Post #14

The Taiping Revolution was very interesting to me in this reading. One of the things that stood out to me was that the revolution cost the lives of almost 30 million people, yet nobody really knows about it. I thought that the ideas of the Taiping were strangely revolutionary for this time period. It reminded me a little of Communism. The belief that there should be no private property and the redistribution of land are both pillars of communism. The rebels also had some ideas that the world would later see such as marriage based off of mutual attraction, and the idea of idea of health insurance. I was very surprised to see how long the revolution lasted considering the rebels did not actually change much.
I think that the Opium War was the major shift in world power away from Asia and towards Europe. The Europeans were able to defeat the Chinese in the Opium war with their mighty military power. This is something that had always been the other way around. Once the Europeans had won the war they were able to create favorable terms towards themselves, such as the opening of the major chinese ports to the Europeans. This helped European countries get their goods into the Chinese markets. By doing this they were able to get more Opium into the country and cause more addicts. All of this combined led to the downfall of chinese authority and power over many European countries. I believe that the Chinese lack of an industrial revolution at this time led to the country not being able to keep up with the Europeans.
After reading this I believe that European greed is one reason why their is so much distrust of Western Culture. If the Europeans had not taken advantage of China and many other Asian countries then the Chinese nationalism that hates Western Cultured would have never been born. The actions of the greedy Europeans during this time still has an affect on us today.

Call To Action

My lacrosse team and I decided to volunteer at the Catholic Social House. When we first arrived there we that a lot of people were just leaving. We later found out that the reason that all those people were there was that the Catholic Social House has a community breakfast every Wednesday and Thursday for those in need. At the breakfast they give out pancakes, eggs, toast, fresh orange juice and many other typical breakfast foods.
Our task for the day was to help with their garden. The garden was dormant during the winter but has become ready for planting now that the whether has warmed up. The only problem with that was the hundreds of weeds that covered the landscape. Our job was to pick all of those weeds and to help create planter beds to plant the new crops. The House was planning on planting some strawberries, carrots, onions, and many other types of vegetables.
My team is 27 people strong and we got to work quickly. We were able to quickly pull up all of the weeds with the help of shovels and hoes. One of the hardest parts of the the job was having to turn over the hard dirt so that it could be softened for planting. Usually a rototiller would have gotten the job done in a few minutes, but unfortunately for us the group did not own one. I was covered in all the dirt that was getting tossed around from turning over the dirt. This was not my first time having to work in a garden or deal with a lot of shoveling so I was used to all the manual labor, but many of my teammates have not spent much time in dirt or near gardens and did not appreciate how dirty they were getting. Often times some of my teammates had to be showed how to use a hoe or the proper way to shovel so that they did not break the tools.
It was a humbling experience and I also think that my team had some team bonding. It was humbling because many of the families that the organization works with relies on the produce that comes from  the crops we were helping to plant. We indirectly had a huge impact on their lives. It was also good for our team because we still had to communicate with each other so that we could make sure we were pulling the right plants or doing the right jobs. It felt good to give back to the community and it was nice how much work we had gotten done. One of the volunteers had taken a before picture to show how many weeds and how bad the garden looked and then took an after picture to show the nice, newly formed planter beds and the weedless pathways. Gardening has always been a favorite of mine which is why I enjoyed our Call to Action day. I also appreciated how we got it out of the way early in the day by starting at 9am and ending by noon. Our large numbers helped us to get the job done much faster than was expected.

Blog #13

I agreed with many of the churches teachings to improve the standards of living in the world and decrease poverty. I think that the church is on the right path by declaring the specific needs that need to be addressed in order to achieve these goals. One thing that I think that the Church needs to do a better job of is implementing its ideas on a smaller scale. The ideas need to be implemented on a local scale. It would be much easier for poverty to drop if the Church was able to get the small communities more engaged in its ideas. I know that this is not as easy as it seems but if everybody was to get on board I believe that we could see an immediate impact. I like how the Church has built upon its goals over the years. The Church started off with broader ideas but has now narrowed them down.
One thing that I did not appreciate in the text was when the text talked about the history of the church and colonization. The text said that many natives were enslaved and often forced into baptism at gun point. The text also stated that the priests were complicit with these activities along with many of the other activities that were done during the colonial area. I believe that the text is trying to soften and sugar coat how the church and its priests actually treated the natives. This is so that the church can protect its image as a caring and loving organization, when in reality not to long ago it was responsible for the enslaving of millions and the deaths of thousands more.

Blog #12

This section of reading was very interesting to me. I found it ironic that many countries in Europe at the time were becoming increasingly democratic while the countries were creating vast empires around the world. The empires that they were creating around the world were dictatorships that suppressed many of the native people. I believe that the main reason that this happened was because of the European greed. The Aristocratic Europeans found a way to make more money and took advantage. I don't know if the common european knew about how the natives of other countries were treated but I am sure that if they had seen or knew about the conditions then many of the inequalities that took place would not have happened.
It took me by surprise that the European nations were able to divide the continent of Africa in less than 20 years. Did the Europeans travel all of that land? Did they discover all of it then claim it for themselves or did all the countries come together and decided who got what? I want to know how the countries divided up the land and how they were able to conquer it so quickly. I am also surprised that the Europeans were able to make so many colonies in Asia. I thought that Asia was supposed to be strong and powerful. I also assumed that because there were large populations of people in the Asian countries that they would be harder to conquer.
The first visual source, the board game, is suggesting that European life in Africa was not bad. The board game is suggesting that the European life consisted of shooting at Africans, fishing, and making sure that Africans were doing their work. The board game also is portraying the land as exotic because of the different types of animals such as lions, giraffes, and zebra. I believe the board game is meant to lure more Europeans to Africa by trying to make it seem more attractive.