#i cannot believe i said ‘illustrates’. i feel like i’m writing an essay for school.

[pelideswhore]

the horror and the wild (and achilles)

basically i’m trying to explain why the songs that are in my iliad playlist are there at all and ofc i’m starting with none other than achilles. I’m gonna do this line-by-line so you can listen as you read but i won’t be doing repeated lines. enjoy <3

also, yes, i am aware that the song is written about an abusive relationship between father and child, and i love listening it to it in that sense (yes i’m traumatized) but in this context it’s obvs different. my ability to make everything about achilles is a gift that keeps on giving. if you don’t want this song to have different meaning than what it’s actually about, just stop reading.

You were raised by wolves and voices, every night I hear them howling deep beneath your bed —

The ‘you’ in this line is Achilles, who knew from a very young age that he was destined for greatness. He based his entire personality around the fact, hence the having been ‘raised’ by voices. The ‘wolves’ also remind me of the fact that he a) spent many years in a cave with Charon and b) had many father figures. I mean it. Count them.

They said it all comes down to (you) —

This ties in with the previous line. Achilles really was told that the fate of the war and hence the entirety of Greece depends on him, when he was literally a child. That’s way too much responsibility for a five-year-old if you were looking for parenting tips.

You’re the daughter of silent watching stones, you watch the stars hurl all their fundaments in wonderment at you and yours, forever asking more —

I mostly connect the female part of the song to Thetis. Firstly, I feel like this segment already makes her feel like an ethereal, divine being (although Madeleine’s voice does that well enough ngl), at the same time it also describes her character very well. The fact that the stars ‘hurl all their fundaments’ reminds me of Book (idk what book it is), where Zeus fulfills Thetis’ wish on Achilles’ behalf, no questions asked. I also feel like some people forget that Zeus literally wanted to marry her, she was that gorgeous, so ya.

You are the space that’s in between every page, every chord and every screen. You are the driftwood and the rift, the words I promise I don’t mean —

I don’t know what this means. Love it tho.

We’re drunk, but drinking; sunk, but sinking —

I love this line so much, you have no idea. It brings up the idea that while they all know that they are fated to die and it is guaranteed, there’s still living it in real time. They’re eating, laughing, speaking, with the knowledge that tomorrow they won’t be able to. They’re dead men walking. Also, on a less existential note, it reminds me of the fact that they’ve doomed themselves by starting the war and yet they continue it. They’ve dug themselves a hole and instead of hopping out, they dig deeper.

They thought us blind, we were just blinking —

Patroclus and Achilles now: Their decision to put the war on hold, a momentary action, is the blinking, in relation to “blindness” which would’ve been leaving. The ‘they’ who thought them blind could really be Agamemnon, who underestimates and insults Achilles with the little party he sends to him. Or it could be Hector and the Trojans who believed they were safe … and then Achilles came back.

All the stones and kings of old will hear us screaming at the cold —

The stones are a perfectrepresentation of the Trojan wall and the kings, well, that’s the current Trojan royal family but also all that have passed. They will hear Achilles screaming at the cold, which could be the sea or Patroclus’ corpse if you want to take it literally. When he hears the news of Patroclus’ death, his screams do in fact reach Troy.

Remember me, I ask. Remember me, I sing —

Yeah. Remembrance for Achilles is obviously a big thing, so I’m not going to go super deep here, however the switch from ‘ask’ to ‘sing’ is really nice, considering we’re taking about an epic that was sung in remembrance of Achilles. The first word of the Iliad is literally ‘sing’.

Give me back my heart you wingless (thing) —

This could very much be about the fight for Patroclus’ corpse, but Achilles didn’t even know that was happening at the time, so instead I just make it about Achilles wanting Patroclus to be alive again. He does in fact refer to him as “his soul’s far dearer part”.

Think of all the horrors that I promised you I’d bring —

To me, this sounds like Achilles referring to threats he made to Hector about killing him and bringing destruction to his people. While the threats were empty at the time, now, after Patroclus has died, he takes them very seriously.

I promise you, they’ll sing of every time you passed your fingers through my hair and called me child —

In the song, this is the same person as in the lines before and after, considering it’s a song about a father and his son, but to me, this line is about the fact that Achilles wants the affection Patroclus showed him to be remembered. He doesn’t want the love they had to go forgotten. This is 100% caused by the fact that in my writing, Patroclus and Achilles’ hair is a huge thing you might want to look out for if you read it lols. OH also, the fact that he cuts it after Patroclus dies is like a “if you can’t touch it, no one can” moment.

Witness me, old man, I am the wild —

Back to the Trojans. ‘Old man’ here obviously means father but we’ll just ignore that and apply it to Priam, specifically to the scene where he comes to Achilles’ tent and asks for Hector’s corpse back.

You are the son of every dressing up box —

Honestly, I have no idea what this means. It definitely does remind me of Achilles hiding in a costume among the princesses in Skyros, but that doesn’t hold all too much significance. Dressing up is also usually a kids’ game which reminds you that he’s really just a kid pretending to be someone he’s not.

