The Botany of Desire

• The Botany of Desire By Michael Pollan
  A Plant’s-Eye View of the World

I took a break from my attempts in understanding the skeptics’ point of view. I found a new book that taught me deeper on our freedom of thought and where we direct our desires. This book is a scientific, creative writing by Pollan which thoroughly explains different kinds of botanic that link our aesthetic preferences. He divides the book into four kinds of desires or pleasures that we crave for: 1. Apple (Sweetness) 2. Tulip (Beauty) 3. Marijuana (Intoxication) 4. Potato (Control) This book so far has strongly reminded me on how to think more selflessly and to realize how nature does not make an impact in our lives but we make an impact in theirs. However, that does not make us have the bigger authority over them at all; in fact, it is the contrary. They make us survive according to their needs. We have evolved from planting and eating vegetation into finding beauty in them. We have helped them to evolve, by cooperating their existence as our necessity to survive. We have evolved for them, much more than an apple has, over the centuries that we have lived. Apples may have increased its species but only because we gained more need for tastes, and we gained the need to travel and grow population. This book is very educational and not at all challenging for a girl like me who barely passed Biology in high school. It teaches even more than just the scientific evolution of botany and I truly enjoy reading it..
Just like how Paulos explained in Irreligion of the cycle of certainty (probabilities that expand into more possible solutions, which then are eliminated into more intricate probabilities, expanding into even more possiblities..), Pollan’s chapter on The Apple, Sweetness talks about a similar theory. Human cultures experiment with all kinds of possible genetic effects in apples – sweet, sour, bitter, variety of skin colors, softer texture, and so on; the variety are endlessly available and frankly unstoppable. Even without our intention, apples will eventually travel and breed on its own pace of evolution. This need for variety, grows more ideas and newer desires for our taste buds. But our world today suffer from globally dwindling environments. The only way we can continue to have ‘preferences’ for aesthetics is to simply preserve variety whether or not the variety will suit our preferences. As long as variety is still available, apples will continue to evolve, which then eventually, we will find ourselves enjoying. Our need is the richest source for apples to survive. It is not at all too difficult for them to survive, thanks to our needs and preferences. They feed us and demand us to support them, we have obeyed them for centuries and we most definitely will for centuries more! “‘In Human Nature is the preservation of the wilderness.’ – Wendell Berry.”
I don’t know whether it is fictional or simply fate that Michael Pollan and Wendell Berry (an author Pollan mentions at the end of the chapter on Apples, as quoted above), both have names that are so botanically relevant, haha.

 

Mathematics and the Divine

Here is the big question: Does God Exist???
Irreligion by John Allen Paulos proposes some intriguing mathematical facts that reject the concept of religion. Reading through some chapters was a bit startling for me at first, because he disapproves on a couple of things that I refer to as my spiritual guidance, such as coincidences and miracles. But the book was definitely a good read, and helped me to deepen my thoughts on spirituality much further.
Paulos uses algebra in order to prove most of his theories. His first theory states is that every cause exists because it has a creator. This theory applies validly for everything which exists today however, except for the existence of God. Religions claim that God does not have a cause/creator. As Paulos says, “If something doesn’t have a cause, it may as well be the physical world as God or a tortoise.” – We do not necessarily need to believe in an extraterrestrial being to the whole existence of our world, when our world itself can be the cause of every existence.
Nozick’s self-subsumptive principle demonstrates how we would define the world, if God had been the creator. Here’s the excerpt on the theory: (Suppose we substitute C with God, and P with religion: this explains that we simply reflect our ideal divination for what we want to claim as the truth)

P says that any law-like statement having characteristic C is true. Principle P is used to explain why other, less general laws hold true. they hold true because they have characteristic C. And what would explain why P holds true? A possible answer might be that P itself also has characteristic C. In short, P if true, would explain itself.

