Week 5: Notes, Cosmos & Final Thoughts on Connection

HOW TO TAKE A WALK IN THE WOODS:
-We've grown up as scientists
-It's all about noticing and observing the little things
-Connection to Nature
-Viewing things around you in a different way - a scientific way - counting things
-WHY not HOW
-The mission is to be present and aware of your surroundings.

FULL CATASTROPHE LIVING : MEDITATION
-We are always on the go
-Constantly organizing and making a to do list
-We need to come back down to Earth and connect to nature
-Staying in a still, neutral position and breathing
-Willingness to be mindful
-Breath
-You become antsy and over it quickly, but this is a good thing and you have to embrace it, it's a habit and will dissolve over practice and familiarity.

FULL CATASTROPHE LIVING: USING THE WISDOM OF YOUR BODY AND MIND TO FACE STRESS:
-If you ignore your problems, more stress
-Stress Reduction Program
-"Good sailors don't control the weather, they learn to work w/ it"
-Catastrophe is our own perception of catastrophe
-Observing is the key to awareness
-no judgment or criticisms. must have trust and faith and patience.

THE COSMOS
We inform our universe, just as our universe informs us. I guess I didn't really connect these dots until we really dove into this final week of class. It's funny to think that I am really right back where I started in the first place, with my theme of connection. In a way, this theme parallels that of our universe.  Especially by incorporating my spiritual WOK (meditation, connection), with my scientific WOK (cyberspace and it's role in our society), I am able to see just how connected to each other we really are. I think I realized that our selves as humans make up our society, and our society strives for a deeper understanding of how things really are - the cosmos. We are the scientists, desperately wanting the answers, often times arguing and striving to discovery a new theory. With advancements in our modern world happening at a rapid pace, we have to be and are game for pretty much everything and anything. We are spiritually and scientifically connected now more than ever, and ready to discover new things even more.


THE SOCIETY:
"We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day so let's start living." _ Michael Jackson. Our society is just a larger pool of many selves. We use these selves to connect to other selves, and through this connection we react and take action. A lot of voices are stronger than just one.


THE SELF:
"I am me and I am here" - Kristen Linklater. Having the full sense of self is curtail to understand not just who we are but the ways of human nature. It's through this sense of self that we can connect to others in our society.


Thank you so much, Mr. King and the rest of the Summer Session Self Society and Cosmos gang! I truly learned so much from you and I can't wait to continue this learning in Paths to the Present in the fall. Have a great rest of the summer and stay connected!!

Week 5 Notes; (Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, God is Not Dead, Parallel Worlds, Proof of Heaven, Quantum Enigma)

Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives:

-       ­Mark Everette  goes on a quest to learn about his dad, Hugh

-       Hugh famous for theory that involves Parallel Universe

-       Atheism

-       Virtually no relationship with son

-       Our decision making schools are split into 2 universes

-       Admiration of Albert Einstein and his theories

-       All about splitting things down into atoms (ex of pencil)

-       Photons : light particles

-       Double Split Experiment.

-       Atoms can represent us or pretty much anything

-       Bohr theory: everything revolves around laws of physics an quantum physics

-       Copenhagen Interpretation.

-       Universe is constantly expanding

-       Different theories (big bang/religion)

God is Not Dead

-Science is able to prove that God is real

-Despite religions being different, there is a common belief shared with them all in that God is an entity that exists

-Our purpose is of higher domain of consciousness

-Morals, fate, purposes

-Claims to have proof but fails to mention what the proof is

-Creationism v. Evolution

-Didn’t really understand this… I understand it, but I maybe just disagree with it too much to see how it could be considered valid at all.

Parallel Worlds (BOOK)

-Edwin Hubble

-Telescope put 20^th century on the map

-“The Big Freeze”

-WMAP: the universe  shown at 380,000 years due to measuring the distances between certain planets in space and time

-Universe is always in a state of expansion

-Multiverse Theory: hypothesis that more than one universe can exist at one time, including different times (past, present, future)

Proof of Heaven:

-Different occasions of perceived deaths

-Bright light is heaven

-Jesus?

