<<February
25, 2008>>
Archived distributions can be retrieved at;
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/35zedj>
This archive includes a html version of this list distribution and its MS/WORD
version with its filename as Òmonth-date-year.doc.Ó You can also access
all of its attachments, if any.
John A. Karkala, Ph.D.
Prof. Emeritus, Comparative World Literature
Member: Columbia University Seminars
on Shakespeare/Renaissance, and on Indology/South Asia
100 Bennett Ave, 4E
New York, NY 10033
212-928-9485
jakarkala@aol.com
Professor Seth G. Neugroschl
Co-chair Columbia University Seminar on Computers, Man and Society
Columbia University
1349 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10128
212-876-7674
212-722-4046 -- after 6 pm
SN23@columbia.edu
Dear John:
(1) Many thanks for your msg (ATTACHMENT
I) in response to my following list distribution;
(01/19/08) Belated season's greeting
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3apezd
Many thanks also for your msg (ATTACHMENT
II) in response to my following list distribution;
(02/10/08) Globalization of Higher
Education
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yplc9n
(2) They are very interesting, scholastic, and encyclopedic. I always
learn a lot from your responses. Thank you.
I am taking the liberty of distributing them to our list members.
(3) There is a movement in Japan nowadays as advocating to make all government
documents be written in both Japanese and English side-by-side — as
similar to the ones of the Canadian government with French and English.
At a seminar at the World Summit of Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis,
Tunisia in the fall of 2005, Prof. Negroponte of MIT said that English would become
the Òworld languageÓ and the traditional national languages, e.g., Japanese,
Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, etc., etc., would become the so-called
ÒnicheÓ languages.
Japan had more than 50 feudalistic lords before Meiji Restoration about 150
years ago. Each of them had their distinct dialects which were encouraged
by the lords — this was because when a stranger penetrated into his
territory, he/she could be easily detected as spy.
After the restoration, people could move around Japan and their dialects
started disappear which was accelerated with the spread of radio broadcasting
— similar phenomena is now occurring in global scale thanks to the rapid
advancement of transportation and telecommunication technologies.
However, recent Japanese newspaper reports that young girls often use those
local dialects to show-off their Òniches.Ó
(4) Japan spend billions, billions dollars every year for learning English, but
alas, they are very incompetent on acquiring its skill. I think that this
is because of their social hierarchical system.
Seth G. Neugroschl (our dear friend) once said to me that you have to be able
to call each other with first-name basis to be friend in America.
Japanese culture clearly prohibit this.
This means that language, tradition and culture are very intimately interwoven
each other. I recall a TV program ÒLanguage as WeaponÓ broadcasted at the
Public Broadcast Service (PBS) some years ago, as advocating English language
is the major tool to spread democracy.
(5) Many thanks for your kind words for our GUS projects — yes, the
ÒUnity in DifferenceÓ is our motto.
Looking forward to meeting again at our Columbia University monthly seminar,
Best, Tak
ATTACHMENT I
From: <Jakarkala@aol.com>
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:46:10 EST
To: <utsumi@columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: [gu-new] (01/19/08)
Belated season's greeting
Dear Takashi:
Thank you for remembering me,
among so many of your e-mail correspondents- to send greetings for the New Year
according to Julian-Gregorian calculation of 2008. You are obviously not
late, because the Chinese New Year,I guess 4407, I forgot the animal in 12year
cycle, is coming soon, and thereafter Vaishaka Purnami, the Buddhist New Year
could be possibly 2508 , and yet more the Sankranti and Yugadi, according to
Yoga Chronology of Kalijuga 5078, the fourth cycle in the mega cycle of
maha-yuga of 4 cycles. calculated on the basis of planetary time, Stellar time,
and Galexic Time or Kalpa, that goes to 23 degits, or 22 zeroes. According
to this there is no beginning or end, and one can join TS Eliot in sayings
"the beginning is in the end, or the end is in the beginning" in
cyclical Time, unlike linear conception of Time. That makes us not
to forget that Eliot studied "Oriental Classics" at Harvard Gen.
Education Program some years ago.
We Just finished Hebrew New Year Rosh
Hasana 5768, that assumes the "world " was created in the year zero
or 1. That leaves out Islamic New Year Heijira 1429, and possibly
Zoroastrian New Year Nov Rosh celebrated in India! In a globalized or
globalizing world. there are plurality of New Years according to the cultures
of different people calculated on lunar or solar system of Chronology, that too
depends upon where is the zero year is located, or the year 1 is located
according to myth or cultural event.
May be there is a New Year according to Shinto tradition too, I guess.
Excuse my 'avidya' or non-knowledge. that is to be on the safer side of
Greek Guru Socrates.
