September 11, 2012 [Mukilteo YMCA]

    Perhaps it is only a coincidence that I feel inspired to start writing here again. Why do I bother with saying today is a coincidence? Well, today is September 11, the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York and Washington DC. I was in 7th grade when the attacks happened. I graduated from high school in 2007 and college in 2011. Now I'm not going to say that I'm into any numerology, but my OCD is happy with the outcome.

    9/11/2001 was the start of me truly finding out who I was as I person. In the ensuing months I became more aware of my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. As much as I would like not to admit this, OCD does play a part in my life. The web of thoughts that become stuck in my head and the reasons they stick there are a blessing and a curse. Over the years I've been able to to better control it, but I do have to stay on top of things.

    The next major turning point in my life occurred in college. Mostly it was living away from the family for a bit, but really it was my first introduction to the study of culture. Except for the exact day, I remember it exactly. The class was ANTH 201 (ANTH 203?), intro to culture and the teacher was Shila Baksi, a professor with a BA and MA from Calcutta, India. She was annoying. The section of the class on language, especially speech, was painful. She would tell us that some letter in a word would sound a certain way, but nobody could hear it. One, because her accent was not American and two none of us had ever thought about what we were saying in the sense of how it sounds. That knowledge was implicit.
    But walking out of that class, after about the second or third week, and looking around at the people on campus. How they talked with each other, how they avoided each other, how they looked, what they wore, why they used certain sounds to convey certain meanings, the idea that all this (the campus, the people, the culture) was the result of hundreds of years of accumulated and modified interaction replicated manifold times! It was a trip.
    The strangest part though, was when I realized that I was a part of this. I was the result of hundreds of years of interaction. That what I wore and what I said were part of a larger system, something bigger than every person I could see, but something we were all part of. I didn't understand all of it though. Things I couldn't explain or find reasons for. So, I decided to try and totally isolate myself from my culture, which is stupid because I was in my culture. After snapping out of my idiot experiment, and reading a few books on anthropologists who had taken the plunge into a different culture, I made a promise to myself to be a true fish out of water and go live somewhere else in the world for a while.

   Come senior year, I had my opportunity. Thanks to my mom, I received information on a volunteer opportunity in a country of my choice, in early March of 2011. I looked at the International Volunteer HQ website to see what they could offer me. Guatemala or Ecuador, I did take a few years of Spanish in high school. Tanzania, Africa is pretty different. But I didn't choose any of those. Nope, I chose, solely based on the logic that this destination was (nearly) in the exact opposite position on Earth from my home in the Western United States. I chose Nepal.

    Now, this journey to Nepal was more than just a physical trip. I learned how to let go. I understand how big the world is now and I want to get back into it! The US is not enough anymore. I can't believe I almost got a job being an engineer, honestly, that would have been a waste for me. As for what exactly happened in Nepal, I will post some of my journal entries here.

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May 23, 2012 [NW Corner of my House, Mukilteo, WA] Been a While

Well, it's been a while. I'm back though. Let's see what's new. Job.
That's it. Okay, now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

  Unbelievable amounts of order, space and individuality. That's what struck me upon my return to the states, and now that I have had some time to let those ideas rattle around in my head a bit I feel confident enough to share my findings.

  First, order. You must drive on this side of the road, you must pay this much in taxes, you must do this the way the government tells you to. An affront to our individuality? (More on that later) Or a catalyst for creating a modern nation? I'd like to think it was the latter. I'm talking about the order of law. Its use, its function, application, and impact. Law creates an external framework that all citizens have to abide by, it is the manifestation of norms and taboos into a codified set of references. The assumption behind most law seems to be an offshoot of Hobbes Leviathan, where the natural state is chaos and/or anarchy. Every man for himself and the only way to prevent us all from killing each other is to impose some sort of external authority. This authority is the law.

  The application of law is supposed to be fair across all gender, ethnicity, and with some exception, age. In reality this application is not always uniformly fair. Some individuals or groups receive favorable outcomes though the law while others must abide by its unfair discrimination. There are exceptions, like any situation, but these exceptions almost prove the rule of law itself. If one tries to disobey the law, swift retribution is almost always close behind. This brings us to impact.

