Sick, so Slow

I was sick yesterday and got very little accomplished, I hope today is much more productive. I want to get a lot done so my weekend won't be swamped, I have a feeling my weekend will be swamped...so if I do not grace this highly important blog with words of wisdom...I will be back next week.  :D

Here is something to think about that connects to my previous post.

This semester I've read a great deal regarding our fear of "the other." That can easily translate into our fear of anything different. It is not a rare trait...to fear people who are different, to fear change, to fear a challenge to your own set in ideologies and it is not a modern phenomenon.  The peasant class in Europe were often relegated to "other" status to justify their forced servitude on their Lord's estate...this was a feat for Europeans because they usually oppressed peoples of other faiths, who were not Christians, but with the peasant class in Europe, they were also Christians (I wont go into how the clergy of the day raised them to an almost holy status because of their saintlike labor and at the same time subjugated them as well on their own estates...very different clergy though, most of them went into the church because they were the sons of major lords and needed to find a lucrative and economically productive career...middle ages was a period of great change for the church and it worked diligently throughout the end of the middle ages to remove that sort from service to the Church and replace with people who wanted to teach and live in a more chaste and holy manner...but  it took a while).  Apart from medieval peasants or slaves, the obviously oppressed, I cannot help but continually connect the fear of "the other" with modern forms of oppression.  In many countries, a dominant group will oppress a minority group be it for religious, ethnic, or ideological reasons and usually do it because as the other...that society has placed certain negative traits (often unfounded) on said group.  There are many people who fight this type of oppression, and they too have existed since the middle ages... and you wonder, are we making progress?  We must be, but what will it take to convince people that there will always be differences... and we cannot hold one person down because they look or believe differently than we do.