Season 7 finished

Well, time's up for this season. I meant to put on a few more posts, but I'll put them on the next season, between thinking it and doing it.

Currently reading...

The survival of delicate wonders

Just a small argument against what Han  said...butterflies.

Cost

People keep talking about not being able to do things because of the money it costs. But considering all the things we do in spite of being trillions of dollars in debt, seems like a lack of money is no real obstacle so long as there's a will to do it.

Devolution

In the beginning
We were smarter
And flame was heaven-sent

Through the ages
We got stupid
Now we must repent

- excerpt from "I burn", by Toadies

The creatures that live in the dark

I remember learning in one of my biology classes that ecological niches are not preferred by the organisms that live in them. It just turns out that that's the environment that they are best adapted for after physical attributes and competition are accounted for. But most would rather be in a different niche. 

God's motive

Just out of curiosity, why did God create beings so far beneath Himself? If He was lonely  and needed friends, why not create beings closer to being His equals? 

Perhaps it’s because if He’d created equals, they wouldn’t really appreciate Him and wouldn’t see much point in worshiping Him, since they would be, after all, equals. 

But did He need to feel so much bigger and more important than His creation? Did He feel a need to be worshiped? Wouldn’t that be vain? And wouldn’t it also be vain for us lowly humans to believe that God needed us? 

Surely, He doesn’t need us. We are a constant disappointment to Him. We can’t live up to His expectations and standards, and we’re constantly reminded of this fact. And why would we want to be in a relationship with Him if we aren’t good enough for Him? As if that situation isn’t bad enough within human relationships, it’s even worse in this case as it’s a disappointment He set Himself up for, since He did create us. 

So from His angle, why create us (or anything) at all?

On the other hand, from our angle, many of us would feel that we do need Him, which would be a motive for us to create Him.

Generalizations

Jerry Mander wrote about a situation in his book, In the Absence of the Sacred, about the difference between our scientific methods of hunting deer as a part of wildlife management versus the native Americans’ methods. In our scientific method, after crunching numbers, we’d say that it’s ok only to hunt male deer. But no considerations are made as to which male deer are killed.

Native Americans, on the other hand, would have intimate first hand knowledge of the deer in their periphery and would know not to kill an older male deer that the younger ones depended on, as killing it would result in the others dying as well. 

When I told my friend about this situation, he said that the data collection was sloppy and needed to be improved upon. But how? And wouldn’t that still be more complicated than what the natives were doing?

In another situation, my vice principal at my last school wanted to conduct a research project on two of my sixth grade classes. Having a large subsample, she assumed homogeny between the classes and that the only significant differences would be a result of her different teaching methods that she was testing. 

But I knew the students in each class well and could see right away that her methods did not account for or accommodate the differences between those two classes. 

And it’s dawned on me just now (as obvious as this will sound) that if we know the individuals, we don’t need to make generalizations about everyone else.

The bakery reopened

Actually, it reopened about two weeks after it closed. I meant to write about it then, but had other things going on and I haven’t had much access to the internet. Anyway, yeah, it’s open again. Same franchise but seems the owners have changed. But I’m glad to get that corn bread again. Wasn’t able to find any good replacements.

The bakery closed down

There was a bakery near my old apartment that I’d continued going to since coming back to Korea. I’d gone to other bakeries, but this one had the best corn bread. (No, not like back home. This is just a regular loaf of bread, but made with corn flour.) 

But like a lot of establishments in this area, you never know how long things are going to be around. Last weekend, after buying what would be my last loaf of bread there, the bakery closed down. 

The loaf I’d bought ran out yesterday and today I had to get bread from another bakery. I like this bakery just fine and all, but the bread just isn’t the same. Just upsets me sometimes that the good things don’t seem to last. 

Delicate Wonders

Han:  It is difficult to associate these horrors with the proud civilizations that created them: Sparta, Rome, The Knights of Europe, the Samurai... They worshipped strength, because it is strength that makes all other values possible. Nothing survives without it. Who knows what delicate wonders have died out of the world, for want of the strength to survive.

 Rooper:  What’s this?

Han comes over to see Rooper looking at the frail, skeletal remains of a human hand inside the display case.

