150th Birthday of H.G.Wells - Part III

    For the third time I dedicate a third part for the same author, the others authors who deserved three parts were: Charles Dickens and Dante Alighieri. The first summary was published in 2003 at https://www.academia.edu/400254/_Human_Rights_and_Public_Accountability_in_H._G._Wells_Functional_World_State_. The second was published at http://thewire.in/67634/hg-wells-social-predictions/

           As has long been acknowledge, H.G.Wells was one of the twentieth century insistent advocates of a world state. From the publication of Anticipations in 1901 to his death in 1946, Wells evolved a political vision which rejected nationalism and advanced global political institutions. In this chapter an aspect of Wells's thinking and which has been relatively neglected by scholars : the role of human rights protection and government accountability. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Wells saw an opportunity to embark in a practical way upon his project for world unity. This possibility he called the 'Rights of Man' campaign and it was first raised during the discussion of allied war aims in the first few months of the conflict. By 1939 Wells came to realise in The New World Order, when he wrote: "The more highly things are collectivised the more necessary is a legal system embodying the Rights of Man". In promoting human rights, Wells felt a part of that democratic tradition going back to the Magna Carta and Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. There would be no possibility of a static society being created because, through the charter of human rights, the actions of the world state would be constantly challenged, not only defending human rights but being used as a legal mechanism to reinterpret those rights continually in a changing world. In order to achieve the acceptance of the "Rights of Man" worldwide, the humanistic tradition of Britain, France and the U.S.A. would have to be extended to the whole world. With the outbreak of the Second World War, and particularly after 1941 when nazi-fascism and communism ranged their forces against each other, Wells realised the need for in-built guarantees which would protect the rights of individuals and minority groups throughout the world and which would allow a popular voice to directly influence the bureaucracy. Thus, in relation to his world state project, the 'Rights of Man' campaign was aimed at establishing a check to power strong enough to prevent political repression and authoritarian excesses. Wells hoped the 'Rights of Man' would be a bulwark against the totalitarian usurpation, an usurpation he saw increasing around the world: "Throughout the whole world we see variations of this subordination of the individual to the power. Phase by phase these ill-adapted governments are becoming uncontrolled absolutisms, they are killing that free play of the individual mind which is the preservative of human efficiency and happiness. The populations under their sway, after a phase of servile discipline, are plainly doomed to relapse into disorder. Everywhere war and economic exploitation break out, so that those very same increments of power and opportunity which have brought mankind within sight of an age of limitless plenty, seem likely to be lost again, or may be lost forever, in an ultimate social collapse." (Wells[1940]79-80) Wells's opposition to tyranny at this time shows a lasting interest in the protection of fundamental human rights which he demonstrated during the First War with his plea for a human rights charter for colonial peoples, and in the interwar period when, for example, he condemned censorship by the BBC, and was seen 'mingling with hunger marches during the great depression, to deter the police from baton-charging them.' Wells's 'Right of Man' aimed not only at preventing the abuses of power that had been so rifle throughout the interwar period but also at setting in place a guarantee that the world-state dogma could not be turned into a monolithic tyranny through bureaucratic unaccountability. Wells first advocate the 'Rights of Man' in a letter printed in the newspaper The Times in October 1939, he also published a version of the rights in almost all of his books between 1940 and 1944 with slight amendments from draft to draft. Education was also central to Wells's cosmopolitan philosophy. By insisting on the right to knowledge and information for all throughout life, the declaration was enshrining the principle of Wells's Permanent World Encyclopaedia, a mechanism by which all the world's citizens would have access to all knowledge through the micro-photographing of texts and objects, and universal access to microfiche machines. All registration and records about citizens shall be open to their private inspection. "All dossiers shall be accessible to the man concerned and subject to verification and correction".  This clause, although greatly truncated, remains unaltered in principle and becomes merged with clause eight in the final draft. These rights were recognised as fundamental by Wells. He enshrined them in his Five Principles of Liberty as the principle of privacy. In the final charter these principles are condensed thus: 'Secret evidence is not permissible, statements in administrative records are not evidence unless they are proved. A man has the right to protection from any falsehood that may distress or injure him.'

