* So yeh, this is a case study I did that I have just come across. I remember whilst doing the study that I went through quite a few blogsites to collect research; it only really seems fair now to show my gratitude by posting up my own rivetting peice on WOW. There are some chunky quotes in there but I dont want you to think i used them to fill it out, I had to present this in a lecture and so I had them on a screen as visual aids. Thankyou to everyone who made this possible for me...
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Saturday, 16 January 2010
GENOCIDE PROJECT
This is something that I have done recently for a local school. It's going to be the closing video for an evening they’re holding for the annual Holocaust Memorial Day on 27th January 2010, the very day on which in 1945 the Soviet Army liberated prisoners of the largest Nazi Concentration Camp– Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Before I began the project I was vaguely aware of particularly significant genocide events such as the continuing conflicts in Darfur and of course the Nazi Holocaust. What I wasn't aware of was how consistently rife these acts of genocide have been even throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Quite literally each decade has had at least one monumentally horrific instance of one set of human beings going about wiping out another. Of course throughout human existence rather gory conflicts between opposing sides has always arisen; what makes me despair is the fact that as we lead the way into a globalized society these slaughterings are still occurring.
And so a project that should have taken me a few days at the most spilled over into nearly two weeks worth of research. What I learnt was a depressing truthfulness about the human race, that no matter how far we supposedly advance we are inevitably incapable of not repeating the same mistakes again and again.
What leaves me feeling even more dejected is that influential governing bodies such as the U.N continuously seem to fail in intervening in such atrocities against fellow human beings. Of course they sit, they discuss and in the end conclude that steps should be taken to ensure that such events never happen again; but rarely is enough action actually ever taken.
I know its a dreary outlook on a particularly dismal subject and of course their are several other factors to address but I think the main point is that although we have our technology, our medicines, our literature and our weapons, we as a species still to quite a substantial degree are functioning on a primitive level. Perhaps that is why we sit idly by while thousands are massacred, because unconsciously we understand and accept that tribal mentality.
I suppose that that is what the video is meant to emphasize, that this is a continuous cycle, which will just keep happening. Human beings need to properly engage with one another and have a true sense of empathy is genocide is to be prevented.
Before I began the project I was vaguely aware of particularly significant genocide events such as the continuing conflicts in Darfur and of course the Nazi Holocaust. What I wasn't aware of was how consistently rife these acts of genocide have been even throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Quite literally each decade has had at least one monumentally horrific instance of one set of human beings going about wiping out another. Of course throughout human existence rather gory conflicts between opposing sides has always arisen; what makes me despair is the fact that as we lead the way into a globalized society these slaughterings are still occurring.
And so a project that should have taken me a few days at the most spilled over into nearly two weeks worth of research. What I learnt was a depressing truthfulness about the human race, that no matter how far we supposedly advance we are inevitably incapable of not repeating the same mistakes again and again.
What leaves me feeling even more dejected is that influential governing bodies such as the U.N continuously seem to fail in intervening in such atrocities against fellow human beings. Of course they sit, they discuss and in the end conclude that steps should be taken to ensure that such events never happen again; but rarely is enough action actually ever taken.
I know its a dreary outlook on a particularly dismal subject and of course their are several other factors to address but I think the main point is that although we have our technology, our medicines, our literature and our weapons, we as a species still to quite a substantial degree are functioning on a primitive level. Perhaps that is why we sit idly by while thousands are massacred, because unconsciously we understand and accept that tribal mentality.
I suppose that that is what the video is meant to emphasize, that this is a continuous cycle, which will just keep happening. Human beings need to properly engage with one another and have a true sense of empathy is genocide is to be prevented.
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