Thinking about thinking

Stop for a moment and focus on breathing normally, in and out.  Can you continue to breathe normally while consciously thinking about it?  How about blinking?

The science is that these are both things our bodies do with no conscious effort on our part, when our conscious minds try to take over they can - but not as effectively as our subconscious.  There are many bodily functions that happen like this, including swallowing and shivering.  There are also functions can't be taken over by our conscious though no matter how much we try including sneezing, yawning and the beating of our heart.

I was recently caught up in an argument about whether thinking falls into the former or latter group (because apparently my friends are even more ridiculous than I am) and this led me to a startling discovery:  Thinking about thinking hurts my brain.

Before I explain the arguments, I feel I should point out that the question of how much the observer changes the observed looms large over this discussion.  When you (as observer) try and understand the way you (the observed) thinks, you can't help but be aware that you are observing yourself thinking thus negating the value of the observation in the first place because you can't be sure that the knowledge of the observation isn't having an effect on how you're thinking.

It's generally about this point that this happens:

Source

If, however, you've managed to understand everything so far then you're a) doing better than me and b) probably some sort of genius philosopher.

So the first side of this debate claims that the very fact that you can turn your thinking on itself and try to understand the way you think is proof that you can consciously control your thinking.  Fair point.

The other side of this debate claims that the process of thinking is still happening without you being aware of it and what you are thinking about is the progression of thoughts rather than the thinking itself.  Also fair point.

The response to this is that the awareness of the difference between thinking and thought demonstrates that thinking is what is being thought about, but this is rebutted by the fact that this difference is a thought itself.

From this point the argument gets into circular logic with both arguments supporting each other and there aren't enough gifs in the world to illustrate my confusion whenever this happens.

If you know the answer, or can explain this back to me in simpler terms, then please put me out of my misery!

Writing about writing

So I joined a writing group recently, or more accurately I helped start a writing group recently.  It's going well and there are four members, we have known each other for a long time but not through our writing so we are comfortable enough to critique each other honestly but not familiar enough with each other's work that we get caught up in the author's voice.

I had forgotten how nice it is to be critiqued by people who's opinions you respect while in a supportive environment.  I enjoy having my beliefs and assumptions challenged, after all if I don't allow other people to challenge my ideas how can I know how strong they really are?  This includes the ideas and application of those ideas that I put into my writing.

The problem, of course, is the supportive environment.  It is ridiculously easy to be abused for thinking something by someone with a different view, the problem is that so many people seem to be less interested in having a discussion that challenges the beliefs of both parties than in having a discussion to prove the other wrong and convert their thinking.

Having different opinions is what makes life interesting, and I hope this writing group allows me to have these wonderfully challenging conversations and, as part of this, improve my writing and hopefully churn out something that may even be worthy of publishing someday.

American Travel Story: Part 5

Previously:  I discovered that Washington salmon is delicious.  Seriously, that and sleeping on planes was about all I got up to.

An early start for the first day of university related activities.  Today's activities consisted of seeing many of Washington's monuments, which I was looking forward to, with the worst lecturer I have ever had as tour guide, which I most certainly wasn't looking forward to.  Another factor that we were coming to terms with was the combination of two very important truths: First, Americans put sugar in everything, and second, sugar makes you pee.  We were little worried that a day spent mostly on a bus before our bladders had adjusted to this diet could have become very messy very quickly.

The first stop on the tour was the Capitol, which involved us standing outside the security barriers in place for the presidential inauguration.  As we were there for nearly twenty minutes we also checked out the nearby statues of James Garfield and Ulysses Grant.

 Our lecturer/tour guide informed us that the statue atop the dome is "Lady Liberty" but Wikipedia assures me that it is the Statue of Freedom, confirming my belief that the Statue of Liberty is on Liberty Island in New York after all.

James A. Garfield                                                                   Ulysses S. Grant

The bus then took us past the Washington Monument, which is still closed due to earthquake damage, and around Tidal Basin.  Despite stopping to take photos at several memorials the majority of what our tour guide had to say was how disappointing it was that we'd miss the Cherry Blossom Festival and how beautiful the Cherry Blossom festival is and that the Cherry Blossom festival is a great example of integration of cultures.  He did give us some information about Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr, but given the reactions of others on the bus I am assuming it was mostly incorrect.

