INSPIRE
Lent Term 2020 14th I s s u e
- Contents Natasha Johnson – The Murder of Ancient Alexandria’s Great Female Scholar. - - - - - - - - - - 3 Minty Corbett – How Our Streaming is as Polluting as Flying: Data Centres – - - - - - - - - - - - 5 The “Factories of the Digital Age.” George Honeybourne – A Pebble Beach. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 7 Valentina Milne – Should We All Write in Chinese? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 9 Eva Stuart – I Procrastinated Writing This So I Wrote This About - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 10 Procrastination. Sophie Smith – On Curiosity. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 12 Gigi Chambers – “Slavery Is Illegal Everywhere”. The Real Truth About This - - - - - - - - -- - 15 Statement. Nadia Johnson – Fear Is No Excuse to be Racist. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 16
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- Editors' Notes We are writing this in a fragmented manner, through snippets of text emailed to and from one another and with despairing exclamations that have latterly begun to border on expletive as the Wi-Fi cuts out or as we do disservice to our reputation as the “online generation” when we can’t work “Zoom”. Editing this issue of Inspire has proved to be an interesting process and one that most will understand as we learn how to continue in a frankly strange situation. Over a video call we found ourselves discussing the current issue of the coronavirus - truly, what did anyone talk about before? This stemmed into discussion regarding the increasing prevalence of an uglier side to human nature - a somewhat animalistic greed in “stockpiling” and, as Nadia’s article discusses, an increasing tolerance of racism. Although it’s difficult to acknowledge, some good has come out of the world on what feels like “standby”. With the vast majority of flights on hold, next to no travelling taking place and record declines in factory activity, many a satellite image shows the dramatic decline in pollution levels over the big cities of the world, notably those of China. And have you seen those images of the Venetian canals? As the Guardian put it, “wildlife returns to tourist free city” ...enter George’s article. These are odd times, and amidst the exposure of nastier elements of the human species one mustn’t neglect to acknowledge the good that is being displayed - singing on balconies and the note that came through the letterbox last week offering to do shopping runs if they were needed are just examples of these. Sophie’s article on curiosity evokes this positivity. There won’t be a print run of this issue of Inspire, nor will there be various members of our fabulous Lower Sixth Scholars running around distributing them. Nonetheless, we look forward to the time when we can do so, and to continue pursuing our aim for world-wide distribution of this magazine. Eva and Honor
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Natasha Johnson – The Murder of Ancient Alexandria’s Great Female Scholar. In light of International Women’s Day, I thought I would write a review about one of ancient Alexandria’s greatest scholars, and her tragic and untimely end. Hypatia of Alexandria was an ancient Greek intellectual, who was not only a renowned philosopher and teacher, but also the first recorded female mathematician. Born in Alexandria in the late fourth century AD, Hypatia grew up in the cultural and intellectual centre of the world. Her father, Theon of Alexandria, was a mathematician and astronomer, and taught his daughter about those respective areas. Throughout her life, Hypatia grew to become one of the leading intellectual figures of Alexandria, acting as an advisor to the city’s leaders as well as an influential teacher of philosophy. Although Hypatia was a prominent mathematician and scientist in her own right, refining scientific instruments and writing commentaries of many mathematical texts, it was through her teachings that Hypatia made her most significant contributions. Hypatia was the head of the Platonic school and taught students from all over the Mediterranean. She mainly lectured on philosophy, specifically the philosophical school of Neoplatonism. Although the Neoplatonists’ belief of the “One” had an almost religious aspect, Hypatia taught students regardless of their religion, and was loved and respected by pagans and Christians alike. This nonpartisan environment that Hypatia fostered was incredible during a time of extreme religious turmoil and contributed to her popular position within the leaders of Alexandria. However, it was in part her trusted position within politics that led to her death. It must be noted that all of her achievements were unique to women during that time. Previously, the role of scholars and teachers was reserved for men alone, with women expected to stay within the domestic environment. However, Hypatia did the remarkable: she not only escaped from this traditional requirement, but she also thrived in a world initially intended only for men. Hypatia became respected by many despite her gender, and thus remains a feminist icon even today. However, despite her influence within the intellectual sphere of Alexandria, Hypatia wasn’t universally loved. During the time of Hypatia’s life, Alexandria, like the rest of the ancient world, suffered from extreme religious turmoil, especially between the Jews, pagans and Christians. With Christianity becoming the new state religion, those practicing other religions found themselves increasingly persecuted. During this time, the Archbishop of Alexandria, a man called Cyril, was steadily gaining power, commanding militias of Christian monks to destroy temples and harass the Jewish and pagan population. This blatant exploitation of power encroached on the authority of the governor of Alexandria, a man called Orestes, which led to conflict between the two men. Although Orestes himself was a Christian, he did not wish to cede power to the church, hence causing the power struggle. Orestes was also associated with Hypatia, who he would ask for advice from due to her reputation as a wise and unbiased counsellor. Hypatia herself was tolerant of Christianity and would advise Orestes to act with fairness and restraint. However, when a group of Cyril’s monks badly injured Orestes, he had their leader
