Hi everyone,
I'm sorry, but with the Easter break I'm afraid I completely forgot to post an entry for you to reply with your diaries, so here is the Post for you to put your diaries for weeks 5 and 6.
Thanks to all of you for making the effort to connect even during the Easter holidays, most of you managed to be there for your appointments. As you will have realized, it's very important for you and your groups to try to be there for all sessions, and to be on time, missing sessions can sometimes make it hard to get back into the group as you may have missed some important discussion.
It was good to meet up with most of you last week and catch up with your progress.
For those of you who didn't come, we talked about various issues:
Discussions - One way of pushing discussions further is by asking questions, and we discussed what kind of questions you should ask - something which one of you also mentioned in your diary as it was discussed in your group. The best kinds of questions are those that ask for explanation, requests for clarification if you may not have understood fully what someone means, and also those that ask WHY people think certain things, react to what you or others say, behave in certain ways. These open dialogue and push deeper, much more so than questions which simply ask for yes/no answers or if people agree or disagree.
Diaries - I commented that some of your diaries were quite short, and not as reflective as they perhaps could be, and I gave some examples that you could look at for an idea of good, reflective diary entries. The aim is not for you to describe what you did, but more what it meant for you, or what particularly struck you, what you learnt or what you found difficult ... you can also relate things that you reflect on to other issues outside of the project. I'm very glad to see that the diaries after our meeting were much more substantial, reflective and interesting to read :-))
Video projects - we discussed these, and most of you had already made good progress. Now most of you have sent links to your projects which I have pasted into the box on the right to make it easier for you all to watch each others'. We will discuss your videos at our final meeting which will be just after the project has ended, so the final week of April. I don't want to comment on them now, I'd rather wait until you have discussed them with your groups. But please reflect on the process of making them as you write your diaries, what did you learn from making the videos, and also from discussing them in your group.
Three more sessions to go!
Now you have only three more sessions. Please make the most of them, ask all the questions you have been wanting to ask, play the devil's advocate, push discussions deeper to make the most of the next few sessions, and most of all enjoy them!
I'm sorry, but with the Easter break I'm afraid I completely forgot to post an entry for you to reply with your diaries, so here is the Post for you to put your diaries for weeks 5 and 6.
Thanks to all of you for making the effort to connect even during the Easter holidays, most of you managed to be there for your appointments. As you will have realized, it's very important for you and your groups to try to be there for all sessions, and to be on time, missing sessions can sometimes make it hard to get back into the group as you may have missed some important discussion.
It was good to meet up with most of you last week and catch up with your progress.
For those of you who didn't come, we talked about various issues:
Discussions - One way of pushing discussions further is by asking questions, and we discussed what kind of questions you should ask - something which one of you also mentioned in your diary as it was discussed in your group. The best kinds of questions are those that ask for explanation, requests for clarification if you may not have understood fully what someone means, and also those that ask WHY people think certain things, react to what you or others say, behave in certain ways. These open dialogue and push deeper, much more so than questions which simply ask for yes/no answers or if people agree or disagree.
Diaries - I commented that some of your diaries were quite short, and not as reflective as they perhaps could be, and I gave some examples that you could look at for an idea of good, reflective diary entries. The aim is not for you to describe what you did, but more what it meant for you, or what particularly struck you, what you learnt or what you found difficult ... you can also relate things that you reflect on to other issues outside of the project. I'm very glad to see that the diaries after our meeting were much more substantial, reflective and interesting to read :-))
Video projects - we discussed these, and most of you had already made good progress. Now most of you have sent links to your projects which I have pasted into the box on the right to make it easier for you all to watch each others'. We will discuss your videos at our final meeting which will be just after the project has ended, so the final week of April. I don't want to comment on them now, I'd rather wait until you have discussed them with your groups. But please reflect on the process of making them as you write your diaries, what did you learn from making the videos, and also from discussing them in your group.
Three more sessions to go!
Now you have only three more sessions. Please make the most of them, ask all the questions you have been wanting to ask, play the devil's advocate, push discussions deeper to make the most of the next few sessions, and most of all enjoy them!
Weekly diary wk5
RispondiEliminaThis week the Soliya’s meeting has been very powerful! The discussion has been very rich.