  It is in the final impact of the law that we see the full extent of its influence and capabilities. Can you imagine if there were no road rules? Or commerce rules? The law, the government, is the reason why the United States is an economic superpower. The rules created allow business to prosper and foster new industry. The transportation networks, the communication networks, the financial stability, the political stability, all this can be attributed to the order of law. An environment to foster growth, both socially and economically.

  Did I mention how much !%@^#! space we have in this country? My Civic is gigantic, the house I live in has huuuuge windows and two yards, a kitchen the size of a bedroom, multiple bathrooms....and this is normal. Okay, you're thinking, so what. Why does it matter?
Well, you ignorant fool (LOL), why do we need so much space? It's borderline wasteful, it IS wasteful. But that's kind of the problem. We have too much space. Our roads, gigantic, our houses, massive, our cars, big. It's probably even worse out here on the West Coast.

  Last, individuality. If there is one thing on this planet that is American in all shapes and forms, it is individuality. We prize the individual more than any other concept. The person who goes against the grain, or questions authority is (for the most part) idealized as a visionary.

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December 19-20, 2011 [Flight: KE696, Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean] Definitions

  Definitions are important. They allow a non-subjective method of communicating ideas, concepts and real world physical constructs in a manner that can be understood by more than one individual. Because of this multi-being requirement for the creation of a definition, internal definitions are irrelevant. For example, "libro" in Spanish and "book" in English both define the same item; but if each individual sticks to their definition than no progress is made towards effective understanding. Internal definitions are fine for internal processes, by my interest and focus lies in external definitions. Definitions that are broader than one individual and acceptaed by other individuals.
  The physical matrix through which we perceive and interact with the surrounding external world is, in abstract terms, similar among all humans. There are only so many ways to detect the outside, only so many ways our senses can transmit the messages they receive. Where the differentiation among individuals arises is in personal interpretation. However, if an agreement can be made among a group that a certain thing has certain characteristics that a majority of the individuals in the group can see, the subjective interpretation may remain, but now communication is possible. You can understand this sentence because we have a shared set of ways that we communicate.
  The only way definitions work is through abstraction. If I talk about a couch to another person, and that couch is not in the same physical space as we are, then the concept of a couch is used when communicating. Even if I perfectly describe the couch to this other person, they only have an abstract idea of what this couch is in their mind's eye. Even if the item (or concept or idea) is physically in the same space as communicating individuals, their abstract ideas about the couch may be different. One may think the couch ugly while the other sees a certain beauty. One might see a reddish-brown couch with floral patterns and wooden legs as another simply sees a brown couch. But the abstract idea of what constitutes a couch, is always there at a fundamental level.

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December 3rd, 2011 [Upstairs Room, Krishna's House, Male Patan, Pokhara, Nepal] Pain has a purpose

    Pain is not always a bad thing. Pain drives us to new hights away from itself, to seek pleasure in new areas beyond. Without pain or suffering there would be no reason to do anything. Pain is the base for any uncomfortable thing, be it physical or emotional. Pain is the source of all innovation. Necessity is not the mother of all invention. Intuition, experience, but above all a desire for change, a result of pain, are the necessary requirements for invention.
I should probably start, after my awesome introduction (lolz), with a definition of pain. Definitons are very important (I promise to write more about the importance of definitions later). Anyways, pain, I think, is any sort of undesired physical or psychological ( I think emotional can be considered under this umbrella term, right?) condition felt by an individual. This condition could be considered caused by any external or internal event with relation to the individual. Pain tells us that something is wrong and needs to change.
For example, you touch a hot stove and you feel pain in the form of heat damage to nerves on your finger. The resulting pain notifies you of the undesireable situation, a burn, and that action needs to be taken to remedy the situation, aka something is wrong and needs to change. You draw your finger back and change the situation for the better.
The previous example also gives rise to another dimension of the definiton of pain. Pain is a teacher. Pain turns events into experience. Without pain we would not grow wiser or smarter. We would continue to make the same mistakes and never move forward towards, well, anything. There would be no reason to live.
In this sense, pain can be said to be similar to black holes, especially the monsters that lurk in the center of galactic cores. They are deadly, nothing escapes them, everything is devoured, but, without a central core of immense gravity there would be no galaxies, no clumps of stars, no planets, really, no us. They keep galaxies together and structured. Pain is the same. Pain, keeps our lives in order, sets limits for tolerence and allows, paradoxically, a greater reason for living than living itself.
This brings us to an interesting phenomena, pain as pleasure. (Assuming that they are not mutually exclusive and that they are opposites, both, haha, will be covered in a later essay) The individual who seeks pain is not an exception to the rule of pleasure over pain because pleasure and pain are only abstract concepts that can and should be applied in a way that helps us to understand the subject under study, in a more complete fashion. In this specific case a reversal of the two concepts seems in order, that is, pain becomes pleasure and pleasure becomes pain. Notwithstanding the ambiguous change up, the concept remains clear. That pain is avoided, not in the physical, but in the abstract sense.
Pain is an importaint part of life. Without it we would not drive to higher ground. Also, we would probably die a hell of a lot more often. Really, pain keeps us alive. At least, pain makes us avoid the unberable parts and guides us to seek the pleasure in life.

