Wednesday, January 23, 2008

empathy paper

Our interactions with other human beings are some of the most important occurrences within our daily lives. We all hold abilities that range from helping to mend someone to being the driving force that broke a person in the first place. It is because we’ve been entrusted with such power, that we also must deal with the strain of the haphazardly woven responsibilities of the deal/package. Understanding where and how the responsibilities to ourselves and to others come into play is a necessary component for understanding the most basic elements of empathy. Once one has a grasp of such things, the use of empathy can be properly put to use whenever one comes into contact with others.
The simplest definition of true Empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”. While there is a concrete meaning behind that word, its real essence and implications are much harder to pin down and implement. The majority of people possess many selfish tendencies when engaged in conversations with another person. The complete list would be a pointless venture, but some examples include focusing the conversation on you only, being overly cruel, and competing over verbal dominance. Such things prohibit any connection from being established and consequently there can be no presence of empathy; no common ground for it to exist on.
The issue of listening relates back to empathy. When most people have a friend or someone close to them they usually try to console them. However, normal methods used for consoling are not empathic in nature. They are instead trying to pacify the person, while the true empathic thing to do would be to help them explore their feelings. If one is aiming to have more empathy for others in life, then this would be the preferred thing to do, but as in everything else in this world, there are some drawbacks. While you do connect to the person on a deep level, you may end up only making their situation worst. Thus the best method you should use is logic – there are times when you will have to pacify someone to help them along and there will be times when true empathy is needed. More than likely, you will know when what is needed.
Touch is also an important element of interacting with others and empathy. It’s where the physical component comes into play. The presence of touch and the lack of it convey how one is feeling to those around them. For example, if someone does what want to be touched then may they jerk away, go stiff, or even curl their body inward onto itself – as if to minimize the amount of space they’re taking up. But when someone wants to be touched, or are just comfortable, their movements become infinitely more open. In contrast to curling up, they may move in rhythm to the other person, or they may even first engage in physical contact with another person first.

first draft of Meaning of Life – Final Reflection Paper

From this course, there has been so much that I’ve learned this semester. The wealth of knowledge makes the semester one of the very best I’ve ever had at School of the Future. Never before did I attend a class that asked me to look around me, as well as inside of myself and attempt to answer the great meaning of life question. Yet, after going through all of the course work, I have decided on an answer. The meaning of life is to experience everything and anything around you and to live as you see fit. I, after many months of work, came upon this answer after completing and learning many new skills. Of which, I will clarify through a few of the following lenses.

The first and foremost this that I would like to explore is the “Thoughtfulness of orientation to life” requirement. This class has allowed me to have some very detailed and cognitive conversations, the sort of which I thought that I would only have in college. These conversations not only happened in the classroom, but also took place outside with people I would never have guessed even bothered to take notice of things as well. And this is because I was always being asked to open my eyes to the way things are around me, notice them, and then share my viewpoints on the matter. I ended but becoming a more observant creature of thought. I was more willing to listen to other points of views, especially those that challenged my own views. They were the ones that I paid close attention to. I found being challenged either made me depend my thoughts and if I could not logically argue anymore, I went back and edited my viewpoint with the lessons that I learned.
Now I will discuss the “Writing” part of this class. This class has made me produce some very interesting ideas on paper that I never thought I could ever find the words for. While there was some chunks that I felt really I did not connect with, there were others that I felt resonated deep within me. I noticed this as I read through my snowball paper. The deeper I went into the writings the deeper and acute the ideas that I was expressing became. I espieally would like to point out my chunk about dreams. This was the chunk that I had the most connection with and therefore had the most pleasurable time writing. I remember my three-paragraph first draft of that piece. It really crappy, but it help
Last but not least, I got better at my Digital communication skills. Before entering this class, I played around with the idea of creating a blog. But I never actually went through with it. I thought that most of my thoughts would be pointless and worth putting up. Yet, once I created a blog and started to post my papers up on it, I had this strange feeling. The best word I can think of to name it would be enjoyment. I was happy that I had my own personal thoughts swimming out there for the world to see. It was almost as if they did matter. And because they did it taught me that before posting anything online, one should have put a lot of thought and effort into their work. Thus I made it a point to try and give most of what I wrote a proper effort. That way whatever I allowed myself to share was adding to the amount of intellect on the Internet. Not contributing to the mind numbing content that exist in overwhelming numbers.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

My contributions to the class

As of lately I've posted up comments on Crispin's, Yusuke's, and Wilbert's blogs. I'm trying to be as helpful as I can with my comments. As a matter-of-fact, I'm trying to help crispin find a way to sting all of his chunks into one.
Also I've most of the time been willing to share my thoughts with everyone in the class. I tried to keep the thought pool active when most of my classmates did not really bother - even if that meant the class discussion became one between two or three people.

