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"He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how"

I enjoyed (enjoy is probably the wrong word in this context, because once again these readings made me look at the world with disgust) the readings for week 5, I felt they were a great summary of what we have been talking so far. The book chapter on culture and marginalization got me into thinking about what constitutes a marginalized group. Dutta defines marginalization as "at the periphery of a dominant system." What about a population that is not at the periphery, but yet the health issues that this population is concerned with is not addressed? I even want to take it as far as: the dominant system knowingly doesn't inform this population of certain health threats they face. Are we talking of a marginalized group here as well?

The articles on the Santalis and the FM patients once again served as a great example of how the voices of the marginalized are unheard and not cared for in the main stream. When coming across Nietzsche's quote (see headline) while reading I couldn't help but think how true his statement is. And then again, what about "him who has no why to live?" Where do you the Santalis/FM patients get their energy and motivation from to start your day? Or am I looking at this yet again from an outside/dominant perspective and comparing their situations to my day won't do any of us any justice...

The article about violence, culture, and the politics of drama raised many questions. We talked about a "theoretical" pain scale in class, I was thinking about...who classifies trauma? Who defines trauma? Can someone who has never experienced any "trauma" even come up with a definition? Can someone who has experienced trauma can come up with a definition/scale? Can one trauma be compared to another trauma? One definition of trauma used the word "recurring". What about the people that go to bed hungry every day...recurring...do we classify them as suffering from trauma?

I had to think when I read the chapter on dominant societies using the headlines of other countries' to make their own oppression less obvious: how true, it makes people look at the world saying - "look how good we have it, we shouldn't be complaining". And as much as there is truth about this statement and as much as when compared to another situation theirs might look so small, yet the dominant structure in their home country fools them just with that. It's that simple! Wow!

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