Critique is not the same as labeling.

In class yesterday we basically went over our "You Call It" assignment. A few students legitamatley did something interesting or useful, while others obviously bullshitted their way through the assignments like usual. I thought the I-Lantern was unique. I will be honest and say I never would have thought of doing that. I definetly think it should be posted up on deviantart's pumpkin carving contest or some other technology halloween contest. One student actually tried to use their time wisely and learn something new, but I think he failed in his attempts to do something great. He learned how to make a vintage effect in photoshop, but I think when you are given total free reign over an assignment where you can do anything you want (and while I think it is a great choice to learn something new), it should definetly be taken to the next level. What he did was simple and nothing special, nothing that made me say "wow". He had a great oppurtunity to do just that and he didn't, nor could he answer questions posed to him besides "oh definetly". In the end I posed it to a half bullshitted assignment.

My assignment wasn't great even though I got applauds for it. No I did not bullshit my assignment. I worked diligentley on it. I actually finished the frontpage on Sunday, but Monday I decided to go ahead and push out the other pages and finished the site as a whole. Yes, I was tired. Yes, it was a lot of work. However, it does not deserve applauds. Everyone had the same oppurtunity to go a long distance with this assignment and simply because they chose not to does not make my assignment better than anyone elses. It is just the limit I chose to hold myself to.

Like I said, I am dissappointed that a lot of students just did not take the time to really put themselves out their in this assignment. I think what pissed me off the most was the girl who did not want to show her work. I called her on it, for sure. She deserved to be called on it. If that had been me not wanting to show my work, Beth would have sat their and reemed me a new one. You don't get away with that. You don't sit there and say "oh my work sucks so I won't show it" and not expect someone to demand to see it. If you think your work sucks then your opinion is biased and you are doing yourself more harm than good, but if you were in class you already heard my strong opinion over this situation.

You Call It

For this assignment we were told we could create anything we wanted. There were no restrictions as to what we could do so I wanted to do something I enjoyed doing: design. Beth had mentioned on several occassions that a few previous students wanted to create a "Seeing Sideways Club" and I think it is a geat idea, but I alos thought that the idea could benefit from its own class and club site. With the concept of Seeing Sideways in mind and how the class promotes colorful brainstorms and memorable elements, I designed a webpage and already have the index up and running. The subpages are not finished, but you can get a feel for the site.

http://www.cs.iupui.edu/~klthacke/seeingsideways/index.html

For the sake of a healthy debate:

Okay, so not much of a debate persay, but we did get into a deep conversation over religion and discuss a lot of historical and theoretical aspects of it. I think a lot of the conversation was great; people really kept an open mind. I think this is mainly because a few people did not show up for class and those people may have been the ones who would have been the die-hard fanatics over their beliefs. It took me awhile to really warm up to talking mainly because my views contradict a lot of sincere beliefs and as people talked there ended up being so much to respond to that I could not figure out what to address first.

I finally started responding and found that a few people agree with my beliefs which amazed me because for so long I could not find anyone who did besides my Best Friend. Heck, even my boyfriends views differ from mine because of how he was raised (I still love him lol). I did disagree with with some comments, but I cannot expect everyone to see things in the same way I do whetherthey be right or wrong. I did like what Kyle said about being an Inconclusive Theolist because now I have a category for myself when before I did not. I was just Christian.

When we got to the Westburrow Baptist Youtube video I was getting upset. I obviously do not agree with this church as many people don't. I cannot listen to these people. Do not get me wrong, I respect their beliefs. They have as much right to believe in what they choose as anyone elsel what I do not believe in is dictating and forcing your beliefs on another group of people. For a Christian to raise their voice and doom another group of people is not what Jesus taught, preached, or did. He never raised his voice, never casted fury, and forgave those who sinned and taught them with kindness and showed them a better way of living. He taught of God's Grace, yes, but he also taught about peace, and happiness, right and wrong, and it was because of how he taught, because of his overflowing love for humanity despite their mistakes, that brought people to faith. Westburrow goes against everything. God disciplined in the Old Testament before Jesus' time. When Jesus died it was God's promise to forgive sins. That was the deal he made with his son. It was a promise.

