Jared Diamonds Academic Journey and Career

Jared Diamond grew up in Boston and studied at both Harvard and Cambridge University. He also taught at UCLA for many years. In the film of Guns Germs and Steel, Diamond was one of the first to assemble all data to show the world how much the environment has been an influence everything in regards to the developments of civilization from an early standpoint. He is arguing that there was nothing in the sense of being European or having European culture that would make them better or worse than other people.

Which then brings us to look at the question that Yali had asked Diamond, "Why is that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" For Diamond, Yali's question meant trying to explain why Europeans had become imperial powers, wealthy nations, where others had not. Global inequality is based on geographic luck. Which also meant that Diamond's response was to do with agriculture and geographical standpoints rather than European superiority, intelligence and race.

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The biggest challenge to cover up things in history that weren't brought to attention.

In the film, Diamond argues that one of the main reasons for the "Great Divergence" is that history itself never stayed on the same path or course for different people because of the differences among everyone's uniqueness in their environmental living. One of his main goals is to show that the inequalities developed mostly because of the geographic variations that helped make certain regions to be more suitable for agriculture than others.

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Finally, the big factors that developed into the future like technology, social organization and health.

I personally am at odds about the whole argument, but if I did have to pick a side, I think I would go on the ends of agreeing with the argument. Differing from those around you and acquiring different characteristics isn't necessarily something that you can be in control of. Not everyone in their right mind should be the superior of everything they accomplish. For example, it's impossible for every person to be born or brought up in a wealthy civilization. Also, what I think is extremely important is that people who were born in the civilization with wealth, leadership and all the resources they needed wouldn't have the need to understand the hardship of trying to learn, going through trials of success and failure, especially when it comes to the way you choose to live your life.

The Criticism of Jared Diamond in his book and video is simply going back to his argument earlier. A lot of people don't necessarily agree with the idea of being "lucky" in a sort of way when it comes to terms of geographically speaking. It would be like comparing the importance of agriculture in a civilization to how well you perform in a sports event. I feel that many other people who have read or heard about Jared Diamond would say the same. They want to hear the "dirt" of the findings and the stories and struggles behind each obstacle in every society, not just the basis of these people were lucky enough to be put in these certain scenarios. In his best interest, Diamond ended up writing a second book to try and answer some of his critics, but in the eye of the publishing world, having to explain to people means you initially did wrong the first time around without wanting to admit it.

Diamond has nothing to say about the political decisions made in order to pursue European imperialism, the manufacturing of steel, and being able to use disease as a weapon. His account underplays the alliances with native groups that enabled European forces to conquer and rule. I don't think that Diamond really cared much to think about or worry about his adventures and findings on a political standpoint. His passion was to uncover the roots of the past and that's what he spent the majority of his life doing. Finding out things that the rest of us can't. He wanted to learn and explore for himself, to add to his specific studies because of his passionate attribute.

Beauty and Race are both extremely important concepts which still impact our own civilization today. Colonialism and imperialism in the period led to more than just beauty and race, for example, it led to the factors of justification for brutal expansion, forced labor, removal of resources and even some religious beliefs. Modern notions of "beauty" were impacted by characteristics of a humans body type, their hair, skin and height/weight. All the changes overtime in relation to "beauty" reflect social ideals of society. What they mean by that is basically what people would describe of find in someone else to be beautiful, whether back then it be binding of women's feet to make them appear smaller, or in today's society, the invention of makeup. Diamond also talks about the "racial superiority." His first argument is that people of societies that traditionally haven't experienced with much or any power at all, should still be considered intelligent and talented as people from any other society. Secondly, he shows that throughout history, societies in different parts of the world have behaved in a more rational way by, in a sense, for example, using all the resources provided or easily given to improve their quality at living.

Eichmann in Jerusalem is Hannah Arendt's own personal account of the 1960 trial of a turned Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. For someone who as already written an incredible amount of well thought out pieces of work, Hannah Arendt took it a step further and traveled almost twelve gruesome hour journey to Jerusalem in order to cover the trial of Eichmann. Now what did Eichmann simply do that ended with him being hanged? Adolf Eichmann is said to be one of the many held responsible for the shipment of the mass slaughter of Jews.

Ardent was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1906. She studied at the Universities of Marburg and Freiburg and received her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. Hannah Arendt was a humanist thinker who often thought boldy and provocatively about our shared political and ethical world we lived in and continue to do so. In 1933, she fled from Germany and went to France, where she worked for the immagration of Jewish refugee children into Palestine, but later became an American citizen ten years later.

Now let's talk a little about Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann is the main figure being talked about in the book. He spent twelve years working with coordinating European Jews' deportation to Nazi execution camps. Trying to find a way to not be noticed, Eichmann went into hiding in Argentina for more than a decade before being kidnapped by Israel agents, who then later brought him to trial in Jerusalem.

Hannah Arendt argues that, while Eichmann's sentence which was in the end chosen to be death by hanging was given to him as punishment for his crimes, that the court missed "the central moral, political, and even legal problems" raised by his trial. Arendt explains that it is more as a propaganda tool for the people of Israel to claim it has achieved the vengeance on behalf of the Jews. But most importantly, she makes it known that it hides the truth that Eichmann was not a criminal mastermind but seen more as a thoughtless, bureaucrat who was simply in the state of mind of "not knowing what he was doing" in the moment of his "criminal" actions.

The Banality of Evil recounts the 1961 trial, which again talks about the unbelievable act of Adolf Eichmann. Arendt's goal was not to minimize Eichmann's actions and sugar coat around them, but rather to illustrate how thinking from the perspective of others, including those who we see as enemies, is a key component of a moral lifestyle. Adolf Eichmann never wanted to be seen in the image of an "evil" person. He simply stated that he did indeed help carry out the Holocoaust despite never truly wanting to kill anyone since he didn't truly come to the sense of his acts until it was already too late. Hannah's work again argues that Eichmann failed to see that he was intended to commit evil because he was unable to imagine the perspective of anyone else. His case shows how thoughtlessness can be dangerous as having evil intentions. Arendt even went far enough to say that she believes that most of Germany suffered from the same thoughtlessness as Eichman during and after important historical events such as the Opium War and both WWI/WWII. Nevertheless, people must actively urge on moral thought, must reflect on their actions and their consequences, but more importantly consider not only the experiences of others but also the consequences being faced. Most of the critics were as harsh as critics can be. Sending death threats, constant phone calls yelling and screaming and wanting nothing to do with Arendt. The critics put more of the blame on Arendt and how she basically understood where Eichmann was coming from and how it was in the fault of the Jewish community.

Bringing up Jared Diamond, who argued that there everything was based on geographical luck, is in different terms when it comes to comparing his argument to Arendt's, while Hannah's argues that these specialities have always existed. Her critique when it came to talk about modernity was that the public domain is profoundly relevant for educators and educational theorists who seek to locate their activity within range of other human undertakings and within the context of the modern eclipse of public life. That her work points towards how we can fall short in our responsibility for and love of the world and education can become a conspiracy. I personally don't know what side I would choose to stand by in the fact that this can be viewed as a hard concept to wrap your head around and truly a difficult task to grasp. Needing to hear both sides of any story is important. Trying to piece every single bit of information can be difficult to do. All these conflicts come to the conclusion of being inspirational models for citizens who want to resist totalitarianism.

Updated: Apr 29, 2023
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Jared Diamonds Academic Journey and Career. (2019, Nov 21). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/jared-diamond-essay

Jared Diamonds Academic Journey and Career essay
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