This 2011 Explosions in the Sky album is sensational. I’m listening to it right now as I write one of my 3 last college papers. This one is called Globalization and the Poor of Brazil, and I think its paired wonderfully with Take Care, Take Care, Take Care.

It’s hard to believe that in 5 days I’ll have finished college. In some ways it marks the end of a little era. But in so many other, more important ways, I’ve only marked the beginning of a journey. My college experience, and really, the people I’ve met along they way have expanded my mind beyond what I could have imagined 4 years ago. I’m excited to jump out of this little community and into the world. Its funny the way that the more knowledge you gain, the more aware of how little you really know. I’m looking forward to years of learning and living and being.

http://grooveshark.com/#!/search?q=explosions+in+the+sky+take+care+take+care+take+care

This song is disquieting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNOWzHI9i7U

“I Can Feel Your Pain” by Manchester Orchestra

Well I watched your black tied family
Rise up from graves near cemeteries
That I have not been to since you goodbye
And I drank another simile
And compared your Jesus to a thief
He took my bones and turned them into bread.
Cause I can feel your pain, in my bones, in my bones.
I was scared to call your mother
For news that you weren’t getting better
Well my God, what the hell am I supposed to do?
And I ran off and ran on to something
That I swore was everything but beautiful
I only say that word for you
Cause I can feel your pain, in my bones, in my bones.
And I can feel your pain, deep in my bones, deep in my bones.
And hallelujah to the one in our bones
And hallelujah to the one that we love

This subject is particularly problematic for me because I’m white and I care about issues relating poverty, which are most acute in the developing world.

I’ve experienced them in Africa, in West Africa. And yes, sure, it feels good to be doing something ‘for other people’. It feels incredible to be living for something beyond my own self-interested ambitions. Sure, I’ll admit that. And I don’t feel bad about it. But then there is this ‘white savior’ idea. And there is so much history that I’m not isolated from. I’m a hash mark at the end of a very long time line. What came before me? colonialism, imperialism, and even now, neo-imperialism.

And I’m not as innocent as I’d like to think, and neither are you. We all play our part in the global economy. As consumers, producers, travelers, volunteers; we all play a part. But we can’t be so ignorant as to think we exist in our own little worlds. Globalization came, and all our worlds crashed together. We are citizens of the world now. But still, this idea, the one about white American or European students or young people in general, getting all fired up and going on a trip to who-knows-where, however many miles on a 747, past Timbuktu (or maybe you went to Mali), to a place where its hotter, there are more mosquitoes, and people are darker than you are. Paint a school, volunteer in a clinic, bring food aid, or whatever more sophisticated operations you pride yourself in having been a part of. The issue is systemic, its historic.

A professor of mine says: The “Third World” becomes an addiction, a drug for existential needs.  What does one do?

Data from Togo:

The most recent World Bank data show 61.7% of the total population live beneath the poverty line, life expectancy is 56 years, and the literacy rate is 57%. World dataBank records show there are 81,473 female children out of primary school, compared to only 5,830 male children (WB 2000), and primary school completion rates for males and females are 84% and 64%, respectively. The rate of secondary school participation among females in Togo is 35%, up from 25% in 1990 (WB 2010). Adult literacy is at 44% for females and 70% for males (WB 2006). Youth literacy rates are 68% for females and 85% for males (WB 2006). Maternal mortality was last recorded at 478 per 100,000 women (WB 1998) and fertility is 4 live births per woman (WB 2009).