And I am time itself, I slow to let you play. I steal the hours and turn the nights into (day) —

Instead of giving the female voice just to Thetis, I could classify it as divine interference as a whole. This line specifically is giving me Athena vibes, though she is not time itself. The way she refers to what would be battling in this context as ‘playing’ shows how superior she is and how much she looks down upon even her favoured soldiers. It also reiterates for the millionth time that these soldiers are really just children. The fact that Athena has to ‘let’ him or allow him to play illustrates that Achilles is dependent on divine interference to win his battles, but specifically the duel with Hector.

Day by day, oh lord, three things I pray, that I might understand as best I can how bold I was, could be, will be - still am, by god, still am —

Here we get to the self-reflection where Achilles realizes that he was never as great as he thought he’d be, and that he had failed his people by not using that greatness to its full potential. The ‘will be’ and ‘still am’ parts are just him hyping himself up to take revenge on Hector, reminding himself that he does have the strength to do it.

Fret not, dear heart, let not them hear the mutterings of all your fears, the fluttering of all your wings —

I don’t know how deep I can go into this beyond what it literally means. He simply can’t let on that he’s scared. I guess the wings do represent his inner demons, but it’s also kind of funny when you think of him being Podarkes aka. having “winged feet”.

Welcome to the storm, I am thunder —

In the storm that is the war, Achilles is the thunder, the loud thing everyone fears. It’s quite interesting to consider that in reality, thunder is safe. The danger is the lighting. In my mind, Achilles considers Patroclus to be the lightning, which makes sense when you remember that after his death Achilles admits that he is not the best of all Greeks, but Patroclus. This leaves Achilles to be the thunder, the echo of what truly mattered.

Welcome to my table, bring your hunger —

This is similar to the line before. It’s his table, his war. Hector is the one that has to come prepared, ready to fight, but also ready to be served, ready to die.

[amieyhko]

The Last (for now) Days of Being a Student

29 Oct 2018

Honestly though, my last semester in uni wasn't very studious. I had one course called Sixteenth Century English Literature in which the professor basically mocked all forms of religion and pointed out all the sexy details in Shakespeare's sonnets. For the final exam, which was three essays long, I wrote one very indignant essay about why I needed more women in literature and how all of the supposedly feminist writers in the sixteenth century were full of *$#% (but in a literary chic way). I got an A.

To top off the not-student like behavior, I TA-ed for my advisor's Freshmen English class. I survived a semester before and couldn't be prouder of myself for the job I was doing. It was mostly writing emails to students, making photocopies now and then, and sending reminders to the professor. The most excruciating part probably was correcting their essays' grammar and spelling. My friend said "Why bother? They probably won't read them," to which I retorted "CUZ I LIKE BEING RIGHT!"  On the anonymous end-of-the-term survey, I've received many confessions of love to which I awww-ed and laughed. But most of them genuinely thanked me for the effort I put into emailing them, asking them questions, and drumroll correcting their grammar.

But why bother reading about my boring school life when you can read about what I have been doing not in school! Here is what went down in my life from April - June 2018.

The Diary of Anne Frank

The best way to cure jet lag is to go straight into tech week the following week. I have experienced many ailments from traveling and found jet lag from Europe to Asia is quite the worst. Fortunately, I signed myself up to run the lights for the Butterfly Effect Theatre's production of The Diary of Anne Frank. This was our second run but this play just doesn't get old. Fun fact about this play: this show's original Broadway cast had young Natalie Portman playing Anne. The Diary has been adapted into many plays but this version doesn't deify Anne into a hero figure but truthfully illustrates the inner drama of a teenage girl and the struggles of seven people living in a cramped up space. Honest to God, I cry almost every curtain call.

During the production, I read many young people don't believe that the Holocaust happened—this information killed me a little. It's absurd that someone wouldn't believe in a historical event with monuments and memorial sites all over the world with many primary sources and survivors who are still alive to tell their stories. Don't even get me started on how good some great works of fiction are based on WWII, like The Reader, Everything is Illuminated, and The Fiddler on the Roof… Also, there was a group of high school students in Taiwan that dressed up as Nazi soldiers and marched around the school for an event. Ignorance is not bliss, naïve is not cute—history is there for us to reflect and learn. I somehow took these news very personally, maybe because I grew up listening to the same Bible stories as the Jews, maybe because I cannot stand uneducated people, probably a combination of both.

A representative from Israeli cultural office was invited to open the show (we had free falafels, hummus, and pita during the last run of the show but not this time, insert whimpering). The weekend swooshed by. I was just thankful I could be a part of a show that spoke a story that some started to neglect.

That was the last time I worked with this theatre company because 1. they did have one last show August but I was helping another show the exact same time 2. rent issues with the theatre space 3. the artistic director got a new job in Vienna. He moved early September and he basically sold everything from costumes to lighting equipments. It was a hectic process to watch a theatre company that I truly felt at home turn into a goodbye yard sale. I learned a lot about running low budget shows, programming with too-old consoles, but most of all I made connections with people I know I will meet again in this tiny theatre world.

