Presidential Debate/ Confucius

After watching 15 minutes of the presidential debate, I noticed that both candidates have some Confucius values. I'll begin with Hillary. In her speech, she seems more of the type to help everyone out not just the already wealthy people. She goes on in detail about her plans with helping the middle class, education, and creating more jobs. This reminded me of one of Confucius ' Analects, number 29. Hillary seems to be more modest in her speech and (I hope) seems like she will exceed with her actions. Actions speak louder than words. Also, number 18 I feel like fits with her too. I don't think she cares about the popularity she receives such as boosting her ego by saying crazy things just to be the topic of discussion, seems like she actually wants to help make things better. Trump on the other hand is quite different. I will say number 36 fits with him. He is very firm with what he wants and his speeches says it all.

Intro to Part Two & Ch 3 (State & Empire)

After the first civilization, not much has changed for the second and third wave. This is surprising to me because I would think that the second time around, many things would be different/change. Monarchs continued to have the power to rule and women still had little to no power. But there was a great growth in populations and and a growing size of states and empires. These states and empires were: The Roman, Indian, Persian, and Chinese. Chapter 3 begins with The Persians and the Greeks. In the Persian Empire, they had Cyrus and Darius as the kings. These kings had absolute power and lived a very luxurious lifestyle with palaces and even rituals. In 500 B.C.E., the most impressive empire was the Persian empire, it was the world's largest.  The Greeks were Indo-European, just like the Persians. Greece emerged around 750 B.C.E. as a new civilization, but the civilization of Athens, Sparta, of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeus and Apollo were created and problems began to arise. The Greeks called themselves Hellenes. They began in a small peninsula that was divided. But then collisions began to happen with the Persians and the Greco-Persian wars had begun.

Chapter 2 Documents

What philosophy of life commes across in the Gilgamesh story?

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh is seen as violent and selfish. He then, found peace within after he encountered the immortal flood hero. This is interesting to me because when someone goes through something that could be impactful, they usually change for either better or worse. In this case  Gilgamesh learned that wisdom is more valuable than immortality. Gilgamesh then finally undestood that he could no longer be selfish and had to protect his people and provide for them. 

Chapter 1

It was interesting to read about the agricultural revolution. It was cool reading about how the paleolithic people would use and make tools for hunting and breeding animals. Reading that populations would grow, cities, states, civilizations, etc were established by this early time period is really interesting because it was at such an early time and knowing how far we've come makes it mind blowing. Nissa's story about her life and her experiences in her village was very surprising to me. I thought that back then men would think they were superior and better than women but everyone in her village was treated and seen as equal. Everyone would share and men and women had equal rights and no one was shamed for what they did, for example, married couples having affairs was accepted and seen as normal. They were a group of open and liberal people. Since it is from 1st person point of view, we can get a good idea of how paleolithic people were back then. In her story, the people were described as very accepting, open, and very kind. From that time period we can get an idea about how things/people were at that time.