsed on his departure from 1 Ibid. , p. 47. 2 Ibid. , pp. 46-47. 3 Ibid. , 105. p. 67 Orphalese before he was given birth again; not by another woman, as he had foretold, but by Gibran himself. His name this time was not Almustafa but Jesus. Jesus the Son of Man, Gibran’s second book after The Prophet, appeared in 1928, the first being only a short collection of aphorisms under the title of Sand and Foam. To the student of Gibran’s literary art, Jesus the Son of Man may offer some novelty, but not so to the student of his thought. Gibran in this book tries to portray Christ as he understands him by inviting to speak of him each from his a number of Christ’s contemporaries own point of view. Their views combined in the mind of the reader are intended to bring out the desired portrait. But names, places and situations apart, the Jesus so portrayed in the the book is not so much of the Biblical Christ, as he is the old Biblical a new development Gibranian Almustafa. transformed into another Like Nazarene who Almustafa he is described as â€Å"The chosen and the beloved†, after several previous rebirths is come and will come again to help lead men to their larger selves. He is not a God who has taken human form, but an ordinary man of ordinary birth who has been able through spiritual sublimation to elevate himself from the human to the divine. His several returns to earth are the several returns of the eagle who would not taste the full freedom of space before all his fledgedesire†, says lings are taught to fly. â€Å"Were it not for a mother’s Gibran’s Jesus, â€Å"I would have stripped me of the swaddling-clothes and escaped back to space. And were it not for sorrow in all of you, . I would not have stayed to weep. I Therefore Gibran’s Jesus was neither meek nor humble nor characterized by pity. His return to earth is the return of a winged spirit, intent on appealing not to human frailties, but to the power in man which is capable of lifting him from the finite to the infinite. One reporter on Jesus says, â€Å"I am sickened and the bowels within call Jesus humble and me stir and rise when I hear the faint-hearted an d when the that they may justify their own faint-heartedness; meek, for comfort and companionship, down-trodden, speak of Jesus as a worm shining by their side. Yes, my heart is sickened by such men. It is the mighty hunter I would preach, and the mountainous spirit 2 unconquerable. † Gibran’s Jesus is even made to re-utter the Lord’s prayer in a way 1 Jesus The Sonof Man, p. 19. 2 Ibid. , p. 4. 68 to the heart and lips of Almustafa, appropriate teaching man to himself to the point of becoming one with the all-inclusive: enlarge â€Å"Our father in earth and heaven, sacred is Thy name. Thy will be done with us, even as in space †¦.. In Thy compassion forgive us and enlarge us to forgive one another. Guide us towards Thee and stretch down Thy hand to us in darkness. For Thine is the kingdom, and in Thee is our power and our fulfilment To dwell further on the character and teachings of Jesus as conIn The Prophet, Gibran the ceived by Gibran is to risk redundancy. thinker reaches his climax. His post-Prophet works, with the possible exception of The Earth Gods of 1931, the last book published in his lifetime, have almost nothing new to offer. s a collection of The Wanderer of 1932, published posthumously, and sayings much in the style and spirit of The Forerunner of parables 1920, published three years before The Prophet. As to The Garden of the in 1933, it should be dismissed Prophet, also published posthumously as a fake and a forgery. Gibran, who had planned The Garden outright state of being and of the Prophet to be an expression of Almustafa’s after he had arrived in the isle of his birth from the city of teachings Orphalese, had only time left to write two or three short passages for that book. Other passages were added, some of which are translations from Gibran’s early Arabic works, and some possibly written by another pen in imitation of Gibran’s style. The result was a book to Gibran, in which Gibran’s attributed are poetry and thought to a most unhappy state of chaos and confusion. brought This leaves us with The Earth Gods as the complete work with which Gibran’s career comes to its conclusion. And a fitting conclusion it is indeed. The book is a long prose poem where, in the words of Gibran, â€Å"The three earth-born Gods, the Master Titans of Life† hold a discourse on the destiny of man. is career was a poet of alienation and Gibran, who throughout strikes us in The Prophet and in Jeszrs the Son of Man, Almuslonging, tafa’s duplicate, as having arrived at his long-cherished state of intellectual rest and spiritual fulfilment. Almustafa and Christ, who in Gibran’s reckoning are earth-born Gods, reveal human destiny as being man’s gradual ascent through love and spiritual sublimation 1 Ibid. , p. 60. 