"I get how you feel about touching, but what about people who are too touchy? I know as a fact that you've gotten mad at a certain person for the way that they did touch you (or rather didn't). So to add on the this paper, you may want to talk about that."

""Dreams are, in my opinion, a collaboration of the unconscious and the conscious, with the unconscious dominating one’s dreams. "

I agree with you perfectly. This is the same way I feel and I also think that for any dream that I have, its my job to try and realize them."

"I would like for you to talk ab out lucid dreaming some more. I think you can get really deep into it if you wanted to. You can write about if you believe in it and/or if it ever happened to you."

"Hmm. You're intro is more towards dreams. Is that the theme that is most common through your work? If not then I would suggest that you go and add something that can include your other parts - it would make it easier for you to then tie everything together."

Monday, January 21, 2008

Most of the first paper in one nice long post

As the title says, this is most of the first paper. Its only missing chunk seven and the conclusion. Both of thoses are not good yet.

The awareness that has been bestowed upon us is an amazing thing. Its sheer complexity has been the focus of some of the greatest philosophical movements all throughout time, and so in my Insight into Daily Life class, we’ve decided to tackle this phenomenal occurrence in an attempt to see for ourselves what the are limit and depth consciousness possess. Through the process of introspection, I’ve indeed gained some valuable insight on the essence of my own existence. In, turn, I’m now able to see the trends that reside within by using R.D. Lang’s argument as a focal point of reference. In the end, knowing oneself is a truly important concept to grasp in order to even begin to comprehend the meaning of life, or life in general.
Conclusion: After all is said and done, R.D Lang’s arugment, while fairly valid, one must use their own logic and experiences to figure out how to live their life. Lang only offers us a chance to reveal what he considers to be our true selves, but this is in no way the only path to discovering such a thing.

The task is to notice and understand the world around us in its entirety. But we can't do this. We only can grasp bits and pieces of what is really there.
Adults have lost their awareness of their inner thoughts. And in terms of the body, they keep enough sensations to move correctly and to allow the most basic feelings for survival. But from that they have nothing else. So much so, that much extensive levels of un-learning is needed for anyone who wishes to see the world a new.
The way that things are now expresses a sad destruction of our experience, the consequence of the separation from our experiences. “What we think of as normal is nothing more than a creation of repression, denial, and many other actions of demolition.” And it’s this kind of “normal” that tends to look down on others. The normally alienated people, because they act like everyone else, is labeled as sane, while others outside of this are bad or mad.
“The state of being asleep, unconscious, of being out of one's mind, is the state of the normal person.”
We act in accordance to how we see things thus if our experiences are destroyed, our behavior will be destructive. We also will have lost our true self – our humanity. People can destroy humanity in each other because we are not separated from one another. Every action we do to others changes them in some way.
We act on what we see the world as, and this rule is even true when things conceal themselves from us rather than shows us its true colors. We are not capable of thinking about the actions that are bringing us to this dangerous thin line. We are less than what we can be because what we think is smaller than what we know, which when it boils down to it, is smaller than what really is there.
However, there is a chance, a possibility when a new baby is born. Retrieval may take place. Every new kid is a new light that can stand out in the darkness. Who are we to say that it is hopeless?

I personally find what the author of this piece is saying to be true. We are all taught to focus on only a few things in life, thus causing us to lose sight our what we can feel. Now that I'm in between being a child and an adult I do see me losing parts of myself. But from what I've noticed taking place I must ask this question: How do we go about regaining what we've lost? Especially when we are constantly bombarded with the forces that caused us to be this way in the first place. The best answer that I've been able to create on my own is that we must consciously take a step back, and remind ourselves to look at what’s around us. And then, after we've done that, we must try our best to analyze what things truly are. But of course, this is easier said than done, and we can never fully grasp reality to its fullest degree, but at least we've done something rather than nothing. If we do this we've taken the first steps. And if enough of us do this, we may be able to give this world a better version of ourselves that it so readily deserves.
“We act in accordance to how we see things thus if our experiences are destroyed, our behavior will be destructive.”
This is the line that I feel that, if for nothing else, must be understood by all those who read it. And it acts as the backbone to my statement above. It is the reason why shifting our outlook on the world is so important. Because how we act and what we do relies so much on what we perceive, changing perception affects everything with our lives. Hence why one must make sure that they are aiming for something more positive in order to receive positive thoughts and actions. If not then they are only leading themselves down the ladder that should be meant to climb upward. For as bad as we are now, we've yet to yet rock bottom, so we must keep our heads at least above water and keep moving forward to prevent that.