In the meeting we carried on the discussion about the role of the religion.
I started explaining why last time I cited Durkheim (1893). Durkheim was one of the fathers of sociology that gave us a way to understand the religion mechanism.
I advanced that religion, for me, is important but the importance is not just in absolute terms.
Religion, with other things, makes a contribution to create the “collective consciousness”.
By definition the “collective consciousness” is the set of shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.
But to get a shared understanding of social norms for me we don't need of religion. Theoretically we could get social rules separate from religion.
I tried to show them a couple of evidences. The first one is in the western where, increasingly, with secularization, religion became more spiritual and less material. The second one was about the politics: in Italy more or less 20 years ago there was the Christian Democratic party (DC), now there is just the Democratic Party (PD), this is a sign, the times are changing. We can consider religion as part of society, but is not part of the social rule. I have added a comment in our Soliya Padova’s Blog to Matteo Lazzarini that’s strongly expression of my thought: I believe in the separation between politics and religion. Social rules have to be defined on shared principles independently from any kind of beliefs.
In this way I have changed completely the perspective of my fellows, and, as It happens when you see your fundament bases that are collapsing, some people tried to maintain a conservative and safe position.
Anyway It has been an opportunity to go deeply in detail into my thoughts. In fact the tentative from these guys to define moral a person either with or without religion or to say that you can build a society based on values that are intrinsically created from each person, are all visions that see as predominant factor of our analysis the individualism of a single person. Instead, in my opinion, we have to look at the society. That’s in the same sort of breath as when you compare psychology and sociology.
At this point, I struck my fellows citing Karl Marx, as an example where the idea of justice has upset our societies. The entire world and, especially, the European people, Marx was German, have known his theories about the surplus-value, about the class conflict and the division between worker and capitalists (the definition of capitalist is anyone who gets their income from the surplus value they get from the workers who create wealth). The concept of justice has been modify from these classes of people that were been aware to be in conflict. In this example we see the religion has no role.
Clearly if we speak about the possibility of building a society without religion we have to understand that society is a sum of people and each person should be aware about his behavior inside of a society.
The most of times we assist to the religion that appear and disappear as a consequence of its cohesiveness role. Moreover there is a sort of overlapping between the value of religion and the common sense of a society.
These overlapping areas are social cohesiveness empties where religion play a role to fill this gap.
Gianluca
WEEK 5 (PART ONE)
RispondiEliminaHi everyone!
These days in Soliya are running fast. The week 5 and the week 6 can be linked all together and I am going to write about them.We started session number 5 while talking again about stereotypes.They all were so funny! We prepared two lists of stereotypes: one about our Countries, and another one about other Countries. The first volunteer to speak was mehmet from Turkey. He said that the first stereotype from his list, is that French and Italians are the best lovers in the world. Then he said that Turkish are known to eat onions, and that Americans are obeses.
Not a wonderful beginnning in my point of view! :)
Then it was Rami's turn, the muslim guy from United States. He told that American people are dumb and don't think about a world view. They are fat and overweight, they always work and don't have time for theirself.Corey, a girl form U.S. said her list of stereotypes: U.S. are a dangerous Country, U.S. are better than other Country, U.S. don't have morals.
The other girl from United States, Jess, said from her list of stereotypes, that Americans are arrogant and egoistical, rich, and not family structured.
Jess told also some stereotypes about people from the middle east. she defined tham as "desert people", rag heads all riding on camels.
WEEK 5 (PART TWO)
EliminaSarah Marie, from Middle east, said that people from her region are known as poor of technology, and depending on animals. She thinks that stereotypes about western people, define them as stingy and without traditions.
Hala from Jordan thinks about middle east: angry people, riding on camels, uncivilized, haveing traditional dresses for each tribes, they are terrorists.
Hala told aobut the west: Americans (girls) have freedom to live alone apart form their parents
and they are selfish.
Sana from Tunisia said that the people from the west seem not to value family, they seem to be lookeing for war with other Countries. Sana said eastern people act like they are savages and terrorists.
Mohammed finds western people without moral and violent , and eastern people ineducated and uncivilized.