Fashion Revolution Taipei

April was a month where I went crazy juggling all about. I collaborated with Totes & Tees, a small social enterprise that focuses on ethical and zero-waste fashion. I have been following this small company for a while through a mutual friend and was really interested in what they did. The owner was also going to be one of the hosts for Fashion Revolution 2018 in Taipei. The idea was to have a runway showcasing up-cycled items handmade by many different designers. I was to crochet a beanie from a no-longer-used piece of fabric. Sadly, I couldn't participate on the actual day because I went on a family trip to…

Rome & Paris

To say this was a family trip would be a misleading statement. My parents were there to lead the seminars they have been running for 10+ years. As I mentioned in Update 3.0, their heart is for the Chinese speaking people all over the world. The Asians basically took over a whole hotel on the outskirts of Rome to host Fathers' School and Mothers' School simultaneously. This meant, there needed to be a baby sitting club. Slowly raise your hands if you're a pastor kid you basically did everything that was assumed of you! (Did I volunteer? Did I chose to be their child? We'll never know) No, I'm not being bitter, I just simply love poking fun at my stereotype. Besides, I was asked nicely to participate in taking care of the children—a member from the Taiwan side of the team had activities prepared for them, I just had to support. I said "WHY NOT? I JUST DID THIS A MONTH AGO!"

But, this crowd was tough. It wasn't like calming down super rowdy Hungarian-Romani children nor was it like being dragged around by crazy bubbly Filipino kids. These were well-educated, cellphone-hogging Chinese-looking kids who preferred classily sitting on chairs, not the floor, chattering away in Italian. Of course, they were all embedded in their Chinese-ness from their parents, so they still understood most of what we were trying to do. However, whenever the head teacher asked them to do something extremely "Asian", my TCK heart ached, feeling all the "well, they are NOT going to relate to that at all…."

Because the seminar lasted three out of the five days we were at Rome, we only had enough time to look around the Vatican and trot around to sneak peek here and there. One of the free days was taken over by a tour set up by the local church. They took us around historical sites that were related to the early underground churches and Apostle Paul. We visited way too many cathedrals that all of them started to look the same. The most memorable place was the underground tunnels where the early Christians escaped to and hid from the Romans. Going to a Christian school, we would always play Underground Church when we had class sleepovers—even though it was just a game, the danger felt extremely real. But as I stood in the tunnel, I could actually really imagine how real their fear must have been. I was in awe of the way these early Christians kept their faith even in the dark, cold underground.

After eating one too many cones of gelato and faking one too many Italian conversations in Spanish, we arrived in Paris. They were only going to host Fathers' School so umma and I had plenty of free time. However, being the only linguistically competent person in the group (but honestly, my French is basically nonexistent), I had to take everyone around the city. I was annoyed at having no time to myself and just my parents but thankfully, appa had three days free and the crowd let us be for two of those days.

Paris' reputation really proceeds itself, it's a bit dirty, there are more rude strangers than nice people, and they really hate you if you ask "parlez-vous anglais?". Despite all the negative stereotypes, I took my little tour group all around the places I've researched in advance. I was also allowed to go off on my own when I wore them all out by 5 p.m. I'm proud to say I've actually hit all the touristy places I wanted to visit with and without the group. We even visited Versailles kudos to the fact umma is so internet-savvy that she actually researched. She was very intent on visiting a few places like Château de Versailles, the top of the Eiffel, and the Louvre—her excuse always being "I'm never coming here ever again!"

After two-ish weeks of venturing around Western Europe, we emptied out the 99 cents cheese blocks at the local Carrefour market, squished it into our luggage, and sat on a long plane ride. Umma commented that I seem to be the "vacation type", she couldn't understand how I could still be so chipper being gone from home so long. Although her observations were accurate, I wouldn't have wanted to stay longer unless I started taking French classes or something—the language barrier was devastating.

Sharon McGill Memorial Service

My dorm mother passed away from cancer last fall. Her favorite drink at Starbucks, toffee nut latte, just came round again. I received the news via McGill dormie Facebook group while I scrolled through my phone during class, bad idea. My commute back home that day seemed five times longer than usual. Halfway through my walk home from the bus stop, I ran into umma. She asked if I wanted to go to Costco with them, then asked why I don't look so well. I honestly had no clue how to break the news. Appa's car rolled around to pick us up for Costco, I said Sharon died, we cried a little and had a moment of silence. I always thought about how umma and Sharon, appa and Terry are the same age. My mums and dads. They are some of the most important people of my life and one of them was gone.

I'd like to think I had enough time to process through this situation. Then I'd realize that not all valleys in life are empty holes. You don't just get over it. You live with their memories. Some days will pain you more than others but they're there to remind you that you are that much alive. You can still feel. As cheesy as I'm starting to sound, this is something I have been needing to remind myself lately.

After what seemed like too long, the day of Sharon's memorial service came. I hopped on the familiar bus from Taipei to Taichung. Visiting high school wasn't a big deal but I've never thought I'd visit because my dorm mum passed away. The auditorium was filled. Dorm kids had priority seats. Terry gave a bear hug to everyone who made it. The whole thing began with Terry mumbling to the mic "Alright, let's get this over with," to which I definitely chuckled. I didn't even bother holding back my laughter or tears or both as they came and went throughout the service. At the end, I could just feel this was a closure that everyone who knew Sharon deserved. I cannot describe what kid of feeling that was. The feeling of home? Feeling of clear certainty. Maybe everyone's love for Sharon somehow became a tangible atmosphere. I must say it almost felt like a wedding.

