Note to self
It is weird and wonderful how it takes a lot of time to think about whether or not we said the right thing, or, where our actions lay the best, or whether or not we respected the identity of other’s, or whether, or own identity is being suppressed?
I feel as though Carl Jung has made me feel as though our thoughts will always be judged and we have to accept criticisms. Nothing is black and white. Especially when we are think about the cultural identity of other’s. Then we mere mortals have to think about how we are connected.
So why do we allow people to take us down this crazy route, where we lose our own identities as nations?
I feel that most of us take into account environmental factors, psychological experiences that may have hindered the way we think. Even more strangely mixed with our repressed feelings. All the things we should have said at the time but did not. Are we thinking collectively, or are we bold enough to speak out when something harms our own identity?
However, I feel as though our unconscious thoughts are the most weird and wonderful way of helping us interact with others. It is like our tolerance band, then luckily enough we have politicians that speak out for us because we are not bold enough to lead. Apparently, even though we disassociate, or, exclude ourselves from activities it is a sign of repressed feelings.
Would it not be weird if we were not able to speak out or talk to someone? To discuss the way we thought and then have no one would tell us that we were wrong. Would we have schools, or a government, or, a healthcare system?
Even though I tried to look at all the different aspects people face today, I wonder if we as humans really feel connected to the reasons why we need repressed thoughts and finally wake up to a resistance. I think it is rather Orwellian to think we can live in a world where no one can think. No one can feel. No one can show emotion. No one could react to something in a different way. No one is allowed to even have a recollection of their history and their identities, culture or lives are all blank.
It all looks a little extreme. So when I compared the behaviour in Iraq to our lives in the Northern Hemisphere, this includes Russia and China; there was the relentless pensive thought of how unparalleled universes are formed by repression.
I thought we in time will have to think about our future and the love of our history and how our culture was developed. How much we know and how much we love and feel proud about our human achievements. However, these people in Iraq are going through tyrannical, turbulent times, and perhaps their history is being erased.
Then I thought, would we, in the Northern Hemisphere stand up for our history? What we would allow to happen to our own historical places around the world? Would we care about it? Would we accept it? Would it affect our identity if they did take the louvre in Paris? Would we accept it?
I have to admit I do not normally read the National Geographic. I was engrossed in an article about the historical place called, “Dur-Sharrukin” in the Northern Iraq city of Mosul Iconic Ancient Sites Ravaged in ISIS’s Last Stand in Iraq – Kristine Romney (2016) where by the article states:
“Dur-Sharrukin was allegedly looted by the Islamic State in the spring of 2015.
An October 27 Facebook post from the Kurdistan Regional Government Directorate of Archaeology revealed that Peshmerga forces stationed at Khorsabad had reported to the Directorate of Antiquities that they had uncovered Neo-Assyrian architectural fragments while digging fortifications at an undisclosed site.
Satellite images show that this site is actually Dur-Sharrukin, and that Peshmerga forces bulldozed extensive earthen embankments and built a large military post on top of visible archaeological remains.
Heritage officials who visited the site recovered some of the newly exposed archaeological remains; others were simply too large to remove at the time.
Militarization of heritage sites in northern Iraq, including mosques, churches and archaeological sites, has become an increasing concern as efforts to recapture Mosul from the Islamic State continue.”
I feel it is time for us to be honest with ourselves. Reach deep into your unconsciousness and bring it to the front. I was a little angry about this. Not because I am racist, or, not because I favor where I live. But because as a human being I know, you are hurting the identity of other’s, just so that you can manipulate them into thinking in your way.
Repressing thoughts and erasing thousands of years of history of Persian history which could connect us all as human beings. Historically this was done through trade. This means, Persia had a lot to offer and they were actually the ones who started the globalisation trade deals. If we think about it in this kind of manner, they were the ones who were not just selling to their own people, but to everyone in the Northern Hemesphere and here is a section of evidence from Greece ii. Greco-Persian Cultural Relations, Encyclopaedia Iranica (2002):
“Very few examples of actual Persian imports survive in the Greek world (Miller, pp. 41-43; Tuplin, pp. 164-65; Baitinger; Völlig). Nonetheless, a variety of evidence attests to the spread of Persian material goods and cultural knowledge to Greece, thanks to trade, booty and diplomatic relations. Traded goods introduced to Greece included such items as foodstuffs, textiles, glass, slaves, and possibly toreutic. A major source for material goods introduced to Greece was the booty from the Persian Wars. The capture of the Persian camp at Plataia (479 B.C.E.), whose wealth far exceeded anything within Greek imagination, became legendary and was probably the single largest intrusion of Persian (and other foreign) goods into Greek society (Herodotus, 9.80-83), but there is reason to suppose that substantial booty was also won at Marathon (490 B.C.E.) and especially at the battle of the Eurymedon River (466 B.C.E.), as well as at various other engagements on land and sea throughout much of the 5th century B.C.E. A portion of the spoils was dedicated to the gods (cf. Thucydides 2.13.3-5; Harris, pp. 109-10, 204-6), but the rest was distributed among participants, ensuring a wide distribution throughout much of the Greek world. Though items in precious metals were doubtless soon melted down, some traces indicate that not all were, or if they were, their unusual qualities were remembered: the most striking instance is a Persian bracteate design that appears as a shield device in Attic red-figured vase-painting about 490-470 B.C.E. (PLATE II; Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, B8; Thompson; Miller, pp. 29-62).”
