Cultural Perspective on Time

Middle Eastern (Palestinian) Perspective on Time

When examining the middle-eastern perspective on time, it can be generally stated that we are future-oriented when exploring past, present, and future thinking. This is due to the fact that Middle-Eastern families invest a great amount of time thinking about their forthcoming investments, savings, and overall financial preparations, in order to arrange for upcoming accountabilities regarding situating their children in outstanding universities and building flourishing careers for them, assuming they would become either doctors, lawyers, or engineers. These "future plans" are significantly taken into account, as Middle-Eastern families are always concerned about savings and the education of their children, more than themselves, so that they can set off their children at a great start in their early life.  On the other hand, the past and present aren’t regarded as much, particularly the present. Despite this, the past is valued at a reasonable stage, as it includes the time period that encompasses the sacred history of Palestine, in which structures Palestine as it is today. In addition, the unforgettable, deep-rooted childhoods of many current parents and grand-parents were contained within the past of Palestine. Finally, the present time is very much disregarded within the Arabs' lives, as it is a common stereotype to arrive late to any event or appointment, while being very rushed and unorganized. Moreover, due to crazy rush of daily routines, Palestinians, in my opinion, have lost their perception on the present, which is catastrophic, as the present is the result of the future. This is what distinguishes the Middle East, specifically Palestine, from other parts of the world, and why cultural attitudes towards time differ throughout, as the pace of modern Middle-Eastern life with its businesses, markets, stores, schools, etc., has pressured us on time and increased our reliance on clocks, in comparison to the past, in which patience was key and time was plentiful.

Middle Eastern (Palestinian) Perspective on Time vs. Brazil's Piraha Tribe Perspective on Time

When inspecting Piraha's perspective on time, it can be commonly specified that they are present-oriented when exploring past, present, and future thinking. This is much different than our Middle-Eastern culture, as they have no perception of time whatsoever, since numbers and time aren’t part of their daily language. They value the present much more, and take time in their daily doings, rather than hurrying to complete day-to-day tasks, which is linking to the Middle-Eastern culture. Since they are a tribe, and they possibly look into the history of their tribe, they perceive the past as a thriving memory that cannot be forgotten, which is partially similar to the Middle-Eastern perspective when looking into the way they value history. In regards to the future, they have no perception of numbers and time, in order to even think ahead to the future. They are simply not concerned about it and only about what they are doing in the moment, in that day, which is completely unlike the Middle-Eastern culture, in which revolves around future preparations. The Brazilian Piraha Tribe are unaware of such thing about preparing for the future, which is relaxing and stress-free for them.  

Personally, I admire the Brazilian tribe's logic on focusing on the present rather than getting hung up on the past or the future, as it is the present that helps build a prosperous future. We should definitely look into the future, in preparation for upcoming years. However, not to an extent that we are oriented around the future, and we lose our perception of the present due to busy routinely duties. A major confusion and misunderstanding on my part includes the fact that this tribe do not require the use of numbers to organize their everyday lives. On the contrary, we rely on them greatly, from using numbers within the date, the time, the year, mathematical conductions, and much more. It is impossible to live our daily lives without numbers or time, as they structure our use of hours, minutes, and seconds within a day.

Knowledge Claims and Knowledge Questions

Background Information

To begin with, knowledge claims are claims that are made within particular areas of knowledge or  by individual knowers about the world; these are known to be first-order claims. Looking into the second-order claims, they are claims made about knowledge, involving an examination of the nature of knowledge. On the other hand, knowledge questions, that are dealt in presentations and essays, are simply questions about knowledge that are open and general.

Here is an article on the 'Latest UK flood plans fail to address growing risk of flash floods'

LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/16/latest-uk-flood-plans-fail-to-address-growing-risk-of-flash-floods  

Knowledge Claims 

When identifying the knowledge claims of this article, it can be stated that the first order claims, which are the claims about the world, include four major points within this story:

- Southern and Eastern England were hit by a flash flood

- flash flooding occurs due to climate change

- the overloading of the sewer and drainage networks contributed to the overflow of the flash flood and are very important to maintain

- a 2007 disaster occurred, which led to the creation of new laws in 2010 for the use of sustainable drainage systems

When identifying the knowledge claims of this article, it can be stated that the second order claims, which are the claims about knowledge, include three major points within this story: 

- scientific and geographical knowledge is reliable

- understanding of the disaster can come through proven scientific research, investigation, and analysis

- statistics of previous disasters or chances of upcoming disasters is done through scientific research

Knowledge Questions

Bad: How can we forecast the occurence of a flash flood?

- bad because its cannot use any scientific research, as it is will only trigger discussion and the opinion of others.

Bad: In what other ways does climate change impact a city?

- this question is bad, as it only allows to list off other disasters caused by climate change, rather than exploring specific causes of climate change and the reasons of its disasters to the environment; not much knowledge can be explored.

Better: In what ways does our background scientific knowledge of global warming help in avoiding such disasters of rising sea levels?

Better: How does the media or technology have an effect on our understanding of global warming in regards to gaining knowledge from the media?

- despite their similarity of relating to climate change and global warming, they all seem to lead the reader to scientific exploration and reasoning, better distributing knowledge.

Theory of Knowledge - Perspective

The exhilaration of going to TOK class hit me, as soon as I entered B block, in memory of the first TOK class. As I passed through the class, and positioned myself on the edge of my seat, I, as well as the entire class, were enlightened with two world map images; one displays the map that we know as "normal", and the second is a map with America positioned in the center, with Asia, as well as Africa, and Europe on both edges. This goes to show the perspective of different countries and its people, as they make assumptions according to their beliefs and own culture. Then, after having an impressive discussion, as a class, we created an advantage and disadvantage list for both maps. There is no right or wrong answer, but each perspective has its strengths and weaknesses.

We then watched a 5 minute video that looks into many forms of the world map that includes it being upside down, shortened, widened, and positioned specifically so that certain countries are centered on the world map. These are the many perspectives of the world map, which people view according to their own opinions, conventions, and knowledge. It shows how people may look at things in a certain way, which others do not see from.

Theory of Knowledge Introduction

Taking part in the Theory of Knowledge class with Ms. Muge, has definitely turned my world upside down. One of the first activities that took place as soon as we entered the class, was looking at the levitating water machine that produced water droplets that appeared to be flowing in slow motion, as well from top to bottom and bottom to top, which definitely caused confusion within the class, including myself, on whether or not what we observed was real. Endless questions were arising about our beliefs on certain topics, and our knowledge on them. This included our trust towards others; this was brought up through an activity in which we were instructed to draw a straight line and measure it. Everyone called out their measurements and Ms. Muge recorded. She then asked the question of how we know these measurements are accurate, as anyone could’ve faked it.

In the end, I concluded that as we discover more about the wonders of our planet, more questions take place, including: "what is knowledge? Where do we get our knowledge from? How are our beliefs justified? How do we identify the world around us? Do we even know anything at all?" Such arguments trigger the brain to question ones existence and understanding overall.

Taken as a whole, the class was very exciting, entertaining, and informative, as we were conducting simple experiments that yet caused great misperception and perplexity within the class.