Life seems to come at me fast. Yet some days I look back and cannot help but feel like I did nothing, that the day was a waste. After attempting to reconcile those views I have come to a working hypothesis. Life is passing me by because the things that occupy my time I relegate to obscurity (the resolution comes in the next post). As I write this it hardly seems like a unique or novel thought. So why has it taken me so long to come up with? Why do I think it is worth writing about? Why do I feel better at the end of days where I am conscious of it?
I think it is because we all know that we do things day in and day out that are not what we would choose to do every day.
"We the American working population
Hate the nine to five day-in day-out
We'd rather be supporting ourselves
By being paid to perfect the past times
That we have harbored based solely on the fact
That it makes us smile if it sounds dope" -Aesop Rock
But I am not talking solely about monetary concerns; I mean the administrative aspects of our life (what a horrible analogy to work). The minutiae of daily life is what irks me. For example, I wake up at 6am, I walk dogs, eat breakfast, maybe get in some push/sit-ups, shower and I am out of the house by 7:35. I get to work by 9am, work until 5:30 take the metro back, workout, get home make dinner and it is 8:30 or 9pm.
I told my mom I was surprised/shocked by the lack of free time I have now that I have started a job. I came to D.C. thinking I will work from 9-5:30. In the morning I was planning on running, or studying for the LSATs. In the evening I thought I would be able to work out, blog, and explore the city. To my utter astonishment my work in D.C. does not allow me these luxuries. For the first few weeks I was disheartened.
I think the LSAT studying is affecting how I see it because I started to think of it as a logic game.
I have 24 hours. Each hour I can do one thing.
• From 7:35am-7:00pm I am either working or riding the metro. That means I have an hour and a half in the morning and let’s say 3-4 hours in the evening (I try to get 7-8 hours of sleep to get strong).
• The second rule is composed of the minutia of daily life. Walking the dog, making breakfast, lunch, and dinner (plus a few snacks), showering/getting ready, etc.
• The third rule is a conditional if I workout then I must shower, which leaves me with about an hour or two before I go to bed.
• The fourth rule is if I go out then I cannot workout, the contra-positive is if I workout then I cannot go out.
• Fifth rule is if I study for the LSAT then I cannot blog, if I blog I cannot study for the LSAT.
The trade-offs are really what kills me because I go to bed thinking there is always more I need or want to do.
In other words I have a set amount of time in which to do things, unfortunately there is not enough time in the day. So I have to prioritize; I have to create a calendar.
When I tell my mother (the lovely Regina Heilman-Ryan) she responds somewhat baffled by my astonishment, “yes hunny, that is life.”
to be continued...
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Disclosing Intent
Right or wrong people are often defined through their interpersonal interactions not their intrapersonal interactions, i.e. not by the internal dialogue you have with yourself (so true is the statement that intrapersonal is not considered a word, according to Word...werd). I do not mean to say that your conception of yourself is unimportant; rather that identity is dialectic between your internally [sic] constructed self and the way you present yourself to others. Interpersonal interactions shape peoples’ perceptions of you, but also your perceptions of yourself.
If you're anything like me, and I think people are (come on you’re not that unique), then you consciously or unconsciously internalize others' perceptions of you. (Some might take issue with me here: if you choose to believe that you are not unconsciously swayed in your perceptions of the world, and hence yourself I won't claim you're in a state of false consciousness. But if you claim not to consciously alter your identity in relation to others' perceptions of you then I would level an attack much worse than false consciousness {For those existentialists Foucault might be good a good read for you}). We live in a society; to be unaltered by others would require being the underground man in Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground.
The explanation I wish to offer focuses on the way our relationships are defined by the words we use and choose not to use. Words are representations of ideas, they are symbols for some abstract understanding we take for granted that others have. This is problematic because we all come from different experiences and understand the connotation (and for that matter the denotation i.e. there are X amount of dictionaries) of words differently.
I think this is borne out by an article on Edge I recently read. In the article the researcher explains the important work she is doing on different languages and how they differ. I think it comes to no surprise to many that languages have words that cannot be expressed adequately in different tongues. The example the researcher provides is a word association game that contrast words in the German and Spanish language. In German the word key has a masculine gender. In the game the researcher asks native German speakers to describe key. The words Germans use to describe a key is hard, rigid, etc. When they ask Spanish speakers to describe the term key the Spanish speakers associate words like beautiful and intricate. The researchers explain this difference by explaining that in Spanish key has a feminine gender. This is very basic and ‘essentializing’, but demonstrates the point that languages construct words through their syntax, gender, and context.
