Notes on Pedagogy of the oppressed

1. 被压迫者需要通过与压迫者的斗争获得自由，被压迫者要避免成为新的压迫者。没有被压迫者就没有压迫者。
2. 反对“灌输式”教学法，提倡 “提问式”教学法。运用对话而不是说教的方式，教育者与被教育者通过反思与行动共同创造知识。
3. 世界因为个体的存在而存在，人不能独立于世界，人与动物的区别在于动物只能适应环境而人能够创造、改变环境。批判性思考（改变现状）与幼稚思考（维持现状）的区别。（我认为人可以独立于世界，没有人世界照样存在。感觉自己要么认命，要么犬儒，不在乎做人还是动物，总有选择的自由，是不是更接近存在主义啊？）
4. 社会调查的方法：提出问题—初步调查，列出主要矛盾、风险—编码（抽象）—解码（具象）—讨论—分类—再编码—再解码
5. 压迫者的策略（反对话）：征服、分而治之、操纵、文化侵略；被压迫者的策略（对话）：合作、团结解放、组织、文化综合

“The correct method lies in dialogue. The conviction of the oppressed that they must fight for their liberation is not a gift bestowed by the revolutionary leadership, but the result of their own conscientização.”

“A revolutionary leadership must accordingly practice co-intentional education. Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators. ”

“Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.”

“the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the students. The students—no longer docile listeners—are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own. The role of the problem-posing educator is to create; together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos.”

“Education as the practice of freedom—as opposed to education as the practice of domination—denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people. Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world. In these relations consciousness and world are simultaneous: consciousness neither precedes the world nor follows it.”

“Once again, the two educational concepts and practices under analysis come into conflict. Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world; problem-posing education sets itself the task of demythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers. Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation. In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take the people’s historicity as their starting point.”

“The universe is revealed to me not as space, imposing a massive presence to which I can but adapt, but as a scope, a domain which takes shape as I act upon it.”

“Critical thinking contrasts with naïve thinking, which sees “historical time as a weight, a stratification of the acquisitions and experiences of the past,” from which the present should emerge normalized and “well-behaved.” For the naïve thinker, the important thing is accommodation to this normalized “today.” For the critic, the important thing is the continuing transformation of reality, in behalf of the continuing humanization of men.”

“Only human beings are praxis—the praxis which, as the reflection and action which truly transform reality, is the source of knowledge and creation. Animal activity, which occurs without a praxis, is not creative; people’s transforming activity is.”

“When people lack a critical understanding of their reality, apprehending it in fragments which they do not perceive as interacting constituent elements of the whole, they cannot truly know that reality. To truly know it, they would have to reverse their starting point: they would need to have a total vision of the context in order subsequently to separate and isolate its constituent elements and by means of this analysis achieve a clearer perception of the whole.”

“The more educators and the people investigate the people’s thinking, and are thus jointly educated, the more they continue to investigate”

“Human activity is theory and practice; it is reflection and action.”

“Internalizing paternal authority through the rigid relationship structure emphasized by the school, these young people tend when they become professionals (because of the very fear of freedom instilled by these relationships) to repeat the rigid patterns in which they were miseducated. ”

Notes on "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond

Chapter 1 Up to the starting line

The spread of humans around the world:
1) Separate from chimpanzee— 7 million years ago
2) Bipedal—4 million years ago
3) Our prohuman cousins—Australopithecus afarensis (3 million years), Homo habilis (2.8 million years), Australopithecus africanus (2.5 million years), Australopithecus Sediba (2 million years), Homo naledi (2 million years), Homo erectus (1.9 million years), Homo neanderthalensis (250,000 years), Homo floresiensis (18,000 years)
4) 1st wave of Out of Africa—Homo erectus around 1 million years ago to Java, Indonesia
5) Colonization of Europe—0.5 million years ago
6) 2nd wave of Out of Africa—Homo sapients around 50,000 years ago: appearance of Cro-Magnons and extinct of Neanderthals in Europe, arriving at Australia/new Guinea ~40,000 years ago, arriving at Serbia ~20,000 years ago, colonizing America ~13,000 years ago

Chapter 2 A natural experiment of history

December 1835, Chatham island, hunter-gather Moriori people were extinguished by agricultural Mori people
The contribution of environmental factors: climate, geological type, marine resources, area, terrain fragmentation, and isolation.
Environmental difference—> subsistence—> population and social complexity
Why strong nation always invade weak nation even for poor resources?

