Religion, Poverty and Wealth Essay examples -- Poverty Essays

Religion, Poverty and Wealth Poverty is now a problem on a global scale, and Hinduism has needed, and will continue to need, to undertake an ongoing state of change and adaptation. Many of the beliefs Hindus held only a couple of centuries ago have been altered or even removed altogether. The globalisation of Hinduism, bringing it into contact with a wide range of other cultures and religions, has influenced this a lot. Hinduism, however, is full of variations itself, so what is said of Hinduism may be true for some Hindus, and false for others. Hinduism is less a religion, than a culture, and way of life. This way of life affects how they view poverty and wealth, and what there reactions to it are, as outlined below. Unlike many other societies, where the caste system is based on power or wealth, thus giving the poorest the least power, Hinduism has four set castes, which a member belongs to by birth. These groups are called varnas, and each has its own set of rules and duties to live by, known as dharma. Too much inter-varna mixing, especially intermarriage, is strongly disapproved of. The first, and highest varna is that of a Brahmin-priests, teachers, and wisemen. The next is Kshatriya-warriors, rulers, and leaders. The third is Vaishya-traders, merchants, agriculture, and other work involved with commerce. The final, and lowest varna is Sudra-manual labour and service. In many societies, the difference between the high and the low, in terms of social status, has caused great troubles, due to discontentment of the poor and weak to continue living like they are. In Hinduism, however, this problem is avoided, by the promise o... ... many Hindus to make a small donation to the poor, and will give old clothes or shoes away, rather than throwing them out. MK Gandhi changed many old Hindu beliefs with his teachings. He taught that it is wrong to think that a poor person is only getting what they deserve. He believed that everyone was a part of God, and people should recognise that they share the same world and should care for one another. He taught that service to others was the best way to find God and comprehend fully the human condition. This had a profound effect on the treatment of the poor in India today. There are many charities set up for helping the poor in India, such as the Hindu Mission Hospital and Prison Fellowship India. These receive many donations from many Hindus-even those overseas will often send back money to help the poor.

Pen Biography

The Pen Mortality is a fact of life for everyone and has been since Creation. As humans, we have the intelligence to realize and understand this because we possess the ability to reason and to learn. This ability, when combined with the presence of Life that keeps us in existence, beckons us to secure the future in some way and for some reason(s). We need not only the chance at life beyond our own which comes with the birth of our children, but also to leave our own names, our own ideas and beliefs secured onto something more solid than the spoken word yet not as heavy as stone tablets.In he arid, desert climates this came in the form of parchment . In locations with more water and vegetation, it came from the papyrus plant. But in either climate, something was needed to stain the language onto this new device. That something was the first pen. The Dawn of Pen-kind As early as 2,800 years before Christ, the pen was beginning to appear as a writing implement in the world. Its first fo rm was that of a dried reed, its tip cut at an angle so to create a line of ink instead off blot. To write with it, simply dip the cut tip of the reed into an ink supply, then gently press the dipped tip against the paper .This was a simple meaner of writing that required raw materials ample in the environment. The degree of technology it used can be seen as only slightly higher than the scientific concept of the sharpened wedge (blade) used to cut an angle on the reed tip. The small effort needed to build a pen was far less than that of the ink needed. Nature grew the reed, humans merely plucked it from the ground and sliced off its bottom tip. During this period of Antiquity, the Egyptians had also constructed the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx.By no meaner was the pen as physically large and omelet a creation as the wonders of the world, which were constructed with the sole purpose of being the final resting-place of the Pharaoh. However, the reed pen had a much more profound, a m uch greater effect on the world and the path our present-day history took. There are no records to indicate any one person or group as the inventors of the pen. Rather, it is was a creation made to assist in the posterity of an Empire, and on that would effect all empires the earth would ever see.Israel, people of the Great WHY, the Creator, God, and one of the fiercest fighting people of the contemporary world, Egan their ascendancy into History by two stone tablets, engraved with the Ten Commandments by the hand of God. God can use stone without any trouble at all. He's all-powerful. To us humans, however, stone can get both heavy and impractical. We have no omnipotent powers to create and create and create whole encyclopedias from stone by sheer thought. We have to sit down and chisel away for hours and ideal thing for humanity to use as a writing implement.Along the same lines of uselessness, Papyrus, though very much lighter and easier to store away, was really just some plant strips without the use of the pen. Thanks to the pen, however, the Israelites, as well as the rest of the writing world, have secured themselves with ink on the pages of History. This is evident in the nightstand drawer of Just about every motel room in America. The prime of life for the reed pen lasted until around the 6th century AD, where the earliest recorded reference to quill pens was made by Spanish theologian SST. Isadora of Seville . The quill is a flight feather off bird.It is made ready for writing by, like the reed pen, slicing of the tip at an angle so as to have a point for ink to bleed onto papyrus or parchment. Before the cutting, however, the quill must first be hardened y heating it or simply letting it dry. A special penknife was usually used in cutting the tip, but any sharp blade could do the Job. Writers using the quill often had to recur the tip so to maintain its edge. Though there is no rule depicting any species mandatory as the origin of the feather, goose , swan, crow, and (later) turkey were preferred because of both the size of the feathers and the abundance of birds to obtain them from.This new pen was the main writing utensil used in Europe for the next 1,300 years. Its affordability was great, and its use was limited only by the spread of literacy. (Incarnate 98) As writing increased, commerce began creating more documentation than the Church. Hence, so to save money and time, new, more durable writing tools were sought after. Horn, tortoiseshell, and even gemstones were tested, but steel was ultimately used as a replacement for the quill tip. (Incarnate 98) Such a precise steel structure as a pen was not easily manufactured.They did not become popular until about the 19th century when free public education for children became prevalent. (Incarnate 98) Through the years as civilization developed and education became noticed for the potential that it gives humanity. Writing, a prerequisite to any complex civilization, became emph asized in education, and the popularity of the skill of quill cutting began a speedy decline. In 1803, English engineer Bryan Domain became the first person to patent a steel pen. (Incarnate 98) This patenting marked the entry of the pen into commercialism as a product for sale.We, as materialistic beings, decided that it would be best for us to profit from the pen rather than from the education available with the use of it. In 1884, a New York insurance salesman, Lewis Waterman, patented the first fountain pen with its own internal reserve of ink. He fountain pen would gradually become the prominent writing instrument until it was replaced by the ballpoint pen Just after World War II. (Incarnate 98) In our unending human efforts to improve upon old ideas, the ballpoint pen was developed.This new device had several advantages over the other pens that had The ink was waterproof and almost unarguable; the pen could write on many more kinds of surfaces and could be held in almost any p osition for writing, and the pressure required to feed the ink was ideal for making carbon copies. The advent of this new device has had an incredible effect on the writing of history. When we look at what a rudimentary part of everyday life the pen plays in society, it's hard to imagine life without it. Think about how often you pick up a pen and write something.Or, if you only type, consider that without a pen, the inventor would not have been able to put his thoughts for a typewriter, word processor or computer into a drawn plan, and, therefore, none would exist today. The same can be said for Just about every invention since the industrial revolution! Even as far back as Leonardo Dad Vinci, the pen had been used as a tool to expand the mind as well as secure the past. Inventors and dreamers scribbled away at drawings of such preposterous ideas to their contemporaries that we could not know of their attempts were it not for the pen.Dad Vine's drawing of man, his helicopter, and o ther ideas of his could never have been know were it not for the pen. Likewise, computers today have their own version of the pen. The stylus and light pen have been used as interface systems to input information into computers for years. The pen is due thanks for that. If you want to say, â€Å"well, what about the pencil? † FORGET IT! The pencil wasn't invented until around 1795 AD . The pen had already been around for centuries.In fact, it's not unthinkable to imagine today's world using much the same stone tablets as The Flintiness. The bottom line is this: without a written language that could easily be used to transmit information across both space and time, our society, our world, being the complex civilization that it is, would not have developed. Cities, schools, and everything we take for granted in or society would not exist. At best, we would be engraving cave walls with pictures or some basic language. We would not be the ever-increasing global community we are t oday.