If this is true, then seeing the way in which language constructs our perceptions of reality is easy. If words do define how we perceive reality then it’s not a far jump to see how our interactions define our identity to others. The point is explicated by seeing how the words we choose are equally as important as the words we do not choose.
In Ways of Seeing Jonathan Berger discusses the man made characteristic of languages. Words necessarily retain the norms, standards, and culture of the environment they are coined (note the relationship between coined and wordsmith)
Here I seek to use Berger’s explanation of pictures as representational snap-shots of culture in an analogy to clarify his point. In Frans Hals’ Regents Berger explains that the position of the Regents’ hats, characteristics of their hair, as well as the position they are in, all contribute to the demonstration of the cultural baggage an image carries. Berger explains, “What you see is relative to your time and space” (162). History constitutes the relationship between the present and an image’s past. The present cultural learnt assumptions bias your perspective when evaluating a past image within a different social context. In other words, an image is interpreted through a lens out of the social context in which it was originally taken, and everything we use to interpret it is a social construct of that present time period. This biases that evaluation of the image in a process known to Berger as “mystification.”
Accordingly, an image, and if the analogy holds true a word, ought only to be comprehensible by taking into account the social context it was taken in, as well as the relational bonds shared between perceiver and subject.
This is also why the Oxford English dictionary is a better resource for understanding a word than a dictionary is because dictionaries only provide a definition. The OED provides the etymology of a word in addition to the denotation. This is important to understanding words because language is fluid. For example English takes a lot of words from different languages, and borrows the relationship from other languages. Thus language is only a function for describing a relationship but not only between words. The words people choose define their interpersonal relationships by projecting an image of that person’s reality.
The point I am trying to demonstrate might also be analogous to the wii head tracking demonstration online where the narrator explains that traditionally video games are 2 dimensional. Meaning we see video games online as flat images, the image does not change depending on our aspect. I want to move the frame in much the same way that head tracking does. It allows you to move through the image and see the depth of the image. In this way culture is the third dimension to language, it give it context. This is why disclosing intent is important. It provides the visibility of the culture and the transparency of the word acknowledges the obscurity of a word and demystifies the interactions between people.
I think transparency of interpersonal interactions is essential to the human connection. I attempt to approach conversations by disclosing the intent of what I am saying. By disclosing intent I mean acknowledging my intentions. I think you must ask yourself what you seek to gain from the conversation, why have you chosen to respond to what others have said in the manner you have? It's a deconstructive logic that requires a yearning to understand, a yearning to understand how a person ought to construct the world around them and why.
.
If you're anything like me, and I think people are (come on you’re not that unique), then you consciously or unconsciously internalize others' perceptions of you. (Some might take issue with me here: if you choose to believe that you are not unconsciously swayed in your perceptions of the world, and hence yourself I won't claim you're in a state of false consciousness. But if you claim not to consciously alter your identity in relation to others' perceptions of you then I would level an attack much worse than false consciousness {For those existentialists Foucault might be good a good read for you}). We live in a society; to be unaltered by others would require being the underground man in Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground.
The explanation I wish to offer focuses on the way our relationships are defined by the words we use and choose not to use. Words are representations of ideas, they are symbols for some abstract understanding we take for granted that others have. This is problematic because we all come from different experiences and understand the connotation (and for that matter the denotation i.e. there are X amount of dictionaries) of words differently.
I think this is borne out by an article on Edge I recently read. In the article the researcher explains the important work she is doing on different languages and how they differ. I think it comes to no surprise to many that languages have words that cannot be expressed adequately in different tongues. The example the researcher provides is a word association game that contrast words in the German and Spanish language. In German the word key has a masculine gender. In the game the researcher asks native German speakers to describe key. The words Germans use to describe a key is hard, rigid, etc. When they ask Spanish speakers to describe the term key the Spanish speakers associate words like beautiful and intricate. The researchers explain this difference by explaining that in Spanish key has a feminine gender. This is very basic and ‘essentializing’, but demonstrates the point that languages construct words through their syntax, gender, and context.
If this is true, then seeing the way in which language constructs our perceptions of reality is easy. If words do define how we perceive reality then it’s not a far jump to see how our interactions define our identity to others. The point is explicated by seeing how the words we choose are equally as important as the words we do not choose.