             Many of H.G.Wells's futuristic prophecies have come true, but the one on which his heart was most set, the establishment of a world state, remains unfulfilled. No writer is more renowned for his ability to foresee the future than H.G.Wells. His writing can be seen to have predicted the aeroplane, the tank, space travel, the atomic bomb, satellite TV and the worldwide web. Yet for all these successes, the futuristic prophecy on the establishment of a state world, remains unfulfilled. He envisioned a government which would ensure that every individual would be as well educated as possible, have work which satisfy them, and the freedom to enjoy their private life. His interests in society and technology were closely entwined. Wells's political vision was closely associated with the fantastic transport technologies that Wells is famous for. The Outline of History (1919) claimed to be the first transnational history of the human race, telling the story of human beings from our early evolution. In the hope that his readers would, on learning of the common origin, outgrow the idea of the nation state. While controversially received, The Outline of History was Wells's best-selling book in his own lifetime. Today, given the role that national identity continues to play in human being's efforts for greater self-determination, the prospect of Wells's world state seems even less likely. One surprising legacy remains, however, from Wells's forecasts of a better future for humankind. Letters from Wells to The Times led to the Sankey Committee for Human Rights and Wells's The Right of Man, argued that the only meaningful outcome for the war would be the declaration of human rights and an international court to enforce them. The influence of Wells's work is clear in the U.N. 1948 Declaration of Universal Human Rights. These rights now have legal force, so are perhaps Wells's most significant prophetic aim. While Wells is remembered more now for his science fiction than his ideas of world government, the political Wells still might something to teach us. While political leaders of various stripes use nationhood as a way of putting barriers between human beings, Wells's message of our shared origin, universal human rights and international co-operation might suggest to us a direction for a more hopeful future.

150th Birthday of H.G.Wells - Part II

               The tribute to H.G.Wells goes on. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at https://www.britishcouncil.in/father-science-fiction-h-g-wells. The second was published at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/20/ali-smith-celebrates-hg-wells-role-creation-un-declaration-of-human-rights. The third was published athttp://www.gradesaver.com/author/hg-wells. The fourth was published at http://www.hyperink.com/Major-Themes-And-Symbols-In-The-Time-Machine-b930a15

              H.G.Wells was a British author four-time Nobel Prize nominee and a journalist. And his work as a science fiction writer created a legacy, which is still felt to this day. Wells is frequently described as the 'father of science fiction'. John Clute, sci-fic historian, describes Wells as the most important writer in the genre's history. He has influenced countless writers, including Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke. Wells was an extraordinary prolific author. He worked to establish fictional techniques that authors still use today. 'The Time Machine', for example, popularised time travel as a narrative tool. Wells also wrote popular non-fiction. 'The Outline of History' was a bestseller, and prompted a renewed interest in world history in popular culture. Wells is remembered today for his substantial output of science fiction writing, but also as a champion for human rights and a better society.

           H.G.Wells wrote several classic, visionary novels about the very worst consequences a past and a present can have on a future, and a great deal of what he wrote, though it takes fantasy form, has come to pass, with stunning corollaries with his own time, the time after him, with our own time, and presumably with the as-yet-unwritten time ahead of us too. So, what did the visionary choose to do, at the latter end of his life, when he was in his 70s, the man who had seen and foreseen so much, in his fiction and his political writing, including tanks, global warming, aerial flight and bombardment, visible mass surveillance, invisible mass surveillance, modern germ warfare, radio, TV, video, the internet, the atom bomb, laser beams? What did the far-seeing man do, the man who had been invited to meet and advise both Roosevelt and Stalin, who had worked on ways, in his latter years, to "release a new form of government in the world", a power "without tyranny", one "to hold men's minds together in something like a common interpretation of reality"? He wrote and published in 1940, a book called The Rights of Man. He helped form and sustain PEN, where an internationality of writers would come together and think the world, and fight for and protect each other's freedom to write and to read, He helped form and sustain the National Council for Civil Liberties, to monitor and fight for the freedoms that human beings need, and that weak or bullying governments who want all the power will always want to mess with. Above all, Wells believed that what we needed to do was make and ratify as law an international declaration of human rights. Wells's drafts were closely followed in the eventual drawing up of the wording for the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, shortly after his death in 1946. Since 1896, when he was a young man writing The Island of Doctor Moreau, a book about the beast in the human, he had been interested in how at the mercy of the random or self-serving lawmakers we are. In the first year of the second world war, remembering how little the League of Nations had been able to "banish armed conflict from the world", he published The Rights of Man as a call for "a profound reconstruction of the methods of human living". His question, in 1940 was: what are we fighting for? His answer: "a declaration of rights for the common welfare...a code of fundamental human rights which shall be made easily accessible to everyone". His initial draft included most of the things you can still find in our current Human Rights Act, and is especially strong on rights to privacy and dismissal of secrecy. "All registration and records about citizens shall be open to their personal and private inspection. There shall be no secret dossiers in any administrative department." He knew that, as Jose Saramago puts it in his novel Seeing : "rights are not abstractions, they continue to exist even when they are not respected". "There is no source of law," Wells says, "but the people, and since life flows on constantly to new citizens, no generations of the people can in whole or in part surrender the legislative power inherent in mankind."