During the reception, there was a photo time where Terry was huddled around 30-something out of 120-something of his dorm children. Later on he said that was the highlight of his day. He also said no one was allowed to leave the dorms before midnight, to which most of us complied to. Most of the dorm kids that showed up all graduated around '02 or '03 so I was just a little bit very intimidated, mostly because I forgot the fact that we were all bound by the similar experiences of studying in Morrison while living in a dorm with the same dorm parents. It was a good evening to be a McGill Dormie.

Bye Hair Day

I have been notorious for the way I treat my hair. If you know the song "Grace Kelly" by Mika, well, in the chorus, he is singing about my hair circa 2013-2015. Then I stopped. I hated the way my hair felt dry and crinkly, I wanted my normal long hair back. I also remembered I've always wanted to donate my hair to a cancer foundation. It was just something I wanted to cross off my bucket list. So I've been growing my hair out ever since—it took way longer than I thought. Throughout my hair growth, two significant people in my life died from cancer. It felt like I had way more reason to donate now.

June 16th was the date. My friend also wanted to join in. We found Little Princess Trust, an organization that gives out free wigs to young girls who have lost their hair due to illnesses. Their guidelines said they love receiving longer hair because they're more popular. After some measuring I decided to get a buzz cut so that I could maximize the length of hair I could donate. Besides, I've been wanting to have crazy buzzed hair after a couple of years of freakishly long hair. Fickle me, I know.

My hair stylist washed my hair way thoroughly, dried it for what seemed like an hour, tied it up into sections, and snip, it was in a plastic bag. My buzz cut buddy and I couldn't stop rubbing our heads the following few days.

But my oh my, I did not know that a head of hair was keeping me warm all this time. I was constantly dealing with extremely cold overhead AC on buses and I eventually caught a really bad cough for three plus weeks. I now never leave my house without a hat of some sort.

My hair has become so short that I have been tracking my days with hair length. My best friend, Fanny keeps saying it's like watching a little infant grow every week. I told her to stop being so overly dramatic.

oh dear, this is getting real long

Instead of asking how someone's day was, Sharon would ask us three things: 1. what was the low point of your day? 2. high point? 3. what have you learned today? or what do you think Jesus is teaching you today?

So to boil down my April to June into a few pointers, it sucked that I got really sick for almost a month, but I loved getting to travel and do a lot lot lot of things. I'm learning that well-done goodbyes are possible. Currently, I'm learning to do just that—slowly closing up gaps responsibly, honestly, and kindly. God is also teaching me that I'm allowed to chose and do what I love (but more on that next update).

Thank you for catching up on my life, I promise the next post will be just as long.

[the-end-of-art]

Rapid fire

Two small excerpts from two Comment pieces on attention, distraction and technology:

From Habits of Mind in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs:

This passage reminds me of something the comedian Louis C.K. said a few years ago, in an appearance on Conan O'Brien's show. Louie, as his friends call him, was explaining that he doesn't want his kids to have cell phones because he wants them to be sad. And sadness comes when you are forced to be alone with your thoughts: "That's what the phones are taking away, the ability to just sit there. That's being a person."

He described a day when he was driving along as an emotionally intense Bruce Springsteen song came on the radio, and he started to feel a certain melancholy welling up in him, and his instant response to that melancholy was to want to grab his phone and text someone. "People are willing to risk taking a life and ruining their own, because they don't want to be alone for a second," he said.

But on that day when, in his car, Louie felt the melancholy welling up, he resisted the temptation to grab his phone. As the sadness grew, he had to pull over to the side of the road to weep. And after the weeping came an equally strong joy and gratitude for his life. But when we heed that impulse to grab the phone and connect with someone, we don't allow the melancholy to develop, and therefore can't receive the compensatory joy. Which leaves us, Louie says, in this situation: "You don't ever feel really sad or really happy, you just feel . . . kinda satisfied with your products. And then you die. And that's why I don't want to get phones for my kids."

FREEBASING HUMAN CONNECTION

By our immersion in that ecosystem we are radically impeded from achieving a "right understanding of ourselves" and of God's disposition toward us.

If you ask a random selection of people why we're all so distracted these days—so constantly in a state of what a researcher for Microsoft, Linda Stone, has called "continuous partial attention"—you'll get a somewhat different answer than you would have gotten thirty years ago. Then it would have been "Because we are addicted to television." Fifteen years ago it would have been, "Because we are addicted to the Internet." But now it's "Because we are addicted to our smartphones."

All of these answers are both right and wrong. They're right in one really important way: they link distraction with addiction. But they're wrong in an even more important way: we are not addicted to any of our machines. Those are just contraptions made up of silicon chips, plastic, metal, glass. None of those, even when combined into complex and sometimes beautiful devices, are things that human beings can become addicted to.

Then what are we addicted to?