In Ways of Seeing Jonathan Berger discusses the man made characteristic of languages. Words necessarily retain the norms, standards, and culture of the environment they are coined (note the relationship between coined and wordsmith)
Here I seek to use Berger’s explanation of pictures as representational snap-shots of culture in an analogy to clarify his point. In Frans Hals’ Regents Berger explains that the position of the Regents’ hats, characteristics of their hair, as well as the position they are in, all contribute to the demonstration of the cultural baggage an image carries. Berger explains, “What you see is relative to your time and space” (162). History constitutes the relationship between the present and an image’s past. The present cultural learnt assumptions bias your perspective when evaluating a past image within a different social context. In other words, an image is interpreted through a lens out of the social context in which it was originally taken, and everything we use to interpret it is a social construct of that present time period. This biases that evaluation of the image in a process known to Berger as “mystification.”
Accordingly, an image, and if the analogy holds true a word, ought only to be comprehensible by taking into account the social context it was taken in, as well as the relational bonds shared between perceiver and subject.
This is also why the Oxford English dictionary is a better resource for understanding a word than a dictionary is because dictionaries only provide a definition. The OED provides the etymology of a word in addition to the denotation. This is important to understanding words because language is fluid. For example English takes a lot of words from different languages, and borrows the relationship from other languages. Thus language is only a function for describing a relationship but not only between words. The words people choose define their interpersonal relationships by projecting an image of that person’s reality.
The point I am trying to demonstrate might also be analogous to the wii head tracking demonstration online where the narrator explains that traditionally video games are 2 dimensional. Meaning we see video games online as flat images, the image does not change depending on our aspect. I want to move the frame in much the same way that head tracking does. It allows you to move through the image and see the depth of the image. In this way culture is the third dimension to language, it give it context. This is why disclosing intent is important. It provides the visibility of the culture and the transparency of the word acknowledges the obscurity of a word and demystifies the interactions between people.
I think transparency of interpersonal interactions is essential to the human connection. I attempt to approach conversations by disclosing the intent of what I am saying. By disclosing intent I mean acknowledging my intentions. I think you must ask yourself what you seek to gain from the conversation, why have you chosen to respond to what others have said in the manner you have? It's a deconstructive logic that requires a yearning to understand, a yearning to understand how a person ought to construct the world around them and why.
.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
BBQ
Fogarty grantees, as I believe they are called, receive money to facilitate the NIH missions in global health research. I happened to walk in on them having a BBQ. For the past week my bosses have been clamoring about getting an interview with these students, and here I am, by pure coincidence, having dinner with them. So I jump in the mix.
It would be impossible to find someone that wasn’t thoroughly engaging, and insightful. Almost all of them are in their mid-to-late twenties and have graduated, or are about to graduate from their respective graduate programs. The students have just been gathered in Bethesda (I have been here two weeks and already noticed people grimace when they say Bethesda) for a two week orientation before they go off to their respective global sights to do research on HIV/AIDs, tuberculosis, malaria and other neglected diseases (as Kimberly likes to say ‘saving the world’). As I work my way through the crowd I talk to Marc who is doing research in Haiti, his home, comparing best practices for treatment of HIV/AIDs patients who contract tuberculosis. I learn about the Chinese AIDs epidemic from Jing who is doing research in China. Miriam, Jerry's daughter is doing work on infectious diseases in Kampala in Uganda. You get the picture I am painting; these are the next generation of global health researchers.
After answering my questions, they turn the tables and ask me what I do. I explain the Research!America Paul G. Rogers Society mission to increase the the budget for global health research. Because they are global health researchers I know I am preaching to the choir.
With grilled leeks in hand I find myself in a discussion about micro-finance institutions (MFIs). Finally, a subject I know a fair amount about (Last semester I took a class on underdevelopment: hat tip to Matt Warning, and Omid Haraf). Unfortunately I have to bridle some of their enthusiasm for MFIs. I explain I am cautious about endorsing an unsustainable development program.
The main problems with providing credit, especially to the world's poor, are asymmetrical information, and moral hazard dilemmas. (i.e. there are not a lot, if any credit agencies that service the world's poor, and poor people often do not have collateral to back their loans).
As I work my way down the list of problems with MFIs a Fogarty grantee (We'll leave the person anonymous because of the sensitivity of their work) asks me what I propose to do about countries like Zimbabwe. I soon find myself flustered by the question. People familiar with Zimbabwe know that its currency was abandoned in January of this year because of the rampant inflation (10 million percent last I checked). The grantee proceeds to tell me an enthralling tale of smuggling hard currency denominated in U.S. dollars into Zimbabwe in picture frames. I quickly come to the realization that I must back peddle from the line of attack on MFIs because sustainability of a program is hardly a priority in a country where people are on the verge of existence. Today I still struggle to reconcile my position on Zimbabwe.
