Dissertation Thoughts

Joe one of my lecturers, and my dissertation tutor actually put the idea out that perhaps we should try using a blog to put our dissertation ideas out there to help us formulate them.. and i guess see what other people comment on if they do too.. so here goes some rambling i’d made earlier..

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Burma according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is the world’s second most heavily censored country next to North Korea. I would like to then analyse or formulate a breakdown of the military junta’s oppression of its civilian population and to examine which groups seem to be expressly targeted by these various methods. I’d do this with primary and secondary research if possible with a mention to how the population has responded in various ways with a focus towards ethnic minorities.

I would then like to compare the findings to the stories of oppressed people around the world (ie; Stalinist Russia) as well referring to fictitious accounts of oppressive regimes in dystopian literature to better understand my own assumptions of life under such regimes and then relate this back to what’s going on in Burma to see how this might inform our understanding of life in this country for these people.

Topics…?

Methodology

- Desired outcome and resources available on the topic

- Qualitative and Quantitative approaches to research

- Phenomenology and the use of sources.

- Ethnography

A recent history of Burma

- 1962 Coup d’etat

- ‘The Burmese Way to Socialism’ The ideology of the military Junta

- Dissent and the history of the pro-democracy movement

- The National League for Democracy

- The last few years/ internet in 2000/cyclone nargis/ 2007 protests/ new constitution vote 2008

Government Behaviour and the country as it is..

- The Military

- Censorship and the Media

- Religion and Ethnicity

- Economy

- Human Rights

Oppression

- A comparative study on the USSR 1937-1949

- A comparative study with Dystopian Literature (Western/Eastern literature.. brave new world, 1984, We, Farenheit 451 etc.)

- Westernised views of authoritarian government

- Burmese Voices on life in Myanmar

- Forms of dissent amongst the Burmese people

It’s not so much to go on.. i guess. What I will say is Athens is flippin’ amazing.. if you haven’t got an Athens account.. then get it, or get onto Googlebooks or something like that because there’s so many resources to be found in a site like that I’ve found..

I’ve got a contact who’s linked with a group called the Free Burma Rangers who I occasionally get through to.. the contact is actually in Thailand but the organisation equips and sends teams who support and work with ethnic minoritys across the country.. so theres the chance of some first hand experience, i don’t want to hedge my bets too much though.. who knows?

Obviously I better get back into the habit or writing in my third person again..

Thin Places

Aurora Borealis

I just finished reading a book about a Norweigan who in struggling to figure out meaning in his life took to making lists.. to figure out what he had.. and what he wanted.

I thought it was stupid but a part of me started wanting to make a list of places I would like to see before I die. I quite like the idea of travelling, wanderering.. just taking stuff in.. most of the travelling I’ve done in the past been fairly loud with crazy times with strangers in hostels. I have a clue what this life is about.. but I quite enjoy being by myself.. and being outside I dunno these moments seem more significant than the others. I read a book about the first generation of Christian Celtic monks in England who travelled and identified places like this.. holy places as ‘thin places’ the idea that the border between the seen and the unseen was thinner in that place. It was subjective.. not based on a worship of the place itself but of the objective, expansive presence of God. It could be a room, a seat on the bus, a wood or a grave.. God isn’t actually in that place but that place opens your heart to God.. and God’s spirit rests within those who accept him. The Jews before they built the temples had a tabernacle or tent which moved with the people in exodus, and after the crucifixion of the Christ it’s said that God’s spirit became tabernacled amongst the people instead caught up in a temple..

I heard about this guy called Leonard Knight. I really really would love to meet him some day, theres something else about him.. he made Salvation Mountain which is literally a pile of cement and paint made from donations which he’s used to tell people about the love of God, it’s in the middle of the desert in California but people are drawn to it from all over. It’s all he does really as far as I know, just paint and build non-stop and I think if anywhere is a thin-place it’s, for me atleast.. the concept of Salvation Mountain and Leonard Knight.. I read a story about his life somewhere, it’s pretty crazy.. but just makes me realise what a massive world we live in.

Leonard Knight

I’ve just gone off on one again but, for me atleast there seems a significance in the idea of thin places, of being reminded that God is with us, that to a measure we reflect him and that this world can remind us of that.. whether it’s in something beautiful or even in something horrible that can remind us of our need for God. I never really woke up the idea of Christianity till I had read Nietzsche and.. the world left behind by Nietzsche for me just wasn’t worth living in.. all I could say after reading about Nietzsche was somehow he didn’t live quite by his convictions, and then I read Satre and I don’t think he did either.. which just made me figure I haven’t got these moral hangups by some cruel joke; Not even that.. I just got sick of being so bloody melancholy, half happy, half sad.. and such a consistently apathetic cynic. Even when the world does try to toughen me up I know I got a heart that bleeds, thats flesh.. that might not be pretty but it’s real.

Sometimes I’ll look at the world and I’ll remember all of a sudden it’s real.

Phew

I was boarding back from uni the other day when I narrowly missed stacking into this black mini as it popped out from round a corner when I was coming down a hill. It’s small mercies like that which give me some sort of appreciation of life.. I would of been pretty gutted if that mini hit me. Maybe I should of been sensible and walked down the hill.. but when have humans ever been sensible? When have I ever been sensible?

Still, I’m glad my arms aren’t in slings right now. That’d be a shame. I quite enjoy my arms and my body in general for one reason or another, I appreciate it a whole lot more now I’ll be honest.