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publicly punished and tortured to death. Despite this being the act of Orestes, not Hypatia, Cyril blamed Hypatia and accused her for turning Orestes against Christianity. She was further accused of witchcraft and engaging in satanic practices, as well as intentionally hindering the church’s influence over Orestes. The rumour that Hypatia prevented Orestes and Cyril from reconciling spread among the more extremist Christian population, eventually leading to her brutal murder. In March 415, as Hypatia travelled home after a day of teaching, a militia led by a lector named Peter attacked Hypatia and dragged her from her carriage. According to Socrates Scholasticus, she was dragged into a building known as the Kaiseron, a former pagan temple, where she was stripped naked and viciously murdered, with her body torn into pieces then burned. Hypatia’s death sent shockwaves throughout the empire and served as a turning point in the politics of Alexandria. Shortly after, Cyril gained control of the Alexandrian council and Alexandria’s position as the leading intellectual centre of the world readily declined. Although Hypatia was neither the last pagan nor intellectual in ancient Alexandria, both paganism and scholarship took a severe blow from her death, with Hypatia’s students and fellow philosophers fleeing the city out of fear. Hypatia’s death wasn’t just a brutal end to an inspiring and intelligent woman, it was symbolic of the end to Alexandria’s place as the intellectual centre of the ancient world. Today, Hypatia’s death is symbolic of the bitter end to intellectual endeavour in the face of religious oppression and intolerance; it is representative of the loss of knowledge and culture to ignorant prejudice and religious fanaticism. In a very real sense, with Hypatia’s death died the very things she fostered: the spirit of inquisition, fairness and the intellectual values that she held dear. Even today, Hypatia remains an influential figure, a feminist icon and even the inspiration for many works of fiction, but even in the modern times, we can still see the very same effects of fear and ignorance in the face of intellectual truth. Whether it is due to religious extremism in fifth century Alexandria, or racism in light of the current Covid-19 outbreak, it seems that regardless of the era, fear and ignorance still play far-reaching roles in society.
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Minty Corbett – How Our Streaming is as Polluting as Flying: Data Centres – The “Factories of the Digital Age.” Recently, there has been a huge increase in awareness of the environmental crisis and as a result many people are making changes to their lifestyle such as eating less meat or flying less. However, there is an aspect of our lives which is just as damaging to the environment which isn’t talked about - our constant data usage. If you have watched all of Peaky Blinders, that has produced the same carbon emissions as driving from Birmingham to Manchester (166 miles). It may seem difficult to understand the link between watching an episode and the pollution which is caused, so I am going to try and explain this little-understood issue. The internet is using colossal amounts of energy. Global internet usage has exploded and everyone is constantly online; streaming videos, playing games and listening to music. The main culprit being video streaming which makes up ¾ of the world’s internet usage. Let’s say you are on Netflix and you select a movie. That request is sent to a data centre in America, where the movie is stored, and then it returns and comes to a landing station in Somerset (a large UK landing station). From here it then transfers to your device and the video immediately starts playing. 99% of the world’s data comes underneath the ocean through copper cables and the journey from data centres to devices uses energy. All the data centres, cables and Wi-Fi signals used to stream the hit-song Despacito used the same energy as Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic put together in a single year. The music video was the first to hit 5 billion views on YouTube, but it also burned as much energy as 40,000 U.S. homes use annually. Not only does pushing all the videos through the network use large quantities of energy, but the 24/7 availability of video, which we have grown used to, requires data centres to use up just as much power keeping the videos ready to go. All of the power needed to keep them running non-stop generates heat so even more energy is needed to cool them down. The internet is a connected chain of data centres and the problem with data centres is that fossil fuels power everything. By 2035, the internet will be using a fifth of the world’s electricity which is the same as the whole of America. This is concerning as fossil fuel production is already heading to be 120% more than is consistent with climate protection by 2030. Loudoun County, Virginia, USA, has the highest concentration of data centres in the world and 70% of the internet passes through every day. They have 13.5 million square feet of data centre space and there is constant construction of new ones. Since 2008 there hasn’t been a day without new data centre construction as the number of internet users and things to do and watch on the internet are increasing daily. As our demand for video grows, the number of data centres needs to grow too, and therefore more and more power is needed. I found it really interesting how reliant we are on this one area in Virginia, since if it disappeared, Netflix, Amazon, Spotify and Uber would all crash at once. The issue with the data centres in Loudoun County (i.e. the majority of the world’s data centres) is that their energy comes from a company called Dominion Energy which is extremely ‘un-green’ and uses fossil fuels to create huge pollution. There needs to be a