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September 14, 2011 [Rm 2, Hotel Panorama Point, Tadapani, Nepal] Death is an environment

   Death is a transfer of energy. I want to define energy because being vague is only fun when searching for abstract ideas of abstract concepts. The energy I'm talking about is the energy that sustains life as we know it. The chemical conversion of energy stored in matter to energy that can be used to perform work. I guess you could equate this with Calories.
   When a living being can no longer absorb the required energy to survive, its function as a living thing ceases and it dies. So the transfer of energy that is death is a net loss for the organism that previously had said energy. The transfer is a loss, relative to the organism. This simple concept is common to all forms of life, self-conscious or not, and is fundamental to both.
   What I want to focus on now, in this context, is the idea of conquering this natural and seemingly inevitable process. Humans have been extremely successful in spreading out over the various environments of this planet. Every stage of long term adaptation of homo sapiens has stemmed from the use of technology. From stone and flint, to agriculture and animal husbandry, to words and language and written symbols. Especially in the case of the latter, humanity has been able to acrue knowledge and wisdom to better suit their environment to their preference.
   This manifest adaptation even goes beyond what one would normally consider a traditional environment. In social situations adapting can be key to survival, or at least efficient function in a society. Understanting who is in charge or how social processes work, for example, can more often than not determine how long an individual can sucessfully survive and thrive in a social setting.
   FInally, let me sum all my points togeather. Humans are dominant on planet Earth because we have the skill to adapt to various environments. These environments need not be traditional in the sense on physical environments. Death is a common feature of all living things. Birth leads to death. Can the very real conditions of life and death not also be considered as non-traditional environments? Can death lead to life? Can we not control death?
   I want to make explicitly clear here that I am not discussing suicide. Yes suicide is a choice when it comes to choosing when a being dies, but the choice is permanent. In the context of environments, the change between life and death is not a premanent decision. It is a barrier to be crossed and to return from. Not something to permanently stay on one side or the other. Life is challenging, death is peaceful, it's the transition that is troublesome. Why does it have to be troublesome? Why do we have to lose when the border is transgressed?
   I also want to make abundanly clear that I do not have the power to overcome death. This, er, essay is merely a philosophical statement that in essence says: if we have the technology we should pursue it.
   Now! The fun part, moral dilemmas. And as always, non-existant invisible audience, feel free to comment and disagree with me because that is the only way we are aver going to get anywhere, that is the only way we can refine arguments and really determine what is worth arguing about. Arguing changes the nature of truth, let's change it together.
   The greatest and most pressing moral, and prehaps physical, dilemma is the case of over population. That if we have the technology to prevent death and even return people from death, that there will be too many people alive. That death, the natural conclusion to any living organisms life, is natural for a reason. There is only one solution to this, something that I will most surely address in later posts, expansion.
   If we can extend our lifetimes, the universe becomes not just a dream or a longing gaze at the night sky, but a real, tangible location. As real and as close as a room in your house or a convenience store down on the corner. If we can take a greater chunk of time, we can explore these wonders. These pillars of existance that, for all intents and purposes, streach out to infinity. Suddenly, leaving this cradle, this earth, becomes a reality. The stars are our new home, space is our highway. An interstellar civilization. A level of production, of trade, of communication, of ideas, of imagination, of art, of thought, of wisdom....that no one in the history of this planet could ever even begin to picture. A renaissance ten-thousand times greater than the European Renaissance. A flow of ideas that you can not even understand. Every corner and strech of humanity vibrantly alive. ....and people wonder why I think we should leave this planet....it's too small, I say.
   But I don't think it's going to be all hopes and dreams. Wars will probably be worse. As technology advances, weapons become more deadly. Atrocities will probably become worse before they become better. Disparity in economic wealth. Political dominance and control over subservient populations. Human rights abuses. I guess, you could say, that it's going to get much better and much worse. But it has to get worse, before it can get better....
   Wow, that was a romp through my mind. Exits are to your left and we hope you had a good time. Echo One-Three-Six Air appriciates your business and we hope that you will fly with us again soon! .....luggage can be picked-up at carousel 14...

