The Tedtalk that we watched in class hit on many points about the easy habit of making people into single dimensional persons, effectively objects. The conception of this as a "single story" is very apt, and recently I have discovered that it plays out especially in my life as a student. In my major, many classes reduce people to a mass of similar individuals with predictable interests and give them simplistic stories in order to make modeling what "should" occur easy to compute. I've recognized recently that this kind of thinking has made itself more pervasive in my thinking than I realized. I had this discovery in my women's study class, when suddenly the gendering of development flipped everything I had been taught about development on its head. I had been always told the same story about developing countries: they need certain programs, they need money, they build industry, until my professor asked "What about the women?"
This question opened up the story of the developing world to me. The cultural norms, traditional division of labor, resource variation, and countless other aspects of the developing world that hardly get considered by the theorists telling me how to approach development contribute to the plethora of stories found in the developing world. Understanding that there is no single story calls for a lack of ignorance that comes along with respecting people for being unique, and not turning lives full of unique experience into statistics, another way that the single story is used to amass people into anonymous bundles. These may be different from the way that the single story was exemplified by the speaker Adichie, as believing to know one's history before learning it, but follows the same ethos of her story. I believe that anonymity is a large part of how the "single story" sustains itself. It is easy to subject an anonymous group to the single story that one chooses, but with names come the uniqueness of each person's history and story. Illuminating individuals' differences diffuses the power of the single story, and being interested in learning individuals' stories is the ultimate cure to the prejudice and assumption that comes from the single story.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Ernest Shackleton's Voyage
One leader from history that I would like to bring up and discuss is Ernest Shackleton, one of the last great explorers. Shackleton and his famed Trans-Atlantic Expedition were the stage for his leadership style to prove its strength in the face of impossible odds, and he delivered a superhuman performance.
Shackleton was a British national who worked his way up through the Merchant Navy to gain a reputation in the world of British seafarers. From this reputation he then was selected to go on a couple of expeditions to the Antarctic, the last unexplored region of the globe at this point (c. AD 1905). After missing the race to the South Pole between the explorers Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott, Hemmingway decided he would attempt the last great expedition, crossing Antarctica. In 1914 Shackleton finally had the funding to realize this dream expedition, one that would turn out very different than he had planned.
Shackleton prepared for a rough, cold, and weary journey across the last unconquered continent, but could not have imagined the trials that he and his crew would face. His ship, the Endurance, left from South Georgia to became trapped in floating ice near the shore, at which point he demanded that regular ship routine was to be abandoned and that it be converted into a winter base. When the ship's integrity failed, Shackleton organized the abandonment of the ship and move to a makeshift camp on an ice floe. As the ice floe drifted, Shackleton lead the crew to move yet again to Elephant island by way of the life boats they salvaged from the original trip, all while in the dangerous south seas. Shackleton, captained one of the lifeboats from Elephant Island all the way back to South Georgia. Landing on the opposite side of the island than the inhabited one, and in a last heroic venture, made it back in time to send a rescue party for the rest of the crew back on Elephant Island.
These are ridiculous accomplishments. The original plan to cross the Antarctic was an insane goal to have (I was cold enough at the Indiana game last year) but to survive a much longer journey in circumstances that changed drastically and dangerously with every leg of the trip is down-right incredible. But it was not just luck that got Shackleton's crew (and one stowaway, an extra mouth to feed) through this entire journey without a single mortality. It was Shackleton's specific blend of leadership that brought his crew through in the end.
I thought that including all of this backstory might help explain why I believe Shackleton was an example of a near-ideal leader. He had the correct leadership strategy and attitude for the situation that presented itself, in this case, a deadly and painful journey through the antarctic. He made a point of loosening traditional hierarchies found on these kinds of expeditions in the past. He understood that the most important quality for his expedition was camaraderie and morale. He was flexible and valued the group over himself, constantly giving of himself for the sake of the crew whether it be his rations or his sleep. He fully understood the changing needs of the group as they transferred from ship to base to ice to sea with just one minor revolt that he handled as well. He adapted to lead through it all in the face of an indefinite future, with minimal resources, and still fostered the most important resource, hope. A leader that can selflessly make his followers believe and press on in the face of impossible odds is the best leader.