-DMT

-The only time people hear about heaven is when they go to a funeral

Quantum Enigma

-Require outside thinking

-Black holes

-Einstein

-Inflation

-Opposes fatalistic view of universe

-Goes against religion in that regard

-Dark Matter

-1/10 chance that the universe would’ve allowed life? Whatever that means

-Scientists still don’t understand it

Week 4 Notes: Nature of Human Nature, Jaques Lacan, Marshall McLuhan.

Human Quest- The Nature of Human Nature

-Why are we so alike?

-Culture isn’t the only thing that shapes us, we share human nature (common heritage resides in the brain)

-Quest from roots, beginnings, evolution – common birthright

-Our ability to learn language cannot be helped due to how we are wired

-Adaptations are evolutionary birthright we inherit in genes

-Williams Syndrome; socially articulate, though she has a mental disorder. Cannot visually see things as they are. “Drawing an Elephant” – cannot see it or draw, though language is perfectly fine which shows a very different few of brain, causing functions that are inconsistent.

-Mothers can communicate with newborns by sounds, the way people speak with adults and babies are different (high pitch, low pitch, slow, fast) – in all cultures mothers all do this with universal melody.

-Do babies know the difference? The language shouldn’t manner.. in music not lyrics.

-Babies can control how long it plays best on checkerboard.. proving babies prefer “Mother” version of speaking

-MICROSCOPE AND BUTTERFLY NET

-How did living things change over time?

-Alfred Wallace- flying to Indonesia to collect insects, in daily contact with nature. He realized the answer and told Charles Darwin. Darwin saw conclusions earlier and didn’t publish them. After the letter, he did,

-“The Origin of Species”

-Evolution by natural selection, first Darwinian revolution.

-Darwin disagreed that human evolution and our bodies and brains are built for solutions, “package deal”

-Who we are and why we act the way we do.

-Modern world is all products of adaptations some are by-products.

-Facial Expressions are how we communicate all around  the world.

-Sound/Facial Expressions v. Language.

Jaques Lacan: A Graphic Guide

-Philosopher, studied medicine (20s)

-Interested in paranoia and pursued the case of a woman who attempted to stab another woman, an actress.

-Aimee’s rational for this crime was “a punishment of her own self”

-Narcism, image, ideal

-“Mirror phase”- children come to take hold of recognition of themselves from the outside.

-Ego is made up of an alienating identification

-(initial lack of completeness in nervous system)

-Humans born premature, we mirror as a type of survival technique

-Surrealist Movement – Picasso’s DR.

-Personality of body as an attack shows that is who the attacker would rather be or wants to be… stems form insecurity.

Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage

-Societies have always been molded by media

-People communicate than by the content of communication.

-Connectedness.

-Media is taking over.

-Printing created separate viewed individuals with fixed p.o.v.

-Printing established individual and brought intellectual property as a private property.

-Media in technology dictates we share, causing problems of copyright and ownerships.

-Stem from self.

Week 3: Notes (Black Athena, Social Brain, Boyer Ch. 2, Cohn 3-5)

The Black Athena:

-Parthenon being rebuilt  

-Athens is described as the most civilized society that ever existed

-“For the People” – Image of Greece true to history? How is image of creators from Athens and Greece able to showcase racism and anti-Semitism? (1987)

-Did they rewrite history books?

-Scholars don’t care or want to focus on racism and anti-Semitism.

- The search for roots is the search for identity, and everything is mixed.

-Hardly evidence to support this claim that they were racist.

-Uses hieroglyphics and Herodotus and says its lies

-Relies on myth.

-IndoEuropean undiscovered language- classics and researches undercover texts from that time, they began to see we all have Egyptian roots

-No quote from the author of the book.

