Chunk paper FINAL

R.D Liang has come out with an article in which he had explained Freud philosophical thinking of humans. The article explained that Freud thought that people were only a part of what they could be. He said that people, once they hit adulthood, don’t even remember their childhood. People don’t even remember their dreams. People only realize and care about when their tired, have to use the bathroom, and sex. He also brings the reader into the thoughts of normality. Stating that people who feel more things are considered weird, and don’t fit in to what the community considers "normal". He leaves the reader with the idea that the future can be changed, and it doesn’t have to stay like this. When I had first read his theory it sounded like a cheap rip off of the matrix. I laughed at the thought of how crazy this man was. Once reading the article over to myself I tried to put Liang’s thoughts into consideration and compare them to my life. I looked at his main concepts of dreams and remembering my child hood and I realized he was right. I don’t really remember my child hood, all I think about is things that are right in front of me and "real". With me caring about only these things it takes away my imagination and all these other feelings I have on the inside making me just a body on earth. It’s almost as if we are just robots working to keep the world turning, when in fact we are killing and making everything around us pretty bad. In class we will take excerpts if Liangs theory and put them to the test to figure out if in the end we can gain a deeper insight into our daily life.

Our first test to the journey of becoming "enlightened" was to learn about our senses and become aware of them. In class we had done many exercises to try and become aware of the physical feeling being felt while doing common things we do all day. One thing that I remember most was called the stand. The stand was when the whole class would stand in a circle and stay still and quiet for 5 minutes. Starting this exercise you think "5 minutes, wow this is easy". In the end I was really wrong. Standing there not moving and just standing isn’t very fun at all. In actuality it was funnier. At first I remember trying to take it serious, but about 30 seconds in I looked around and saw some people standing with their eyes closed like they were standing and sleeping at the same time. Sadly I distracted myself with laughter and I made eye contact with my friends, and ended up laughing with them also. It wasn’t till the second time I tried when I actually noticed something about myself and my friends, and I guess this can also go for allot of other people too. I noticed that people have to constantly distract themselves with things just to keep them entertained. In the end people just want more. As humans we can never be entertained with just one thing it needs to get better and bigger to just keep distracting us. But why? Why must we always need a distraction? It me be in part that on the inside we do not like our selves so we garnish ourselves with 300 dollar sneakers and 4oo dollar clothes just to make us look like we are something important on the outside. A great example is an ipod. People first had an ipod just for music but now it had evolved into something more. People wanted more out of an ipod so companies made ipods smaller and sleeker and also added videos so we don’t only entertain out ears now but we distract our eyes also.

I understood from this exercise that R.D Liang is trying to say we distract ourselves from what’s going on inside. When I understood this I connected it strait to me. I agree but I personally disagree. I know I have many electronic devices and other things to distract me, but I don’t think that takes away any part of me as a person. I won’t become some kind of "zombie", or "robot" just because I use something to distract me. In essence what I am really trying to point out is that it’s pretty much impossible to not be at least a little bit distracted with ourselves. As people we might not feel every little feeling in our body but we do as R.D Liang states recognize at least the important ones that directly affect our life. The difference between the way I think about it is that I dot think it’s a horrible thing. Yeah, it’s kind of screwed up that everyone was raised to be this way, but what can we do? Sadly in our world people aren’t accepted if they walk around barefoot trying to feel the world under their feet. Those people in our society are perceived as crazy people.

During another sense awareness exercise we went up to the roof and tried the five minute stand. It was a very different experience because we felt what we always feel while outside, but we actually paid attention to it. First before we even started we had named our five senses. We looked at each one and discussed what and how we knew what they were. The main senses (in case for some reason you don’t know) are smell, taste, touch, hear, and see. While looking at each sense we questioned the thought of which each actually was and how we know what it is. For instance we took the sense of seeing. We had discussed how we know what we are seeing looks the way it does. As the stubborn kid I am I reacted like this is dumb and started trying to say all these scientific terms that I had learned in the grades before. But how do we know if we are learning the right things? Just because someone says this is all the right stuff and everything else is wrong, doesn’t mean it’s always correct. While doing the actual stand I felt the sun actually hitting me and arming up every part of my body that was directly pointing at it. I had also felt a cool breeze blowing and giving me Goosebumps while it was hitting my arms. I most likely feel these things everyday but as Liang says I don’t pay attention to them. In conclusion from the sensory part of the semester I feel like I learned a lot about physical feelings. I learned and felt the feeling I have all the time just while doing this I paid a little more attention. Just because I am now informed I don’t think in whole I can change this aspect of my daily life. But ever since, I have felt as if I am more aware. An example is sometimes ill just be sitting in a car with my family thinking, and ill just start thinking of Liangs theory of physical feelings, and I start actually paying attention to all the little feelings in my body that usually don’t get that much attention.