             Wells was born into poverty in Britain in 1866, and he was not shy about glorifying his lower-class beginnings. He later won a scholarship to what is now part of the Imperial College of Science and Technology. Before the advent of his later works, Wells cultivated his literary potential as both student and educator. Wells's first novel, The Time Machine (1895) was written to relive his poverty. It serves as a harsh critique of capitalism. In the novel, a man travels to the future and finds a nightmarish dystopia in which two distinct species have evolved from the ruling and working classes. The novel struck a chord with Victorian England, a heavily industrialized country of haves and have-nots, and it became a success. Wells soon turned his attention to inflamatory and often contradictory politics. He preached socialism whenever he could, though he later rejected it. He was a stainch supporter of World War I, calling it "the war that will end war", but after World War II found the war-ravaged world he departed in 1946 more horrifying than any of his fictions. Wells became as major player in the political landscape as a writer could become.

              The major themes in the classic The Time Machine are: Class Distinction and Opression - Wells was a child of parents who had worked in wealthy households as servants, so from a young age he was aware of the difference between the classes. It is this observation, as well as his experiences of what class distinction could mean, that led him to explore the theme in this book.The Nature of Man - the time traveler, as the protagonist and hero, represents the inquisitive and constantly questioning mind of man. He feels the need to explore the world and believes that in time, man will have evolved beyond the petty problems experienced in contemporary times. The time traveler is certain that we will experience the wonder of a more evolved future man. At first, he believes his vision has been fulfilled when he encounters the Eloi people,  but they are nor what they seem. they have not evolved, man will instead devolve. they have oppressed the Morlock people to the point of turning them into nocturnal creatures. Here Wells is suggesting that man's nature is to use power over others even if it will eventually damage both, his own future and that of the human race. The Morlock, on the other hand, represent the result of what happens when man is oppressed for too long, he becomes a sickly person. The major symbol is the time machine. The machine is a symbol that Wells uses to explore's man own influence over his destiny and to suggest that man has some control over whether or not we will end up in the future. He creates the machine, expecting to find incredible technological and cultural advances when he arrives in the future. But instead, he finds that the world is quite different than he expected. He hope that with the knowledge of the future he has seen and now shared, man might be able to make changes in the present in order to avoid the horrible future that will otherwise be man's destiny.

           

150th Birthday of H.G.Wells

             A little more than two months ago, the English writer H.G.Wells would complete 150 years old, so this post is a tribute to him. The wide range of his works always concern the improvement of the world, the fight against injustice and for human rights, and a more productive, full and fair existence. This post is a summary of five articles. The first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells, The second was published with the incomplete title above at  https://kcls.org/blogs/post/happy-150th-birthday-to-h-g-wells/. The third was published at http://www.newstatesman.com/node/193726. The fourth was published at http://www.wnrf.org/cms/hgwells.shtml. The fifth was published at http://www.bookslut.com/small_but_perfectly_formed/2005_04_005019.php

               Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) Known as H. G. Wells was a prolific English writer in many genres, including novel, history, politics, social commentary and textbooks. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels  and is called a "father of science fiction, along with Julio Verne. His most notable science fiction works include: The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). His later works became increasingly political and didactic. Novels like Kipps and The History of Mr. Polly, which describe lower-middle class life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole. A diabetic, in 1934, Wells co-funded The Diabetic Association. His father was a shopkeeper and professional cricket player, H.G.Wells was the fourth and last child. When his mother returned to work as a ladys's maid at Uppark, a country house in Sussex. For H. Wells, Uppark had a magnificent library in which he immersed himself, reading many classics works. This would be the beginning of H. Wells's venture into literature. In 1880, Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London, studying Biology. He later helped to set up the Royal College of Science Association, of which he became the first president in 1909. Wells studied in his new school until 1887, thanks to his schoolarship, yet in his Experiment in Autobiography, he speaks of constantly being hungry. He was also among the founders of The Science School Journal, a magazine that allow him to express his views on literature and society, as well as trying his hand at fiction; a precursor to his novel The Time Machine was published in the journal under the title "The Chronic Argonauts". In 1890 Wells earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of London, in the same year he finds a post as a teacher at Henley School. His first published work was a text-book of Biology in 1893.  Some of his early novels, called "scientific romances", invented several themes now classic in science fiction. He also wrote realistic novels, including Kipps and Tono-Bungay. Wells also wrote dozens of short stories. According to James Gunn, one of Wells' major contributions to the science fiction was his approach, in his opinion the author should always strive to make the story as credible as possible. Wells also wrote nonfiction. Wells first nonfiction bestseller was Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scienctific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901) When serialised in a magazine it was subtitled, "An Experiment in Prophecy", and is considered his most explicity futuristic work. Anticipating what the world would be like in the year 2000, the book is interesting both for its hits (trains and cars resulting in the dispersion of population from cities to suburbs; moral restrictions declining as men and women seek greater sexual freedom; the defeat of German militarism, and the existence of European Union) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft before 1950 and successful submarines) His bestselling two-volume work, The Outline of History (1920) began a new era of popularised world history. Wells reprised his outline work in 1922 with a much shorter popular work, A Short History of the World. Wells also wrote a dystopian novel, When the sleeper Wakes (1899).