-Acroteri proves that author is lying about sources.

-Mixed with what?

-African/European genes. African are dominant, European are receptive

-Images show black Egyptians on throne.

-Cultural creativity of mixture is the modern belief system.

Human Quest: The Social Brain

-People are interested in other people.

-UTOPIA failed because people couldn’t get along.

-Social brain didn’t evolve to live in utopian, urban world, it evolved to live in a world of nature.

-Animals and humans are different, human transformed world animals just lie in it and it’s all because our brain has the ability to make connections.

-Our brains show we are interested in actions of others.

-We cannot go back to hunter/gatherer.

-Terry can’t recognize mother or famous people or even HERSELF.

-Face recognition is everything and it starts when were infants.

-Baby Boot Camp-voice, face, eyes.

-Joint attention- the way we look at things showcases inner monologue and changes in reaction

-Understanding other minds doesn’t develop until children are about 4

-Gossiping.

-Facial expressions showcase inner monologue and showcase emotions.

-Charlie and the 4 sweets.

-Autism social breakdown of mind and do not read behavior based on others thought.

-William syndrome children (opposite of autism)

-Birds have wings, we have a module for social thought.

Boyer Ch. 2:

-Exploring the idea of supernatural concepts.

-The questions are of intuition.

-Good/Bad concepts are perhaps not based on the idea of what is familiar to us.

-Maybe this is why religion is comforting to most people?

-We feel that one list is “bad” and another is “better” but how do we know?

-We have intuitions about which ones are good because they are built according to particular mental recipes.

-If we understand what these recipes are, what ingredients are put together and how they are processed, we will understand why some types of concepts are found in so many religious traditions are why others are not.

-Is religion just strangeness?

-Zygoon chart.

-Ebony Trees chart.

(examples of how we link together rational thoughts)

-Is it all just supernatural? Such notions crop up in convos all over the world. But it is different in the West than the East.

-The precise effects defined and described by intention.

-the idea of Theological correctness.

-The main idea: are Religious myths just silly tales?

-Believe what you want to believe, evidence or not.

Cohn Ch. 3

-Vedic Indians.

-Indo-Aryans vs. Iranians.

-“Land of 7 Rivers”

-Rig Veda history was written around 600 BC for the use of a sacrificial cult, content was largely based on widespread popular beliefs

-Religion, hymns, culture.

-Indra- supreme lord.

Cohn Ch. 4:

-Zoroastrians

-There are only OPINIONS on when this was achieved… not actual fact?

-Took place in what is believed to be Western Afghanistan./Kazakstan.

-Sacred Scriptures.

-Dogs were loved/wolves evil- DOGS DECODED!

-Sacrificed.

-Believed in a future prophet and savior.

Cohn Ch. 5:

-Cosmic war: conviction that a mighty power that is spiritual is locked with another power that is set on destroying life and changing the world into a rather chaotic one.

-The Avesta tells of a lesser god, Tishtrya, who fights and defeats a chaotic monster. He does not care about the Iranian people.

-Zoroaster has a tradition and includes the idea of a divine warrior in the form of a future savior…

(THIS IS A PATTERN WE ARE TENDING TO SEE)

-Apocalyptic faith. 

Chapter 2: Current View of the Self

The image below represents the combination of the past and the present. Using a picture from my youth combined with a picture taken of myself earlier this year, it's astounding to see how different I am! There are the rather mundane things, my skin appears lighter, and I've obviously grown into my face. However, I notice a clear difference in my personality by just looking at these pictures. The little girl is shy, looking at the camera (probably because she is forced to), waiting for it to be over, barley smiling. As a woman behind her, I stand with undying confidence, wearing sunglasses and posing in a public restaurant, clearly flaunting and slightly obnoxiously basking in the glow of my sense of self.