My list of stereotypes for the west was: not respecting of other cultures, not religious or traditionalist, want to be the wolrd leader, all Italians are members of mafia, only eat pasta, only love Italian products
For the east I wrote: no freedom in expressing their opinions, no freedom to drink alcohol, no freedom to choose religion other than Islam, muslim men don't respect women. Do you agree?
Then we began discussing about our personal lifes and we told the main experiences in our life that made us what we are still being....everyone talked about his personal events. and I talked about mine.
I told about my sad family story, my pregnant aunt died in a car accident while I was a 4 years old Child, during a car accident. An that Event shocked me a lot. Last year my oncle had a similar accident and he still being in coma. My experiences at University made me a better boy.
But I said that there have been also some International facts, changeing my life. The 9/11, the terrorist attacks in Norway, and the International court case about the two Indian fishermen killed by two Italian soldiers.
I totally agreed with Rami, when he said that it is interesting to hear personal experience of every mate in the group, and it's great to understand how their experience changed their life.
The 5th day in Soliya ended with a survey from the facilitators of the group. They just invited us to choose the topics to discuss about during the next session. My mates voted for “Women Rights”, and I proposed to talk about how to enforce the relationship between the West and the Middle East.
The facilitators liked my idea a lot, and they sent me a private email, to instruct me to think about a way to plan 6th session of Soliya, without forgetting the main topic of “Women Rights”, but envolveing my ideas. I have been instructed to prepare some questions for my mates.
The questions I prepared, were all good and interesting, but most of them, were exactly tha same questions our facilitators prepared for the final day of soliya. So I had to change some of them.
WEEK 6 (PART ONE)
RispondiEliminaThe 6th session of Soliya began with the picture of an Iceberg as background of our chatbox. Our facilitators choosed that image, just for reminding us to try in digging deeper into conversations.
Then we had a little discussion about it. In my point of view, the image of this iceberg represents people. We can see in people, only what do they want to show us, but we have to remind that every one has a personal background that is hidden to us, and we can't know it.
Mehmet from Turkey said that an iceberg represents the levels of importance about things: all necessary things are above the water, and all unnecessary things are under the water.
That image was the introduction to a rolegame I sudgested in the email I sent to our facilitators last week.
Those who are living in the West, had to try to imagine living in a Country in the Middle East, and vice versa.
Mary told that this rolegame has been inspired by me. And I felt myself so honored for hearing that words.
Sarah, the other one facilitator from U.S. Asked the first question, about the connection between religion and States. I immediately understood that they really appreciated my idea, and they showed to me that they were going to follow my plan, step by step. So the second question was about the differences between Middle East and West, and how Religions can influence diversity.
In my opinion, every religion wants to be the truth. And this is a big problem, because it can generate conflicts.
Ahmed from Tunisia, said that Islam and Christianity don't have conflict. The people who don't understand religions have conflict.
The most important aspect appearing from the answers, in my point of view, was about a common opinion between all my mates: Religions are not creating conflicts. The conflicts are created by people who are interpreting religions in the wrong way. And I find this absolutely interesting, because, these sentences have been used also by non-believers mates in my classroom.
Ahmed said that Christanity and Islam have the same goals, and the same source, so they don't are enemies.
Mohammed explained to us that in the Koran, we can find a sentence, where Allah said that human beins are different, and this diversity is necessery to enrich human experience. Religion teaches us to accept and respect others.
I took the right to talk, and asked my first question from the list I prepared the week before: Is religion useful to keep relationship between the Countries?
Everyone answered yes: religion is useful to keep relationship and peace.
My second question was about the cultural diferences. Are they “feeding” conflicts between the Sates?
Mehmet remembered us the answer he gave before: cultural differences are good for knowing each others. Rami replied that before 9/11, there were bad relationships between the West and the Middle East. Mohammed thinks that cultural differences aren't the main reasons for conflicts. The main reasons are Politics and governments.
So I moved proceeding while asking the next question: Can a more globalized Economy influence the relationship between the West and the East?
I collected goose answers for this question, but all of them were on the same way. My mates don't think a more globalized economy would make better relationships. Rami thinks that the Countires have different kinds of Economy and it's impossible to create a unique global Economy without haveing unhappy people. He said that global economy would make relationship worse.