In February 2016, Ben Rosen, a twenty-nine year-old writer for the massively popular website Buzzfeed, wrote a post about what he had learned about the social media service Snapchat by talking to his thirteen-year-old sister Brooke.

He got interested in this topic when he watched Brooke reply to forty snaps—that's the basic unit of Snapchat, like a tweet on Twitter—in less than a minute. So he asked her questions about how she uses, and thinks about, Snapchat. Three things emerged from that discussion.

First, for Brooke and her friends Snapchat is almost never text, it's all images, usually selfies in which they respond to one another with various facial expressions, as though they're using their faces to imitate emoticons. Second, Brooke is not unusual in being able to do forty of these in a minute. Third: When Rosen asked Brooke how often she's on Snapchat she replied, "On a day without school? There's not a time when I'm not on it. I do it while I watch Netflix, I do it at dinner, and I do it when people around me are being awkward. That app is my life."

Brooke also noted that "parents don't understand. It's about being there in the moment. Capturing that with your friends." And when her brother asked her how she could even mentally process forty snaps in less than a minute, much less respond to them, she said, "I don't really see what they send. I tap through so fast. It's rapid fire." Snapchat is a form of communication drained almost completely of content. It is pure undiluted human connection.

So there is a relationship between distraction and addiction, but we are not addicted to devices. As Brooke's Snapchat story demonstrates, we are addicted to one another, to the affirmation of our value—our very being—that comes from other human beings. We are addicted to being validated by our peers.

OUR ECOSYSTEM OF INTERRUPTION TECHNOLOGIES

If you don't believe in God, you might not think this craving for validation is a problem. But if you do believe in the God of Jesus Christ, it doesn't look good at all. As Paul the apostle asks the Galatians, "Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ" (1:10).

Now, to be sure, there is one sense in which we should care what people think of us. Paul tells the Romans, "give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all" (12:17). But that is in order to commend Christ to the world in all that we do and say, to avoid being a stumbling block to those who might otherwise come in through the door of faith. That's a very different thing than seeking to "please man" because you so desperately crave their validation. If you measure your personal value in the currency of your Snapchat score, then you will be profoundly averse to doing or saying anything that might lower that score or even limit its growth.

A few years ago the science-fiction writer Cory Doctorow published an essay in which he referred to "your computer's ecosystem of interruption technologies." Keep in mind that Doctorow wrote that phrase before smartphones. My iPhone's "ecosystem of interruption technologies" makes the one on my computer seem like pretty weak sauce, because the latter is on my desk or in my bag while the former is ever-present. And it's ever-present because I like it that way. I choose the device that interrupts my thinking and, as Louis C.K. observed, gives me an ever-present opportunity to escape unwanted emotions.

I am a living illustration of Technological Stockholm Syndrome: I have embraced my kidnapper. Or, to change the metaphor yet again, I have welcomed this disruptive ecosystem into my mental domicile and invited it to make a home for itself here—like those poor kids who let the Cat in the Hat in.

The church who would draw such novices has a historically new task as well.

But an awareness of the potential gravity of this situation has gradually dawned on me. I have been significantly affected by this pocket-sized disruptor, even though I had decades of formation in a different attentional environment to serve as a kind of counterweight. People like Ben Rosen's sister Brooke, the Snapchat queen, clearly don't have any of that. I wonder what her future—her future as a self, as a person—will hold.

Our "ecosystem of interruption technologies" affects our spiritual and moral lives in every aspect. By our immersion in that ecosystem we are radically impeded from achieving a "right understanding of ourselves" and of God's disposition toward us. We will not understand ourselves as sinners, or as people made in God's image, or as people spiritually endangered by wandering far from God, or as people made to live in communion with God, or as people whom God has come to a far country in order to seek and to save, if we cannot cease for a few moments from an endless procession of stimuli that shock us out of thought.

It has of course always been hard for people to come to God, to have a right knowledge of ourselves and of God's threats and promises. I don't believe it's harder to be a Christian today than it has been at any other time in history. But I think in different periods and places the common impediments are different. The threat of persecution is one kind of impediment; constant technological distraction is another. Who's to say which is worse?—even if it's obvious which is more painful. But I really do think we are in new and uniquely challenging territory in our culture today, and I don't believe that, in general, churches have been fully aware of the challenges—indeed, in many cases churches have made things worse.

In his 1996 essay "Philosophy . . . Artifacts . . . Friendship," the Catholic priest and theorist of technology Ivan Illich provides numerous insights into these challenges for the church in our age of distractions. He writes:

The novice to the sacred liturgy and to mental prayer has a historically new task. He is largely removed from those things—water, sunlight, soil, and weather—that were made to speak of God's presence. In comparison with the saints whom he tries to emulate, his search for God's presence is of a new kind.

. . Today's convert must recognize how his senses are continuously shaped by the artifacts he uses. They are charged by design with intentional symbolic loads, something previously unknown.

And remember, Illich wrote all this before the Internet. What he wrote then is even more true now: the age of television and print ads for Persil now seem a very primitive endeavour indeed. If then it could be said that "our perceptions are to a large extent technogenic," they are now almost wholly technogenic, for most of us. If Illich is right to say that "the novice to the sacred liturgy and to mental prayer has a historically new task," then that means that the church who would draw such novices has a historically new task as well.

SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF—SQUIRREL!!

And what Illich says about how we "search for God's presence" is related to how we understand and talk about and preach sin.

When George Whitefield and John Wesley were preaching sermons that created the First Great Awakening, they almost always started by trying to arouse in their hearers a conviction of sin. The typical sequence of their sermons looked like this:

1. You are a sinner, though no more, or less, of a sinner than anyone else. 2. We sinners cannot rescue ourselves. 3. But God in his grace and love has come to rescue us. 4. So we need only to accept that grace and love, in penitence, to be reconciled to God.

But I don't believe we can readily reach people today with the same sequence. The very idea that I am a sinner sends me groping for my smartphone to avoid unpleasant emotions. I think this will be especially true for the majority of North Americans whose basic default theology is what the sociologist of religion Christian Smith and his colleagues call Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. For such people an awareness of sin is going to be hard to achieve—certainly at the earlier stages of their Christian lives.

But what if we tried to tell people that by disconnecting, however temporarily, they might be able to hear God? Consider these thoughts by Rowan Williams:

The true disciple is an expectant person, always taking it for granted that there is something about to break through from the master, something about to burst through the ordinary and uncover a new light on the landscape.

And I think that living in expectancy—living in awareness, your eyes sufficiently open and your mind sufficiently both slack and attentive to see that when it happens— has a great deal to do with discipleship, indeed with discipleship as the gospels present it to us. Interesting (isn't it?) that in the gospels the disciples don't just listen, they're expected to look as well. They're people who are picking up clues all the way through.

We need to put people—those who don't yet believe, those whose belief is young, those whose lives with Christ have become attenuated in a "technogenic" environment where our thoughts are largely directed by engineers— in a position to "pick up clues."

From Learning with Your Hands by Matthew Crawford with Brian Dijkema:

BD: What you mean by a political economy of attention?

MC: A few years ago I was in a supermarket and swiped my bank card to pay for groceries. I then watched the little screen intently, waiting for its prompts. During those intervals between swiping my card, confirming the amount, and entering my PIN, I was shown advertisements. Clearly some genius realized that a person in this situation is a captive audience. The intervals themselves, which I had previously assumed were a mere artifact of the communication technology, now seemed to be something more deliberately calibrated. These haltings now served somebody's interest.

Over the last ten years a new frontier of capitalism has been opened up by our self-appointed disrupters, one where it is okay to dig up and monetize every bit of private mindshare. And very often this proceeds by the auctioning off of public space; it is made available to private interests who then install means for appropriating our attention. When you go through airport security, there are advertisements on the bottoms of the bins that you place your belongings in. Who decided to pimp them out like that? If my attention is a resource, and it is, then the only sensible way to understand this is as a transfer of wealth. It is an invisible one, but the cumulative effects are very real, and a proper topic for political reflection. Maybe for political action too.

BD: And people who want to guard their inner life are forced into themselves. It forces you to put a book in front of your face.

MC: Right, that's one of the hidden costs. What's lost is the space for sociability in our public spaces. Like you say, we're driven into ourselves with sort of an arms race between private attention technologies versus the public ones.

Of course there's another solution. If you have the means you can go to the business class lounge which in some countries like France is silent, there's just nothing. That's what makes it so incredibly luxurious. When you think about the fact that it's the marketing executives in the business lounge who are using that silence to think — to come up with their brilliant schemes which will then determine the character of the peon lounge — you begin to see this in a political light. When some people treat the minds of other people as a resource, to be harvested by mechanized means, this is not "creating wealth," as its apologists like to say. It is a transfer of wealth.

[zoe-truong]

P4

Organization, Transitions, and Word Choice

Option 1

I stumbled upon an image not long ago on a popular, niche website called Reddit. The image depicted a well-known Japanese concept of life called Ikigai: A reason for being. In a sense, a person can only reach the pinnacle of purpose at the cross-section of what they love doing, what they are good at, what they can be paid for, and what the world needs. Leave it to me to have an existential crisis after realizing my plans for the future fall short of a perfect Ikigai.

In order to discover this ideal area, I have to go through an arduous process of evaluating the aspects of my character that hold the greatest value. Over the course of my first year in college, I’ve performed the most excruciating autopsy on my identity. At this point I feel as though I’ve taken every personality questionnaire or strengths assessment quiz out there. The qualifiers were nice to categorize who I was as a leader on campus, but I think the biggest growth and step forward I’ve seen in my college career is through my curriculum.

I’ve written a number of essays for World Literature that cover a spectrum of challenging concepts, anything from systemic racism to the carnism ideology. In each blog, in each paper I find myself questioning the way I view the world. How is it that these problems exist today and why am I a bystander? I hastily evaded the topic of my true passion in P3, because frankly I was clueless. Up until that paper, I was certain that my passion laid in my love for the stock market. However, when looking at this “passion” through the lens of the Ikigai, pursuing my parent’s dreams ignores the requisites that give my goals meaning, purpose.