 The Jefferson Memorial

 Apparently Jefferson single-handedly wrote the US Constitution according, once again, to our lecturer

 The Roosevelt Memorial is the only presidential memorial to feature a statue of a First Lady or Presidential Pet

I found it ironic that the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial was made from white granite but I was quickly informed that the type of stone used was one of the least controversial aspects of this memorial.

By this time my camera, which had been making weird noises all morning, decided that it didn't want to change focus at all so all my pictures had to be at exactly the right distance or they were completely out of focus.  I had plenty of time to try and fix this, though, as we drove to Mount Vernon.

After God knows how long of our lecturer randomly announcing a fun fact he'd obviously just remembered, and remembered incorrectly at that, we arrived at George Washington's house.  Having arrived we then got to wait in the tour bus while the lecturer went and booked tickets, because prebooking is not something to worry about when organising an international trip for just over 40 people.

Eventually we gained admission and were soon sitting through a 25 minute orientation film detailing the life of George Washington that everyone agreed we could have done without.  After the film we had roughly 20 minutes left before we had to be on the bus again which meant that by the time the last group had made it through the house itself we were already running late.

The house itself, no pictures were allowed inside unfortunately

As you can see my efforts to fix my camera resulted in it randomly giving a fish eye effect to almost all my photos

After our rush to get back to the bus we drove back into DC for lunch at the Union Station food court, apparently a must for our US cultural experience.  We spent as long in the food court as we had at Mount Vernon which seemed excessive but I find myself unable to complain about the stop as it included my first ever taste of Ben and Jerry's.

After lunch we headed out of DC again to visit Arlington Cemetery.  Yes, for those of you keeping score we traveled from Maryland to DC to Virginia to DC to Virginia.  Upon arriving we once again stood around waiting, this time for the bus that would take us to JFK's grave and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

 

I ended up at the back of the line for the bus back to the cemetery entrance and it was already full before I was able to get on meaning I needed to walk back to the entrance.  This walk turned out to be the most moving experience of the entire visit to the cemetery, not just because I got a much clearer idea of the scale of the place than I did from the bus but also because of the quiet and peacefulness of the grounds.

I feel like the contemplative experience is lost thanks to the fish eye effect

After Arlington, we headed back to DC once again.  Back, in fact, to within spitting distance of the Tidal Basin and the monuments we'd seen before heading to Mount Vernon.  This time it was to see the Lincoln Memorial and nearby Korean War Veterans Memorial and Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

 The Korean War Veterans Memorial

Every service and support role is represented pictorially on the sandblasted wall

 The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

 The name of every soldier either killed or missing in action during the conflict is etched on the wall

The tribute to the women who served in Vietnam, mostly as nurses

 The Lincoln Memorial

         

The statue's hands make the ASL signs for A and L                  The Gettysburg Address is reproduced in full

We also found place where Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famous I Have a Dream Speech, but unfortunately the lighting wasn't conducive to my photos of the dedication there being in focus.

Eventually we headed back to the bus and on to dinner at a 'traditional' Italian restaurant where the meal included, confusingly, a Greek salad.  Soon enough, though, dinner was over and we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep before our introduction to American education tomorrow.

Culture shock for the day:  Marinara pasta sauce.  In America this is equivalent to a napolitana back home and includes exactly zero seafood.  Weird.

Next time: More statues at the University of Maryland!

Less work, more time

It feels, somehow, like I have less free time this year, even though I'm doing fewer subjects at uni.  Sure I've been filling some of that time with job searching and the like but it still seems like it is taking me more time to do less work.

Some philosopher with a name said that the size of any task increases to fill the allotted time.  My uni work this year is certainly living up to that statement and it surprises me.

I've always been a busy person, with far too much on my plate at any one time and for the first time in my memory I should have time to really have a good relax and enjoy the peacefulness of having nothing to do.  Despite this it seems that there is still always something that needs to be done and I'm still putting fun and personal things off.

Perhaps I don't know how not to be a busy person.

Interesting?

The other day I was reading a request for bloggers with interesting blogs to get in touch, it finished with the following statement "be honest, you know if you're interesting or not."

The problem is, I don't.  I find my writing interesting, but I am well aware that different people have different tastes.  An example of this is my undying love of blue brie, a taste I am well aware is not shared by a great many people.

I believe I have mentioned before that I have social phobia.  This manifests in many ways, often intermingling with my anxiety disorder, but the most common is that something as simple as "you know if you're interesting or not" makes me overanalyse everything I know about myself and how people view me.

