The Tesseract of Globalization

Put several squares together and fold them up, and you will have a cube. If you were one of the imagined Flatlanders from Edwin A. Abbot's 19th century literary classic Flatland, you would be bound to the Second Dimension and only be able to imagine those several squares to idealize what a cube would look like, but never truly know it until you have experienced it. Our own situation here is trying to understand the concept of the hypercube through the tesseract, an unraveled hypercube, which exists in the fourth dimension, one dimension over us. Like a Flatlander bound to the second dimension, he can only imagine several squares combining to form a cube, but can never truly fathom the cube without experiencing beyond his dimensional prison.

Keeping with this metaphor and knowing that globalization is an inescapable truth that only becomes harder to deny, we still find ourselves trapped in understanding the world through our default categorizations as we visualize a superficial world through our limited understanding, whether it comes from a lack of information due to the filtering of what is available by hiding it from us, or by what is highlighted for us.

But in spite of all the images on TV, the Internet, magazines, and the accounts of others, we have to remember that this is only a fraction of the other world we have not experienced; like a Flatlander cannot imagine a cube because he only understands the square, we cannot understand this hypercube of reality solely based on the information out there, no matter how much detail we have.

Whether it is an Indonesian nationalist's account of his country's history, or a socialist reporter's understanding of outsourcing in the People's Republic of China and its effect on workers' wages and conditions, there are many truths that are out there they are eager to reveal, but it is their perspectives that create the biases that are evident in their choice of replicating their experiences; from these accounts come a false picture of reality that has some truth in it and is thus only a fraction of what's really out there.

Whether it is Noam Chomsky's conspiracy theories or Tom Plate's chaos theories on popular news media, both cases illustrate the potential for misrepresentation of the world through the media, as well as inherent cultural biases that influence the cultural insensitivity that prevents adequate research and choice of words.

In the case of Noam Chomsky's conspiracy theories, it is believed that the news media deliberately attempts to maintain the status quo as it is influenced by the dollars of the consumers who buy the products from the corporatioons who bombard them with advertisements and control what the media focuses on through corporate sponsorship. In making the real world issues of ongoing genocides or human trafficking less significant by allocating less time to them and more time to sporting events, people are bred to become apathetic machines who consume and consume like animals in a farm. So in this case, it is lack of time given for actual thought as well as limited information which leads to hardly a fragment of the overall picture of reality. The metaphor here is a used-car salesman trying to sell a car for more than it's worth: he cheats the customer by withholding information of better deals or vehicles found elsewhere, and lies about his credibility, achieving the effect of limiting the consumer's choice and making him believe that it is also the best choice.

In the case of Tom Plate's strong case for chaos theory, the news media is definitely influenced by consumer dollars and corporate sponsors, but not to the extent that people are mindless slaves: more specifically, it can simply be explained that it is a matter of stupidity, not sin. From the space restrictions, the rushed editing jobs, lack of sleep from the reporters and editors, as well as differing educational backgrounds and different needs of the audiences, sponsors, and bureaucracy, the real issue is the chaos that arises from an entire organization trying to both earn money and please everyone at the same time, which is a very obvious case that explains why the world is difficult to grasp from the news stories and images that we are fed. The metaphor here is of an office secretary being told to multi-task and accomplish several objectives within a five-minute time frame, from making 200 copies of one document, faxing another one, making a new pot of coffee, answering and connecting an expected phone call to her boss, as well as dealing with any other assignments that come in: this high level of expectation and small time frame is what causes many people to get annoyed when mistakes happen during any of the tasks or if any of them are not completed.

With two proposed reasons for the misinformation fed our way, whichever you choose to believe is one thing, but the important thing to know is that we can not wholly rely on the news media for our world understanding. Thinking critically from the information we receive is one thing, but knowing that there is plenty of information out there to dig through is another thing; the lack of time (or interest for many) prevents us from getting a better perspective that comes from looking through that myriad of information. Suffice to say, we all live on the same planet earth, which is the same shape and size it has been for millions of years, but we all live in our own different worlds, based on different experiences and subjective understandings of what the world is, or whatever it happens to be, if there is any objectivity at all.

Brain drain: Manila’s finest don’t live there anymore, nor do they want to

The first time I dropped out of university was probably one of the better decisions I’ve made in my life.

