About Politics 

  So what is Politics? Let me borrow some words from my friend. My Yemeni friend once said, “In Politics, it is not whom you believe but whose lie you believe”. This would hit the mark indeed. And a Jewish proverb says, “One lie is a lie and two lies are also lie, but three is Politics.” It is not funny at all and sounds very malicious to me. But why do Jewish have such a proverb? Does that mean Jewish people are good at Politics? They are supposed to be weak people. Very weird… Something is rotten in the state of Denmark… Anyway it may express something in Jewish mind. On the other hand, children are taught in Japan: “A lie is the beginning of thief”. So people evaluate honesty and liars get despised. People would rather choose being poor without lie than being rich with lie.

Well, the definition of Politics would be very difficult, so let me borrow the words from the Oxford – Advanced Learner’s Dictionary on my desk: “The activities involved in getting and using power in public life, and being able to influence decisions that affect a country or a society”. The easiest definition would be “to rule a country with power of laws and constitution legally”, though my definition is “the way to trick people openly with the tools like laws and constitution”. For example, when Western countries make contracts with developing countries in “economy”, they rather use “Bilateral methods (between two countries)”, in which they can easily cheat, than “Multilateral ones (among many countries)” by the power of “Politics”. Why? Because they can trick people in the name of “treaty”, “law”, “relationship”, even “friendship” etc. But what they do is in black box so nobody knows. If both sides keep quiet or lie in the same manner, people don’t know what’s going on. 

When I was in high school, I used to say, “In the future, I will get Nobel Prize in Peace and spend the prize money for prostitutes”. It doesn’t mean either I wanted Nobel Prize or I wanted prostitutes, but I mock at Nobel Prize. Alfred Nobel who invented Dynamite lived in a very rich life with the enormous amount of money from the invention. In 1888, when his brother passed away, some newspapers in error put obituaries (articles on death) of Alfred Nobel like: “The merchant of death is dead” and “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday”. And he was disappointed with what he read and began to think about the reputation after his death, then decided to found the Nobel Prize in his will (though he didn’t mention about the name of the prize). It is true that his wealth and fame are on dead corpses. Since I got to know about his story, I’ve looked down on him and the Prize, which is dirty from its birth.

In 1968, a wired thing occurred. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which is not in the will of Alfred Nobel, was established by Sweden’s central bank “Sveriges Riksbank”. Why a bank? You must remember that central bank is the start to control over a country. You remember that Politics and economy is interrelated in essence as the word political economy shows. And remember, if scientists and scholars say a complicated theory with  terminologies, people don’t understand and believe it without doubt like “a scholar says it”, which doesn't necessarily mean truth. But if you buy the mind of scientists and scholars with the power of fame and money, they might lie. Remember why Alfred Nobel established the Prizes? For the fame after the death. It is very natural for scholars and scientists to seek for fame and money. Economy is the actual activities of ordinary people but Economics is a tool for Politics to rob wealth of country and people. Politics is the mask to justify their hypocrisy. Oops, needless to say, 99% of scholars and scientists are nice!

About Economy

 Well, I mentioned about the 3 factors: History, Economy and Politics that you must understand in order to understand the theme of my blog, “International Development”. From now on, I’ll focus on Economy so I may have to leave my students and school for the time being, I’m very sorry for that.  

What is the definition of Economy? In Japanese it is called “経済(Keizai)” which is the abbreviation of 経国済民(Keikokusaimin) or 経世済民(Keiseisaimin). But the meaning of “Keizai” in Japanese is literarily “Help people by ruling country well”, which sounds like “Politics” because this word was used for “political economy” at first. When Japan started modernizing country, Japanese scholars translated many words necessary for modernization from European languages, and although the word “Kiezai” is originated, for the above meaning, in China, today it is widely used for economy in Asian countries. On the other hand, the English word “Economy” derived from the Greek words “οἶκος (house)” and “νέμω (mange)”; the original meaning in Greek is “οἰκονόμος (household management)” and later it was applied for “country management”. And the definition of Economy is: “An economy is the total sum of product and service transactions of value between two agents in a region, be it individuals, organizations or states” (Wikipedia). And my definition is: “Economy is movement of things and people and money is lubricating oil to reduce friction of the movement.”