Moving into our childhood unit in class we pulled out a quote from R.D Liang’s article. He had stated that "As adults, we have forgotten most of our childhood. Not only its content, but its flavour". When I had first seen this quote I thought immediately that this is bullshit. I may not be an adult but imp pretty close to it and I remember everything about my childhood. One day in class we started class openly. Usually one person starts and it branches into a big debate or share out. This day in particular really stood out to me because it made me understand Liangs quote the most. I remember previously thinking I remembered everything when in fact I remembered only a little bit of many experiences I had. In the discussion one person would say one experience and then almost every classmate would erupt saying "me too". I myself remembered so many different things about my self that I had just put to the side until that day in which I had to take those memories out and actually remember.

While thinking about it later on that week I kind of thought it is sad how our brain works. We can remember the most pointless stupid things like what we ate for lunch last week, but we can’t remember the most important things about our past that made us who we are now. Going back to Liangs quote I realized I can remember some of the content, but do I remember the "flavor"? Sadly, no. I can’t remember the taste of my great grandma’s apple pie, or the feeling I got while finding 20 dollars on the floor and being able to spend it on whatever I want. The only type of feeling I remember is the very general feelings like "good" or "happy". Just to think about it makes it feel kind of depressing because it’s almost as if you wasted your years on something we probably won’t look back on very often.

As a project we were assigned to create a portfolio of pictures from our childhood and underneath write every detail we can remember while the picture was being taken. There were to pictures that I had chosen that really stood out to me. One picture was from when I was in elementary school. I’m sitting on the floor with a crown on my head with a cup cake in my hand. It was my birthday ad we were celebrating it with my friends in school. I can remember almost all the major details. The crown was made for me during "Activity time". I had worn it because I felt since it was my birthday I was like the king. My mom had made the cupcakes for me and all my class. Then while going into my memories I get back to the "flavour" part and I just don’t remember. Only thing I can think of is the cupcake was probably good, and I was really happy. The other picture was a picture of me on thanksgiving smiling with a big turkey leg in my hand. I remember that as a young kid I was picky and only ate chicken legs, and I was happy when my grandfather let me eat the turkey leg. Sadly this is all I can remember. Once again I get back to the actual feeling part of my memories and I can’t remember.

In conclusion I understand and can completely agree with Liang’s theory about childhood. I also think the way he worded this quote was also on purpose because if he were too had just said we had forgotten most of our childhood I would definantly disagree. But if you think of your memories in content and then remember the actual feelings, it’s hard to remember what you were feeling inside at that very moment. I compared my picture memories with Liangs quote and that when I realized that I was wrong. Besides the fact that I can only remember most of the things that happened, I can’t remember and specific feelings. In the end im really saying that I now completely agree with Liang’s theory about childhood.

In Liang’s article he also had a theory about dreams. He had said "we hardly know of the existence of the inner world: we barely remember our dreams, and make little sense of them when we do". While looking at this quote I thought it was weird that he spoke about dreams and our mind as o our inner world. I can agree with calling it our inner world because in our minds anything can happen, and it can sometimes seem so real while we are dreaming its as if we are in a different world that no one else knows about. Once again when I looked at this quote I thought that it’s crazy. I thought to myself that I don’t have dreams so this doesn’t apply to me. I believed also that even when I have a dream that’s amazing I can remember it no problem. As usual I was proven wrong while we were doing our in class activities.

One of our major class activities for this unit was to create a dream journal. In this journal we would write our dreams as soon as we woke up. The first 2 days I didn’t remember having a dream. What would happen was that I would abruptly be woken up by my alarm, go pee and then by the time I came out I just didn’t remember. I don’t know how this is possible but I would remember my dreams for the first 5 minutes after I woke up, then ill just forget about them. The thing I first questioned about this is why? I can remember when I was young having specific dream about now I can’t remember dreams. The reason I think this happens is because as we are growing up kids are taught to keep their inside feelings to themselves. As a child I remember being able to sit with their 1 toy and being able to play for hours because I had a` big imagination that entertained me. Now as I am getting older I was sort of taught to be "down to earth" and keep my feelings to myself as if feelings are a sign of weakness, and imagination is a sign of being immature.

Even though my first few attempts to remember and talk about my dreams were unsuccessful I eventually did remember and wrote down some dreams. When I looked at my dreams after I had them I realized most of them were directly influenced by something I saw or was thinking about the prior day. An example of this is one day I had fallen asleep with the TV very loud. Oprah was playing on he TV, and I guess in my dream I heard it and had a dream that I was on her talk show as a guest. I couldn’t remember the little details of the dream but I remember that I was just answering her questions.

