Walking into this quarter, I thought I had a good idea of what an empire is: an idea. According to pre-winter-quarter-Denae, empire was a vague term used to help someone put something into a category.
A respected empire:
- Sounds large, probably with a good military
A small empire:
- Sounds modest, probably not with a vast military. However, it probably is able to hold its ground and stays out of other empire’s ways.
A chaotic empire:
- Sounds like it’s still finding its way to be organized. New rulers?
The word empire gives a group of people unity. It allows them to be treated as one, which simplifies things not only for them, but the surrounding areas. I learned in the fall that this unity is found through language and social habits. Both of these can still be found today from cultural and social norms to schoolyard habits. However, as my knowledge of empire has grown, I have learned that it is more than this.
During the winter quarter, I learned that empire creates a lens of one’s truth. The way we understand our truth is based on the narratives we choose to believe and the ones we identify with. The stories we tell ourselves define our reality and our idea of the world around us. For example, when we studied the Incan Empire, I learned that the Spaniard’s truth differed greatly from the Inca’s truth. Through their myths, they created their own reality and their own idea of what is. From these shared stories and their personal truths, we can take from them the information that is given to us, and strip from it the language involved in these narratives. To connect what I had learned this quarter with last is that language, the partner of empire, plays a significant role in how we claim truth. In sharing our histories and our narratives, it is important to understand the role of perspective. We must consider the story of the “winner” of the event and the “loser” and from these two completely different narratives, we can draw an idea of what truly happened opposed to what can be hypothesized based on one side, or what one tells themselves for generations and generations.
I learned that each individual is a part of some empire and that this empire aids in building perspective. And perspective lays out how one will approach everything in life. Empire builds perspective simply because the empire in which one lives controls their way of thinking, their way of viewing reality, and their way of understanding life. For example, growing up in the West, my reality must greatly differ from those who are far removed from our understanding of life and from those who do not align with American ideals and characteristics. I believe that an empire plays as a formal structure for the way we perceive our life.
Winter quarter has taught me that through language, through stories, and through perspectives, empires control our way of thinking and navigating through our world much more than we truly think.
letsgettothecore 