I did not stay for the video. I was burnt out on the discussion and needed time to recharge. Convesation on Religion and beliefs always leaves me drained with a sense of apprehension on what to think after hearing so many different views. I spent the rest of class time looking up different concepts people mentioned in class as a way to encourage myself to continue to be open minded and knowledgable so when I do discuss this topic with people, I do it informed and not with ignorance.

Really that important?

Ask the question "What is important to you" can be considered many different ways depending on the individual. In many cases people bring up religion and the impact that the structure their beliefs is encompassed around has made. I could easily delve into the structure of Christianity and what an impact it has made in my life, but the truth is, it is not just Christianity. All religions, all beliefs, anything that gives a human being's life purpose has grown to influence and shape me into who I am.

When I was growing up I had Christianity poured into me like a funnel. It was all I knew and I was taught that other religions were bad and Christianity was correct. I remember waking up every morning and going to church with my grandmother, sitting in the same pew, and listening to a monotone sermon every sunday. My mother and father and brothers never really attended church, nor did my grandfather. They did not believe they had to go to church to believe in what they did.

My grandmother died in 2003. I was in eighth grade at the time and her death impacted my family hard. She was the centerstone of our family, the rock. She kept the family together, and since her death it has fallen into dismay. I gradually stopped attending church over the years, mainly due to the fact that my aunts and uncles have become (or always were) hypocrits in their own rights. They ran me out of church by bad mouthing my mother which was unacceptable (and there is much more behind this story but for the sake of this blog post I am keeping it tightly knit). I could not fathom how someone who called themselves a Christian, who preached how they were right in their beliefs and justified their actions by the bible, could be how they were, a  hypocrit. However, they still preached how they were justified in God's eyes.

I slowly started believing in evolution over the years. Do not get me wrong, I am still a Christian, but I like to call myself a NEW AGE Christian. I define it as a person who believes in Christ, bases their actions on the concepts and idealogy of the Bible, but has embraced certain aspects that are unbeknownst to us in truth/fallacy. I can read the Bible, and I can shape my life to it, but in many senses I can not believe everything written. Mistranslation, missing information in time, and fallacy has all given me room to expand on what I focus on.

I have always been told, or tend to think of myself as a logical person. I believe that everything can be proven and yet not proven at the same time. While we claim something is true, we cannot logically state it as true. Anything can be proven false using logic.

After 911 everyone was very quick to jump on the bandwagon over racism and prejudice over the muslim community. History tends to repeat itself when our country does to muslim's what it did to the african american society. I knew this was wrong. I was alway taught to treat others how I want to be treated, that he who lives without sin shall cast the first stone kind of thing. Let me make this clear, practicing a different belief or religion may be a sin to certain other religions, but it is NOT anyone's place to cast judgement on them. I cannot recall how many times I have questioned my faith and what many Christians fail to realize is God says he wants us to question him. He wants to show us the answers that we do not comprehend. If we do not ask or question and just take everything as truth like a grain of salt, then how is that living?

I am one of the quickest people to defend a religion, belief, or community. I find it wrong to cast judgement on a group of people or persons just because they live life or view things differently than I/We do. In the end our beliefs all come down to a common goal and meaning.

Let me point this out real quick since I am on this subject of muslim and christianity. If we look at this from a geographical and anthropological standpoint we can find some interesting tidbits. First of all why do Christians for the most part always display Jesus as white? In no way could he have been white. Think about it. Jesus was from Jeruseleum, which is in the Middle East. The Middle Easts is a Arabic/Saudi ethnicity and always has been. Under no circumstanes could Jesus have been my skin color. I have come to accept that and no it as fact of our dimension (I say this because of the rules of logic/fallacy). Now in muslim beliefs their prophet was Muhammad. Both Jesus and Muhammad lived around the same time, and had the same intentions. Granted Jesus was for GOD and Muhammad was for ALLAH. Allah means God.