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change in the world’s energy infrastructure within the next decade in order for us to grow sustainably. Google and Apple say they have achieved green energy data centres and Mark Zuckerberg has said that every new data centre is completely powered by green energy. However, they don’t consider how the data gets to the network in the first place which requires so much energy. The biggest problem is going to be 5G which will create even more data use on a massive scale and therefore demand much more power. If we keep on streaming everywhere we go, data centres will have to keep on growing. There are new films and series to watch every day, but we need to consider the environmental implications of this. After researching this, I felt a little despondent as I wasn’t sure what I personally could do but there are some small and easy actions: watching videos in high definition uses 4x the energy, so just watch in standard definition. Streaming videos uses 3x the energy if you are on 3G or 4G compared to Wi-Fi, so it is much better to watch them at home. When you are about to watch a video, think whether you actually want to watch it, or if you are just pressing play for the sake of it.
Coastal smoke stacks - By Viktor Lysenko on Unsplash
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George Honeybourne – A Pebble Beach. Imagine a long pebble beach, shrouded in a blanket of thin ethereal fog. A lone sea eagle hangs amid the still autumn dawn and avocets call across mudflats. The sun slowly rises above rolling waves, perforating shadows cast by the oak woodland which stretches out behind you. A few seals lounge on the rocks out to sea and occasionally the long sloping back of a harbour porpoise breaks the ocean’s surface. Then you see what you are looking for. Further out, across the estuary, the now shimmering sea becomes dappled. Hundreds of thousands of dark shapes conjoin into huge shoals, forced to the surface by the chaos of nature. Mass migratory shoals of cod, sea trout, salmon and eel race along the shallow estuary floor chased all the while by diving flocks of gannets, puffins, guillemots and great auk. Bottlenose dolphins leap through the salt spray, met by breaching humpbacks, orca and basking sharks. All feasting on this endless resource of fat and protein, building up their reserves for the long winter ahead. This too is why you are here, your nomadic tribe hopes to harvest this natural bounty, joining the congregation of predators. One thousand years before Caesar invades the South East, you have travelled to where sea and river meet to harness the power of nature. Fast forward three thousand years, you now stand on the same beach and the sun rises once more upon a still autumn morning. But you are in the shadow of the Severn Bridge, the stillness is immediately interrupted by heavy traffic on the M4 and the silver spires of Cardiff dominate the view. The great estuary has silted up, no longer filtered by shellfish colonies and it’s impossible to see any shapes moving beneath the clouds of mud. A container ship slowly trundles to Avonmouth port and seagulls sift through the accumulated rubbish around the high tide mark. Human development, the Industrial Revolution and our own thoughtless plundering has rendered this magnificent resource to a trade highway. Strict return policies govern sea trout and salmon fisheries by necessity and the elvers have all but disappeared. But all is not lost. To me there seems to be a clear solution, one by which humanity and nature can coexist and flourish in pre-industrial levels of biodiversity and wilderness. We can reconstruct this spectacle through tighter fishery regulations, reintroduction programmes and cleaning up the estuary. Breeding colonies of puffins and Manx shearwaters still coexist on Lundy island and WWT Slimbridge have successfully reintroduced the common crane to wetland areas surrounding the estuary. Common dolphin and porpoise are still regularly sighted in Pembrokeshire on the edge of the Bristol Channel and in 2006 a pod of four orca were sighted. These animals can be drawn back into the Severn Estuary, revitalising and rewilding it. In doing so we are giving the estuary what it needs to function naturally and then stepping back, letting nature take control. Rewilding Europe defines this rewilding approach, “It’s about letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes. Through rewilding, wildlife’s natural rhythms create wilder, more biodiverse habitats.” We can restore the dilapidated estuary to its former glory. Imagine large congregations of whales, seabirds and eagles, all feeding off one spectacular mass of salmon. But these salmon aren’t swimming up a Norwegian fjord, they are not racing up an Alaskan river, they are 50km west travelling up the River Severn to ancestral spawning
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sites. It’s the year 2100 and the ethereal autumn fog slowly lifts from the pebble beach as the sun slowly rises over the glimmering, crystal clear water.