Chapter 3 Collision at Cajamarca
November 16, 1532 at Cajamarca, Peru
Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro vs Inca Emperor Atahuallpa
168 vs 80,000 soldiers
guns, amours, horses, germs, writing, organizations

Chapter 4 Farmer power
domestic plants, animals—> more foods, more people, more germs and diseases—> more complex society—> more specialists (king, priest, soldier, artisan, bureaucrats)—> more technology and explorations

Chapter 5 History's haves and have-nots
When and where the first plants and animals were domesticated?
Independent domestication centers: South west Asia (wheat, pea, olive, sheep, goat), China (rice, millet, pig, silkworm), Mesoamerica (corn, beans, squash, turkey), Andes and Amazonia (potato, manioc, llama, guinea pig), Eastern US (sunflower, goosefoot)


Chapter 6 To farm or not to farm
competition of farming, hunter-gather, and herder, farming became dominant because:
1) decline of wild food availability
2) increase production of domesticable wild plant
3) innovative technologies for collecting, processing, and storing foods
4) rising food production and increasing population density
5) famers displace hunter-gathers

Chapter 7 Ho to make an almond
artificial domestication vs natural selection

Chapter 8 Apples or Indians
Why agriculture never arise independently in some fertile areas (California, Australia)? local people and available wild plants.
Why all major domesticated plants derived from thousands years ago? Our ancestors have tried all? The domesticated ones are enough for food supply? 
Advantage of Fertile Crescent— climate (mild wet winter, long dry summer), available easily domesticated plants, high percentage of hermaphroditic selfers. 
Advantage of Fertile Crescent over other mediterranean zones– high diversity of wild plants; greatest variation of climate with high percentage of annual plants; wild range of altitudes and topographies within a shot distance; variable domesticated mammals: goat, sheep, pig,cow; less competition from hunter-gatherers.
Size of the seeds/Abundance/Production/

Chapter 9 Zebras, Unhappy marriages and the Anna Karenina principle
Why major livestocks were domesticated in Eurasia but not America, Australia, or Africa? 
1) large area and ecological diversity with more candidates
2) lost candidates due to human invasion with advanced techniques
3) Suitability: dirt, growth rate, mating habits, disposition, tendency to panic, social organizations. 

Chapter 10 Spacious skills and tilted axies
Why domesticated crops and livestocks spread faster in Eurasia than that in Africa and America? 
Climate are similar in 30-40 degree latitude for survival and breeding.

Chapter 11 Lethal gift of livestock
Why Indians were eliminated 95% by germs?
increased population density (farm, city)—> increased domesticated animals—> increased epidemics

Chapter 12 Blueprints and borrowed letters
Sumerian, Egyptian,Chinese, and Mexico developed their own writings, all other writings derived from them. 

Why? Food production and connections

Chapter 13 Necessity's mother

I read this book for the 2nd time, truly finished the whole book this time. It is an enjoyable reading. After reading many different books on human evolution and anthropology, I think this is the one I like the most so far, with clear and well organized ideas and arguments, also cautious conclusions. 

I am most interested in the question "Why Europe, not China?" about the modern science origin. I quite agree that unity may inhibit the competition, which is the basic for science and technology. That is true of China for the past 2000 years. Yet, it's complicated. There are many other factors, say a few, the dominant golden mean doctrine of Confucianism, the contempt of commercials, and strong parental control. 


The author argues population growth is the start of civilization and the advantage of one state against the other. This may be true in the beginning, in China's case, before 15 century. The continued population growth after some point will slow down the progress for short of resources unless the problem is solved by technological change. It happened that China didn't seek this solution to explore overseas to get more resources to support more people, but let the heaven to solve the problem by famine and war. Why? just a haphazard incident. If the Ming emperor didn't stop the oversea fleet building and commerce with Arab and Africa and Europe then, it will be another result now. 