The next argument is the reasoning behind coincidences. People like myself, believe that coincidences or chances do not exist, but all causes exist with a reason or purpose. Paulos argues that this is merely a wishful thinking. “Note that there are always a fantastically huge number of evolutionary paths that might be taken by an organism (or a process), but there is only one that will actually be taken.” Our entire existence is simply a minuscule of the billion possibilities of this universe. A slight difference in our existences’ minuscule outcome would definitely have made us all different, like what religions claim. However, that does not necessarily mean that our world today is a form of miracle if we have billions of other ways to exist. This theory can also be applied to the concept of natural selection. Possibilities and outcomes are tautological (my new favorite vocabulary, and it means:) “in order for us to exist to observe the universe, its laws and constants must allow for observers to exist.”
In order to find more answers, researchers logically hypothesize possibilities. When bizarre hypotheses are brought up from studies, religions like to stir them up into mystical conspiracies. When these studies are answered, they are in mini, tiny steps but surely cutting down the many possibilities out of the billions they refer to, when investigating their hypotheses from. Therefore with answers discovered, the more probabilities (the guessable answers) there will be. However, to exist in this universe, we are all created and formulated out of all the matter that are available in this universe. Therefore we all share the same matter. Then it would make sense to say that all probabilities are also made up of the same matter. This opens up another wide field of possibilities under the probabilities that researchers study upon. Each answers divide into more branches. The more possibilities researches eliminate, the more possibilities they are creating.. This is the pessimistic, Doomsday Argument; as Emerson is quoted in the book, “No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday.” Near the end of this chapter, Paulos states a really good point, which is now one of my favorite quotes: “Certainty a strange Ferris wheel of a statement!”
Last but not the least, Paulos points out that religious people are not capable of logically proving their faith. God is omnipotent and omniscient – can God create a dinosaur bigger and much stronger than Himself? Religions rely on assumptions, the wishful claim of universal truth. If these two alone can prove that God is real, how does religion explain their paradox in their unchanging truth?
   ”I am lying.”
   ”This sentence is false.”
By reading these sentences, we are given two answers which neither are correct. This again, brings us back to the idea of the Ferris Wheel statement of Certainty. Both Mathematics, and religion come down to an endless search for the answer, back to uncertainty. Paulos is not an atheist and he believes in the power of love (which I’m relieved about, haha), however he also believes that religion is not necessary. Here are two letter A’s of different colors A, A. To study the two, we would first classify them as the red A, and blue A. Why? Because we need the convenience to distinguish them every time we refer to them despite the fact that both letter A’s are equally the same context. This concept applies as well, on either believing in a religion, or simply that this world exists under a cause of uncertainty. Either decision, we will be searching.
Here’s one final note for a positive ending to the faithful ones! Paulos pointed out on miracles, which did somewhat support his point of view, but it also supported more of what he refers to as wishful thinking. It made my day! “If a miracle is simply a very unlikely event, then miracles occur every day.”
NOW that all being said on Paulos in almost 1000words (possibly worth an essay to submit for my future classes I hope), I personally prefer to believe that if math can only accept truths from proven calculations, then there is one thing that cannot be calculated and that is 0. Like Paulos said, Possibilities are limitless, endless, forever. And if every answer we find eliminates these possibilities, then it sure has never been, nor will it ever be able to eliminate 0. Can 0 be the certainty? 0, like the existence of Divine, does not physically exist. The Divine is therefore 0, Nothing, but an uncountable figure. Bite me, Paulos but I am still not convinced after reading your book! Although it did take me a lot of scribbling around my notebook arguing with myself while reading your chapter on Paradox…..

 

URGENT

I have one bizarre news to post today.. Eeriness was all over the sky all day today since the morning, when a huge orange butterfly flew into my balcony. Not many bugs can make me feel so odd and curious over their visits to my bubble – this butterfly was definitely a creepy one, not like the usual scary ones (I hate bugs and I will never be able to accept and love them unless maybe if I get trained to do so, at a temple spiritually). I tried to look up some meanings for butterflies but I got sick of going through silly superstitions on Google so I gave up and headed for work. Again, my walk to work was unusual and perplexing; a man ahead of his time, formally dressed up 6 or 7 months early for St. Patrick’s day walked up to me from nowhere and complimented my nail polish, then walked off to wherever he was heading that required him to wear such ridonkulous outfit. Then I saw a whole crowd, yet again ahead of their time, dressed up a few months early for Halloween, in Hogwarts uniform with the craziest make up. Note: this was all encountered at around 8 AM… (is this post not weird enough yet?) These surprises did not end by morning. They only got worse – later in the afternoon on my way back to work from my lunch break, I witnessed policemen and two other men shooting at each other, and a few collapsing like birds flying into a glass wall.