69 towards ultimate reunion with God, the absolute and the infinite. It is possible that Gibran began to have second thoughts about the philosophy of his prophet towards the end of his life. Otherwise why is it that instead of one earth God, one human destiny, he now presents us with three who apparently are in disagreement ? Shortly after Jesus the Son of Man, (libran, who had for some time been fighting a chronic illness, came to realize that the fates were not on his side. Like Almustafa, he must have seen his ship coming in the mist to take him to the isle of his birth and in the lonely journey of towards death, armed as he was with the mystic convictions Almustafa, he must have often stopped to examine the implications of his philosophy. In his farewell address to the people of Orphalese, Almustafa saw his departure as â€Å"A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind†. But what of this endless cycle of births and rebirths? If man’s ultimate destiny as a finite being is to unite with the infinite, then that destiny is a virtual impossibility. For the road to the infinite is infinite, and man’s quest as a traveller through reincarnation is bound to be endless and fruitless. ‘ Therefore comes the voice of Gibran’s first God: â€Å"Weary is my spirit of all there is. I would not move a hand to create a world Nor to erase one. I would not live could I but die, For the weight of aeons is upon me, And the ceaseless moan of the seas exhaust my sleep. Could I but lose the primal aim And vanish like a wasted sun; Could I but strip my divinity of its purpose And breathe my immortality into space And be no more; Could I but be consumed and pass from time’s memory Into the emptiness of nowhere. â€Å"‘ In another place this same God says: â€Å"For all that I am, and all that there is on earth, And all that shall be, inviteth not my soul. Silent is thy face, And in thine eyes the shadows of night are sleeping. But terrible is thy silence, And thou art terrible. â€Å"2 1 The Earth Gods, 3. p. 2 Ibid. , pp. 5-6. 70 If man in his ascent to the infinite is likened to a mountain-climber, then these moments of gloom and helplessness only occur when he casts his eyes towards the infinitely removed summit beyond. It is not so when he casts his eyes downwards and sees the heights he has already scaled. The loneliness and gloom then give way to optimism and reassurance. For a journey that can be started is a journey that can be concluded. Gibran on his lonely voyage must have turned to see There we hear the this other implication in Almustafa’s philosophy. voice of the second God, whose eyes are turned optimistically downwards. His philosophy is that the height of the summit is a part of the lowliness of the valley beneath. That the valley is now transcended is a reassurance that the summit can be considered as already conquered. For to reach the summit is to reach the highest point to which a valley could raise its depth. Man’s journey to God is therefore a journey inwards and not an external quest. The second God says to the first: â€Å"We are the beyond and we are the most high And between us and the boundless eternity Is naught save our unshaped passion And the motive thereof. You invoke the unknown, And the unknown clad with moving mist Dwells in your own soul. Yea, in your own soul your redeemer lies asleep And in sleep sees what your waking eye does not see. †¦ Forbear and look down upon the world. Behold the unweaned children of your love. The earth is your abode, and the earth is your throne; And high beyond man’s furtherest hope Your hand upholds his destiny. â€Å"‘ Yet in Gibran’s lonely journey towards death, a voice not so pessimistic as that of his first God nor so optimistic as that of the second from the youthful past of is heard. This voice, coming perhaps Broken Wings and A Tear and a Smile, though not part of Almustafa’s voice, is yet not out of harmony with it. It is the voice of someone who has come to realize that man has so busied himself philosophizing to live it. Rather than the climber about life that he has forgotten terrified by the towering height of the summit or reassured by the lowliness of the valley, here is a love-intoxicated youth in the spring meadows 1 Ibid. , on the mountainside. p. 22. 71 â€Å"There is a wedding in the valley. â€Å"Brothers, my brothers,† the third God rebukes his two fellows, â€Å"A day too vast for recording. †¦ We shall pass into the twilight; Perchance to wake to the dawn of another world. But love shall stay, And his finger-marks shall not be erased. The blessed forge burns, The sparks rise, and each spark is a sun. Better it is for us, and wiser, To seek a shadowed nook and sleep in our earth divinity And let love, human and frail, command the coming day. â€Å"‘ Thus Gibran concludes his life-long alienation. His thought in the twilight of his days seems to have swung back to his youth where it first started. It is a complete cycle, in conformity, though perhaps unconsciously, The tenacious cedar tree which was with his idea of reincarnation. Gibran the Prophet went back again to the seed that it was: to love, to wake to the dawn of another world. â€Å"2 human and frail-â€Å"Perchance N. NAIMY 1 Ibid. , pp. 25-26. 2 Ibid. , pp. 38-41.