When I was taking part in the various sensory awareness exercises, my attention was brought to many new experiences. For example, during the exercise in which we had to find our way back to the class blindfolded, I noticed how many other senses became enhanced when we lost the use of our eyes. My ability to hear took its place as my main source of information, along with my memories of the area I was in. In addition, there was a nagging feeling I had. I was more aware of things around me just from their relation to my body, however even if nothing was near me, it merely felt like I would walk into something. It is hard to put into words but it was as if the air was more active and my skin was noticing the signals. The last item of interest was that I felt some sort of tingling in my eyes. In addition to this, either in my mind’s eye or in the back of my eyelids I swear I saw when I paid attention, little golden sparks dancing around. I’ve noticed them before, and they only seem to be there if the tingling sensation is present. And as many times as I’ve seen them, I never really stopped and asked why they were there. I suppose that I just looked over them as useless information. 

After doing the sensory awareness exercises, I do find Laing’s points to hold true in many aspects. It is very important to be in the here and now. This has the potential to greatly increase the value of our lives.
However, I also I think that there is a greater advantage to be gained from having enough wisdom to know when to be physically aware and when to be the so-called “floating mind with a body”. In the world that we live in, there are times and events that call for certain mental responses from us. For example, school. Some activities need for you to physically aware but the majority of them calls for us to be making good use of our mental being. Even as I am righting this now, I can feel some parts of my body, but overall my awareness is rooted within my thoughts. But in times when one is just walking down the street or waiting for something, it may be better just to relax and take in all that is around you, instead of just being trapped in your head.

My reaction to Lang before starting this unit was that I felt he was saying some very insightful thoughts. His ideas were not shocking to me because I’ve read articles dealing with similar topics, however he was the first to discuss alienation to such a degree. 
My reaction to Lang now that I’ve done this unit is that of understanding. As I said before, I got what he was saying. I recognized his theory for what it was and then carried on. But doing this unit really brought it home for me. I gained a deeper grasp of his words. I believe that Lang’s point of our forgetting of childhood – not only the content but also the flavor is for the most part true. The nature of memories is that they become blurred and muddy over time – a form of mental corrosion. We are then left with bits and pieces, sometimes not even sure if they really happened or if our minds had created it for no apparent reason. I myself have memories of dreams that seemed so real that the barrier between real life and them has broken down. And this is how it is for my childhood. I am certain of some memories in their realness, yet there are others that I have to question.
Pictures play a great role in helping keep a hold of memories. They serve as great anchors of thought, allowing us to recapture what was lost. I remember, as a part of this project, going through boxes of pictures with my mother. Almost each one seemed to bring back a memory of me from the deepest depths. Her face just lit up. Yet for me, only a few really brought me back to an event, but I was able to remember little chunk of things in the pictures be it a toy or a place, so everything was not completely dead and dull.
Along with pictures, scents and hearing stories about yourself as a child can help as well. Scent is said to be one of the senses most tied to memory. There are certain smells that as soon as I pick them up in my head, they invoke a particular feeling or takes me back to something I’ve experienced long ago. I’m willing to bet that everyone has at least one scent they can identify with in some way. And going further than memory, some scents, new and old, can make us feel safe and comfortable or can make us feel disgusted and awkward. As for hearing stories, sometimes I do remember the event. Having the story being told to me can help to guide the memory, but most of the time it just feels strange. Take, for example, my mother’s tales of how bad I apparently was when I was little, like 5 years of age and younger. She likes to tell people about how embarrassing I was when she would take me with her when she went out shopping and to me it feel seems like a different people. I have no conscience recollection of me beating any male who dared to speak to her and when I picture it in my mind, using what she described I’m merely watching a little version of myself running around attacking people – it is all in third person. And honestly, I just can’t see myself, the way I am now, doing such things.

In R.D. Lang’s paper he said that we don’t pay attention to our dreams. And if we were to be aware of them, it would help us in waking life. I do believe that he is correct. I think that dreams are windows to deepest thoughts. Being able to understand them would help us become more of who we want to be. But most people are not able to do this. Dreams are treated as something that is not real. Many just continue with their lives just ignoring them. Our society on a whole is one that thinks of anything that does not give concert evidence as unimportant. However, dreams are apart of our realities. Everything that we experience is. Thus it is illogical for anyone to rid himself or herself of a piece of life them don’t like or wish to understand. 