Notes on "Seven Skeletons" by Lydia Pyne

1. The old man of La Chapelle: 

When: Aug.3,1908

Who: Amédée Bouyssonie, Jean Bouyssonie, Louis Bardon

Where: La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France

What: Neanderthal skeleton (50,000 years)

Characteristics: adult male, severely curved spine, bent knees, jutted head, large brow ridge, complete in burial, Neanderthal 

Publication: L'Homme Fossile de La Chapelle-aux-Saints by Marcellin Boule (1911)

Fiction: La Guerre u Feu by Boex brothers

Reevaluation: osteoarthritis by William Straus and A.J.E. Cave (1955)

2. Piltdown man:

When: Feb.14,1912

Who: Charles Dawson

Where: Piltdown, UK

What: fake fossil of ancient human (500,000 years)

Characteristics: mix of a "human skull of medieval age, a 500-year-old lower jaw of an orangutan and chimpanzee fossil teeth"

Exposed: 1953

3. Taung child:

When: 1924

Who: Raymond Dart

Where: Taung, South Africa

What: skull of a child (2,500,000 years), Australopithecus africanus

Characteristics: the position of the forman magnum indicates its bipedal 

4. Peking man:

When: Dec.2, 1929

Who: Wenzhong Pei 

Where: Zhoukoudian, Beijing, China

What: human-like skull(750,000 years), Homo erectus

Characteristics: heavy brows and large chinless jaws

5. Lucy:

When: Nov.24, 1974

Who: Tom Gray and Donald Johanson

Where: Hadar, Ethiopia, Africa

What: partial skeleton of an old female hominin (3,250,000 years), Australopithecus afarensis

Characteristics: fragments including jaw, cranial, spine, ribs, humerus, radial, ulnar, pelvic, femur, tibia

Publications: Lucy, the beginnings of humankind by Donald Johanson, 1981; The quest for human origins by Donald Johnson, 2009

6. Flo:

When: 2003

Who: Thomas Sutikna

Where: Lian Bua, Island of Flores, Indonesia

What: Small female skeleton (18,000 years),Homo floresiensis

Characteristics:adult female, 3 feet tall, 35-65 pounds, small cranium about the size of chimpanzee's

7. Sediba:

When: Aug.15, 2008

Who: Matthew Berger and Lee Berger

Where: Malapa Nature Reserve, South Africa

What: human like skull(2,000,000 years), Australopithecus sediba

Characteristics: link between ape and human?

Though it's a fast way to pick up some legacies in paleoanthropology, I am disappointed with little scientific discussions about the famous skeletons.

Choose to sin

Choose to sin __reflections on Divine Comedy (IV)

According to Dante's theory, our sins progress from low level to high level, from unconsciousness to deliberation, from abuse to violence, fraud, and betrayal, from absent mind to decisive mind. I agree that we sometimes make deliberate choices, which make us fall into sins that damage others' needs.

One examples is the terrorists, who kill people for their own believes; these believes  are so strong that they refuse to compromise or negotiate with their opponents. This situation is like that in the heretics (Farinata and Cavalcante) whom Dante encountered in Canto 10.

Another example is the fraudulence. We always face the choices in many crosses during our journey of life, and we know there are a correct way and an incorrect way by the definition of the society. The correct way is always harder than the incorrect way because the correct way costs you more endeavor to get to the destination; whereas the incorrect way is a short cut, yet it will sacrifice others' needs. Any cheat to break the rules may benefit you in the moment, but it may also bring injustice to others. These are the sins we can choose to avoid.

The meaning of life

The meaning of life__reflections on Divine Comedy (III)

"City of woe, everlasting pain, and lost soul", these are the situations in the hell described by the poet. Though God gave the choice of freedom and love, these people refused to make their choices or refused to accept God's touch by giving their believes to God, so they will remain in the hell with pain or no hope after death and the judgement by God.

The inscription does touch the core of human living, and the question of "Who Am I?". It is important, because it is a question we human have been searching for answers since we were born thousands of years ago. What is the meaning of life? To be an hero, to be helpful to the society, to look for the truth... we have many purposes in the reality, but in the end, what for? What is driving human to evolve to the future? The inscription gives us one solution: to believe in God, to give yourself to God; virtue itself is not enough, and believing God is the only way to give you the freedom and hope to live, before and after death. It's one of the world views that affect many people, but I reserve my doubts.