CBS2 Chicago, Chicago Breaking News, Chicago Now
This happened on State st. and Randolph st. by the Chicago Theater, right across from the SAIC Dormitory, Jamba Juice and ABC News station – literally right across the street from where I was standing with my Potbelly’s sandwich. One of the two men carrying a nice, leather briefcase fell on the ground, but I remember he was still conscious; while the other fell motionlessly and fortunately without a bloody show. Either of the two, (none of the articles specify which) was carrying a knife around the Chicago Theater, attempting to mug people in the city in daylight. I remember hearing the police yelling to drop the weapon.. It got scarier when I realized, weapons can kill! I couldn’t move; soon my ears exploded over seven or eight gun shots as the police ran around all over State street. Police then tried to get a hold of this crazy person and his knife, but the policeman almost got slashed just when another policeman shot several gunshots towards this crazy razz matazz. One of the bullets hit the policeman who was holding the crazy. This policeman fell on the ground for a while but got back up because fortunately and miraculously, he happened to be wearing his bulletproof vest! As I watched this, I looked at the book I was holding – The Devil in the White City (history on Chicago’s architectural development for the World Columbian Exposition in 1892, and its many hidden stories to all the crimes that took place during the event.. mainly about H.H. Holmes’ razz matazz). Then I contemplated on how extraordinary this Thursday was. The happy, eventful downtown Chicago was now, almost as thrilling as the 1890s.. On this one insanely extraordinary Thursday afternoon, my respect for policemen went from 2 to possibly 9 out of 10, and I gained a reality check that living in downtown Chicago is just like living blind of common sense, because we never know what goes down what goes where and what in the hell to expect!… Of course, when one doesn’t know what to expect, he secures himself and, his bike. But just a simple mistake as forgetting to lock a bicycle on its wheel together with its tube can lead to his garage left with only two wheels and entire tube stolen and astray. My best friend Cecca (whom I’ve mentioned a couple of times on this blog!) just got her bike stolen while the policemen were shooting around on State st., because she had only locked her wheels around the pole, and without the tube. I really need to find a way to somehow cheer her up even though I can never transform into a bicycle for a day. She was so upset when she called, I almost cried just listening to her! I am known for having emotions like a baby, when I hear someone cry, I start crying. And clearly this does not help, it confuses the situation instead. “Why are you crying?!”

 

My Last Summer Weekend

Today is technically my last ‘free’ summer day.. Starting tomorrow, I will be a working girl all day all week until classes officially start. So to make this precious Sunday a productive one, a couple of my friends and I went to check out the Modern Wing which recently opened this May 2009, as an extension to the Art Institute of Chicago! It was really beautiful but what disappointed me was the lack of new works. I shouldn’t be complaining about this sort just yet since its opening was still very recent, but many of previously exhibited works were simply relocated from the AIC into the Modern Wing which filled up almost half of the entire first floor.. And one of the painting galleries, I couldn’t help but despise it. There were three humongous paintings that looked exactly alike with free hand floral abstract patterns in different palettes. These palette choices weren’t even that great…. They looked tacky and effortless, to me. Even if that actually were the artist’s point behind his concept, the pieces aren’t aesthetically pleasing either so… Fail it is! I would much rather spend an hour staring at Kelly Ellsworth’s uninspiring pieces (images on the right) than those abstracts which I didn’t even bother check the painter’s name. However, Architecture and Design Object galleries are always, always guaranteed to have the best, coolest stuff in any museums I visit! I also think it is the most frequently updated departments; either that or every visit over the same pieces never fails to surprise me! The architecture gallery was particularly so interesting, I loved them all. I was so thrilled to see Renzo Piano’s sketches on designing the Modern Wing, and of course, sketches by Sullivan, Wright, and Mies Van der Rohe! The Fiber&Material section was also one of my favorites. The picture below is a porcelain sewed onto fabric. The porcelain has small holes to allow the strings to go through it. Sadly, the Fiber&Material section is rather small, and is a subcategory under the Design Objects.. I hope it will continue to grow until it gets its own gallery space! Piano definitely gets an A++ on his design of the Modern Wing, it is really so sooo stunning… I will make it a goal to visit it every Friday after class even though I will be looking like crap every Fridays this semester. I have my ceramics class on Fridays which means I will be wearing awful apron-y clothes and rainboots. Whatever is clever, my school is known for the most unhygienic and strange dressed clans in the city after all!

