Ghandi and Beyond a Boundary (4/27)

Beyond the Boundary makes me wonder who is your true self. James was a student and had the persona of a student but when he played cricket he became someone else, he was a team player. Even he says “we lived in two worlds.” Who is to say it is not all one world? With the technology expanding the way it has I claim that we have an online persona and a “real” persona. We have created this online personality that might not be the same as the person you are. For example, you may text a certain way that does not reflect how you would have conversations with others. Even with online avatars, you can make a reflection of you but if someone else was doing an avatar for you, it would be different. Sure, we are living on this phase of the Earth but we are also living in an online world but it doesn’t have to be two worlds, it can be just one. James also said in the article, “[he] was educated at an English school, read English authors, and played English sports. All this: the education, the literature, the cricket, reinforced the English way of seeing the world; as James writes: ‘everything began from the basis that Britain was the source of all light and leading, and our business was to admire, wonder, imitate, learn.’ It was the culture of imperialism.” That resonates with me because even though he was from Trinidad, he had to learn English, so did I. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have grown up speaking and writing Spanish at a public school all the way until graduation.

Gandhi’s goal was to free oneself mentally and spiritually from Western machines and materialism. I believe the message he was trying to get across is that we should become culturally independent and not dependent. By being dependent, we are making our minds enslaved and also making others think they are enslaved as well.