 Han:  Ohh...A souvenir.



Probably my favorite scene from Enter the Dragon. We know from the previous scene that Han is missing his left hand, which means the remains in the display was his...a delicate wonder that had died out of the world and been replaced with something crude and monstrous.

First actual post

Ugh... I’d had some ideas come together to write the previous post but I didn’t strike when the iron was hot. The ideas are still there, but I haven’t found the time or energy to write it. But I suspect I will eventually.

I don’t know, I’ve just been preoccupied with lining up my next job in Korea and trying to look at prospects of buying rental property. In other words, trying to get myself settled so I can feel more at ease writing. Of course often when I have a job, I feel too tired after work to write anything. We’ll see how it works out this time.

I mentioned near the end of the last season that I was applying for EPIK in Korea. Well, long story short, I got accepted to EPIK but was still waiting to hear where I’d be placed when I received notice from my former principal (who’d transferred from the school I finished working at) that he wanted me to work at his new school, not too far from where I lived in Bucheon. So contacted my recruiter and now I’m in the process of getting my visa to work there next month. I’ll know it’s for sure when I get my visa number and can get to the consulate. But it’s a wonderful break because I was going to be placed way out in the sticks with EPIK.

Anyway, the title of what was going to be the first post is a quote from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Something one of the men in space said after he’d passed out sandwiches to the others. The sandwiches were some synthetic processed food that was meant to taste like something natural. “They’re pretty good”, one of them said. “Well, they’re getting better at it all the time”, the guy who’d passed out the sandwich commented.

At the time I was reading My Ishmael, and I’d just read a part where Ishmael was commenting on humans constant attempt to reinvent the wheel (or a bridge in the example he used) when what was already there works fine.

But the movie also reminded me of ideas Jerry Mander mentioned in Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, including being adrift in mental space and our culture’s infatuation with leaving the Earth.

I’ll try to compile those ideas I’d had when I watched Space Oddyssey and write a full post eventually, but for now...just not sure it’s going to happen.

It’s almost 3 AM right now and while it does seem that I get good ideas and motivation to write at these odd hours, I’m also trying to start going to bed at a decent hour. But the problem is that I haven’t been tired in about 6 months.

In part, I’m not tired because I stay up late and, subsequently, wake up late. Because I don’t have a job to force me to get up? Maybe that’s part of it. But there isn’t anything else that gets me out of bed, either.

In fact it came to my attention a few weeks ago that I might be more depressed than I suspected. I knew I was depressed already but didn’t realize the symptoms until I was reading some user comments of the film Melancholia. I haven’t seen the film yet, but it looks interesting...and possibly related to some of the ideas I mentioned above.

It’s helpful that I know exactly what is causing my depression but at the same time frustrating that the solution will not come in the form of some quick fix. Amazing to me how many people think that there’s something wrong with themselves when they’re depressed (or angry) without considering that there may be legitimate reasons outside of themselves that is causing the depression.

As usual, I’ll think my way out of it and take comfort in the fact that what didn’t kill me before will never have a chance at getting to me again.

Anyway, enough on that. Let me bring you up to speed on books I’ve read (or am currently readying). Still working on Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and The Birth of Tragedy (the latter is much slower but the former is blowing my mind) and recently finished My Ismael (really good follow-up to Ishmael with interesting ideas on education).

To balance the philosophical books, I like to concurrently read novels. I read The Angel’s Game (same author of Shadow of the Wind) and...well, first let me tell you about a movie I saw that opened up other fictional books to me. I watched Woody Allen’s film, Midnight in Paris. It was an ok movie, but it did get me more interested in writers from the 1920s. So picked up The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms.

I already read The Great Gatsby in high school but didn’t like it then. When I watched the movie a few years ago, I saw it in a different light. But I never thought to pick up the book again until I’d read Love in the Time of Cholera and found the movie to be much worse than the book. I’m most of the way through Chapter 3 of TGG and am already finding it to be very beautifully written.

Well, this seems like a decent start to the new season. A little late. I usually start at the end of November, but...anyway, I’m starting Season 7 now.

Anyway, off to bed.