So dear Takashi, I can assure you, you are never too, too, too late to
send your greetings, and I welcome all such good wishes with goodwill and zest.
and meditate on the wonderful power and hold such myths have among the deep
deep unconsciousness of people all over the world. Be happy you made me write
this teaser, and I hope you will appreciate it with the spirit in which it is
written. It is obvious how much we need GUS to enlighten us on the
wonderful complexcity of the mythic substrantum of our thinking. Be good and
keep in touch till we meet again here or there on either side of the
traffic lights of mortality on the Time Line. Namaskarams. Insha
Allaha. Gokigenyo! Rest in Silence, which is the substratum of all sound
and echo and suggestion by which all knowledge is comprised, as they say, the
Rishis on the Himalayan slope of the soul!
John A. Karkala
Professor emeritus, Comparative Literature.
2008-1-19 according to the myth of Common Era.
ATTACHMENT II
From: <Jakarkala@aol.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:44:06 EST
To: <utsumi@columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: [gu-new] (02/10/08)
Globalization of Higher Education
Dear Takashi
I have been relishing your communications
and attachments, and meditating on some of the concepts underlying the thoughts
and expressions. So let me make a few minor, perhaps not very
insignificant observations regarding the two New York Times articles by
professors Tamara L and Seth GN
(1) lingua
franca, was an expression used in the Mediterranean basin
in references to the use of French language internationally in Europe.
To say English as the lingua franca
of the world, is the most odd term in contradiction. If one were to
use English as world Language, and one were to use a Latin phrase of learned
scholarship, it would be perhaps lingua
monde or whatever is appropriate.
(2) English as evolved in modern times is
studied in many parts of the world, as a common media of exchange of
thoughts and ideas, and not as the mother tongue, though people in British
Isles and elsewhere use it as mother tongue. Those who have studied
English as a second language have developed such skills in the use of it in
commerce, journalism, philosophic grasping, science and technology and
aesthetic expressions, as well as mythic and symbolic suggestions,we no
longer see that the language is the sole monopoly of the native speakers only.
Secondly, modern
communication methods, computer technology, UN and its Organs and Agencies have
in some ways helped to facilitate the use of English globally. One could
say, therefore, English has become, functionally at least, the language
of the world (not language of France) in the 20/21 centuries.
It is a phenomenon of the time, in the same way at one time Chinese
was the language in East Asia and North Eurasia, or Sanskrit was in the
whole of Asia in the days of Buddhism, or Greek in the
Mediterranean basin [great books of Sumerian Semitic people became
recorded into Greek in Septuagint
in Alexandria in about 240 BC; or 4
of the Gospels containing teachings of Jesus became recorded in Greek and
not in Aramaic the language in which they were spoken, or even in
Hebrew].
Similarly, English has become, in a general sense, a
medium of popularization of knowledge and technology from mega
cities to rural villages. But to assume that English is the language
cultures of the world, is to expect the people to be alienated
from their own inherited cultures. That does not make English
as the culture language of the world, since plurality of cultures are
functioning in the historically rooted culture languages of the regions.
(3) Globalization.
If this
phenomenon has to percolate to all corners of the world towards a better world,
it requires a mind-set not of inherently antagonistic dualistic pattern
of though structure of tribal days, of either-or (my way is right and true and
inevitably yours in wrong and false;or if you are not with me, you are
against me), The dualistic thought pattern sets up to pyramidc images, under
which everyone is subsumed wherein the assumption is one is either
in one pyramid or in the other. This is the way of exclusion, and looking for
an enemy, or demonizing the other. This was the mind set of imperial
colonial days, east or west, when colonists were able to kill people and
destroy other cultures and ways of life, for economic benefit to the imperial
countries.
. What is desired in a new way of
life for the world, is another pattern of Unitary Thought system not of
exclusion, but of inclusion. The imagery of lotus or rose, a flower and
its petals and the centrality of its unity in spite of diversity of its petals.
Roman Publius Vergilius Maro [English, Virgil] in pre-Christian
days envisioned such pattern in e
pluribus Unum [out of plurality unity]. This expression in engraved
on US quarter dollar which people handle every day without reading or realizing
the meaning of it for all these years in full measure.
In a globalized world, there is
a need for a global university system that integrates knowledge in all
departments of human experience. not only in Math, Science, Technology,
Medicine, but with special concern for integrating cultural values
sentiments and ways of life as preserved in aesthetic expressions in
different tradition. For this there is a need to develop curriculum in
humanities with concern of indigenous cultures great or small, and not simply
globalized hamburger coke culture.
The setting up external campus
by some universities either for the benefit of creating additional income or to
spread its curriculum globally, looks like establishing
Imperial universities, as in the days of colonial era. Perhaps one need
to look into UNESCO's Major Project for Mutual Appreciation of Culture Values
East and West (1956), and derive some benefit from that deliberations.
Furthering this UNESCO's objectives Objectives, some selected
universities were encouraged to translate Asian Classics into European
languages, and European classics into Asian languages, and adopt those texts
either in separate sections or where faculty resources are available in
an integrated program on World Humanities.
With good wishes
John A. Karkala, Ph.D.
Professor of Comparative Literature
Member: University Seminars
Shakespeare; Indology;South Asia
Columbia University
100 Bennett Avenue 4E
New York, NY 10033
212-928-9485
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