  

This video is my second piece. I am performing one of Portia's monologues from Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." The theme I wanted to explore here was the "thought," or that of the internal monologue. In other words, what is the character thinking during each line? When does her thought change? Where is she in said moment? To make the work aesthetically pleasing, I decided to use Photobooth's effects. These effects also represent the different mindset the actor explores when creating the monologue. The top sections, representing the Id and the Ego, the bottom sections representing the Superego and (most importantly), the grounded aspects of the physical body. 

                                            MY SPIRITUAL WOK: MEDITATION 

"Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there - buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day." - Deepak Chopra.

I was astounded when I meditated. For only 15 minutes, I sat, legs folded, in absolute, silence. What I thought would be a rather seamless experience ended up being something entirely different. I connected within myself and began to realize every flaw that I wish to change about myself. "I'm too this, I'm too that, I'm not enough of this, I'm not enough of that." As the tears began to overflow, I realized that my thoughts were influencing my experience. I was choosing to believe negative thoughts, making this meditation much more stressful and dramatic than it needed or should've been in the first place. With this change of mind, and heart, the remaining 4 minutes of meditation transported me to a rather peaceful place. I began to think of my friends, my family, my passions. It's as if my life flashed before my eyes. I don't know if 
there's an exact science to meditation, but I really enjoyed my experience. 

This image was one I took while on vacation in Thailand, last summer. It is the Thai Buddha, a figure of undying peace and strength in which they worship: 

                                               MY ADDED MODULE: 

I added this section to my module. The blue pipe cleaners represent my own self's connection to my cosmic cousins, as represented by the grounded clay. The yellow pipe cleaners, if the observer is viewing the module from the back, represents our influences in society that stem from the past (representing from Egypt and Mesopotamia as seen in Religion, Culture, and Art.) If the observer would move around and view this object from the front, they would see pink pipe cleaners stemming from the top representing our future. My goal for this model was to incorporate the past, present and future in relation to the self, proving that we cannot, as a society, as our selves, move on into the future without influences of the past. They define us as a people. To return to my theme from the first chapter, we are all connected, and in no clearer was is this connection depicted than by this module! 

Notes: Consciousness, Dogs Decoded and Religion Explained

The Human Quest of  Consciousness:

-“I think therefore I am” – Rene Decart (he split body and soul. Physical vs. mental)

-What and where is consciousness?

-the core of our beings exist independently from our bodies.

(Hinduism belief is reincarnation)

-Mirror self recognition tests for children.

-The brain is at the core of all of this, obviously, through lots of neurons and how they are connected. 

-Tasting receptors link physical act of the tongue to a mental neuron, scientists call this a representation  (a pattern of concentrated neurons)

-Neuroself- state of brain constructed by ingredients leading to subjectivity

-Cartesian Theatre: life is a private movie staring… our individual selves.

-You are conscious of what you want to b conscious of, we see what we want to see (red balloons signal subjectivity of color)

-Consciousness derives from sensory receptors, man who lost arm in motorcycle accident still feels sensations in his “phantom limb”

-Emotions and facial expressions are from changes in central nervous system, usually not conscious of this, they are innate activities of brain and evolution.

-Hypnosis:  a split in conscious awareness or dissociation, same with multiple personality disorder.

-QWERTY, we build off of evolution, adding new modules as we need them

-Binding everything, consciousness is in harmonies of the brain.

-When we dream, our sense of self returns as we star in our nighttime adventure, brain is able to retain self of self despite  absence of sensory input.

-“I feel therefore I am” feelings are the result of consciousness 

MAIN IDEA: Our feelings and emotions revolving our sense of self not only derive from sensory receptors in our brains, but through our innate ability of consciousness. 

DOGS DECODED:

-We treat dogs as members of family

-Scientists are now attempting to understand dogs and our bonds as humans with them using eye tracking technology.

-Dogs can sense human moods and emotions through facial expressions.

-The left side of the face showcases more emotions, dogs are the only animal species that look to the left, proving we as humans have an intense emotional relationship with them.

