A short something on bboying

Bboying. Just one word. Nothing has been more influential in my life than this type of dance. 

The first time I started to encounter bboying was in sophomore year when a group of my friends started a club for dancing. We were all amateurs and didn’t really know what we were doing. By the end of the semester, there were only two people left. Terence and I encouraged each other to keep going while trying to learn moves from youtube. By the end of sophomore year, I was all alone. I started not only watching more videos but also reading just about anything people wrote about the dance. I studied the music, the history, the culture, and so on. I found out there’s so much more to bboying than just flashy tricks and powermoves most people like watching. There’s also style and flavor to it.

       Bboying changed me because I saw that it represents everything that I want in this modern and restricted world. I don’t want to be bound to rules and laws; I want to be free. Bboying gave that to me; the variety of moves that people can do to a beat is extraordinary. It made me understand that there are no limits to what we can do in this world. The only restriction is that we believe we can’t do it; it’s always too difficult or takes too long to do it. Just like everything else in life, the first step to Bboying is the hardest, and it takes time to get a hang of it, then even longer to perfect it. 

       What most people don’t understand is that Bboying is an aggressive yet a very peaceful activity. It’s a gesture of a fight, without actually touching someone. But with the same intensity or a battle of a gang. Which leads to why people don’t respect Bboying as much as ballet and other types of dance. Even though Bboying did come from drugs and gangs, but it was because they wanted to change and be better.  I want to be better. I really think Bboying deserves much more credit than it does today.

Me on multiculturalism

       My whole life can be summed up in one word. Multiculturalism. Everything that have accomplished revolves around it. I owe it all to my father. Being a sociologist, he believes that the mind might be restricted if only exposed to one culture. Which is why he takes me along on many of his research trips. I have accompanied my father to 14 different countries and have seen a variety of cultures, which all seem so extreme when placed next to each other. Not only do I experience the culture by being there. My father would always encourage me to do research on everything from bus routes to historical backgrounds of the area’s well-known sites. Then he would always ask me to lead the way around to places by public transportation. By that I learned that not everyone think the same way; in order to achieve a goal, there are plenty of routes to get there, and that’s what different cultures display. In order to observe and keep track of the details of the cultural differences, my father would encourage me to keep a journal. He even published a book on his own observation of me observing. 

From trips, I saw and experienced the more pronounced variations of each culture.

       It was from schools did I have the opportunity to spend longer periods of time apprehending  the people from a completely different cultural background than mine.

       I suppose having been in contact with so many different cultures led me to bboying, a type of dance under the Hip Hop culture, which is all cultures put together in one. The dance itself is a sign of peace, love, unity, and having fun. It is also the only kind of dance that allows people to compete aggressively without any physical contact. Anyone can practice it, doesn’t matter where you are from, what you do, even if you are disabled. There are no right way of doing things, there are no advantages, everyone starts at zero and work their way up, there are no limits. I really fell for this dance, because each culture has it’s own restrictions and rules, and bboying is telling us to do whatever we want to do, as long as we are all in harmony with each other. 

       Another extreme cultural experience for me up to this point was entering the military. Under the protection of my parents my whole life, I never understood how different I was from others. Not only did I realize that people from the same country can be so diverse, let alone different cultures, but also the importance of freedom. I lived in a different world compared to most people, and I never really realized that before I entered the military. The military is what the majority actually is. I was far more fortunate than I ever imagined. The military is the first time into the real world for me, so I had to adjust to the situation, it was the only place I couldn’t just leave. There I was taking orders and realizing for the first time that people can come from such different environments, and yet, we can still all live and work together. 

       The most important personal quality of mine is my love for animals. I have always loved animals since I was young. After being being aware of many different cultures, I realized that many of us humans don’t have enough respect for our fellow creatures. The truth is that we can’t live without them; without them, we wouldn’t have become who we are today. Throughout my life, there is nothing I love more than to care for them, to see them as an equal, and to try and understand them. Which lead me up to explore my passion much further by studying it as a major in UC Davis.