A Breaching Orca Photo By Thomas Lipke on Unsplash
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Valentina Milne – Should We All Write in Chinese? With our increase of globalisation in the world, a need for ease of communication is imminent in almost all aspects of our contrasting societies. As shown with numbers and more recently emojis, what better way to ensure easy communication across international businesses and even countries than universalise our writing system. What if everyone across the world used the same writing system, whilst still speaking completely different languages? From a religious perspective, the foundations of a language are thought to have originated in the Garden of Eden where the whole world spoke and wrote in one language. Then as the story goes, the Tower of Babel collapsed. According to Genesis, this structure was built by the Babylonians who wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and tower “with its top in the heavens.” However, God disrupted the work by confusing the language of the workers so they couldn't understand each other. The city was never completed and the workers were dispersed around the world. This explains the existence of diverse human languages. From then on, philosophers and theologists believed that it would take a universal language system to get us back to Heaven. And thus, the search for a universal language began. As demonstrated by China, whilst being made up of many different cultures all speaking different dialects, what unified them in the first place is their use of one writing system. Chinese works in a slightly different way to a western alphabet. Much like hieroglyphs or even emojis, Chinese symbols denote meaning not sound. Furthermore, it is also the most concise written language in the world so less paper would be used. In the 17th century, the search for a perfect universal language became very popular and Chinese was carefully considered by Francis Bacon due to its significant relationship between the character and what it symbolised. However, whilst Chinese seems to be the most likely candidate, it also creates some significant problems. In the first instance, because of the nature of Chinese and how the symbols denote meaning, it is predicted to be made up of around 64,000 different characters. Furthermore, the symbol can become incredibly complicated, with some made up of around 50 different strokes. In fact, Chinese is so complicated that in the 1950s a simplified system was created along with a Romanised alphabet called pinyin. After being revised several times, it was adopted on mainland China in 1982 followed by the UN in 1986. Despite this, after finding an ideal writing system (which seems to be incredibly difficult) issues with both everybody using it and agreement on the same set of meanings are created. It is obvious that language evokes a cultural context and millions of years of background and history have impacted one single language. There is a fear that a universal language could lead to cultural impoverishment and removal of centuries of heritage. Perhaps for now we should just stick to emojis as a form of “universal” communication and leave the language barriers up to Google translate. However, I do think that, whilst possibly losing certain cultural context, a universal writing system could unify the world and communication between businesses and even countries could become more efficient.
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Eva Stuart – I Procrastinated Writing This So I Wrote This About Procrastination. Procrastination. We all do it. We say “I’ll do it later.” “It’s not due for another week”, or “Before I actually begin …” So - before I actually begin, let me ask you to consider a time when you’ve procrastinated. Perhaps it was revision. Maybe it was getting an essay done. Maybe even reading this is your way of procrastinating. The point is, we all do it to varying degrees. I was sitting in my room, all set to start writing - and then I realised that Netflix had just released season two of “Sex Education”. I’m sure you can imagine how productive my next few hours were. The point is, procrastination is something we all do. We can all understand the feeling of conflict about getting something done. Do I? Don’t I? But now I ask you, have you ever stopped to consider why the “Don’t I?” usually wins? Why do we procrastinate and how can we stop? It’s about the combination of self-control, motivation, demotivating factors and hindering factors. When you need to get something done, you rely primarily on your self-control in order to bring yourself to do it. Your self-control receives support from your motivation, which helps you get things done in a timely manner. In some cases, you experience certain demotivating factors, which have an opposite effect to your motivation. These can be very common things such as anxiety or fear of failure. In addition, you sometimes experience certain hindering factors, such as mental exhaustion or rewards that are far in the future, which interfere with your self-control and motivation. When demotivating and hindering factors outweigh your self-control and motivation, you end up procrastinating, either indefinitely or until you reach a point in time when the balance between them shifts in your favour. Fear or failure is a prime example of a hindering factor that outweighs motivation. This can also come with perfectionism. The basic mindset is that you can’t fail at something if you don’t do it. Whilst this sounds silly, a fear of not being up to something because of an unrealistic expectation of yourself can cause you to put things off. Fear is also linked to the size of the task at hand: sometimes it seems daunting, of course it does. Let’s use my writing for this talk as an example: the whole notion of producing one seemed like a rather overwhelming task when I first sat down to write it, leading me to search for something easier to do. Binge watching eight episodes of “Sex Education” therefore seemed incredibly appealing. A dislike of deadlines is a hindering factor: this can make people feel like they don’t have control over their own time and therefore stubbornness makes one more prone to do something else. Another hindering factor is a lack of interest. If you perceive a task to be mundane, it’s pretty evident that you’ll be less enthusiastic about it and therefore be more inclined to find something else to do.