                   In celebration of H.G.Wells' 150th birthday, we present the list of movies based on his creation available. He was the author of many extraordinary stories that , even today, inspire people. "Visionary' is not a grand enough word to describe him. Many of his books are shelved in our Teen Classic Collection, because a lot of American educators believe they are must-reads for our youth.I know this, because students come to our libraries looking for these titles at the beginning of every school year. These are great pieces of history in the science-fiction genre, written before the genre even existed. In the end of his life, Wells was a strong social activist.

                     At the beginning of the second world war, H.G.Wells wrote a letter to the newspaper Times attached to a draft "Declaration of Rights". The celebrated author called for a set of written principles to clarify what people were fighting for. His point was that fundamental rights were not just legal entitlements, but a set of values, perhaps the only values powerful enough to inspire and bind a nation. Wells called for a great debate on the issue, and the newspaper Daily Herald obliged. It made a page a day available for a month for a discussion of the articles in the draft declaration. The final version of the Declaration was published in February 1940. The declaration was translated into 30 languages. After some further lobbying, this goal was reflected in the founding charter of the U.N. Wells traced a line between the Magna carta, the 1689 and his own vision of fundamental rights. One hundred and fifty years before Wells' efforts, Tom Paine's booklet, The Rights of Man, had endorsed France's newly Declaration of Rights. First published in 1791, it was a bestseller. Virtually the entire democratic world incorporated human rights treaties into their laws.

                 The importance of H.G.Wells to the development of future studies lied not only in what he wrote, but in his influence on later thinkers. Every field of study, like every nation, has its founding fathers and mothers. Figures of history, they help give the incoming generations a sense of identity. they supply standards by which to measure the performance of new practitioners. Examples spring easily to mind. In modern physics, Galileo and Newton; in economics, Adam Smith and the French physiocrats; in history as an academic discipline, Leopold von Ranke. But who 'founded' the study of the future? The answer is unsurprising, yet not as obvious as perhaps it should be. The founder of future studies was the English novelist and journalist 'par excellence' H.G.Wells. The keystone of Wells' futurism is a volume now more than eighty years old. Usually cited as Anticipations, it was the first comprehensive and widely read survey of future developments. Wells' book represented a peak in human self-awareness. Anticipations ranged widely in its subject matter, from the future of transport to the future of world order. 

             A little over a century ago, H.G.Wells began the sort of literary career that just does not exist today. Bouncing over modern genre boundaries, he produced a vast number of books: sci-fic, fantasy, mystery, feminist fiction, political novels, social comedies, etc. Though his later books tended to be more didactic, the majority of his works still deserve to be ready today. It is his role as the founding father of sci-fic for which he is perhaps best known. Wells was the first to properly explore the ideas and ramifications of most of sci-fic's preocupations: alien invasion, journeys to other planets, time travel, biological manipulation, nuclear war, bio-weapons, totalitarian states, and more. If you like Wells, the writer with whom he is most often compared, Jules Verne, is in fact a very different sort, more interested in fantastic travelogues than in mind-boogling ideas. It is also worth reading the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World, in particular. Wells' social or problem novels could be fairly compared to those of George Gissing, or  Jerome K. But in many ways, Wells has no peers. He did too much too well for any easy comparisons to be made.

Enhancing Youth Employability

                This post is a summary of the book published in 2013 with the incomplete title above at http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---edifp_skills/documents/publication/wcms_213452.pdf