If I had to pull out a dream, that supported Liangs quote o would be able to pick almost all of my dreams. One dream in which I think can be a great example is a weird scientific dream that I had had. In this dream it was something about an alien ship landing over central park, and I had to get pumpkin water to kill it and its creatures. When I thought about this dream I obviously remembered it as Liang said rarely happens, but when I did remember it I made no sense of it at all. I mean how was I suppost to, it was so weird and out of this world. Actually if not for us doing these activities in class I would’ve kept this dream to myself and just forgot about it, because I feel as if this dream was so absurd and crazy.

In conclusion I agree with Liang’s idea about dreams. The only thing I can really say to counter his theory is why does it matter? I mean I understand that dreams can tell us about ourselves and entertain us, but in the end it’s just another figment of our imagination. I don’t think as humans it’s very important for us to embrace our personal dreams especially because I think that about 50 percent of them are meaningless. Still I can see if someone keeps track of their dreams they can learn about themselves, and maybe embrace themselves in a different way.

The next unit we studied in class was a thinking unit. We pulled out a quote that said "Our capacity to think, except in the service of what we are dangerously deluded in supposing is our self-interest, and in conformity with common sense, is pitifully limited". Looking at this quote at first I was very confused. I didn’t understand what the quote was trying to say. Then while we were talking in class, Andy had asked "Is thinking something you have to practice and learn to get better in?" When I was asked this I thought thinking can’t be practiced. I think that thinking is a natural thing that happens in your head no matter what. If you can’t think then there’s something wrong. I think that maybe the misconception is based on what you think about. When I was just asked about thinking I thought that you can think about anything and your thinking, if you’re not thinking your not doing anything. Then any asked us some question in which altered my perception a little bit.

The first questions Andy asked were math questions. I don’t remember the actual question but it was a division question. He actually called on me to go answer it on the board. I ended up answering it and then he asked how do I know that? I didn’t know what too say. I know it because I know it I had learned it. But isn’t learning math, the same thing as practicing to think what to do when a certain math equation is in front of you. Looking at the question of learning to think was changed after this. Then we had questioned the background of all these learning’s, especially math. How do we know we are learning math and learning the right thing. It’s almost as if in school your teacher is always right because she is older and your "teacher". She teaches things that were taught to her and it almost seems as if all these equations and rules came out of nowhere.

Another way we were tested was with riddles. Andy gave us a few riddles. The riddles consisted of us trying to think outside the box, and he also gave us an "ethical dilemma". One question I remember most was a train question. I don’t remember the question fully but in the end I had to choose to let 10 people die, or change the direction of the train and kill 1 person. My answer was to kill the one person because the way I thought about it was that if I had to choose id rather see one person die than 10; because 1 would affect many less people than if 10 were to die. In the end though it still doesn’t seem that good of an answer.

In conclusion I can look back at Liangs quote and now understand it. I think that he means that our thinking strength can be strong, but with our greed, and common sense sadly limits our thinking strength. This can be proven when I was talking about how we learn math, and other things that we don’t even know are actually correct. If humans think off of other humans than we can only learn a bit of what there is to know in the world. It would be much better to learn for you in an ideal world, but I just don’t know if that’s possible in ours.

For our final unit we did a feelings unit. Liang had mentioned that as humans we are not in touch with our feelings. He talked about humans only being in touch with the main feelings such as sex, having to use the bathroom, and other more obvious feelings. When I listened to this I agreed. I thought that we do pay attention most to these things but we also pay attention to other feelings too. I just think that those emotions aren’t shared out loud as much. There are many feelings that I have I just don’t share them openly so to other people they are non existent. I can see what he means because a lot we don’t pay attention to their feelings, or shield them to show no weakness.

One activity that I remember the most was when we were watching the care bears movie. This care bears was just plain weird. There were about 5 bears all named after a feeling. There was a happy bear, sleepy bear, laughing bear, and a few others. They are against a mean blue ice man. The movie was just odd to watch because it’s a kid’s movie. Feelings were obviously expressed very big to the viewer. I found it interesting how the feelings being expressed were the obvious feeling that everyone has, and in that it’s easy to connect to, especially to young children.

In the end I came to the conclusion that it may help to pay attention to your feelings, because it increases your self awareness. Even though I still don’t believe that as humans us paying attention to our main feelings (having to use the bathroom, ETC) is a bad thing. I think that we do know our feelings; we just don’t always need to feel them. If we were to feel every little feeling in our body, there’s just too many to give one only one attention.

Overall throughout the whole semester I have learned variouse things about my self and about people around me. Looking through these different aspects of life that Liang has presented i have understood my self and people around me better. In the end i ask myself did i change? Personally i think its too late to change. I think why change in a system that isnt killing me yet. I cant leave this class though and say it didnt change me at all. I find myself more aware of my body and the peoples bodys around me. I often find my self sitting somewhere bored, and now i think of how my body is feeling and think of my childhood. I live every day now thinking i wont forget it, ill try not to be fully robotic. I think the units learned were great eye openers, and id love to do it over again, because it helps me learn about myself better than any other history class can.