While I purposefully work towards a future on Wall Street, at times I have to force myself to keep going. This is different from working hard to improve, maybe more akin to reluctance due to dissatisfaction. With this dissatisfaction comes fear: fear of being wrong, fear of being inadequate, fear of failing. If I fail, then what do I have left? Maybe nothing, but I didn’t spend years in a higher education without preparing contingency plans. I often forget that my ideal job is not the end of the road. The only thing more unknown than my future is myself, because the way I will perceive or approach the world will be incomparable to how I did years prior. The only thing I can control now is my action plan for the future. These are the steps I can put forth towards my education so that I can confidently go into the workforce, regardless if it’s the one I expected or not.

I’d likely still be going through that existential crisis were it not for Plan II, because the program’s broad curriculum makes me a little more comfortable about my prospects in life. Every class underscores the university’s values on ethical reasoning, and it is my job to carry this awareness throughout every step of my life. My knowledge doesn’t disappear with my failure, but rather stays waiting until I can redirect it to a new path. I know that “with everything falling down around me, I’d like to believe in all the possibilities”[1] of what I am capable of doing. Thinking of my life in that way, I can think of a few options left in the debris of my failure.

I will always have a strong love for art, animals, and Buddhism. These are three things in my life that I could say evoke the most passionate responses from me whether in practice or in discourse. Firstly, everyone has their own outlet for stress; mine comes in the form of drawing. When faced with worry, confusion, anger, or any unpleasant emotion, I articulate my thoughts through pencil strokes. Secondly, when I unwittingly watch a video or movie with animal deaths, I get incredibly emotional. The helplessness of these poor creatures in the face of cynical humans is something that causes intense frustration and sorrow. And finally, I have found myself connecting with my Buddhist self as of late. I’ve always used Buddhism as a moral compass, because religion has never been a defining part of my life. However, the timing of World Literature with my Buddhist organization has brought me closer than ever to integrating these moral lessons into my life. Impermanence, the Four Noble Truths, and the Five Precepts anchor themselves in my life decisions and expand my worldview.

So, left with these three ideas in mind, I have to figure the different ways I can simultaneously advance through my education and stay connected with these interests. The problem I have to get past is that my classes will not always be relevant to my passions. As much as I could try, Investment Management does not exactly cater to Buddhist ideals. But like I expanded my consciousness to “hammer [my] thoughts into unity,”[2] I am capable of taking with me something valuable from each class.

In my P3, I eluded to some vague grasp of the “Truth” in life and how I expect to incorporate that into my future. But, in writing this essay, I realized that it was a pretty half-hearted attempt. For as long as I can remember, my future was synonymous with my career path. At the behest of this essay, I recognized that there was more to life besides finding ways to stand out as a businesswoman. Let me clarify that building upon my ethical reasoning will still be important, but I plan to broaden the applications of it. Besides using compassion to become a better financial analyst, I want to become a better leader. The great thing about leadership is that it isn’t restricted to the people who excel at delegating or producing the most ambitious ideas. “Some roles are more visibly "the leader" than others, but they can all contribute to the overall leadership effort.”[3] And in enforcing this idea can I ascribe ethical reasoning to education, work environments, or life. I want to use my open-mindedness to assist others, rather than exploit the financial markets with fine-tuned methods of deceit. But when I look at my life with the financial career out of the picture, that standard of ethics still stands true. I will always take in others’ perspectives at all times and try to find the most harmonious solution in any situation. And in the process of writing this paper, I realized how now more than ever is the time to start putting this ethical reasoning in to action.

Not too long ago the President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced a string of potential budget cuts to reduce our nation’s debt.[4] Many of his proposals were shocking to say the least, but the one that brought me to my feet was the elimination of the National Endowments for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. For all of my life, art has been the vehicle for my emotions. I’ll be sitting in class, pencil hovering over a mockingly difficult exam, focusing all of my attention to a free response problem while my brain is conjuring solutions. Unintentionally, my hand flits across the sheet, outlining small pandas or swirls of stars. Drawing is natural for me. Even when my mind is elsewhere, my hand goes through the motions of mindless doodles like a reflex. So, when the new administration is considering to eliminate this opportunity to create and be creative, how can my conscious self stand back when my unconscious self will never stop drawing?

It is with these facts and while writing this paper that I stopped to consider a world without art. It’d be dreary, unimaginative, and restrictive. I had the privilege to grow up in a household brimming with artistic minds and a plethora of tools at my disposal, but so many children across the country barely have free sheets of paper and pencils. Drawing did more than let me be expressive; it helped me visualize my problems or promote my curiosity. If I’m illustrating a realistic piece, I have to study the proportions and analyze the characteristics of the model that translate well onto the page. If i’m painting a scene, I have to go through constant trial and error to find the corresponding color—correctly accounting for undertones and highlights. By taking away the Endowments for the Arts, the administration is going to be discouraging entire generations of children from a world of extremely critical thinking. Three-hundred million dollars[5] is definitely a steep grant, but the opportunity costs for that money does not touch the value of investing a life enriched by creative thinking.