It wouldn’t be very clear for you. When I studied IT at college in Australia, I happened to take a lecture on Economy and the professor explained it with “Fish and Coconut”: there are 4 fish and 4 coconuts in society and if you take 1 coconut, you can take 3 fish at maximum; if 2 coconuts, 2 fish; if 1 coconut, 3 fish; and if 0 coconut, 4 fish etc. What he meant was “Distribution of products”, so the definition of Economy is “how to distribute resources to people in society”, according to the professor. This sounds pretty reasonable and much clearer and we are getting closer to Economy. 

By the way, do you know the difference between Economy and Economics? According to Wikipedia, “Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.” In short, it is a field of study in my understanding. Thus I would say: Economy is “actual activities of selling and buying by ordinary people in everyday life” while Economics is “logical flow of money on paper by so-called ‘economists’ in academic studies”. Are you with me? I know it’s a bit complicated but if you don’t understand my explanation, you will be tricked by “economists”. The thing is, if the logic is easy, people can catch up, but if it’s complicated, people will give up, therefore economists make up new words, theories, common sense, regardless of right or wrong, in order to confuse and manipulate people’s mind because people tend to easily believe words, “theory”, “specialist”, “science”, “Law”, “TV”, “newspaper” etc. But you must know that there are people who want to dominate “4 fish and 4 coconuts”. You must understand that Economics is just a logical work and Economy has nothing to do with Economics. And we, ordinary people, live with Economy, not Economics which is an instrument for those who have power in Economy.

Interestingly enough, Keizai means “Help people by ruling country well” and was used for political economy in Japan and in truth the words Economics was replaced with political economy by Alfred Marshall in his book “Principles of Economics” in 1890. Nevertheless today Economics help greedy people by manipulating ordinary people’s mind. In sum, although I talk about “Economy”, I have to talk about “Politics” because some people trick us in order to take 4 fish and 4 coconuts. 

weareallconnected, 

 Do you remember how I ended the song “Imagine – weareallconnected,”? It finished with the word: “weareallconnected,”, which is the new vocabulary I made up. And it’s not “we are all connected.”; every word should be connected like “weareallconnected” and don’t forget to add a comma “,” like “weareallconnected,”. And the meaning of this word is that we are all connected horizontally and vertically and the comma shows that it’ll continue as long as human beings exist. And it doesn’t mean an ideal but teachings on the principle of the world. It’s easy if you try but I wonder if you can

Well I really admire John Lennon and really like this song “Imagine”. But I have different opinions on some parts of original lyrics. For example, “Imagine no heaven”, although I don’t imagine the heaven as Christianity teaches, when I imagine “no heaven” in the world, my life would be too dark like the image of hell, because I’m a dreamer and love paradise:) And “No hell below us” doesn’t fit to my sense because if no hell, some people would commit crimes without hesitation. And then “And no religion too”, I have no any particular religion, but have my own religious sense toward God, gods, and Gods, and I think religion is very beautiful. And “Imagine no possessions”, it would mean, “Don’t be too greedy for things” but greediness is human nature, so even if one can do it, people wouldn’t be able to join you. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not criticism, but I just don’t seek for an ideal.

And I know John Lennon would have imagined some different scene, but the word, “brotherhood” in the “A brotherhood of man”, reminds me of “Fraternity” in the French Revolution, which sounds to me hypocritical and “too ideal”. And “Imagine there is no country”, it would be controversial. Years ago I saw graffiti, “No more wall!” on the Berlin Wall in Germany. I understood what it meant, but cynically speaking we need walls to protect ourselves. If we didn’t have skins, we would die tomorrow because skin is a wall. Likewise, we need country with borders. In recent years, so many Chinese and Koreans come to Japan by all means, smuggle themselves, overstay, fake marriage etc. and commit crimes a lot in Japan. Without borders and country, the world would be just chaos.  