WEEK 6 (PART TWO)
EliminaAhmed told that, in his point of view, globalization and agreement with international trading would be harmful.
The second part of this session have been spent while discussing about women rights. Corey from United States and Sarah Marie from the Middle East. Corey was the first one in takeing the lead of discussion, and she immediately moved introducting the new issue to the classroom. She said this topic is full of stereotypes about women, from the West and from the Middle East. For this reason she invited us to say what kind od stereotypes did we hear about women.
The American girl living in Kwait, Jess, was the first one to answer: “Coming from the States there are always perceptions that women here are owned” she said, but she thinks these sterotypes are not so wrong: “Also they don't have the right to vote. In some ways there are correct stereotypes” but she remembers also: “Most of these stereotypes should be thrown out the window because they aren't true”. She also told about her experience as an American girl living in the Middle East, and said that people from the Middle East, think American people are exactly like in the American movies they watch. Boys thought American girls were “easy-going” and Jess was a little bit embarassed for this, during her first days in Kwait.
Corey asked to listen some opinion from a man in the classroom. But my male mates seemed to be shy and nobody took the word.
Sarah Marie said that a friend of her told that in France there's a stereotype about Palestinian women, lookeing lika a man. Obviously, Sarah Marie doesn't agree. She is Palestinian but she doesn't look like a man. This was so funny! :)
Then Ahmed founded the necessery bravery to talk. He had two stereotypes to tell us. The first was negative and the second was positive. The negative one, is the same mentioned by Jess, about American women. And the positive one was about girls from Western Countries. People finds them reliable, independent. Western girl are more independent and comfortable from a young age.
Sarah Marie asked if is it possible to improve women rights around the world. Ahmed said we can improve everything. Rami had a more interesting answer: “I think we can improve it around the world. Men and women should be equal. Women are rising up in the work force. I hope it will”.
Also Mohammed agreed with Rami: “I think we can improve women's rights. We are doing it right now. Women didn't have many rights before. Now look what they have now. But there is still more to do”.
WEEK 6 (PART THREE)
EliminaIt became really a very interesting discussion. Corey asked waht is it changed, and Mohammed immediately answered that women got the right to work, and this has been a great step to move on working to expand rights for women.
The next question from Corey, was so delicate. It was about Koran and Bible, and I knew that Catholics in the classroom were a minority part between my mates, but I wasn't scared or afraid about it. Corey asked if do we think that Koran and Bible allude to women being less than men. Mohammed thinks the Koran provides women rights, the same rights provided to the men. So Koran makes rights in an equal way between women and men. Sarah Marie gave us her interpretation of Koran. Islam gives purity to women. It gives them the right to property, to equality, to education and the right to express opinion. Islam allows women to choose their husbands.
Corey let us to know her knowledge about Religion. She isn't religious, she has never read the Koran or Bible, but she heard from speakers that there are certain interpretations that could devalue women.
I expressed my point of view about Holy Books. I dont think the Koran or the Bible has been written to say men are better than women. I agree with Corey that there are some negative intrepretations. But the Koran and Bible were written by men. I think so women have not been shown enough attention in these books. Two Arabian guys immediately replied to my words.
Hala said that Koran was written by God, not by men. I answered that the words written in the Holy books, come from God, but men wrote that Holy Books. That's why women are not shown enough time in these Books.
Mohammed told that Koran is written in the way how God told Mohammed to write it, withou
adding anything from the men who put it together.
But I think Koran and Bible and other holy books have been tranlsated in a lot of languages and I think sometimes things are changed in translation. I repeated to my mates that they were written by men even though the words come from God. This is my opinion.
Hala told that Koran has a whole part about women, and Ahmed told that told that women have more rights than men in the Koran, because they have more duties.
Then we all had conclusions on it. Women rights are changing because is changing also reputation of women in the world. In the past women have been treated as sexual objects only, then they have been treated only as “family employee”, nowadays they are lawers, doctors, leaders. The world could run without women. Actually, women have uncompleted rights. We hope in the future they will have completed rights, and the world is moveing to expand their rights everywhere, in every field.
This one has been a very interesting session, unfortunately, the next one will be the last. I am already sad to finish it so soon. Time has run too fast.
I will make a present for my mates.
See you next week for the final session!
Take care!