Week 8 Analysis

Week 8 Analysis

What I find most intriguing this week is the class lecture and its comparison to the Sermon on the Mount. Yes it is true that Jesus preached there is a new way to live a part from the law of Torah. As he preached on the Mount he emphasized the need to assist others around us who need help in specific ways. This sermon calls for awareness and compassion It was to many in Jesus’ time a new standard of living for people. For us who are followers of Jesus we are called to the same standards. He calls humanity to be peacemakers, to do the right thing, show mercy and to love one another. The Sermon on the Mount in our specific context of ableism and ageism we may not have all the answers to solve these large complex issues. But we can develop and teach awareness and some practicalities to discuss these two issues and dialogue about equality in both groups, the elderly and the disabled.

We as believers are called like Jesus to work within in the existing structure or powers, which may not be exactly bad to strive for bettering the systems. We are called to be fair and just in all that we do. Many of the elderly and the disabled feel included and excluded from our society. To the ones who feel marginalized, as it states in the Power Practice and Redemption Methodology Welcome all, include, and encourage in their gifts. For example, encourage the elderly to get involved with their surrounding communities like helping first graders learn how to read. Encourage the people living with a disability that they too can participate; they can be taught to water ski, downhill ski, and to drive a car. These examples can prove to people who do not have a disability that the disabled are just as able to do societal things as people who are do not have a disability. As Jesus as said from time to time the kingdom of God is not just filled with one people group. It filled with many people groups, young, old, disabled, not disabled, men, women, of all different ethnicities. The Kingdom is rich filled with unity through diversity.

Diversity in the Kingdom is much like the book what Globalization and Culture is trying to decipher what is necessary for global change. Is it through hybridization or not? Hybridity would change especially in the western sense of individualism and emphasis more on a mix of themes like interculturalism instead of multiculturalism. Out of hybridization produces global mélange which has many different meanings to many different cultures. It very important to understand these differences and one final point is to understand that “we are all mixing cultural elements and traces across place and identities (109).” These cultural elements have become ordinary experience in our rapid transforming world.

Week 7Chapter 3 and 4 Analysis of Global Transformations

Week 7 Chapter 3 and 4 Analysis of Global Transformations

I honestly had a hard time this week connecting the two reading chapters to the team project. The reason I had a hard time making connections to the two chapters Global Trade and Global Markets and Shifting the Patterns in Global Finance they both do not directly relate to our project, ageism and ableism. There is no discussion on the affects that ableism and ageism had on the global market? Also or how do the global markets affect these two issues? Both of these chapters wanted the reader to know and understand the background of the global markets and the shift of finance patterns in the world. I have to say these two chapters were hard to read at times if this is your first introduction to detailed economics, which it is for me. I do not have a background in micro or macro economics and I think the book is calling the reader to have a background in this discipline. This discipline would help the reader absorbs and critique the information which is being presented to the reader.

Both chapters give a strong historical account of what has gone on throughout periods of financial influence. There is a question is the global market really global or it is regionalized to specific continents? There are three areas that help with global trade, the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. There is skepticism to whether trade is actually global or regional. “Regionalization as opposed to globalization implies that trade flows are clustered between similar countries which tend to be geographically contiguous and that markets within a region are (at least) partially insulated from the rest of world.”(168) Japan exports their cars and technology to the United States as much of the coffee trade comes to United States from the South America. The United States export much of the many soft drinks to other countries as well as the example of MacDonald’s starting in the US and moving to global market. Through all these imports and exports to different parts of the world, the world is continuing to grow at a fast rate. We literally have to the power and luxury in the western world at the touch of a button to talk to someone at the other end of the world without any difficulty. This is a great convenience, but I wonder with all these advancements in the global markets is the world getting smaller? Will oral traditions become obsolete because we as a people group do not have the patience to sit and listen to others around us? Will the older generation be more engaged in the practices of ageism around them because the youth have lost value in them as great teachers and the importance of the elderly giving back to society? These are the questions which arose as I was reading these two chapters in Global Transformations.