However, I think the Divine comedies is a wonderful work to show us the situations of real human life, where the poet characterized all kinds of people in the world, and led us think about ourselves, who we are, what we live for.

The sorrow of young Dante

About Vita Nuova __reflections on Divine Comedy (II)

The Vita Nuova, a diary of young Dante, led us into Dante's earlier years, when he was in his 20s, the puberty period to fall into loves and learn from experiences to mature. From his poems, we can obviously see what we ourselves experience in our adolescent time: we are enchanted by some beauty from the opposite sex; we have all kinds of imaginations about her/him; we are afraid to break the beautiful dreams we have, and dare not to speak out and only watched secretly far away. We keep it to ourselves, or to a few good friends. We write poems for her/him, but secretly without showing them to the love, accompanied with pain and sorrow most of the time.

The ironic thing for Dante is that although he loves Beatrice, he always avoids facing her directly, or he will blanch to death. Yet, after her death, in the end of the poem, he finally gets released from the burden. We may say that what Dante loves is not Beatrice herself as a human being, but an idealized goddess, who has no fault ever. This is true for every adolescent too. So after recoding all his feelings in his diary "the sorrow of young Dante", Dante's solution is to write a poem for the goddess lady when he matures with more human experiences, and this is how the divine comedy comes into true years later.

Who am I?

"nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita" __reflections on Divine Comedy (I)

In the middle of the journey of my life, I am in the middle of my midlife crisis, where the straight way is over and I found myself in the dark forest, trying to find an objective—the hope of living. I need to find a way to climb to the top of the mountain to see the sunshine, no matter how hard it is, or I will die in the forest.

Who am I? I am a animal first, a biological product like billions of others lingering on the Earth. I live on food, water, sleep, and work to survive in the modern industrial world. I consumed lots of energy from eating plants and animals, yet I found not greedy or guilty in my soul. If I am a substitute animal, I might be the one who eats grasses, and is fast enough to escape the predators. I enjoy the cozy state and have no ambition to conquer or trap the predators to become the dominant one.

Who am I? I am a human second, who is cultured and knows things, trying to behave to the normal of the human society. I have been through a long term education, many many years of training, on medicine and science. I was made to be a doctor or scientist to help other peoples. Yet, in the middle of my journey, I failed the training and was thrown out of the factory, lost in the dark forest, chewing the fate of being eaten or escaping the trap.

Who am I? As a person, I am not different from a sheep, or a flower, or a drop of water; as a member of human society, I have obligations and responsibilities to my parents, siblings, wife, teachers, friends, society...So If I gave up my responsibilities, sins will filled me soon. If I kept my responsibilities, burdens will eat me up slowly. What is the meaning of life if I desire to live on till my old age? It is a mystery that has no answer for human to understand.

Hesiod's Works and Days

This is a poem about 2700 years ago, written as an instruction on how to be a farmer in the iron age (the other four ages are: golden age, silver age, bronze age, and age of heroes) for his brother. It might be the earliest moral instruction before the Bible, which argues that labour is the only good way for human survival. 

There are some views that we may think unreasonable today: you cannot urinate with standing posture facing the Sun; you cannot urinate on the road side during the travel; you cannot urinate into the rivers or lakes; you cannot masturbate; you should hire a woman slave and ox to be a good farmer; management is the most important thing to run a farm; boys should be married in their thirties, and girls should be married in their twenties; you need to choose special days for all of your activities...

Some notes on Odyssey

I think the Iliad and Odyssey are epics on human evolution. First, we get kleos in Iliad, and then we get both kleos and nostos in Odyssey. It's a bible to direct human progress. Oblios from these heroes will benefit the human in some way. That said, we can see Achilles''s kleos is obtained relatively easily, decided by his fate, in a modern word, by his gene; whereas Odysseus's kleos is decided not only by his gene, but also by his determination for nostos. He could have given up his will at any moment during his Odyssey on the sea, but he fought till the end, of course also helped by the Gods. This is how human species grow up on the Earth. We still believe today, the heroes are those stand out from ordinary people and finish a great deed before their death, and it's not only up to their nature, but also their nurture, where hard work and determination matter.