Ahhh and supercali-congratulations to me and my first sold item on Amazon.com! I sold my Yoga DVD for $8, and the buyer obviously has no idea how useless this DVD is. As much as I feel terrible that he is buying it and probably will plan on selling it out again, I’m glad it’s finally leaving my house because every time I look at it, I feel silly for having fallen for silly advertisements, yet again! This is the thing about self-healing products and yoga products – they are so overly commercialized now that nothing seems to really inspire me anymore. They all seem scammy and very “just stay positive and soon you will be able to fly – literally.” I can’t believe I’m talking about spiritual people like this! But it’s only been proven to me like five times this past year… It’s so difficult to find a worthy product. Sad. Well I should get to bed now as soon as I finish my last three cookies. Hopefully I will wake up on time tomorrow morning.. I haven’t woken up at an ideal, humanly hour in about three months. This will be a challenge
PS. I signed up for Flickr today despite my slow website learning skills. I think I figured it out..

 

The Up and Down Life

• The Up and Down Life By Paul E. Jones
  The Truth About Bipolar Disorder–the Good, the Bad, and the Funny

Last week, I read a book on BPD (borderline personality disorder) for the first time as my attempt to understand angry people. I don’t know if I learned much about angry people in general but I did learn that BPD is a serious illness and that our society needs to be much more accepting and well aware of it. They are too frequently misunderstood, live their lives being told that they are ‘just upset, everyone gets upset. You just want attention.’ Even psychiatrists commonly misunderstand BPD people for being only slightly depressed, because of the extreme high’s that BPD people have together with the downs. BPD often requires a long journey of seeking for the five or more doctors you meet in heaven (avoiding the money hungry ones) and a couple of misdiagnoses, to finally have enough information to resolve that they are in fact suffering from BPD.
Contrary to that book I read last week, which was written from a psychiatry point of view, The Up and Down Life is an autobiography of Paul E. Jones who suffers from severe BPD. He has hit rock bottom many a times, when all he could feel was physical pain from the depression and self-agitation. The ways which he describes the situations really frightened me because unlike depressions of a non-BPD, these depressions have no specific reasons as to why they are hurting the way they are! Because they have no reason, they also have no idea how to get rid them. The depressions are cold, extremely painful and at the same time, quite easily forgotten after a single distraction – this distraction which should be considered as a lucky call. This is because sometimes, these distractions could be a trigger to bring the intense high where the sick would suddenly feel like he could save the world after weeks of curling up in bed in the dark, with a bottle of whiskey. Or, it could be a distraction to bring up a happy thought for a second, but which then reminds him of another hateful story about himself causing him to go even farther down into the ‘dungeon of hell’ depression. BPD pulls these people so far down, situations beyond the word depression can even define, causing them to lose their sight to reality. They become deluded by their self agitation, and physical trigger is sometimes they only way to pull them out of their distorted perception of the world. Extreme depressions causes physical pain and sickness (stomach pain, muscle pain, bone pain, migraines, etc.) and it is often times as mentioned in the book, the most gratifying relief to release these physical pain by an actual injury or a rush of adrenaline.
If you or anyone you know are suffering from BPD, I strongly recommend that you take a look at this book. If I had known about this disorder sooner, I may have been a little more patient with my father back when I still lived with him. It also includes sources of medical information and suggestions. As Jones repeats throughout the book, to have BPD is not an excuse to what actions one may take. But it is always better to be sure and aware of what he is ill of, so that he can finally distinguish between himself and what the disorder is making of him. This is a big key to motivate putting in the effort to get better.

Note: I just received an email to clarify this post on being about either BPD or BPAD (Bipolar Affective Disorder). Although the title mentions “The truth about bipolar”, this book focuses on BPD and does not discuss BPAD.

