TED talks

I enjoyed Niall Ferguson’s speech about the great divergence of the east and west, but I did not necessarily agree with everything that he said. Also, I found that at time, I got lost and was confused, but I think I basically understood the jist of what he was trying to get across. He was trying to say that the West had an advantage by downloading apps because it hastened their prosper, however, at the same time, it also backfired in a way because they became more lazy and slowed their progress. This downfall allowed other countries to attempt to catch up to the West’s progress. Also, Ferguson’s idea that institutions helped the area thrive is very true. These institutions are what guide a civilization to success because if there are more innovations and new ideas that come up, that society is bound to grow and prosper as a whole. Although there were definitely parts of his argument that I did not agree with, I consider him an intellectual and wise source and, therefore, I would definitely consider investing my time in watching more of these TED talks (except probably not).

I Hate This Textbook and Global Interactions Blog Post ~

The authors choose to put the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals together in chapter 28 because they probably assumed that integrating all these Islamic Empires together would be beneficial for the reader since he/she would be able to compare and contrast the different societies that had similar origins and religious backgrounds. In my opinion, I thought this was a very lousy way to go about organizing the chapter. It was extremely confusing at points to separate the different societies because it was all in one big jumble. By the end of the reading, I had to go back and take my own notes and separate them because when I finished reading, I had intertwined many of the facts amongst the Ottomans, Sadavids, and Mughals.

This period of global interactions was a good thing because, although many negative aspects came along with it inherently, the overall outcome was far more critical then the few missteps which occurred along the way. The negative aspects consist of the fact that slavery was promoted and advocated through trade and also, with the increased trade, many diseases were transmitted and spread from society to society. Besides this and a few other mishaps, global interactions were crucial in the development of the modern world because it helped improve trade and communication between Europe, America, and Africa. Transportation became more efficient, which helped facilitate trade and increase the amount of items and ideas that were being spread from all these different areas.

Fabian Fucan Rejects Christianity

Fabian Fucan uses various religions, cultural, historical, political, and social aspects to attack Christianity in the excerpt. At first he seems almost a little hypocritical when he reveals that he had studied Christianity for twenty years at first,  but now despises it. He refers to Christians as “barbarians” who he is ashamed that he followed earlier in his life. I also got the vibe that Fucan really respected Japan, seeing as he called it the “Land of the Gods.” He begins his argument by hating on the Christians for wanting to destroy the Law of Buddha and the Way of the Gods by forcing the adherents of Deus to weaken the Royal Sway and eliminating pre-existing Japanese customs by replacing them with their own as a way to try and usurp Japan. Fucan talks about how they have taken over other countries, like Luzon and Nova Hispania, because they were, “lands of barbarians with nature close to animal.” He glorifies the Japanese army by commending their “fierce bravery.” He has faith in the army and believes that even if the Christians try, they will be unsuccessful in trying to usurp Japan. He shows his disgust for Christians yet again by saying, “for the sake of their faith they caulue their lives less than trash, than garbage.” Clearly, we can tell that Fabian is a nationalist for Japan and does not want the Christians to spread into Japan because he is protective over the Japanese customs and culture that he does not want to be tainted by the Christians who seek to invade. He establishes the point that the Christians have history of usurping certain lands then subsequently altering the natives in their beliefs and customs so that they assimilate with them; a completely ridiculous thing to do according to Fabian. He puts Buddhism on a pedestal by basically saying that it is pure and clean and, basically, is a completely better choice of religion over Christianity.

AP world project - Importance of Chapter 26

Sabrina, Bobby and I did a nice little powerpoint on the importance of the chapter for chapter 26:) hope you enjoy it !

Here's the link :

https://docs.google.com/presentation/pub?id=1AjL5Ugkrmz275quNBWVGvUhuBzoE-4r16ukPZP70o_M&start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

Capitalism- After reading the book

After reading about capitalism in the textbook, I definitely gained a lot more knowledge about the logistics behind it. Before reading, if we are being completely honest,the  things we talked about in class along with my VERY little preliminary knowledge on this topic, amounted to a very confused and cynical Nadia. But I think I kinda understand the system more now. In the book, the definition of capitalism is summarized as an economic system in which private parties make their goods and services available on a free market and seek to take advantage of market conditions in order to profit. This helped me comprehend that the whole idea behind capitalism is that each individual makes their own version of a business and makes their specialized goods available to the free market and sells them. The only catch is, each business has to compete with rival businesses with similar goods and therefore, prices decrease and the only way to make profit is to establish a business with the cheapest prices out of all the competition, but also at the same time have quality goods to make the most profit.

                In addition to this, I learned that capitalism definitely facilitated trade for Europe and increased its relations with distant lands like Russia, which in turn, boosted the economy. When it comes to how this system fit in with the rest of society, this is what I extracted from the book. It seemed that the government definitely favored this system more than the church did because it conflicted with religion by promoting greedy behavior and wrong morals, leading to violent social unrest from those who did not comply with capitalism. Also, it seemed like this system used the lower classes of serfs and peasants to build its profit and prestige. It used the advantage of having “cheap labor” to do all the work behind the scenes; so by underpaying these individuals, there was less money being wasted on the actual making of the product, resulting in higher revenues for the businesses.

Christianity and Capitalism

               I think that Christianity keeps splitting up into many forms because, first of all, it is one of the most dominant and prevelent religions in the world and has been spread across oceans and vast regions of land to reach new societies who have adapted it according to their own likes and dislikes and culture. It kinda reflects the game that we used to play when we were children: "telephone". With this game, you would whisper something in your friends ear and pass it down a long chain of people, but by the end, the original message would be altered and modified, just like what happened to christianity after being spread to so many new regions with new people. The main ideas mostly stayed constant, but certain aspects of the religion were tweeked to suite different cultures and soceities. Also, church and state sometimes got mixed up in history, often when one or the other became too powerful. This could have caused some disregard and ignorance to maintaing the religion as its original form in order for these constant competeing parts of society to try and out-shine the other.
           Ummmm, if we are being honost here I don't really know what capatilism means.... The only thing I remember is Mr. Carr saying that it had to do with free market or something like that but I could be wrong! Last year history is a complete haze to me so don't hold me to that definition lol...