The bloody war in Iliad and some thoughts

The HBO popular series "Game of thrones" are full of bloody scenes. After reading Iliad, I found this tradition of violence in literature is in fact originated from the epics 3000 years ago. Here are some examples:

"The blade sank so deep that the head was held on by nothing but the skin..."

"the bronze point of the spear went clean through it beneath the brain, crashing in among the white bones and smashing them up. His teeth were all of them knockout out and the blood came gushing in stream from both his eyes; it also came gurgling up from his mouth and nostrils..."

"The stone hit him on the forehead and drove his brows into his head for the bone was smashed, and his eyes fell to the ground at his feet."

"...so that the bloody brain came oozing out through the crest-socket."

"...hit him on the jaw under the ear; the end of the spear drove out his teeth and cut his tongue in two pieces..."

If you think the cause of the war is the jealousy of women, you will see the Trojan war absurd, but that is the human history. When I finished reading the epic as a moderner, I have more compassion goes to Hector and Trojan people; on the contrary, I couldn't like Achilles as the great Iliad hero, for his arrogant and brutal, selfish personality. Also, the epic 3000 years ago made it clear that heroes are unequal, the heroes from god family tree are more important than the heroes from human descendent. How can I like it this way in 3000 years later? 

Some notes on Iliad (II)

Achilles’ sorrow

Achilles is a hybrid, he will die as human, but he is also a superman because of his goddess mother. This makes him unhappy that he cannot live forever like the god, and have to die some way like human. And he has the knowledge of his background. The sorrow that Achilles carries all his life is like a person with parents having Huntington disease. You know you will have the disease in some age of your life and die of it.  You will carry this sorrow from the moment you know your disease gene. This also reminds me of the Replicants in the blade runner, they are full of sorrow and anger when they know they cannot live longer yet they have the superhuman power. I wonder, there are many other hybrids in Iliad, are they also destined to have sorrow? Or, they don't have it because they don't have the knowledge? Then the question is why Achilles has the knowledge.

Petroklos is a "glory of men" to Achilles, but a brother and friend to Briseis, though dear and near for both. Although they share different personal sorrows, these sorrows merge in lamentations, become one emotion.

Some notes on Iliad (I)

In the name of glory and sorrow

There are two choices for Achilles: homecoming or glory. It’s like Hamlet’s dilemma of to be and not to be, or Salinger’s mature and immature. In the hero’s time, property means honor or glory, but there is something beyond property, “the glory of ancestors”.

In Iliad, when Agamemnon gave Achilles the offer of properties, he declined the offer and refused going to the fighting, but when his dear and near comrade Patrokleēs died, he made the final decision to go to the fighting for glory. This is because, according to Harvard professor Gregory Nagy, the name of Patrokleēs means ‘the one who has the glory of the ancestors’, and Achilles is hinted to die for this glory, the way to become hero and semi-God. In a parallel embedding story, Meleagros fought because of the sorrow of Kleopatra, which also means ‘the one who has the glory of the ancestors’.

If Achilles loves Penthesileia because they share the names with the meaning of sorrow for the people, does it mean that they share the sorrow as empathy?  And the sorrow is caused by their common fate that they will die in the fighting for the glory of men (women)? At the moment Achilles killed Penthesileia, he saw in her eyes his own fate not long after. But does Achilles have the same feeling (love) when he killed Hector, since Hector's death in fighting also made him get the glory of men? Why does death in the fighting cause sorrow, isn't the glory of men a happy ending for warriors? 

The killing of Hector by Achilles makes Hector a hero (the kleos of andron) but causes the sorrows (akhos) of Andromache, and all the man try to become martyr or hero in the war, no matter what sorrow they will bring to the families. Is this the fate of human being that nobody can change? Ironically, even Achilles has the sorrow of himself to die in the war when chasing the kleos of andron in the meantime. The "kleos of andron" causes the sorrow of family in the one hand, and makes the hero on the other. Achilles may just lament about the inescapable human fate.

Another interesting thing I learned from this lesson is the concept of “fear” and “pity”, which are the basic components of Greek tragedy. “Fear” means you when see someone in suffer you want to walk away, whereas “pity” means when you see someone in suffer, you want to approach for the grief.