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The future: I found this one particularly interesting when I finally thought I had better get a move on and do some research. People tend to discount that value of rewards far in the future. To give you an example I am sure we can all understand - though dare I mention exams now? - receiving an exam result in a couple of days rather than a couple of months. This is a phenomenon called temporal discounting. Furthermore, we naturally disconnect from our future selves, seeing them almost as different people. This has also got a fun name - it’s called temporal disjunction. An example is putting off some prep, even if you’ve been told that you’ll get a detention if you don’t get it done. Despite knowing that not doing the task will have a harmful impact on your future self, you separate yourself from that future self and see it as someone else’s problem. As a target reading group comprised primarily of students, I guarantee that we can all relate to having recently put off doing this or that bit of work, maybe because it hasn’t got that little hated red sign on Firefly saying “Due Tomorrow.” But, breaking up a task can help make you feel more capable of doing it, thus reducing any fear that you may have with relation to that task. Once again, let’s take my writing this article as an example (and I apologise for my lack of imagination in formulating another scenario): to my mind it was one large task, which made me look for something easier to do, i.e. Netflix. But, break it down. Researching. Writing. That’s it.
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Sophie Smith – On Curiosity. As human beings, we are unique among animal species in that we experience, along with the need for food, shelter and a mate, a fourth drive: curiosity. A recent study conducted on a male bonobo called Kanzi by primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh investigated the extent to which our ape cousins are similar to us in their ability to learn language and symbols. By the end of the investigation Kanzi had managed to acquire a vocabulary of over 200 words and matched the level of communication and reading skill expected of a two-and-a-half-year-old child. What this remarkable study showed is that we do clearly have a great amount in common with apes. But what Kanzi never did was ask why these tests were being conducted on him, or what the purpose of this strange research was. Therefore, it is clear to see that what has set humans apart so far from the rest of the animal kingdom is our innate desire to question, to discover, and to inquire into all we see around us. Curiosity, the desire to find answers to all questions, is what has driven the human race forward to the huge understanding of the world which, as a race, we now have. Each of us individually is probably no more advanced than our ancestors thousands of years ago. What is different now is that we can learn in minutes what geniuses of the past dedicated years to discovering and understanding. It is this desire first to discover, and then the ability to share and pass on this information, which has enabled the advance of human society. As far as we know, there is no other animal species which has this concept of history, a collective memory of past events from which can be drawn so many stories and recollections. There are many examples, from past and present, of how curiosity is linked to discovery and success. The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci provide an extraordinary insight into the mind of someone who has managed to stay intensely curious about the world. One page details a to do list, which contained tasks from drawing Milan and calculating the measurement of the Corte Vecchio, to learning how to repair a lock, canal and mill from a master of hydraulics. The sheer range and variety of Leonardo’s interests is astounding. A similar example from modern times is Steve Jobs, who started out as merely a technician, but showed a voracious interest in all subjects – for example the history of technology, Bauhaus design and eastern philosophy, amongst countless others. One of his tutors recalled his “very inquiring mind” and his refusal to “accept automatically received truths”, instead wanting to find out and examine things for himself. This desire to learn undoubtedly led to his success, with all the knowledge and inspiration that he accumulated through years of curiosity being incorporated into the creation of Apple. It is impossible to know what information we may need in the future – curious people are therefore willing to take risks, or get distracted by something, on the off chance that they may discover or learn something today that will turn out to be valuable tomorrow. Albert Einstein, when asked to account for his own success, merely said: “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” Curiosity then, seems to be the foundation for innovation. When we consider the sheer amount of discoveries and the lifetimes dedicated to research throughout human history, it is clear to see that curiosity has always been an inherent part of human nature and has undoubtedly been crucial in the history and development of our species. In the 21st century, the value of curiosity has come to be recognised even more. Modern economies and businesses now want to employ those people with a desire to learn
