All moves in cycles

“Because we are denied knowledge of our history, we are deprived of
standing upon each other's shoulders and building upon each other's hard earned
accomplishments. Instead we are condemned to repeat what others have done before
us and thus we continually reinvent the wheel. The goal of The Dinner Party is
to break this cycle.” Judy Chicago

This quotation describes something that has struck me very hard in the last few months I have been back in school and reconnecting with the world of knowledge that we are sometimes disconnected from when we start working and are consumed by the demands of jobs, friends, family and budgets.

It seems that while I have been symbolically sleeping and disconnected a bot a great shift in the world that ovbiously has been forming for a long time now has surfaced. One of the greatest shifts in world history and culture involved the physically voluntary and forced migration of people from the Old World of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia to form the citizens of the countries that now make up the Americas. However, this diversity in roots and origins and this amalgamation of so many different peoples, many not of their own will seems to be contributing to the new shifts occurring.

I will use two examples of things I have noticed that may characterise a bit of this global shift and give us something to think about.

The first one is on the minds of most businessmen, politicians, students etc. and that is the focus on China, India, Brazil, some areas of Africa and the Middle East, but especially the first three in the list. It interesting that in the history of the world as we know it, the cultural dominance of Europe, which faciliated dominance in most other spheres of life, has only taken place in the last 500-1000 years. The world has been subject culturallty and otherwise to empires based in the same said countries that are now coming back into world focus - China, India, empires of Arabia and Africa. These empires were the seats of civilization, knowledge and culture in the Ancient years and their technological, economic, academic and cultural skills and developments were the basis for the growth and rise of Europe from the Ice Age. Then history took a different turn as Europe sought to expand its empires and dominate the world and this allowed for growth, development and the amelioration of life in Europe primarily and the rest of the world. However, many of the seats of former empires were subjugated, crippled psycholigically, economically and culturally and so were relegated to being the 3rd World, the developing and underdeveloped world of our time - to be helped, assisted and in some cases looked down on. However, as all is cyclical, they are rising to preeminence again and it will be interesting to see how the world and cultures will eveolve to deal and cope with this change.

The second thing that I have noticed is that the displacement and large number of diasporas that exist in the Western Hempishere (and have created numerous forms of art, culture etc.) are now linking with other peoples who have been subject to similar experiences of colonisation and subjugation and are sharing experiences and art forms. One I was looking at recently is zouk. Zouk was created in the French Antilles\Caribbean and is a syncretic art form with influences from Europe, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. However, now you can find a dance form caled zouk, people in Cape Verde and other parts of Africa and Latin America who are now singing zouk and I was surprised to find zouk rhythms and melodies performed with different language lyrics.

The world and theuniverse had its own logic and no matter how much we try to dominate and direct if we do not live in harmony with each other and share our differences without prejudice or discrimination. the universe will conspire to ensure that we do..Some stuff to think about