Lastly “And the world will be as one”. I’m a dreamer, visionary and improviser but at the same time I’m a realist; I dream of paradise and live in my dream, yet it’s not for escapism. I love to face the reality because reality is more exciting than ideal regardless of good or bad. My point is that we should think of the world based on reality; I think the world can’t be “as one” for the time being as long as the current situation of the world continues. So I suggest an easy way for all to take with my word, weareallconnected,. My suggestion is that to make And the world will be as one happen in the not too distant future, first of all we should be aware that we are all connected horizontally and vertically. Here “horizontal” means “space” and “vertical” does “time”. Your act in developed country can influence a life of a girl in developing country; your act is connected to others horizontally over distance. An act of an ancestor 100 years ago can affect a life of a boy today; your act is connected to others vertically beyond time. And remember, History never forgets; if you do something wrong today, it’ll be revealed in the future. We can’t escape from the principle of “weareallconnected,”. All phenomena in the world are connected horizontally and vertically. We should be aware that we are loosely and realistically connected each other, which I call “invisible integration”. So all we should do is just simple: “To be kind to people next to you”. Just be kind and be humble! I think it’s easy enough for all to join and you can imagine, if everyone is kind each other, the world may be as one! 

Making Video

For the deaf, abstract matters are very difficult to grasp the concepts. For example, when I taught “Email account”, I defined it, “It is a place to keep and arrange your emails”, but a student asked me the question, “What is Place?” My brain stopped, “How can I explain Place? A place is a place to… no it doesn’t make sense… Well, a place is… Oh! For example, school, office, market and Savelugu is also a place… Ummm hold on, it’s a town and town is also a place…” Regrettably I couldn’t explain “place” well to that student. This always happens in my class. And I must explain it in sigh language, which has limited vocabularies as “theme”, “topic”, and “title” are the same sign. Anyway whatever excuses are, I want to give sophisticated education in ICT as a volunteer, thus I planned the final achievement as high as possible: students make a video for Savelugu School For The Deaf. 

In making video I think everything is created from “ideas” and “imagination” will enhance the quality of the video. And my main focus in making video is creativity or originality, which I teach as the same thing, saying “not copy others”, “different from others”, “new idea”, “your own idea” and “unique (only one)”. It wouldn’t be very easy for students to work on such a creative work, but I want to give them the special experience that other people can’t provide. In order to make up better Ghana in the future, people must Try & Continue and challenge new things that other people don’t do. You may imagine that to develop country is a big matter, but everything starts with an idea, and time doesn’t develop country, but small efforts of people in everyday life will do it, so I have started. 

Anyway making video is not very easy, so we worked on “presentation” with MS-PowerPoint in the last term for a start in order that students could acquire basic skills and knowledge for making video such as title, contents, animation, transition, inserting picture files, etc. And the most advantage to learn presentation is that students can be creative with colors, pictures, words animation, configuration in making slides and also when they give a talk (in sign language), they can express their feelings with their own words, though very few students did as such. In any event, it was a totally new experience for all students. And I made up groups according to the results of the previous term. I think “group work” is effective to cultivate the sense of responsibility, leadership, and collaboration. If one is lazy, others will suffer; all members must carry out each role to complete their job. And students worked on “Introducing Myself” for the mid-term and at the end of the term a presentation for Social Studies with the help of my colleague, Daniel. There’re interventions like power outage and teachers’ strike, but we could go through with the both presentations successfully.

And I started teaching making video in the 3^rd term. First I taught how to use the software, Windows Movie Maker and all groups made 2 videos with the same photos and videos. And due to the lack of weeks in this term, we had only 2 weeks left when students started the 2^nd project with free theme. I thought it was extremely difficult for them to complete videos because first of all they needed to come up with theme and scenario of video, then they had to shoot clips, and lastly they should edit video as they imagined. In fact they couldn’t make it before the exam, but they devoted themselves to the job everyday after the exam. Finally all groups completed videos on the due day. It’s a good example that devotion can make things happen. And on July 23, Tuesday night, teachers and all children enjoyed their videos with smile and laugh. Students seemed to find it very happy to make other people happy. Sincerity and devotion would never betray you. This is my way to go.