An Essay I wrote on my views

The human civilization advances rapidly at an exponential rate. The technology we see today is so sophisticated and well developed that it is impossible to be avoided. But like all things, there is a positive and negative side of all these impressive inventions. The positive side is that it saves us time and energy; it puts flavor and variations into our lives. However, the negative side cannot be neglected. Pollution is everywhere; from the air to the sea, nothing is left untouched by the toxic substances, and the rate of cancer has never been higher. Technology is currently making the planet a flithy place for us. Nevertheless, not only does it affect humans, but also harms other living organisms. Humans have used technology to restrict other living creatures to smaller restricted areas to live in.

Humans have been living with other animals, side by side, for millenniums. We never treated them as an equal; we failed to see that we can't live without them. I have read articles about the government in (better not say where) sent people to beat strays dogs to death with sticks; seen how some immoral salesmen would buy loads of huskies to sell just because they are in fashion, then leave them to die, caged, in bushes when they are out of fashion. To find out more about their contributions to us, it takes an exceptional amount of work to find it. There was one book I found on how hundreds of war dogs sacrificed their precious lives throughout history for us, yet when we learn and read about the wars in history, never once do we even have a paragraph about how much we benefitted from their lives. We would never be where we are today without them. Every time some disaster happens, the numbers we see in papers are all about us: humans losses and money losses. What about their losses? What about their wounded? They give up their lives without a thought to help us. Why do we always treat them as an inferior?

Throughout history, humans have looked down on other animals. Even some of the great mins in history have thought them as inferior to us. 

"Animals eat without pleasure, cry without pain, grow without knowing it; they desire nothing." - Nicolas Malebranche. 

Back in the 17th century, it is easy to see why people would agree with it. The understanding of animals is only more profound recently; there is still so much to learn. We had no understanding of them, we would naturally feel superior because we can control their fate. Another example is the painting called The Creation of Adam; human superiority is shown. The painting echoes earlier divine hierarchy, that animals do not have the traits that God and humans share, such as intellect and a sense of morality. No matter where you go in this world, there is always the feeling of superiority over animals in many people. It's a difficult task to change that thought. We are taught that we are special and are destined to rule the world; we alone are made in God's image.

Throughout my life, I have noticed these things happening around me. Which is why I set my life goal to be educating people to see them as equals, and to strive to let us all live in harmony. The powerful feeling  of wanting to help them wherever I can has lead me to volunteer at the animal shelter and the zoo. I studied their behavior in order to understand them more. Even though it pains me to see them in such small and restricted areas, there's not much I can do at the moment. Every time I look into their eyes behind the bars and glass, they look so lost and confused; they don't understand where they are and what's going on, it's as if they given up on life. When we see other humans looking confused and lost, we pity them. Then why should it be different when it comes to other living creatures? Is it just because they don't look like us? Are we really superior because we have all these technology and they don't? Are they really inferior because they don't have the ability to communicate with us and follow "our" rules? Why do we assume that they are much less than we are when we know so little about them? I want to the someone who persuades other people to understand and feel the animals' pain and to treat them as an equal.

"Hold then the same view of the dog which has lost his master, which has sought him in all the thoroughfares with cries of sorrow, which comes into the house troubled and restless, goes downstairs,  goes upstairs; goes from room to room, finds at last in his study the master he loves, and betokens his gladness by soft whimpers, frisks, and caresses. There are barbarians who seize this dog, who so greatly surpasses man in fidelity and friendship, and nail him down to a table and dissect him alive, to show you the mesaraic veins! You discover in him all the same organs of feeling as in yourself. answer me, mechanist, has Nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel?" - Voltaire

What if the world was turned around, and we were the ones being tortured and mistreated. We wouldn't want to live like that; we would hold a grudge against anything that abuses us. They on the other hand, won't. They don't want to fight or have any conflict with us, the only reason they would hurt us if because they feel threatened. But, they would not attack us simply because we are taking the same resources from the same land. Another reason why I love animals so much is because we always hear humans talk about how they love someone else just the way they are, but they actually don't. There's always some part of that people they don't love, they might just don't know about it yet. But animals, on the other hand, are different. They actually do love the you the way you are, they don't care what you look like, how much you earn. They won't want you to change because you don't live your life their way,  none of that matters to them at all. As long as you love them, they will love you for you.