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and to question; those, who like Steve Jobs and Leonardo, think beyond convention. Computers can be intelligent, and can accumulate extraordinary amounts of knowledge, but as of yet no computer can be said to have displayed curiosity. With the rise of AI, many jobs will be under threat, but those roles which are still needed, now more than ever, are those of the innovators and inventors, those who can see through to the solutions for our modern world’s growing list of problems. It is not necessarily about how much you know, but about how much you want to know. But there is another, more individual benefit attributed to curiosity - it creates happiness. According to the writer Geoff Dyer, the state of depression can often be caused by the “complete absence of any interest in anything”. The therapist Adam Philips also said that his main purpose was to “free people to not have to bother to be interested in themselves” and to recognise that “the only interesting things are outside oneself”. There is clearly something about engaging our minds and striving to understand new things which is a natural and instinctive part of our being, and which causes disruption when we do not fulfil this need. Learning reminds us that we are merely part of a great project, one which has been in progress for millennia. But despite the crucial value of curiosity, it is alarming how poor we are at managing to cultivate it. The priority of the education system seems in many cases to be to prepare students for the world of work, not to inspire them and instil a hunger to learn. Studying to be able to carry out a specific job is not the same as learning to be curious. Similarly, in the workplace, efficiency is often valued so highly that employees are given no freedom to explore and experiment with different ideas or ways of working – a great mistake, since this is surely how discoveries and developments are most likely to be made. However, the threats facing curiosity today are even more widespread. The internet is probably the most powerful tool there is to fuel intellectual curiosity - through the internet, we have in our pockets the answer to almost every question we could possibly wish to ask. Yet, paradoxically, this creates a deeper issue. As answers become easier to uncover, with there being no longer any need to rifle through the pages of a book, our ability to inquire deeply decreases and our capacity for slow and effortful focus is reduced. Diversive curiosity is the name given to the type of curiosity which is stimulated by text alerts, emails, or a quick easy answer; it is the attraction to novelty. This type of curiosity seems to be gradually eroding our ability to stimulate epistemic curiosity - the deeper, more effortful process of inquiry. If used as a tool to gather information and understand deeply, the internet can undoubtedly be a valuable tool; it is only when used as a substitute for real inquiry and a way of avoiding real intellectual effort that it can present a danger. By providing instant answers, what the internet does is turn ‘mysteries’ - questions which are more challenging and cannot be answered definitively - into ‘puzzles’, which have a fixed answer. Our desire to know more is often stimulated by a gap in our knowledge - some mystery which requires a missing piece of information to be solved. It is this technique of creating ‘knowledge gaps’ which can keep us hooked when watching films or reading books. The internet, however, closes these gaps by providing easy answers, thereby threatening to reduce curiosity and long focus on a particular task. It has also been shown that when something proves more difficult for us to learn, it follows that the information is learnt better,
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and we are more likely to remember it. Easier learning through internet answers has to some extent made information more accessible, but it is also now threatening to open up a ‘curiosity divide’, between those who use it as a tool for epistemic curiosity, and those who use it as a substitute. This could further compound existing social and economic divides already present in our society. The increasing tendency of social media and the internet to record our interests and present to us further suggestions based on this is again contributing to a decline in curiosity. Being curious is all about wanting to learn about things which you currently have no idea about and are not yet interested in - instead of promoting this, the internet, by showing you content which it thinks you will most like, only serves to shrink the scope of curiosity. In this way we can unconsciously be streamlined into seeing only the views and opinions similar to our own, which I think, as well as reducing the likelihood of completely new discoveries and interests, will contribute to increased narrowmindedness and intolerance in our society. Curiosity has been the driving force of human development throughout history, and today its importance could be argued to be greater than ever before. As well as bringing about innovation, curiosity can be shown to provide happiness not only to the individual and to society as a whole, with greater interest and understanding cultivated towards all. I think it is vitally important today that we recognise the importance of curiosity, and develop an inquiring and broad mindset, not only to create greater tolerance around the world, but also to create new ways of thinking. If this happens, there is hope that we may yet develop new solutions which are so urgently needed to solve the problems we face today - namely the seemingly imminent destruction of our planet. This article was based on reading the book ‘Curious’ by Ian Leslie.
