Is America a “culture-shocked society” at conflict with itself, as is the remainder of the world?
Mr. Ian C. Dawkins Moore-a man on a mission, who hates “xenophobic bores,” who, in a seamless voyage of self-discovery, traveled via the center of Europe again to Africa after which into America-believes it’s.
And so, taking the time period “tradition shock” from Alvin Toffler’s 1970 e book, Future Shock, he has got down to wake us up and to assist us higher perceive the multicultural world we reside in via the medium of Tradition Shock Information (CSN), which may now be seen 24/7 around the globe in flash video format.
Mr. Moore’s argument is that whereas we have now reached “improbable heights” technologically, “the parallel growth of social interplay, integration, and inclusion has not stored tempo.”
He believes societies are “at conflict with one another and themselves as a result of they don’t settle for the necessity to deal with one another like they’d want to be handled themselves.”
However, ever the optimist, Mr. Moore sees a means out of our culture-shocked state.
“My experiences,” he says, “have proven me that when individuals hear to one another, every good points optimistic suggestions.
“Each one I meet is a possible inventive pressure that may change the character of their lives and people round them.
“By concentrating on one particular person at a time, I am inspired by the potential for change there’s for the long run.
“Because the Christians say: If I may also help anyone on their highway of life, then my life won’t have been in useless.”
The {qualifications} of this author, trainer, engineer, and video producer, who was born in London, England, to deal with the shocks of a multicultural world-or what a author has described as “a blurry-bordered, polyglot Blade Runner world” whereas reviewing Mr. Moore’s work [Anneli Rufus in the East Bay Express, August 10, 2005]-are persuasive.
As “the kid of the fifties and sixties,” he believes he belongs to “the primary technology maybe, to offer voice to the multicultural actuality of the fashionable world” [Culture Shock Essays by I. C. Moore, Jukebox Press, Oakland, CA, 1999; page 1].
“I am,” Mr. Moore factors out, “a product of an English mom and a Jamaican father,” and since neither of them raised him, he had many surrogate dad and mom and households from whom he realized “to like those that give love.”
And in what was to turn into attribute of him in later years, he spent his youth fleeing “xenophobic bores” [“My Bio-Sphere,” Culture Shock Essays].
After graduating in 1970 with a British diploma in civil engineering, Mr. Moore started a journey throughout continents that honed his imaginative and prescient and his position in a multicultural world.
First, he traveled all through Europe, working varied jobs. Then in 1974, he determined to dedicate himself to the educating occupation and traveled to West Africa for 2 years in seek for “the African aspect” of his nature.
He crossed the Sahara desert and journeyed via Algeria, Mali (visiting Timbuktu), Higher Volta (now Burkina Faso), Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, educating English and dealing as a graphic designer, gross sales government, and diamond miner.
Mr Moore writes that his African odyssey had a “profound impact” on his “early manhood” [“The Road to Ramadan,” Culture Shock Essays, p. 51] as he grew to become conscious of his actual African connection.
It was additionally throughout this journey that he grew to become a Muslim.
On his conversion to Islam, Mr. Moore displays in “The Street to Ramadan”:
“By religion and compassion my understanding of the world and its completely different peoples was significantly enhanced. Above all, the seek for fact via fixed inquiry and self-examination has continued all through these a few years since I discovered myself on the highway to Ramadan.”
In 1976, he once more returned to England and labored on an oilrig within the North Sea as a roustabout, and as a planning engineer for an oil firm in Aberdeen, Scotland. He additionally performed saxophone in varied bands at native institutions and was concerned in plenty of theatrical productions.
Then in 1981, Mr. Moore moved to the USA and established himself as a contract author, graphic artist, and award-winning video producer, and got down to wake us up with CSN
His mission lights him up. Elaborating on CSN’s exploration of the contributions of all of the cultures that make up the American family-including its confrontations, Mr. Moore says, “I’ve set out on one of the crucial attention-grabbing challenges of my life: Altering the world via poetry and inventive expression, one poet at a time.
“I’ve a present for assembly individuals, and, encouraging their inventive spirit.
“Every particular person should free themselves, and that may finest be performed by opening as much as their inventive spirit.”
He has written 4 books, two about tradition and training, and two books of poetry.
This avid reader, who averages “a e book per week,” all of which he finds have an affect on him, says in his autobiographical poem, “My Bio-Sphere” [Culture Shock Essays, p. 110]:
I learn like a fish who swims within the evening
I spend extra on books than I’ve such a proper
I meditate, cool out, and keep un-tight.
My desires are to study the center of the phrase
My hopes are to chase that winged hen
My endeavors, I pray, are to show and be heard.
Poem © 1999 Ian C. D. Moore
Based mostly in Oakland, California, since 1981, Mr. Moore lives together with his spouse Bridgette and daughter Jazmine.
Flash Evaluations of two books by Ian C. Dawkins Moore
Tradition Shock Essays [Jukebox Press, Oakland, CA, 1999; $13; ISBN 0-932693-04-0]
All of those essays are enlivened by Mr. Moore’s distinctive perspective. He says what’s on his thoughts, a thoughts alive to the multi-cultural potentialities and contributions of our occasions, as effectively its confusions, as he describes his travels in essays entitled: ‘Coming to America’; ‘See London and Die’; ‘The Street to Ramadan’ (about his conversion to Islam); ‘China: 6,000 years in 6 days’; ‘The Promised Land’ (his sojourn in Palestine); ‘Jamaica-No Drawback’ (his expertise throughout Hurricane Gilbert in 1988); and ‘Good Chap’ (an essay about his relationship together with his father).
The Shade of Jazz (Poetry) [Quilombo Enterprises ICM, Oakland, CA]
These poems, which document observations and memorable moments in Mr. Moore’s life, every written with an individual in mind–including poets, musicians, politicians, himself, and household, had been revealed in 2001 beneath the identify ‘Kweku Dawkins, author, poet, raconteur.’ The one I discovered attention-grabbing was a poem for the poet by the poet that displays a necessary side of himself, each as poet and particular person, that he needs to rejoice and acknowledge:
IT’S NOT WITH EYES OF TEARS (For Kweku D.)
It is not with eyes of tears
That I greet the brand new season’s dawning.
Nor do I chase like a butterfly the
Threads of a half-forgotten tapestry.
I sing no tune of ache to lift my muse,
For she calls to me in each temper,
A spirit mounted to my interior soul
—-I’ve solely to hear.
Poem: © 2001 Ian C. D. Moore (Kweku Dawkins).