Falling Apart

Things Fall Apart has kind of opened up my eyes and made me realize how different and even how harsh conditions can be around the world. Reading about the Ibo people displays resemblances and differences societies have whether poor or wealthy. Mostly what i have taken so far from Things fall Apart is that societies have their ways of surviving just like how we do and those ways shouldn't be forcibly changed for the better of the society. From interpretation i know that the "white men" will come and try to transform the Ibo society but things will "far apart." Even though the Ibo people might not be as civilized or as reasonable as us doesn't mean that by trying to change their ways of life will help. It is also clear from the reading that many of the priorities of the men are some what different from ours. The men's priorities in the Ibo society basically are yams, yams and yams. The food and wealth comes first and then family. Although it may somewhat seem this way in our society most everyone who is working hard to gain wealth is strictly doing it for the better of their family. This just isn't the same in Ibo society or at least with Okonkwo. Okonkwo seems to be focused on growing yams not strictly for his family but mainly for his reputation of being a man and never showing weakness. I hope to see this change in Okonkwo later in the story but still highly doubt it.

Our Struggle for Immorality.

I watched the Ted Talk about the four stories we tell ourselves about death by Stephen Cave. Stephen talks about how death plays an extreme role in society throughout history and how we as humans come up with stories about immorality to escape the constant fear of death. The four stories he mentions are elixir, resurrection, soul, and legacy, which are all ideas humanity has relied on to believe that they will live forever in some way or another. Stephen states that when humanity realizes not to fear death but except it and not to rely on these four stories we can truly progress a create a "good story" without worrying about the "end of our book" or death. Stephen reasoning behind this is that humanity has constantly been repeating itself by creating new ways to keep the four stories about immorality alive which has stalled the actual progression of our race. The one thing that i don't agree with is that the human race will want to progress knowing they will eventually die. How do we know that because of this realization we won't just stop trying to progress thinking its not worth anything because we are going to die someday? Is it certain that everyone will want to make the best of there life span and create a "good life story" knowing that you might just be forgotten about in a couple years? I believe that we will never know until this realization occurs if it ever does.