The second week of class was actually my first lesson as I was not assigned the class during the first few bidding windows. Not dwelling on that fact, the first class was pretty good and I learned some new things. Before the class I had read some of the readings on Vista and although lengthy, I finished reading article 1 on the colonial holocaust. The article is quite interesting and although wordy, it is also easy to read. I was actually unaware of the actions of Columbus before reading the article and always thought of him as a great hero and leader. A quote came to mind when i was reading the article the night before the lesson. The quote is " history is always written by the winners". Although I have already taken the article with a pinch of salt, I am sure the article has a grain of truth and I feel that it is mostly true that colonialism brought about terror for the native Americans. Also in class the prof gave us his model for "falling stars and rising stars" which I feel hit the nail on the head. Rising stars are open minded and whereas falling stars are afraid of risks and closed to new ideas. This model can be used to fit almost everything such as countries/organisations/industries and even people.
Another first for me were the presentations. I would like to just highlight one of the presentation which I thought was pretty good and that was the one on Henry Fords assembly line. What I think is that Henry Ford was really a revolutionary of that era and really applied his mind in coming up with the assembly line. I think that was a stroke of genius at that period of time. However in present age, I believe the disadvantages of the assembly line are quite substantial. One of them is that workers only feel that they are just a mere cog in the gears of the business and that they are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Also, assembly line work is monotonous and pretty much brainless. For example Foxconn employees in China had a record number of suicides due to the poor working atmosphere there. Thus although advancements such as the assembly line can be a boon, it can also be a bane....
Furthermore, I also liked the question on whether developed countries should help LDCs. I believe that most developed countries would not give two hoots about the state of the lesser developed countries unless there was some kind of economic carrot for them. However, I also do think that developed countries should help lesser developed countries in terms of helping to introduce green technology and better ways of doing things. This is effectively helping the developed country as well as we all have to play our part in preserving the environment.
Lastly, the lesson was quite engaging and discussions were very enriching. My rating of the lesson is 7.5 /10