Shackleton was a British national who worked his way up through the Merchant Navy to gain a reputation in the world of British seafarers. From this reputation he then was selected to go on a couple of expeditions to the Antarctic, the last unexplored region of the globe at this point (c. AD 1905). After missing the race to the South Pole between the explorers Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott, Hemmingway decided he would attempt the last great expedition, crossing Antarctica. In 1914 Shackleton finally had the funding to realize this dream expedition, one that would turn out very different than he had planned.
Shackleton prepared for a rough, cold, and weary journey across the last unconquered continent, but could not have imagined the trials that he and his crew would face. His ship, the Endurance, left from South Georgia to became trapped in floating ice near the shore, at which point he demanded that regular ship routine was to be abandoned and that it be converted into a winter base. When the ship's integrity failed, Shackleton organized the abandonment of the ship and move to a makeshift camp on an ice floe. As the ice floe drifted, Shackleton lead the crew to move yet again to Elephant island by way of the life boats they salvaged from the original trip, all while in the dangerous south seas. Shackleton, captained one of the lifeboats from Elephant Island all the way back to South Georgia. Landing on the opposite side of the island than the inhabited one, and in a last heroic venture, made it back in time to send a rescue party for the rest of the crew back on Elephant Island.
These are ridiculous accomplishments. The original plan to cross the Antarctic was an insane goal to have (I was cold enough at the Indiana game last year) but to survive a much longer journey in circumstances that changed drastically and dangerously with every leg of the trip is down-right incredible. But it was not just luck that got Shackleton's crew (and one stowaway, an extra mouth to feed) through this entire journey without a single mortality. It was Shackleton's specific blend of leadership that brought his crew through in the end.
I thought that including all of this backstory might help explain why I believe Shackleton was an example of a near-ideal leader. He had the correct leadership strategy and attitude for the situation that presented itself, in this case, a deadly and painful journey through the antarctic. He made a point of loosening traditional hierarchies found on these kinds of expeditions in the past. He understood that the most important quality for his expedition was camaraderie and morale. He was flexible and valued the group over himself, constantly giving of himself for the sake of the crew whether it be his rations or his sleep. He fully understood the changing needs of the group as they transferred from ship to base to ice to sea with just one minor revolt that he handled as well. He adapted to lead through it all in the face of an indefinite future, with minimal resources, and still fostered the most important resource, hope. A leader that can selflessly make his followers believe and press on in the face of impossible odds is the best leader.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Who Am I
Okay, so who am I?
I would be remiss to try to delve into the deep answers to what makes me the person without listing some of the more superficial answers to that question first. My name is Clayton Perry. I am a young man, I am a teenager. I'm a fifth generation Washingtonian. I'm the grandson of a rocket scientist who is my namesake and I am the son of two eccentric and dedicated people.
As far as background, I spent a good deal of my life growing up in neighborhoods I wasn't allowed to walk down the street in. My parents called themselves "urban pioneers," and would move into nearly gutted houses in a bad neighborhood to fix them up while we lived in them. We would then move on to the next house and rent out the previous one. In contrast to this, I commuted to the same private school for my entire education before college. Some of my classmates were related to movers and shakers of Washington, D.C., while others, like myself, were well-off but lucky to get into this school. I learned that my grandfather had gotten me a letter of recommendation from the previous head of school that supplemented my application for kindergarten, which was reviewed along with my interview. Letters of recommendation and interviews for a four-year-old. It still sounds ridiculous to me, and as I learned these things in my adolescence it made me wonder about whether I had really earned my spot where I was. I tried to prove this wrong by taking AP tests or trying to out perform my classmates, while attempting to give the impression that I did no work at all. I wanted to embrace the culture of the neighborhoods I lived in to appear more disadvantaged than I was while still performing at this level, and took risks for no reason but to give off an impression I thought would be impressive. I don't think that I had a "passion" until I hit the 11th grade.