                Skills development is essential for increasing and sustainability of interprises, and improving the employability of workers. In order to secure job as well as navigate in the labour market, young women and men need the technical skills to perform specific tasks as well as core work skills. Employability results from several factors - a foundation of core skills, access to education, availability of training opportunities, ability and support to take advantage of continuous learning. Skills have become increasingly important in the globalized world. The employment situation of young people today is characterized specifically by high unemployment and lower quality jobs and difficult transitions into decent work, which combined, contribute to the detachment of the current generation from the labour market altogether. At the same time as the world struggles with unemployment, paradoxically, it is experiencing a skills shortage. Developing core work skills help individuals to understand the labout market, make more informed choices about their options in education, training, and self-employment. They also help them become better citizens and contribute to their communities. Many young people face difficult in finding a job because of the mismatch between their education/training and labour market requirements. Innovation and market developments have turned the world into a fast-changing environment.  The greatest challenge lies in the technology and knowledge intensive sectors that also have the highest potential for economic growth and employment. Core skills for employability underpin one does - at school, at work and at home. We communicate all the time and use ICT more and more each day. Good quality primary and secondary education, complemented by relevant vocational training and skills development opportunities, prepare future generations for their productive lives, endowing them with the core skills that enable them to continue learning. Secondary school is an important channel through which young people acquire skills that improve opportunities for good jobs. High quality secondary education that caters for the widest possible range of abilities and interests is vital to set young people in the path to the world of work as well as to give countries the educated workforce they need to compete in today's tech driven world. Lower secondary school extends and consolidates the basic skills learned in primary school; upper secondary school deepens general education and adds technical and vocational skills. Given the evidence on the success of innovative quality secondary education and training in transmitting core skills for employability, more needs to be done to get young people into secondary education and help them complete it. For many adolescents the education system is not sufficient flexible to adapt to their needs, and the quality of their basic education is insufficient to allow an easy transition; for others, their families can not afford it. This youth skills deficit is being felt all over the world. In developing countries, unskilled young people are being trapped in poverty for life. In order to address this deficit, disadvantaged youth need good quality training in relevant skills at lower secondary school and the upper secondary school curricula should provide a balance between vocational and technical skills. To improve the opportunities for youth to gain access to good jobs, secondary school has to be more inclusive, offering the widest possible range of opportunities in order to meet young people's different abilities, interests and background. The power of ICT to reach and teach the marginalized has the potential to break down some of existing barriers. Multiple and varied strategies are needed to address complex issues affecting learning for all in the developing world. ICT allows learners to learn inside and outside the classroom, in a greater variety of ways and to be creative. This is a different learning culture, featuring: independent learning, learners producing knowledge themselves, more content available in internet, connection to experts and access to resouces globally, access to learning material, more motivation. The key messages are: 1) The best way to acquire core skills for employability is on the job. But many employers are not prepared to take on new recruits without demonstrated ability in these skills. So individuals and education and training systems must do more. 2) Secondary school is an important channel through which young people acquire skills that improve opportunities for good jobs. High quality secondary school and vocational training that caters for the widest possible range of abilities, interests and backgrounds is vital to set young people on the path to the work. 3) Teaching skills requires innovative ways of integrating these skills into core academic content. 4) Given that innovative secondary education and good quality training can trasmit core skills for employability, more needs to be done to improve access, participation and completion at this level. 5) Improving access to, participation in and completion of secondary education is enhanced by a system that: Improves the quality of primary education, makes more relevant to the world of work, offers technical and vocational training, designs an effective flexible curriculum at upper secondary school, uses hands-on learning techniques and modular course design, combines civic and digital education to empower youth to understand the challenges that face their communites and work together to solve them. offers an online programme for specialized technologies, 

Democratic Reform and Injustice in Latin America: The Citizenship Gap Between Law and Society

               This post is a summary of a report with the title above, published  in 2008  at http://blogs.shu.edu/diplomacy/files/archives/07%20Brysk.pdf

                Latin America is a paradoxical world leader. In the twentieth century, Latin America leads in unjust societies that can not fulfill the promise of universal human rights despite elections and theoretical rule of law. The "citizenship gap" between developed formal entitlements and distorted life conditions, including massive personal insecurity. L.A.'s experience demonstrates how the rule of law can be systematically undermined by displacement of power, as well as incomplete democratization of state institutions. The persistence of injustice demonstrates the interdependence of democratic processes in the public sphere. This essay will argue that injustice in L.A. is a problem of democratic deficits in function - despite the democratic structure of elections and institutions. The citizenship gap is not an inherent insufficiency of democracy for addressing social problems, as some populists claim, but rather an insufficient application of democracy to functional arenas. The democratic deficit in L.A. can be understood as a failure in the indivisibility, universality and accountability of human rights. Indivisibility indicates the relationship between civil and social rights, while universality demands the extension of these interconnected rights to all citizens regardless of class or status. Accountability is the duty of the state to provide rights, which correspond to citizens's entitlement to claim rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights lays the foundation for the interdependence of civil and political rights with social and economic rights, by including civil and political freedoms alongside fundamental requisites of human dignity. Poverty is interwined with lack of access to social rights such as health care and education. Education, in turn, empowers political participation and is highly correlated with access to justice. The remainder of this essay will discuss the dimensions of the contemporary human rights gap in L.A., and assess some measures taken to address it. The discussion will concentrate on the civil and political rights abuses and show how they are influenced by the lack of state accountability and the denial of social and economic rights. Every year, tens of thousands of Latins Americans are denial fundamental rights to life, liberty, and personal integrity by direct government action, indirect state sponsorship, or systematic negligence. The persistence of political murders and disappearances, torture, abusive detention and widespread social violence are symptoms of an epidemic inconsistent with democracy. Murder and disappearances are committed by paramilitaries and are often targeted at political activists, human rights advocates, and civil society leaders. Persisting human rights violations under democratic governments have been specifically addressed by the establishment of national human rights institutions, The national human rights institutions of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru participate in an international network of such bodies linked to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, which encourages capacity-building and directs attention to regional themes such as migration, indigenous people, and disability rights. Another way to gauge policy response is to examine the set of measures taken on a high-risk country or issue basis. Brazil is clearly a hot-spot for numerous types of human rights violations, from indentured servitude to abuse of power, thus in 1996, Brazil launched a National Human Rights Plan. With ongoing persecution of human rights advocates, Brazil then introduced a special Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in 2004, but it has lacked sufficient funding and personnel. What can be done to close the citizenship gap in Latin America and to allow democracy to foster freedom from fear? First of all, we must remind ourselves of the ways in which electoral democracy and rule of law do offer new resources for the defense of human rights. Transition to democracy implies the state's hegemony no longer intrinsically requires physical repression and armed conflict ceases. Even partial rule of law provides channels for institutional redorm and opportunities for social mobilization, hence, the distorted version of citizenship in L.A. has historically offered an avenue for the struggles of dispossessed populations. What institutional democracy without full-spectrum rights can not provide is accountability for the relevant forms of power, such as private and unelected coercive state agents. In an era of globalization, L.A. democracy looks like partially liberalized weak states struggling to cope with rising threats to social control.   The mandated democratic institutions of legislatures and judiciaries lack traction over actors outside the state. They also can not control unaccountable praetorians insulated by the Executive due to its dependency on their repressive services. Contemporary social conditions short-circuit the historic cycle of expansion of citizenship rights that accompained the rise of modern capitalist democracy chronicled by T.H.Marshall, and the extension of liberal human rights to new groups and expansion to new domains. The prospects for effective state-sponsored human rights reform along current lines are tenous at best. Like the coalition that transformed Latin America's dictatorship to democracies, it will take a renewed effort from international and civil society to secure the new human rights agenda of social rights, accountability, and the deepening of democracy. State-sponsored reforms will be most effective to the extent they incorporate citizens, other democracies, and regional networkd, and when they tackle the complex marginality of second-class citizenship. Injustice is a problem of power, and speaking law to power is the unfinished business of real democracy in Latin America.               