I know that by working as an artist alone cannot protect this amount of money, but I hope to reach a point in my life where I can dedicate all of my time to advocating for the arts and working with children. This is how my career plan is a means to an end. Thinking back to that ikigai, the world doesn’t need a financial analyst, but my career would supplement the three other parts of my life I need to live comfortably. However, I can’t be content making money without fulfilling that sense of purpose. I still love the stock market, but when the time comes where I won’t have to worry about sustaining myself well into the future, I can instead turn my attention to sustaining the arts for the nation’s future. Sure to some people art can be pretentious or overvalued, but it still means something to someone. And for that reason, regardless of what art means to some child in Midwest America or New England, I will be the one to lead the charge to protect this cultural cornerstone.

It’s not going to be an easy task, especially with how the rest of my college years are laid out. I didn’t really expect to ever put art back into my curriculum after I graduated high school, because it was never something I felt would every substantially complete me, financially and emotionally. However, I don’t think my finance and Plan II track will impede me in any way, because like I said in P3, “Unweaving [my intended curriculum] by reading more, learning more, and challenging myself more is conducive to connecting my ethical reasoning to my future.”[6] Yes, artistic endeavors do require ethical reasoning. Some of the most powerful pieces, like the photo of the Napalm Girl or any of Banksy’s graffiti works are reason enough to show how challenging today’s ideologies through art causes a domino effect around society. In many ways, art is like education. Students connect with their professors and see them “[show] such a passion for thought that, by their example, they make one want to think.”[7] Art works in just the same way.

So in order to foster this same perceptiveness, I have to actively work and pay attention to how my professors think in every class. I think the most valuable classes would be the ones that constantly challenge my thoughts and help me understand other people. For example, the year-long Plan II Philosophy course forces students to face uncomfortable problems or try unorthodox methods of thinking. However, if I really want to engage with children and learn how to advocate for the importance of the arts, I should start thinking about classes that can best articulate my assertions and allow me to interact with younger children to help them express themselves as I did with art. Anything from the social sciences to the heavy writing-based courses like World Literature are the stepping stones for that aspect of my leadership vision.

Writing is not an easy process. In fact, writing is an art. Unfortunately, I do not have the natural inclination to the art of writing as I do the art of drawing, but I still submit to the same processes required to create valuable works. To write something worthwhile like these World Literature papers, one has to thoughtfully consider the points one needs to address in the work in a way that is both persuasive and interesting. Any length of work —blog, essay, thesis— will force the writer to carefully consider each word, choosing only the right ones that allows her “to seek the truth and express it.”[8] I always strive to seek the truth in every class. I may not always be right, but the important thing is that I open myself up to new perspectives to find what’s right. I don’t think I could have really been capable of being as open-minded as I have been without World Literature. Reading novels of walks of life I’ll never meet has helped me better understand this disparate world we live in and motivated me to protect the most basic rights of the underprivileged.

I know I started off this paper with lots of doubt, but thinking thoughtfully about how I can make the world a better place was well worth the torture. All those hoping to learn and succeed should go through the same process of self-discovery to become amore compassionate and contributing member of society. I know that I could set my goals so much higher and broader than encouraging an environment for art, but I know that where I can be most impactful is in a world I know and love.

Word Count: 2253  Word Count without quotes: 2169

Citations:

[1] C'mon, by Andrew Dost, Decaydance / Fueled by Ramen Records, 2011, LP, accessed April 11, 2017, http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/panicatthedisco/cmon.html.

[2]  William B. Yeats, "Transfer of Power," Jerome Bump, last modified August 7, 2012, accessed April 11, 2017, http://www.la.utexas.edu/users/bump/603A13/LeadingClassDiscussion603.html.

[3]  Robert J. Lee, "Ground Your Leadership Vision in Personal Vision," in Discovering the Leader in You (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010), 34, accessed April 10, 2017, https://www.la.utexas.edu/users/bump/DiscoverLeader.pdf.

[4] Sopan Deb, "Trump Proposes Eliminating the Arts and Humanities Endowments," The New York Times, last modified March 15, 2017, accessed April 11, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/arts/nea-neh-endowments-trump.html.

[5] Deb, "Trump Proposes," The New York Times.

[6]  Zoë Truong, "Understanding My Ethics," last modified March 9, 2017, Microsoft Word.

[7]  Jon Schwartz, "The Web of Campus Life," in Texas, Our Texas, comp. Bryan A. Garner (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1984), 161, accessed April 10, 2017, https://www.la.utexas.edu/users/bump/TexasLeaders.pdf.

[8] "The Core Purpose of the University," in Composition and World Literature (Austin, TX: Jenn's, 2016), 1:90.

Media Citations: 

Ikigai: https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/63cf1k/image_ikigai/

Limitless Possibilites: http://www.gratitudexp.com/2015/01/09/this-year-embrace-the-limitless-possibilities/

Hammer Your Thoughts Into Unity: http://www.la.utexas.edu/users/bump/images/hammer.html

NEA: https://www.arts.gov/grants/manage-your-award/nea-logo

Arts and Creativity: http://www.actualinsights.com/2014/art-science-creativity-susan-weinschenk-video/

Writing: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/why-writing-good-therapy