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Gigi Chambers – “Slavery Is Illegal Everywhere”. The Real Truth About This Statement. A common misconception held by people is that “slavery is illegal everywhere”. However, new research has estimated that 45.8 million people worldwide are suffering from slavery and in 94 countries a person will not be prosecuted for enslaving another. So this raises some major questions - why are people so oblivious to slavery, and what can be done? A fundamental influence over the lack of awareness is due to an unknown definition of what slavery actually is. Usually people will relate images of men in chains to slavery, but these practices were stopped by the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. In reality, modern slavery involves “possessing or controlling another person for your own benefit or to make a profit” making it go undetected and hidden from the authorities. From this outdated perception over what modern slavery looks like, it can cause both victims and outsiders to become blindsided over the harsh truth. They have no experience or education about the manipulation, and so the only source for this knowledge is based on previous slavery and stereotypes. Data and records which are related to the people involved with slavery also create an oblivion to the issue because of the difficulties in measuring it. In criminology, there is a term “dark figure” which is the difference between the actual number of crimes and the reported number. As victims of slavery are frequently either traumatised, fearful or in shame of the social stigma, many cases go unreported to the authorities. This is not the only way in which slavery defies crime measurements though. The duration of which slavery is imposed on victims can range between days to years, which creates complications for authorities as this cannot be measured by national crime surveys. Whilst this is taken into account when producing data, there will rarely be an accurate figure of the true number of slaves in the world. The unique case of slavery causes extreme injustices to individuals and communities. The victims can be forced into manual labour whilst receiving less than minimum wage and working in extremely poor conditions. According to research, there are over 100 countries which do not impose penal sanctions on forced labour, a growing phenomenon worldwide, thought to affect around 25 million people. These shocking figures highlight the need for change to address the injustices which millions of people are challenged and affected by. Currently, the law does not address slavery enough and so the most significant move to make would be developing new and effective legislations to eradicate human exploitation. There are other approaches for drawing attention and change to the severity of slavery, such as, the North Wales Anti-Slavery Project, which runs conferences and courses to raise awareness. This has already proved to be a success in the Operation BASE, a movement that led to 111 migrant workers being rescued. A method the UK has adopted to tackle slavery is the use of MSE, which will help to determine the number of slavery cases. In doing so, authorities gain a greater understanding of the scale they are working with, and awareness of the topic is raised. These steps being made are a working progress towards a future that should ensure the statement “slavery is illegal everywhere” becomes a reality.
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Nadia Johnson – Fear Is No Excuse to be Racist. “I got back from Toronto, where they had a severe outbreak of SARS - you know, Severe Asian Racism Syndrome.” - Margaret Cho. Everyone’s heard of it. Everyone’s talking about it. To be perfectly honest, I’m tired of hearing and talking about it. But it’s hard not to. For a generation dependent on the rush of constant stimulation, COVID-19 gives us something to fret about. I won’t be surprised if there are other reviews on this very topic. But I’m not here to talk about the biology of the disease: I’m here to talk about the rising xenophobia that it has produced. Late January, just over two months ago. In the York school district north of Toronto, over 9,000 parents signed a petition demanding the prevention of students who had travelled to China in the last 17 days from attending school. One signer wrote: “This has to stop. Stop eating wild animals and then infecting everyone around you.” Around the same time, a Vietnamese-American, Trang Dong, posted a TikTok of herself and a friend having pho, holding their spoons with chopsticks. It was soon bombarded with comments such as the following: “It’s corona time” and “Where is the bat in your soups???” One month later, the 24th of February. Jonathan Mok, a Singaporean UCL student, was walking down Oxford street when he heard a group of four males shout at him: “I don’t want your coronavirus in my country”. To show that he wasn’t afraid - in Mok’s words, so they wouldn’t think that “Asians are easily bullied” - he turned to look at them. The group of four then attacked him, punching and kicking him until his blood was splattered across the pavement. In a BBC article published on March 6th, Mok revealed that he may need reconstructive surgery for a broken bone near his right eye. He had previously published a Facebook post including pictures of his injuries, in which he wrote: “To the group of guys who saw fit to attack me because of my skin colour: here’s something for you; I stood up to you because I wasn’t afraid[.]” As someone familiar with the people of Singapore, having grown up there, his small act of courage makes me proud. But the sad truth is that events such as this one aren’t rare in light of the COVID-19 spread. Meera Solanki was knocked unconscious for defending her friend Mandy Huang, the latter of which had been shouted at by a man to “take your f****** coronavirus back home”. Here’s a final example. Frank Ye, a 23 year old Chinese-Canadian, remembers the xenophobia he suffered during the 2003 SARS outbreak. Recalling his experiences as a six-year-old, Frank said: “The memories I have of that time was really on an individual level about what I faced being a Chinese child at school, and that was children telling me to go away. “You can’t play with us because all Chinese people have SARS.” The Chinese-Canadian community feared the rise of xenophobia from the first few cases of COVID-19, and they were right to. This leads me to wonder: is it ingrained in our nature as human beings to not only be selfish, but to be cowards, too? To succumb to fear, with or without the facts? From the articles I’ve read over the last two months, highlighting explicitly racist incidents, I’d argue yes. Yes, it is.