120th Birthday of Scott Fitzgerald

              A little more than one month ago, precisely on 24th of September, the American writer Scott Fitzgerald would complete 120 years old, so this post is a tribute to him. Like many realistic writers, his novels contributed to become the world less hypocritical. This post is a summary of three articles. The first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald. The second was published at http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ells/article/viewFile/44230/26674. The third was published athttp://www.bookrags.com/essay-2005/10/28/12454/461/#gsc.tab=0

               Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940) known as F. Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist and short story writer, whose works illustrate the called Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Writers of the 20th century. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby (his best known) and Tender is the Night. Fitzgerald also wrote numerous short stories, many of which treat themes of youth and promise, and age and despair. He spent his childhood in Buffalo, NY. His formative years in Buffalo revealed him to be a boy of unnusual intelligence with a keen early interest in literature. After graduating from the Newman High school in 1913, Fitzgerald decided to stay in New Jersey to continue his artistic development at Princeton University. This Side of Paradise, a semi-autobiographical account of Fitzgerald's undergraduate years at Princeton, was published in March of 1920 and became an instant success. It launched his career as a writer and provided a steady income. He married with Zelda Sayre, the daughter of a judge from Alabama and they had their daughter and only child Frances in October of 1921. Like most professional authors at the time, Fitzgerald supplemented his income by writing short stories for magazines, and sold stories and novels to Hollywood studios. Fitzgerald, an alcoholic since university, became notorious during the 1920s for his heavy drinking, undermining his health by the late 1930s. He died of a heart attack in December of 1940 in Hollywood. His work has inspired writers ever since he was first published. The publication of, The Great Gatsby, prompted T.S. Eliot to write, "It seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James..." Into the 21st century, millions of copies of The Great Gatsby, a constant best-seller, is required reading in many high school and university classes.