Lucid dreaming is an important tool for reaching the sub-conscious. Lucid dreaming is when you becoming aware that you are dreaming as you sleep. When it happens, one can watch how things play out closely or them could even control what takes place. The reason why it is such an important tool is that dreams are said to be extensions of your own thoughts – if you’re able to interact with them then you can gain a new perspective on yourself. “Dreams are the thread that leads us to and from ourselves.”
There are many techniques that can be used to experience lucid dreaming. One popular prerequisite is keeping a dream journal. A journal helps to keep track of dreams and progress. It also helps with your ability to recall dreams. However, my own use of a journal of this sort was short lived. I tried to keep it but I found it difficult to repeatedly go to it. Getting to lucid dreaming itself, my favorite method is the use of something called Wake-initiation of lucid dreams (WILD). It is described as “when the sleeper enters REM sleep with unbroken self-awareness directly from the waking state”(wikipedia). Basically you carry your awareness from when you’re awake to when you’re sleeping. To me it is a bit of a shoot or miss method. By this I mean that it is possible to have a lucid dreaming, but since most of the time I miss that goal and end up in something else. I’ve seen hypnagogic images and felt sleep paralysis and the popular vibrations at a rarer extent. Because of all of the times I’ve messed up and botched the lucid dreams, I have spent a lot of time playing with these things. The hypanagogic images I’ve seen have been fun. I sometimes see patterns of light and it even can seem as if I’m looking around my room through closed eyes. As for the sleep paralysis, this is my far the most interesting occurrence. It is said that the scientific reason behind why it happens is that chemicals are released that causes the body to almost ‘shut down’ so that it does not act out your dreams. But when you regain (or rather keep) your awareness as you fall asleep you can find yourself in that state. You are there, fully alert to what is going around you, yet you can move. Usually when I first get there I’m calm. I take a look around and try to keep relaxed. But at some point I always start to think of things that can end up freighting me. It’s as if my thoughts go on a rampage, running through everything they can. The next thing I know I become alert of something that was not next to me before.
It feels like a presence. Most of the time it is simply there. Possibly just watching me. Yet it is an uneasy presence. I’m not comfortable having it around. There have been times that I’ve tried to talk to it. I wanted to see if it would answer me back somehow. Normally it would just not reply but there was time once I asked if it was god or something of that realm and things went over badly. The presence seemed to become malicious and hypanagogic images flooded my mind. There was so much fear in me that I went mad with trying to regain control over my body and since then I never ever asked that question again. I’ve actually had a friend of mine chastise me for even trying to ask it that.
It would seem that I’m not alone in feeling this presence or whatever it may be. I’ve recently started the book “The Varieties of Religious Experience” by William James. On page 71 he gives an account from an informant who wrote about his encounter with something like what I’ve felt.
"Quite early in the night I was awakened…I felt as if I had been aroused intentionally, and at first thought some one was breaking into the house… I then turned on my side to go to sleep again, and immediately felt a consciousness of a presence in the room, and singular to state, it was not the consciousness of a live person, but of a spiritual presence. This may provoke a smile, but I can only tell you the fact as they occurred to me. I do not know how to better describe my sensations than by simply stating that I felt a consciousness of a spiritual presence…. I felt also at the same time a strong feeling of superstitious dread, as if something strange and fearful were about to happen."
As I read this passage and those around it, felt as if vindicated in someway. As if I was not crazy, or rather if I am, then at least I am not the only one.

Yet that was not the only time I’ve felt fear during sleep paralysis. When I’m in state, if I’m not dealing with the presence, I’m thinking about random things and trying to experiment with what I can do. I find that generally my ability to visualize becomes very sharpened. I also notice that I can let my mind wonder and sooner or later I fall asleep. But if I try to let go of my grasp on my body, I may start to feel the vibrations. For me at first they are nice and calm. They feel gentle. But I normally have a hard time letting go. I have to force myself to unless I’m really tired. Tiredness seems to bring the vibrations at a quicker pace. But after they’ve come and I let myself drift into them they take over. It really does feel like being engulfed in them. And they don’t really cut through my body. They always enter from my head or feet and travels in almost vertical lines. The vibrations can get so bad that I always get too scared to continue. They really are unsettling, as many times as I’ve felt them.