An Introduction to Sicilian The Language of Sicily

What is Sicilian? The real question is what isnt Sicilian? Sicilian is neither a dialect nor an accent. It’s not derived from Italian. It’s not spoken only  in Sicily. Sicilian (u sicilianu) in Sicilian and  siciliana  in Italian) is the oldest of the  Romance languages  derived from Latin, and it’s spoken  in Sicily and in parts of southern Italy  such as  Reggio di Calabria  and  southern Puglia. It’s derived from  Latin, with  Greek,  Arabic,  French, Provenà §al,  German, Catalan and  Spanish  influences. Sicilian is currently spoken by most of the 5,000,000 inhabitants of Sicily, plus another 2,000,000 Sicilians around the world. With the predominance of Italian in Italian schools and the media, Sicilian is no longer the first language of many Sicilians. In fact, in urban centers in particular, its more common to hear standard Italian spoken rather than Sicilian, especially among the younger generation. Sicilian as Art? But what most people don’t know is that Sicilian developed as a form of art many years before what we currently define as â€Å"Italian†! In fact, even  Dante, father of Italian culture and dialect, referred to Sicilian poets and writers from the â€Å"Sicilian School† as pioneers in literary works and production written in vernacular Italian. The sicilian spelling of words is, like Italian, essentially phonetic. The spoken language is riddled with words of Arabic origin:  tabutu  (coffin) from Arabic  tabut. And in place names: Marsala, the Sicilian port, is from Allahs port,  mars  port   ala, from Allah. We can divide Sicilian dialect variations into three main areas: Western Sicilian  - From the Palermo areas to Trapani and AgrigentoCentral Sicilian  - Through the Enna’s zonesEastern Sicilian  - Divided in Syracuse and Messina Nowadays, Sicilian is the principle way to communicate within the family  (with a capital F). Its  used as a convivial language and as a homey bond with those who live distantly. What’s Siculish? Did you know that Sicilian dialect spoken by Italian immigrants living in the USA is called â€Å"Siculish†? The Sicilian novelist Giovanni Vergas surname means twig† or â€Å"branch in Spanish. The Italian word is  virga. How Does it Sound? But let’s cut to the chase, how does this ancient language sound? Most of the words aren’t too far from the Italian language, but  how  they pronounce them changes the entire game. B  - a normal â€Å"b,† heard several times in â€Å"babbo, bosco, bambole†¦,† turns into a -V. So la botte ( the barrel) sounds  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœa vuttila barca ( the boat)  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœa varcail broccolo ( broccoli) becomes  u’ vrà ²cculu Double L  - Words like â€Å"bello† e â€Å"cavallo† become  beddu and cavaddu. G  - between vowels falls and leaves only a slight trace: gatto sounds like  attà ¹gettare (to throw) sounds like  ittari Not all the sounds are squeezed though. There are cases that where letters strengthen and are redoubled in their sound. â€Å"gi† becomes  valiggia  ( suitcase), and the Sicilian jacket,  a giacca, has to be read as  aggiacca. Whether you’re a foreigner or an Italian, Sicilian is a complicated language that you can  only hope to understand. We could spend hours listening to this wonderful and melodious language that hides  a magic world dating back almost a thousand years  inside its devious words.