The travel advisory currently issued on the Philippines by the U.S. government meant that UCLA had cut off its Education Abroad Program in the Philippines for fear of sending students to their untimely demise. However, the university UCLA is affiliated with there is reputable, so I will withhold its name out of respect for the institution.

Ignoring post-9/11 norms of paranoia, I went there independently to study for their first semester to see what life in a local university—the most prestigious public university with many Filipino intellectuals as its alma matter, including former president Fidel Ramos—would be like through the eyes of a self-proclaimed citizen of the world who could survive in any environment, thus influencing my (perhaps misguided) attempt to live and study like the typical Filipino student.

An entire semester of tuition for a local (lucky for me, I am a dual citizen and have an apartment there) was approximately $70 U.S.; some of my textbooks at UCLA cost more than this. And in a country with English as the other official language, I wouldn’t have to worry about learning another language, making it fare more attractive to earn credits and save on tuition, and comparatively cheaper than studying in England, which even former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once jokingly remarked about America and Britain, “it is the English language that divides us.”

Churchill could not have been more prophetic about my experiences in the language divide in Manila: I survived for three weeks before wisely abandoning my futile attempts at university life, since we all knew English, but spoke another language entirely, preventing us from seeing eye-to-eye.

On the first day, in spite of looking the same and dressing down to fit in with the other students in a country where the average family’s income converts to just a little over $3,100 U.S., I stood out like a marshmallow floating in a cup of hot chocolate, and I’m not white.

There was something about me that caused everyone to pay attention to me, even while hiding my California accent, wearing sunglasses to avoid direct eye contact, and shuffling my feet like everyone else did instead of hurrying off to class. Perhaps it was my obvious surprised reaction to a snake coming out of the toilet when I went to relieve myself, which everyone else laughed at and shrugged it off as the janitor was called who himself took a nonchalant approach as he went to remove it, everyone seeing it as just another thing that happens, much like overgrown grass in the floors and trees all coming into parts of the building.

My cover being blown already, I was thankful that my professors let me know that I would not receive any special privilege for being an American. Instead I get stigmatized.

Looking for the non-existent textbook store, I was instead pointed in the direction of the long hallway of Xerox copying stalls, having to go to several in order to obtain copies of entire books as my assigned readings. A handful of texts fresh off the copier, I can only describe the long march between buildings as equivalent to crossing deserts, even when riding overcrowded jeeps and squishing between hot, sweaty people.

My second day of classes, a syllabus was then distributed, followed by the assignment of groups and topics. Group work already? Okay, I can deal. I was part of a group they jokingly nicknamed “United Nations” due to my partner being half-Armenian, but already a third-generation Filipino. We did our research and picked a presentation date, and I did the same for my other two classes, which followed a suspiciously similar pattern of topics and assigning of groups.

It turned out to be a very popular university professor’s technique in the Philippines: getting paid to be a teacher who does not teach. They introduce the subject material, then assign topics after the one or two week introduction for student groups to research and present to the class for the rest of the semester, criticizing students for not presenting what the professors would emphasize had they been giving the lecture.

In a history class, students were told to read chapters, with each group presenting a few chapters and themes, getting awarded higher grades for giving snacks and theatrical presentations. In a chemistry class, when a professor spent half an hour wondering why her equation was wrong got embarrassed when my friend, a visiting white guy from Massachusetts, said that she had it wrong because it was upside down, and left the class saying that since we understood the subject material so well, she wouldn’t have to explain it anymore. This is when he got screwed over for homework and became the enemy of the students.

By the end of my third week, I jumped ship and had an extensive talk with my long-time mentor from Boston living in Manila in a self-imposed exile, who had spent time as both a professor and student in that university, saying that his time there in the 1970s was exactly the same, and praised me for being wiser than him in my choice of dropping out instead of dragging out a semester, like he did for two years.

The basic formula ended up like this: teachers don’t earn enough money, so why waste effort on teaching? Let the students pay them to be just as unhappy. The students, however, are to be praised for being ruthless and enduring four or more long years of this in attempts to improve their family’s place in society. A sad fact of life there is that moving up in society is either marrying an American or moving the U.S. And if staying in the Philippines means ending up being overworked, underpaid, and not appreciated turns once-hopeful students into bitter professors, then we can see why the conditions of Manila are pushing out these promising and hardworking individuals who slave through systems similar to this university in attempts to rise above their conditions and class. Until they find reasons to stay and contribute instead of looking for greener pastures such as the U.S., Manila only loses its potential every year.