An interesting question about dreams is whom are they happening to? Are them happening to you or someone else and you are just watching, as if they are movies? It is my firm belief that dreams happen to you, not something, or anyone else. People who say that their dreams happen to something else just don’t wish to talk responsibility or accept that part of their existence. 
If I was to say that the experiences that I described earlier never happened to me but to something that is not me, I would be lying to myself. There is no way for me to deny them. I was fully aware of my surroundings as they took place so I can’t say I was not there. Also they have left such a lasting impression upon me that if I were not to accept them, I would only be stoning myself.
Before entering this unit, as you should be already able to tell, I’ve had a lot of interesting experiences with dreams. I’ve always been mindful of them. I collected books and scoured the Internet for information about dreams. I think it is because of my time investment to the subject that lead me to be able to have positive results with lucid dreaming and just remembering the dreams that I’ve had. However, I noticed that I couldn’t force it. When I do, the average amount of dreams I can purposely manipulate drops. I have to let them happen at a near random basis. However the best way of going about things for me would going to sleep with the intention of remembering or anything else that I wish to do.

The unit we are now in is mainly about thinking. We’ve explored how we normally think, how we can think about our thinking and why it is that we do that. This was all in response to one of R.D. Lang’s arguments, in which he states that most of us who think that we’re smart really are not, unless if is in self-interest. He goes on to say that a lot of our so-called ‘original’ thoughts are not original but really are conformist in nature. I personal reaction to this is that I understand his basis for that theory. It does make sense and it does hold true for many people. When I took at a topic such as politics and see the ideas that exist, I see that most of them are merely in circulation. They reuse so many thoughts that others have already stated that it is extremely hard to find something that is ‘fresh’ to the whole situation. And as for your good thoughts being mostly in your favor I believe this is correct as well. We as humans do have an inert sense of selfishness in all of us. It is fully understandable that we make sure ourselves are fully taken care of before looking out for others around us.
One of the issues we explored was how automatic thinking works. Automatic thinking is when we act on the first thought that pops up in your head, in response to something. For example, if I were to say, “Think of blue” your most likely initial thought would either be of the color blue or something relating to it. We don’t have a real sense of control over it. Automatic thinking then goes deeper in that we live most of our lives in an automatic manner. A lot of things that we do are merely done without any thought about why we’re doing it. This form of thought can be a useful to those in positions of power. Since automatic thinking is one of the most popular ways of thinking, it benefits the controlling party because the majority would not stop to ask questions.
In addition to this we also usually have second thoughts. The notion of second thoughts seems to be a counter-balance. Where our initial thoughts are, for the most part, selfish and egoistical at times, second thoughts take into condition of the situation for more of what it really is.
One way to remedy automatic thinking is to become more metacognitive in daily life. Metacognition is defined as being aware of one’s own thought processes. In class we were given mind puzzles to allow us to experience how metacongition is implemented. Our teacher would pose a riddle to us and we would try to get the answer. After a few minutes of contemplation we would then write down how we went about solving the problem. One riddle was as follows: There is a team of scientists that were on frozen tundra. They discovered a male human body stuck in the ice. They then set out to free the body and before they were done, one of scientists yells out “It’s Adam.” And she was right. How come? A few of us instantly yelled out whatever answer popped out into our heads – once again, automatic thought processes are work there – but we were all wrong. Thus in reaction to that, we retreated into our minds and thought about things on our own. At the end we identified some of the strategies that we used in an attempt to find the answer. We found that a lot of us went back to the beginning of the riddle then systematically broke it into parts and went through each, one at a time. We called this the complete search of the narrow. Others had visualized the situation or contextualized it in order to “understand the little by understanding the big it’s apart of.”

First draft of 2nd paper ~ three paragraphs

History Paper on Empathy
Our interactions with other human beings are some of the most important occurrences within our daily lives. We all hold abilities that range from helping to mend someone to being the driving force that broke a person in the first place. It is because we’ve been entrusted with such power, that we also must deal with the strain of the haphazardly woven responsibilities of the deal/package. Understanding where and how the responsibilities to ourselves and to others come into play is a necessary component for understanding the most basic elements of empathy. Once one has a grasp of such things, the use of empathy can be properly put to use whenever one comes into contact with others.

The simplest definition of true Empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”. While there is a concrete meaning behind that word, its real essence and implications are much harder to pin down and implement. The majority of people possess many selfish tendencies when engaged in conversations with another person. The complete list would be a pointless venture, but some examples include focusing the conversation on you only, being overly cruel, and competing over verbal dominance. Such things prohibit any connection from being established and consequently there can be no presence of empathy; no common ground for it to exist on.

Touch is also an important element in interacting with others. It’s where the physical component comes into play. The presence of touch and the lack of it convey how one is feeling to those around them. For example, if someone does what want to be touched then may they jerk away, go stiff, or even curl their body inward onto itself – as if to minimize the amount of space they’re taking up. But when some wants to be touched, or are just comfortable, their movements become infinitely more open. In contrast to curling up, they may move in rhythm to the other person, or they may even first engage in physical contact with another person first.