Final post

I'm not sure if we have to post this week, especially since we're not going to be incorporating Weight of the World into our wiki, but here goes:

Reflections from The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Societies by Pierre Bourdieu.

This book is basically a collection of anecdotes and narratives from people who have experienced some sort of intersection of different cultures and what their experience was like in the midst of that intersection. It is an interesting concept because even if we live in an urban environment like Los Angeles, we all come to the table with our own biases, history and unique experiences, and it is difficult to see other people’s perspectives on concepts such as housing projects and glass ceilings since they may be subjects that we have no direct experience with and probably never will. It is easier for us to see the poor as an economic class of people and to not see the vast realm of different areas where people suffer, mainly because of their economic “starting point.”

Reading through the first section, I thought this may be the best section on which to comment because it had the most substantial shock factor. Also, I admittedly was too lazy to read the entire book to see which area was the most relevant to our subject of war, militarism and terrorism. However, now that I think about it, the ideas brought up in the first 200 pages can have relevance to our wiki specifically because it is this churning sense of suffering and injustice that feeds much of the violence that we see in certain hotspots, especially those that are known for terrorism like Israel / Palestine.

Bourdieu mentions how the disenfranchised and those who are neglected and excluded adopt certain practices that are destructive and that further entrench them in their status as an excluded people. They destroy the public spaces that are allotted to them, they may be caught stealing or getting involved in violent incidents both at the workplace and at home… they reinforce stereotypes both within the community and outside the community that are destructive at a deep level. Terrorism and war are expressions of frustration, anger, and sadness that only fuels this endless cycle of exclusion, fear, and oppression. In our efforts to tackle this problem, we have to tackle the underlying sources of the problem, not its expression or aftermath.

This goes back to what we’ve been trying to emphasize in our wiki, although our wiki is more focused on war and militarism than it is on terrorism. Nevertheless, we have to be proactive in addressing the underlying causes of these problems more so than taking positions on how to deal with those lashing out because of their frustrations from the weight of the world. Just as “Just Peacemaking” is a proactive effort to curb the outbreak of war, education on the plight of the people in Bourdieu’s collection of stories should encourage us to be more proactive in acts of inclusion, healing, and wholeness. Some urban planning projects, like one I encountered in Boston, integrate yuppied looking for cheap housing and bohemian style lofts with those in need of low-income housing. It’s an alternative to the radical gentrification of certain areas of the city. Such proactive efforts sounds a lot like communism, but then again, so does a lot of the Old Testament.