-Different barks represent different wants and needs and emotions and humans can tell based on barks.

-biochemical signature through oxytocin which helps mother have positive bond with newborn baby and this plays a similar bond with dogs and their owners (DNA tests show boosts of this in both the owners and their dogs)

-Where did dogs come from? There are so many different breeds. Genetics show evolutionary DNA sequences linking dogs to their ancestors. (Grey wolf)

-Domestication changed everything 100,000 years is when it probably started, and our relationship with dogs go back thousands of years, when we were hunter/gatherers.

-Influence of dogs on our development is pivotal, humans would still be hunter/gathers, making civilization impossible.

-Dogs may think more like humans more like any other animal including the Chimpanzee

-Dogs responding to pointing/glances proves social intelligence.

-Betsy knows words and responds to them.

-Dogs and wolves are like 98% the same, so is the reason why dogs respond to humans is because they are so domesticated? –(experiment with raising wolf cubs as puppies proves that is isn’t an issue of domestication but genetics… puppies are responsive whereas these wolves are not)

-Scientists in Russia breeding foxes proving domestication links with genetics and compares tame v. aggressiveness.

-Tamer foxes produces less adrenaline levels, genetically.

 Main Idea: Dogs are the most successful animals to have in domestication, due of their evolutionary, genetic abilities and skill of reading human behavior. 

Religion Explained:

-What is origin of religion? 

-Pascal begins with vignettes showcasing religion as nothing but ridiculous folly to some, but comprehension of God and the universe to others.

-Pascal showcases religion as just another set of difficult but manageable problems. 

-Religion is to be found in the human mind.

-Religion explains things to us (people created religion to explain puzzling natural phenomena, dreams, prescience, the origin of things, why there is evil and suffering)

-Religion provides comfort (makes mortality less unbearable, allays anxiety and makes for a comfortable world, provides social order, perpetuates a social order, supports morality.)

-People will believe anything.

-Catholicism v. Hinduism (such groups are often described as having animistic or tribal religion... which virtually means nothing)

-Christians, Buddhist, Baptist.. it goes deeper in how people conceive of supernatural agents and what they think these agents are like or what they can do, in the morality this derived from religious beliefs, in the rituals performed and in many other ways.    

-Religion is about the existence of casual powers and nonobserverable entities and agencies.

-Buddhism- reincarnation. 

-Salvation is not always a central preoccupation.

-Official religion is not the whole of religion. 

-You can also have religion without having religion.

-You can have religion without faith/faith w/out religion.

-**Relation was created to explain puzzling mental phenomena and make people feel better about themselves, give people a purpose or something to believe in

-The mind as a bundle of explanation machines 

-The urge to explain in the universe is not the origin of religion 

-The need to explain particular occurrences seems to lead to strangely baroque constructions 

-You cannot explain religious concepts if you d onto describe how they are used by individual minds 

-A different angle: Religious concepts are probably influenced by the Brain's inference systems producing explanations without our being aware of it.

-Religious concepts do not always provide reassurance or comfort.

-Deliverance from mortality is not quite the universal longing we often assume.

-Religious concepts are indeed connected to human emotional systems, which are connected to life-threatening circumstances.

-Our emotional programs are an aspect of evolutionary heritage, which may explain how they affect religious concepts

-Religion cannot be explained by the need to keep society together or to preserve morality because these needs do not create institutions

-Social interaction and morality are indeed crucial to how we acquire religion and how it influences' people's behavior.

-The study of social mind can show us why people have particular expectations about social life and morality and how these expectations are connected to supernatural concepts.

Main Idea: Religion simply exists to provide the conscious mind with comfort and has no rules, it keeps society together, and links an idea of morality with faith. Basically, religion isn't one singular thing or bullet. Cultural concepts come into play and it is always different because we have different minds. That's why we all disagree and have so many questions about the topic of religion.