Going into my junior year of high school I had elected to take my school's only course in economics. The teacher was renowned for being fantastic but the class was for being very hard, and I took it out of hope for challenge and the outward appearance of taking on a challenge. I soon fell in love with the course, between the material and the presentation. The teacher did a fantastic job of keeping the class engaged while the course material seemed just so logical and applicable. I excelled among my classmates and made it my goal to go into banking a make a lot of money. It did not seem like a noble goal, but a fun one and that it would be good for my future children, so it was acceptable to be somewhat selfish in it. By the end of the year I felt brilliant and was looking forward to taking the same teacher's class in Environmental History and Philosophy the next year as an easy A for senior year.
That class flipped me on my head. It broadened my perspective to try to encompass all of the people that would be effected by my actions as well as the systems that guide our society. I wanted to save the world, and still do. More than people, I do want to save the world overall. I empathize for the people in the near future that may be effected terribly by the climate change I believe we are causing as a population. At the same time, I'm very comforted by the fact that the world will live on after us. Worst disasters have happened to the planet and worse have yet to come, yet the planet lives on, even if we don't. That aside, I do have a vested interest in our species continuing to live and doing so sustainably, and that has become my passion and my charge in college and hopefully my career.
I would be remiss to try to delve into the deep answers to what makes me the person without listing some of the more superficial answers to that question first. My name is Clayton Perry. I am a young man, I am a teenager. I'm a fifth generation Washingtonian. I'm the grandson of a rocket scientist who is my namesake and I am the son of two eccentric and dedicated people.
As far as background, I spent a good deal of my life growing up in neighborhoods I wasn't allowed to walk down the street in. My parents called themselves "urban pioneers," and would move into nearly gutted houses in a bad neighborhood to fix them up while we lived in them. We would then move on to the next house and rent out the previous one. In contrast to this, I commuted to the same private school for my entire education before college. Some of my classmates were related to movers and shakers of Washington, D.C., while others, like myself, were well-off but lucky to get into this school. I learned that my grandfather had gotten me a letter of recommendation from the previous head of school that supplemented my application for kindergarten, which was reviewed along with my interview. Letters of recommendation and interviews for a four-year-old. It still sounds ridiculous to me, and as I learned these things in my adolescence it made me wonder about whether I had really earned my spot where I was. I tried to prove this wrong by taking AP tests or trying to out perform my classmates, while attempting to give the impression that I did no work at all. I wanted to embrace the culture of the neighborhoods I lived in to appear more disadvantaged than I was while still performing at this level, and took risks for no reason but to give off an impression I thought would be impressive. I don't think that I had a "passion" until I hit the 11th grade.
Going into my junior year of high school I had elected to take my school's only course in economics. The teacher was renowned for being fantastic but the class was for being very hard, and I took it out of hope for challenge and the outward appearance of taking on a challenge. I soon fell in love with the course, between the material and the presentation. The teacher did a fantastic job of keeping the class engaged while the course material seemed just so logical and applicable. I excelled among my classmates and made it my goal to go into banking a make a lot of money. It did not seem like a noble goal, but a fun one and that it would be good for my future children, so it was acceptable to be somewhat selfish in it. By the end of the year I felt brilliant and was looking forward to taking the same teacher's class in Environmental History and Philosophy the next year as an easy A for senior year.
That class flipped me on my head. It broadened my perspective to try to encompass all of the people that would be effected by my actions as well as the systems that guide our society. I wanted to save the world, and still do. More than people, I do want to save the world overall. I empathize for the people in the near future that may be effected terribly by the climate change I believe we are causing as a population. At the same time, I'm very comforted by the fact that the world will live on after us. Worst disasters have happened to the planet and worse have yet to come, yet the planet lives on, even if we don't. That aside, I do have a vested interest in our species continuing to live and doing so sustainably, and that has become my passion and my charge in college and hopefully my career.
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