These Persians were actually quite business savvy and although there was a war with Greece and Persia, they traded. If Persia was not influential enough they had trade coming in and out before the Gregorian calendar was even made.
Why are these people not proud about their trade deals? I mean, it was not like they were not reaching out to even further points of the globe.
Even Vikings went to Persia. Norwegian Vikings purchased silk from Persia – University of Oslo (2013) as the article states:
“On the basis of the silk that has been found, there are indications that more silk came to Norway from Persia than from Constantinople.
– Large amounts of the Oseberg silk have patterns from the Persian Empire. This silk is woven using a technique called samitum, a sophisticated Oriental weaving method. Many of the silk motifs can be linked to religious motifs from Central Asia.
Another pattern depicts a shahrokh, a bird that has a very specific meaning in Persian mythology; it represents a royal blessing. In the Persian myth, the shahrokh bird is the messenger that brings the blessing to a selected prince. In a dream, the bird visits the prince holding a tiara, a tall head adornment, in its beak. The prince then wakes up and knows that he is the chosen one. The image of the imperial bird was popular not only in silk weaving, but also in other art forms in Persia. The motif gained widespread popularity in Persian art.
– It’s an amusing paradox that silk textiles with such religious and mythological images were highly prized and used in heathen burial sites in the Nordic countries as well as in European churches.”
I feel this means we are all connected, in thought in the way we are historically. Then, all of a sudden these crazy people are trying to create suppressed feelings on their own people, by erasing how important and influential they were. How amazingly creative they were as a people to develop the silk trade with the Northern Hemisphere and bring us all together.
I have no words to describe how disappointed I am that people have repressed their anger so much, they irradiated their own identity. I mean, this is why the rest of the world is not holding back their feelings and they are using their freedom of speech to show their dissatisfaction. They are expressing their anger and although it falls on deaf ears sometimes. It takes a travel ban to make things clear. Please, stand up for your culture.
It takes a travel ban to make you realise the historical connection, we all had with the Middle East has been torn down and erased. It takes a travel ban to make us realise we are not racist and do not really promote hatred…
It takes a travel ban to realise the shear lack of disbelief that people have let this happen. Their own culture is seen as a milestone in human history is gone, completely wiped out by hysteria.
Why are these people listening to these crazy people?
If we are not able to think. If we are not able to criticise what is going on, we become drones. We become those very people who allow such things to happen. It happened during 1930’s and now it has happened to the people of Iraq. It is happening to the very people who need to look at themselves deeply and find the courage to stand up against this.
Why are they not speaking up about it?
I have no idea. I feel as though on one hand they want modernism. The other hand they want their cultural identity to be a religion. However, this is their culture, this is their religion and they did not really stand up for it. They just watched it crumble to the ground. This upsets me, it makes me wonder what is next. What is more important, religion, or, how we developed as humans?
Charles Dickens is a wonderful writer. I feel he was making a point about our own identities. Many people became slaves during the industrial revolution. So to take away the buildings would actually scare me a lot. Even the subways and the railway system was created by many slaves. A slave was the working class and it did not matter what race or religion you were, you built what people use today. This goes also back to the Persian statues and the Egyptian tombs, they were built by slaves.
I feel we have to think and remind ourselves to go forward from these points because we will always be slaves.
Losing our history and identities from Imperialism, means we are no better than those who suppressed us back in those dark times. I feel sorry for these people, because they have not woken up to the fact that through reflection comes freedom of thought. Through loving how we traded with one another and had interacted in the past, we had the ability to influence the world. Such a shame they could not think about it.
May be it took a travel ban to punish them into going back to stand up for what they believe in?
Perhaps it took a travel ban for them to realise they are shutting the very people out, whom they need to trade with in order to survive?
Perhaps it will take another travel ban to get them to stop erasing their history and creating hate and fear?
Perhaps it will take another travel ban to protect our own cultures?
To conclude
The world is what we make of it. I feel we cannot have repressed feelings anymore to people’s cultural identities. I used to wonder why those who come from Arabic and Asian countries asked me where I am from, I am mixed, but, I am mainly European. But I will defend my history to the core. I have not laughed about it and nor will I be repressed in telling people I am Scottish/Jamaican/ English/German/Cuban and I could not give a damn if you think this is weird.
The UK colonised and used slave trade for centuries, although many countries became apart of the Commonwealth; the one thing the UK has regretted, especially when colonising America is allowing for the history of American Indians and Australian aborigines to be abolished by crazed extremists or puritans. Time and time again, we are reminded to respect and identify with those historical artifacts, that make up those cultures and we think about it. Because we see it and it has been indoctrinated into education and even television.
We do bring our unconscious thoughts back into the way we think. I fear that people’s depression and anxiety is raised when they cannot associate with their own identity. If this is the case then those whom are repressed need to think, that many communists around the world held on to their identity and perhaps this is an evil route to go down.
Weird and Wonderful 