 

Living Off of Cookies & Soymilk

Welcome to the lifestyle of an art student who can’t be bothered. My health is probably deteriorating more and more by the day.. I haven’t gone grocery shopping in weeks and this is how unequipped my fridge has become. I have a few boxes of pasta noodles in the cupboard but No. Carbs all week with the same pasta sauce is going to make me sick. Nowadays, no matter how hungry I am, noodles don’t even seem to satisfy my appetite anymore. My tummy’s bored of pasta. There is one last egg I’ve been saving, which I don’t really know what I’m saving it for.. But, I do make sure I never slam my fridge to avoid that egg from rolling over! And call me crazy, but I thought to myself that I would much rather go shopping than buy groceries, so I decided on resorting on these $7 box of cookies….. and yes they are incredibly delicious! I am taking my time on eating them as I keep my caution for my weight.
I am currently taking a short break from all the book reading to focusing more on working on my essay posts that I will posting soon; they will be covering topics on religion and creativity. Just for fun though, the new certified bookwormbug that I am as of last week, I’m reading The Great Gatsby. I enjoy reading classics.. i just really love the way Fitzgerald writes, even though the story itself doesn’t really impress me at all. God I am such a nerd. I suppose it’s better being one during a week like this because I need to make this week a productive one – it’s my last full week of summer break! My job starts next week, where I will be working as an orientation leader (because I am just so responsible! ) for all the International and ‘International-domestic-transfer-altogether’ orientation days. I am a horrible leader because like I posted before, I have horrible stage fright. Leadership is really not my thing.. I hope I do okay and that my group of students will be nice and not so artsy snooty (most art kids are such snooty snobs, they are so hard to deal with). Ending the post with a good news, Cecca is arriving back in Chicago tomorrow and I can’t waaait! I haven’t seen her since June, it’s been way too long.
Adding on to this post, here are two of the few reasons why I love Gatsby

• 6.00a:  Rise from bed

• 6.15-6.30a: Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling
• 7.15-8.15a: Study electricity, etc.
• 8.30-4.30p: work
• 4.30-5.00p: Baseball and sports
• 5.00-6.00p: Practise elocution, poise and how to attain it
• 7.00-9.00p: Study needed inventions

• No wasting time at Shafters or (a name, indecipherable)
• No more smoking or chewing
• Bath every other day
• Read one improving book or magazine per week
• Save $5.00 (crossed out) $3.00 per week
• Be better to parents

- The Great Gatsby

 

Transformed into a Bookworm Overnight

I have no idea what exactly had happened to me the past week. I blogged at least once every night and spent the rest of the days reading and taking notes. I suddenly got so hooked on books that weren’t even sci-fi nor suspense. They were all psychology, non-fiction books and I sailed through all of them, when in usual cases, 3 full pages of a book are enough to get me to start counting down the pages until the chapter is over. Something must have gotten to me but whatever it is, I’m glad it did! Even as I speak, I am currently reading a stack of books that I never thought I’d pick. Oh thank God for the intelligence sparks this week. This could be a great boost to gaining a little more confidence against my stage fright…. I get the familiar stuttering, trembling, flushing.. the typical panic attack stage fright symptoms. I breathe like I am wearing microphones attached to my nose and mouth, and connected earphones stuck to my ears when I do just any kind of presentations. This could be among 5 audiences, or 100 – it really does not matter. As long as the event is labeled as ‘presentation’ or the concept of an event is that I am the one with facing more attention than the rest, I die a little by little, and not to mention painfully. I need to get over this and I am desperate to find out how!
This is honestly an embarrassing bit of story but everyday, I’ve been reading aloud to my teddy bears.. I highly doubt this is going to help me at all because at a real presentation, my bears will still be sitting on my bed while I will be facing a crowd watching me tremble without my bears. Even if those people aren’t paying any attention, I will still be just as helpless to possibly running away. I am standing in front of the audience! Just by imagining this situation, I feel thankful that it is not truly happening and that is just a cruel visual in my head. I am so relieved by the fact that I am just sitting at my desk typing out my Spoonful and reading my emails. This kind of relief make life feel really good in the simplest way I love it, but for sure it bites me later. I need to get over stage fright…….
I haven’t slept since 5PM yesterday. But yesterday, I slept the entire day until 5PM. My sleep pattern is a disaster and it is being the biggest butt in the face right now. I am trying my hardest to keep myself awake and not to waste my last full week of summer break. But my eyes just keep pulling me over to the Temptation Islands of sleep and R.E.M.

PS. Lastly, my obsessive compulsiveness is least likely to cease anytime soon. But seriously, why am I not surprised? – 90% of US Bills Carry Traces of Cocaine