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September 1, 2011 [Be Happy Restaurant, Pokhara, Nepal] The Buddha was wrong...

Ok, well, I should clarify myself. I don't know all of the Buddha's teachings so I can't say he was wrong on everything. At least, not quite yet....

    Anyways, my argument centers around the notion that "life is suffering." The Buddha proclaimed this as fact after observing the four encounters on the road. This idea that "life is suffering" comes from firsthand experience of the Buddha in the everyday world. The acceptance of this tenet of Buddhism is easy to believe in because there is so much suffering in the world and it can be seen at all levels and at all times.

    However, I think that saying "life is suffering" is a very myopic view of the world. Such a large blanket statement is no way to interpret the world. Surely life is not always pain or misery. There is ample evidence to the contrary. Even the Buddha did not always suffer during his life. Many people do suffer in life, but they do not always suffer. There are always degrees and intensity to suffering as well as joy. Life is not one or the other. Even in extreme suffering there can be joy as well as the opposite, in extreme joy there can be suffering.

    So, my solution to this dilemma? A blanket statement. Before you criticize me, bear with my logic. blanket statements do not usually work for the simple reason that they are too specific. My blanket statement about life is hopefully more vague and therefore more widely applicable to various situations. The statement is this: life is mortal. When I use the statement "life is mortal" I mean that life is many things. It is suffering, it is pleasure, it is joy and pain. It is limited, it is transient, it is short. It is encapsulated by death on all sides. The human life is mortal.

(more on the " life is encapsulated by death" in later posts)

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August 13, 2011 [Incheon/Seoul Intl] -Episode One, Part Two-

    I did forget to mention to my nonexistant, invisible audience yesterday, the reason I was at the international terminal at LAX. I am traveling to Kathmandu, Nepal. Why? Well..."I choose to go to Nepal. I choose to go to Nepal in this decade and do the other things (grad school), not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of my energies and skills, because that challenge is one that I am willing to accept." Obviously paraphrased, but significant nonetheless.

    I am travelling to Nepal because I want to, it's really as simple as that. Ever since that first cultural anthropology class (did I mention I'm a novice anthropologist? Fully accredited to boot!) I've always wanted to immerse myself in a foreign culture ( I am from the United States, bugger, I should probably put that in my profile at some point) and I wanted that culture to be on the other side of Earth. (You know, the blue green marble, nice place, Mostly Harmless)

Korea is interesting, at least the airport and Korea Air are. I don't have tome to really get into the country now. Everything feels hyper-westernized. The stewardesses remind me of a nostalgic 1960s flying experience, the advertising is over the top in the airport, gigantic screens chock full of western ideas and influences. Efficiency is everywhere in the airport. From the way planes are boarded and disembarked, the separation of passengers is explicit. One group leaves a different way than how the next group arrives. Departures are isolated from arrivals. It is, in this "scary!" post 9/11 world, a security designer's wet dream. Isolation, impenetrable isolation. The only way you can transfer between the two is with an escort by an authorized person.
     However this is all complete wild speculation by someone sitting in an airport and is no more valid than, say trying to discern the cultural psyche of the average New Yorker by spending 6 hours at JFK. For more information see: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html

  

    One quick complaint down here at the end. Damn blogspot has everything in Korean! I can't tell what tab does what, where links lead, and I hope at the end of this I don't delete everything I've written...er....typed. Wait...wait! Hope! Google Chrome to the rescue! "This page is in Korean would you like to translate it?" ....Yes!

....

....

....Success!

Look at that ladies and gentleman! Life as it happens! 

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