             Fitzgerald's style is completely his own and perhaps the most incomparable aspect of his prose. He frequently exploited and became famous for his material rather than because of his technical innovations. This paper tries to investigate the influence of three important literary movements: Realism, Modernism and Existentialism on Fitzgerald's creative works. The realistic elements are obvious in all Fitzgerald's works. He best represented the Roaring Twenties with his evocative works. Many authors after the First World War created a new literature that shattered conservative taboos in their expression of physical and psychological reality. This was the beginning of Modernism. Fitzgerald developed a modernist literature that was connected to American traditions but, what all the modernists shred was a belief in literature's significance in the contemporary world, and the need for it to be repeatedly vital. Like realists, the modernists and naturalists focused on changes on society and used symbolism to attack society's problems. What is significant about this author is the influence of European Existencialism on his works. The Great Gatsby focused on the applicability of Nietzsche's philosophies of modern civilization. Like the existencialists, Fitzgerald recognizes the inadequacy of American democracy in an increasingly commercial and consumer culture and rejects the capitalistic values, and norms prescribed and reinforced through the oppressive political structures of American culture. For Fitzgerald what are at stake are the individual, the inventive spirit, and the life of the nation and they echoes all the way through his works, a sentiment manifest in their portraits of incapable, lost, aimless, and emotionally unfulfilled characters. Fitzgerald was not a purely objective chronicler of the 1920s and 1930s but instead brought a strong moral perspective to his work. His central characters undergo processes of self-assessment, or they judge others, or they are judged by author himself, who constantly measured the behavior of characters against implicit standards of responsibility, honor and courage. In his novels, Fitzgerald revealed not only the fulfillment of the American dream but also the many ways it could be distorted. His most evocative protagonists, among them Jay Gatsby and Dick Diver, share that quality of the idea and willingness of the heart. Although they are frequently disappointed in their quests, it is not finally the dream that fails them but instead something else, some weakness or corruption in themselves or others. In 1940, Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to his daughter: "Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat... the redeeming things are not 'happiness and pleasure' but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle." More than any other author of his era, Fitzgerald was conscious about the influence of money on American life and character. As he wrote solemnly about money, ambition, and love, which were undividable in his work, he has been labeled a materialist. Fitzgerald's sense of being excluded from the freedom and opportunities provided by money had been further intensified by his inability to marry Zelda right away because of his failures in New York following his army discharge. Because Fotzgerald's response to wealth was complex, mixing resentment and strong attraction, his fictional treatment of his material is both profound and extensive. Beside, Fitzgerald with his great sense of pattern was trying to find a way through which he could impose order in the chaotic world he was living in. With the book, This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald became known as a daring writer primarily because of his themes rather than his technical innovations. His questing young men and courageous young women, who challenged conventional standards of behavior, seemed emblematic of the decade of the 1920s. He was not essentially a modernist, as were many of his contemporaries. He avoided the stream of consciousness, technique perfected by James Joyce and Virgina Woolf. He also rejected the style with short declarative sentences and simple diction of Ernest Hemingway. Fitzgerald was above all, a story teller who achieved a close relationship with the reader through the voice of his fiction, which was intimate, warm, and witty. Trilling defined this quality as 'his power of love:' "There is a tone and pitch to the sentences with suggest his warmth and tenderness, and what is rare nowadays and not likely to be admired, his gentleness without softness. He was gifted with satiric eye, yet we feel that his morality, he was more drawn to celebrate the good than to denounce the bad... we perceive that he loved the good not only with his mind but also with his quick senses and his youthful pride and desire." Commentators have given much attention to Symbolism in Fitzgerald's novels, particularly his expansion of color imagery into large symbolic patterns, his persistent drawing upon figures and episodes from American history, and above all, his pervasive concern with time and mutability, or inevitable change. Fitzgerald like other late 19th century realist writers, tried to show the diverse manners, classes and stratification of life in America and he created this picture by combining a broad variety of details derived from surveillance and documentation to approach the norm of his experience. Along with this technique, he compared the objective or absolute existence in America to that of the universal truths, or observed facts of life. as a result, the realistc elements are apparent in all his works. Fitzgerald directed the modernistic renaissance by using realistis and naturalistic techniques. He is considered as a romantic writer, but he combined these qualities with realism, meaning precision of observation and characterization. Moreover, what is noteworthy about this author is the influence of existentialism and the depth of the cultural moments he captures in his art.   

               While it is argued that Fitzgerald emulated Shakespeare in his novel The Great Gatsby through his incorporation of tragic character flaws, his incorporation of existentialist ideals is much more apparent. The character Jay Gatsby embodies three  main principles of existentialism: Gatsby is nonconformist individual combatting absurdity and inhumanity; he created a second life for himself in order to win Daisy's love; and he preserved his separateness as an emblem of his independence.

Dystopian Literature as Social Evolution

             This post is a summary of a literary analysis of dystopian literature with the incomplete title above and was published in 2015 at http://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1026&context=stu_honor