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COVID-19 is direct proof of this: of the inclination of human beings to choose fear over rationality. But personally? I hate calling it a ‘phobia’. If you’re discriminating against someone for having a certain skin colour, I don’t think you’re afraid. I think you’re using fear as a coverup for the fact that you are a disgusting person. The point of this review is to make it translucently and unequivocally clear that the new COVID-19 outbreak is not an excuse to be racist. If you’re making jokes directed to the Asians in your class - whether they be Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese etc. - concerning the spreading virus, that’s racist. If you’re laughing it off as a “joke” when someone gets offended, that’s still racist. If you personally think it’s funny because it doesn’t affect you, guess what? Still racist. What I’ve observed over the last sixteen years of my life is that, for some reason, people like to think of anti-Asian racism as a joke. I admit I don’t even know how bad it can get, as I am only half-Asian, but anti-Asian racism does exist, and it’s only getting worse. In the words of Jonathan Mok: “Racists constantly find excuses to expound their hatred - and in this current backdrop of the coronavirus, they’ve found yet another excuse.” This is, unfortunately, all too true. The ever-increasing fear of getting sick is bringing out the worst in people; it is becoming easier to use the virus as justification for casual racism. Things like avoiding people who look Chinese. Inching away from them on the bus. Refusing to eat at Chinese restaurants. Avoiding Chinatown. This is real. This is happening right now. It needs to stop. It needs to stop, and it starts with acknowledging the fact that treating someone differently because of a nonsensical prejudice is fundamentally wrong. (I’m not saying don’t be careful about getting sick. You should be careful. All I’m saying is it’s ridiculous to act like everyone who looks Chinese automatically has the virus, because that is both illogical and racist, plain and simple.) A similar discriminatory incident happened a few days ago in the UK. On the 5th of March, a Vietnamese curator was dropped by a London art fair exhibitor who claimed that her participation “would be seen as carrying the virus.” Again, the ability of people to jump to conclusions using absolutely no common sense never ceases to amaze me. Not to mention that not all Asians are the same ethnicity! In the words of Sarah Kim: “Not all Asians are Chinese, and not all Chinese carry the coronavirus.” Here is a final quotation that sums up the central claim of this review, said by sociology professor Miri Song: “As soon as you’re dealing with a globalized world, where people are travelling, and are so numerous and impossible to track, it’s clearly wrong to be targeting people simply on the basis of their appearance.” Everyone’s going everywhere; there are Chinese individuals all around the world who haven’t actually been to China in the last year, and there are a vast number of non-Chinese individuals who have. It’s harder to justify antiAsian racism once the facts are set straight. I’m well aware that for most people reading this, anti-Asian racism is not something you’ve ever had to deal with. I’m aware of that. I’m not calling you out for not being born an Asian; I’m asking you to try to understand. I’m asking for you to treat each individual you meet as an individual in their own right. Treat each person you come across as a person, as a human
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being just like yourself - regardless of where they come from … or where they look like they come from. How would you feel if the people around you were afraid of coming near you, because of what you looked like? Keep your mind open. Don’t succumb to fear. Don’t succumb to hatred.
Photo By Allie Smith on Unsplash
All Images in the INSPIRE Magazine (14th issue) are Copyright-free and have been obtained from the website below on 28 / 03 / 2020. Credit has been given to the authors. Website: https://unsplash.com/images/stock/non-copyrighted
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