The thought process goes something along the lines of:
Do other people know if they're interesting?
They must or they wouldn't say that.
So other people know what is interesting and what isn't?
Am I somehow defective for not instinctively knowing this?
Maybe I just shouldn't say anything.
I have absolutely nothing to contribute to this situation.
I have absolutely nothing to contribute to any situation.
And eventually:

I try to avoid feeling like that through mental and behavioural control techniques, and I try to avoid talking about it because acknowledging that I have this thing hanging over my head which could cause me to break down in tears and thoughts tending towards the macabre at any given moment.

I like to think that on the whole I tend to present myself as fairly happy and upbeat and as people are often surprised when I tell them I have social phobia I assume I do that reasonably well.  However, I am never sure how much faith to put in other people's responses because they may just be humouring me.

So I don't know if anyone other than me thinks I'm interesting, I don't know if anyone else wants to read what I put here.  But I'm going to keep doing it because I enjoy it and I'm hoping that others will as well.

An All-Female Panel

Tonight there is an all-female panel on QandA, a trend that appears to have recently started again on a number of panel shows.  Now I have no problem with an all-female panel on a show, so long as it doesn't happen too often, but it annoys me that the media doesn't seem to feel the same way about an all-male panel.  How is this equality?

I'm not for one moment suggesting that "the pendulum has swung too far" or that "the scales have tipped" or any of the other annoyingly oversimplified expressions that are often applied to this viewpoint.  Personally I think that there are many areas in which more work needs to be done to achieve equality despite equality already being reached in others.

I don't think it's right for companies to have a policy outlining the minimum number of women on staff but not the minimum number of men.  I don't think it's right for all male support groups to have to justify their exclusivity while all female groups don't.  And I especially think it wrong for issues to be labelled the exclusive territory of either women or men.

I choose not to call myself a feminist, even though I believe in the ideals of equality that feminism originally stood for, because too many feminists seem to have lost sight of those ideals.  Also too many people seem to view the empowerment of women and the disempowerment of men as the same thing and call that feminism. While the ideals are good, the term feminist has acquired too much baggage to be effective, not least of which is the fact that the term emphasises the female - useful when the inequality was at the extreme level of the early 20th century, but not so useful now.  Masculinism (which unlike feminism isn't recognised by spell checkers) follows the belief that for equality the recognition and redress of discrimination against men is just as important as the recognition and redress of discrimination against women.  Despite this, though, I have trouble with masculinism as well, again the name emphasises one gender over the other.  Perhaps a better term would be equalism.

The whole premise that equality is a single issue is still problematic for me, though.  As I stated before, the idea that a pendulum swings or scales tip may be a nice visual but it oversimplifies the broad range of issues involved in equality in the worst possible way.  As long as equality is viewed as a single issue, rather than a set of problems requiring a range of solutions then it will be forever beyond our grasp because applying a blanket solution has never, and in all probability will never, work.

I understand that this is a touchy issue, but if what I've written offends you then tough.  I am merely stating my viewpoint and if you disagree then you are welcome to let me know your viewpoint in the comments.  I am thoroughly sick of being told that I'm wrong without people having the courtesy to justify their position or that I don't understand the issue and then have no attempt made to help me understand it.

The Pretense of Adulthood

So I've decided that I should probably stop pretending that I'm a responsible adult type person and admit that for all intents and purposes I'm still roughly eight years old.

I have good reason for this conclusion, I spent most of yesterday playing board games, watching cartoons, reading comics and playing video games and eating almost every variety of food that is guaranteed to give you either diabetes or a heart attack.  Also, but I did all of this with a group of friends, all roughly my age, who also claim to be adults, some even responsible ones.

These are all things that I am regularly told are for kids and I should have grown out of it by now and, oh my absolute favourite, that I "should act more my age" which I'm starting to understand just means be more boring.  I don't, however, intend to let anyone else tell me what I should and shouldn't enjoy doing at what age - if I'm not hurting anybody and I'm not breaking the law then butt the hell out.

So I've decided not to bother pretending that I'm an adult with adult sensibilities.  I like YA fiction, I like wasting summer afternoons playing with water pistols and winter afternoons playing with nerf guns, I like my music too loud and my drinks too strong, and I enjoy awkward jokes about various bodily excretions more that I should.

Source is probably somewhere on Tumblr

I'm going to try and be more confident about it and not try and hide that I have the maturity of a squirrel with ADHD.  Except in job interviews.