            In popular culture today, the dystopian literature is experiencing a surge in popularity that is infused with a fervent intensity. Since the publication of, The Hunger Games, dystopians novels have become exceptionally popular, spawning a release of blockbuster movies adaptations and new dystopians series. The popularity of these novels shows an interest in rebellion and revolution, ideas that build the core of dystopians fictions as a genre. The novels provide the possibility of social change in truly horrible societies, thus bringing ideas about social change into young consciousness. These pop culture texts have the potential to develop an examination of society through literary analysis. Literature can be used to ask questions about society, and the development of a better society, because of the way it reflects and questions cultural understandings of social justice, literature can interact more concretely with our ability to work for a better society. Rooted in the history of human rights literature and using the Hunger Games' protagonist Katniss Everden as a model of social change evolution. As defined by the Oxford Dictionary, social justice is, "the objective of creating a fair and equal society on which each individual matters, their rights are recognized and protected, and decisions are made in ways that are fair and honest."  The desire for social justice is the desire to live in a world without oppression and inequality, where individuals are able to participate and be valued in a society no matter what identities they hold. Elizabeth S. Goldberg and Alexandra S. Moore's article "Meditation on a Fractured Terrain: Human Rights  and Literature" established the idea a reading practice for human rights that, "can attend to their material and historical context without instrumentalizing the aesthetic in service to those contexts". A social justice reading of literature aims for a similar practice of reading texts with reference to their ability to establish questions of social change. Literary critics argue not only for the important work literature can do, but for the kind of thinking literature can inspire within readers. According to Greg Mullins' essay "Labors of Literature and Human Rights," readers experience sympathetic emotions of empathy and compassion that work on rationality to "build the human capacity to make sound judgments." Readers, from their experience with literature, will become fairer in their understanding of ethical action. James Dawes attributes these sympathetic emotions to shared inner feelings and desires, a concept he attributes strongly to the form of the novel. Characters in novels define the human as an individual, independent being that is defined by inner feelings that humans implicity share. This understanding leads to the conceptions of natural, equal, and universal human rights based on the inner similarity of our emotions. In the past twenty-five years, literary studies has shown an interesting development in its relation to human rights. Literary theorists argue for the potential for literature to relate to and help readers understand contemporary human rights issues. Literature in human rights circles can be used as a tool for developing a deeper understanding of human rights abuses and for healing those who have experienced the violent loss of their human rights. Literary critics are in a prime position to understand the complexity of abuses and teach others how to empathize with this broader human question. Making these types of arguments about the use of literature in differing contexts, literary critics are calling for a social change in the understanding of how literature can be used. Humans have been dreaming of worlds better than their own since early history, this is a universal human desire. Dystopian fiction has played into these desires. Dystopian works by authors like George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley and Margaret Atwood connect deeply to cultural and social problems and the warning about what would happen if we did not act to change the world around us. Issues of government surveillance, totalitarianism, and oppressive power structures are common. In their own way, characters in dystopian texts attempts to rebel against the system, whether from a personal rejection of the power structure, or in a way that directly stands up against the structure and creates a new society. In the end, whether or not the character is successful, the individuals questioning of power hope to develop, as the reader can see the potential for change. Dystopian worlds take the impulse towards utopianism and use that world to create a warning about the future. The dystopian world relies on the specific problems of the present to invoke a warning about the future that could develop. The world generally has the appearance of semblance and order, but it soon is revealed that the world contains serious power imbalances, governmental control, or lack of resources. The situation mirrors certain elements of modern society in such a way that the reader can recognize the problem and starts to critically engage with them, resulting in a desire toward change in their own world. Embedded in the sense of warning is an impulse toward hope in the future for our own society. The characters in dystopian texts typically have the ability to attempt to engage with a possible solution for their terrible society. Thus, even if the heroines are unsuccessful, the reader can envision themselves resisting the dystopian society and escaping from a future like the protagonists. Adolescent readers have been exposed to dystopian fiction for years in ways that encompassed both the power imbalances and the rebellion along with elements of adventure and romance. This allowed readers to become a part of those dystopian worlds and live out their own anxieties and lack of power by watching characters launch rebellions against worlds that strived to push them down. The popularity of the texts resonates with readers in a way that shows a desire for change, although the success and failure of the rebellion in these texts takes place in a separate realm. By examining the ways that social change occurs in these texts, the lead protagonists can model instances of activism, showing how an evolution toward social change can occur within a protagonist that can apply to the readers understanding of social change. A major element of adolescent is "adjusting to a worthy way of life" which requires an adolescent to examine values, beliefs, attitudes, and ideas into a coherent structure that will allow them to develop their own understanding of the world that reflect their own priorities while "accepting standards and values of his society". Literature can clearly serve as an experimental zone in this process of discovery. Literature has the potential to be responsible for developing an understanding of politics and society in a way that has readers exploring social change more in depth. Current dystopian novels provide a phetora of examples of characters that rebel against their oppression in a way that creates a social change. The protagonist of Hunger Games is an interesting subject of examination, because she has a dramatic evolution in her relationship to social change. The evolution of Katniss' relationship to social change models a way for adolescent readers to begin to understand the process of developing social change movements that can allow them to think about their own activism. The massive popularity of the novels suggest an interest in exploring rebellion further in terms of creating change in the world. Katniss acts as a canonical model of how an individual can inspire a change in the world through a personal evolution. Divergent series stars is another strong, defiant female protagonist, but Tris begins the novel already having experienced her own evolution in understand that she can question the power structure and cause a revolution against injustice. The potential to inspire people toward acts of social change is not insignificant, as within days of the writing of this paper, students in Bangkok protested a military coup using the three-fingered salute and were arrested for the use of that symbol. The potential for change is apparent, but the connection of the novel as an example of a broader change of social justice literature could use texts as models of social justice in the broader culture. By critiquing and understanding the movements more deeply, protagonists like Katniss have the potential to inspire the next generation to accomplish more instances of social change.