How best do you help the people of a country when their ruler is corrupt? When the ruler diverts aid to further subjugate their people? Aid only props up a defunct government, but doing nothing leaves millions of people to die from diseases, and starvation.
It would be impossible to find someone that wasn’t thoroughly engaging, and insightful. Almost all of them are in their mid-to-late twenties and have graduated, or are about to graduate from their respective graduate programs. The students have just been gathered in Bethesda (I have been here two weeks and already noticed people grimace when they say Bethesda) for a two week orientation before they go off to their respective global sights to do research on HIV/AIDs, tuberculosis, malaria and other neglected diseases (as Kimberly likes to say ‘saving the world’). As I work my way through the crowd I talk to Marc who is doing research in Haiti, his home, comparing best practices for treatment of HIV/AIDs patients who contract tuberculosis. I learn about the Chinese AIDs epidemic from Jing who is doing research in China. Miriam, Jerry's daughter is doing work on infectious diseases in Kampala in Uganda. You get the picture I am painting; these are the next generation of global health researchers.
After answering my questions, they turn the tables and ask me what I do. I explain the Research!America Paul G. Rogers Society mission to increase the the budget for global health research. Because they are global health researchers I know I am preaching to the choir.
With grilled leeks in hand I find myself in a discussion about micro-finance institutions (MFIs). Finally, a subject I know a fair amount about (Last semester I took a class on underdevelopment: hat tip to Matt Warning, and Omid Haraf). Unfortunately I have to bridle some of their enthusiasm for MFIs. I explain I am cautious about endorsing an unsustainable development program.
The main problems with providing credit, especially to the world's poor, are asymmetrical information, and moral hazard dilemmas. (i.e. there are not a lot, if any credit agencies that service the world's poor, and poor people often do not have collateral to back their loans).
As I work my way down the list of problems with MFIs a Fogarty grantee (We'll leave the person anonymous because of the sensitivity of their work) asks me what I propose to do about countries like Zimbabwe. I soon find myself flustered by the question. People familiar with Zimbabwe know that its currency was abandoned in January of this year because of the rampant inflation (10 million percent last I checked). The grantee proceeds to tell me an enthralling tale of smuggling hard currency denominated in U.S. dollars into Zimbabwe in picture frames. I quickly come to the realization that I must back peddle from the line of attack on MFIs because sustainability of a program is hardly a priority in a country where people are on the verge of existence. Today I still struggle to reconcile my position on Zimbabwe.
How best do you help the people of a country when their ruler is corrupt? When the ruler diverts aid to further subjugate their people? Aid only props up a defunct government, but doing nothing leaves millions of people to die from diseases, and starvation.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Week 1
It has been over a week since I have been in D.C. Most of last week I spent searching for a place to live.After numerous posts on Craigslist, a flurry of e-mails, and a number of awkward house/room inspections I have finally settled on a place in Friendship Heights with a 63 year old professor named Jerry. Prior to moving in with Jerry I stayed with Jim, my step-father's half-sister, Kathy and her husband, Eddie. I cannot tell you how much I appreciated their hospitality as I looked for a place to live. At no time did I feel pressured to leave, and simply having some support structure there was a added comfort that I sorely missed (unconsciously) when I first arrived in Freiburg, Germany.
I moved into the room at Jerry's house this past Saturday July 11th, 2009. On Sunday I did some work on the new blog design, and searched for a Mongolian festival, which I could not find after hours of effort (From my perspective, if I could not find the festival I must not have missed much). Instead, I chose to find the a bar. I have heard lots of people here in D.C. discuss this bar, but none so aptly as Chris from Tacoma's Red Hot --After receiving numerous e-mails about the new, amazing selection that the Red Hot had just received I reluctantly asked Chris to stop taunting me. He generously complied and shared with me a story about a bar in D.C. with 40 beers on tap, and over a thousand beers in bottle. From this description I set my path, only to be disappointed two metro stops and a bus ride later when I discovered the bar was closed...
I moved into the room at Jerry's house this past Saturday July 11th, 2009. On Sunday I did some work on the new blog design, and searched for a Mongolian festival, which I could not find after hours of effort (From my perspective, if I could not find the festival I must not have missed much). Instead, I chose to find the a bar. I have heard lots of people here in D.C. discuss this bar, but none so aptly as Chris from Tacoma's Red Hot --After receiving numerous e-mails about the new, amazing selection that the Red Hot had just received I reluctantly asked Chris to stop taunting me. He generously complied and shared with me a story about a bar in D.C. with 40 beers on tap, and over a thousand beers in bottle. From this description I set my path, only to be disappointed two metro stops and a bus ride later when I discovered the bar was closed...
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