This is why I say things get mistranslated. What if muslim and christian beliefs were actually based off of the vey same start point, but somewhere got misconstrued. How can we say we are right and they are wrong? Do you want to die and find out? Is that how far this is going to go? I understand people are taught that we are to go out and preach the 'word' and convert, but it has gone to extremes. Jesus and St. Paul did not pressure or push people into conforming. They simple shared their stories. Jesus was a Jew afterall so he never pushed people into believing in him, he was there, he simple taught people how to live a better life and be better people, to not live out of anger, but to find peace. He was basically a hippy when you think about it.

So to wrap this up because I am getting long winded, when asked what is most important to me: it has to be my views. I have grown and shaped them over the years to what today is a very well rounded and logical standpoint. Everyone who has come into my life and left it has had a hand in molding what I believe in whether it be good or bad...

Fear Class 2

In continuation of last weeks class, we had a few more students who had to present their presentation. I think this weeks class was a bit better than last weeks. If you recall, I was not too fond of last weeks class because of the insincerity of the class itself. People spent more time laughing than actually experiencing the projects presented. I also kind of felt like studen'ts half-assed their assignments, for a lack of better words. What I mean is that some of the projects seemed more of an annoyance to people than an actual fear. For instance, my boyfriend says he is afraid of sand and pipe cleaners, but when I asked him why he just says he does not like the feeling of sand and pipe cleaners against his skin. It is not a fear, it is an annoyance.

One thing that got brought up in class today is whether we could take this seriously or not. My blog from last time that scrutinized one student's comments on how he thought fear could be controlled. When he was confronted with the comments this week, he change the way he had worded it last time. I might have actually given this student a chance to really speak on what he was saying had he actually put forth the effort on the assignment, and really inthralled himself in his research over controlling fear by looking at the psychoanalysis or case studies that have been done in the past on this subject. However, it was asked before the professor arrived by William if he just 'bullshitted' his assignment because he didn't have one done and the student laughed and was like "Yeah, pretty much". This is why I was so angry because he spoke about something he did not even put forth the effort to understand.

This goes hand in hand with next weeks class about what is important to us, and how many people are probabley going to say their religion. I am a christian, I will say it, but I have grown to understand and embrace other religions and beliefs as well. I feel most of the racism and prejudice comes from a lack of comprehension, and unwillingness to understand. If you do not, and cannot take the time and fully involved yourself in understand another person's views and fully research it, then you do not, by my opinion, have a justified right look down upon, or strike revelation upon another person, class, group, society, etc.

Fear Factor

So my project last week over fear was to intially put someone in a box and see how uncomfortable they would feel in such a small space. Now, while this concept was good, it did not have the desired effect I was aiming for. Thisw as mainly due to the fact that instead of being serious about the situation as it would be in real life, no one in the class seemed to be capable of this. Everyone was laughing and poking fun at the expirement more than actually trying to scare the person inside of the box. I think it would have helped if we hade a severe clausterphobic person in the box as well, but I think that person would have been me, and let's just say no way was I getting n the box.

The point of clausterphobia is that the person feels they have no way to escape, so with people constantly laughing and giggling, they know people are around, that the situation is not serious nor permanent. If I had a physical way to shut him in the box without it being so easy to escape, I think the onset of fear would have taken place, but because of my resources it was not possible.

Now some people did try to increase the experience, but to no avail. Beth tried to light the box on fire, someone tried to drop in a mouse, I squirted water in the box, and other people just banged on it. This part of the project was not my actual concept. I really wanted it to just be extremely quiet and watched the box squirm, however if I had said that directly I think it would have ruined the experience. I think clausterphobia is somethine that can not be experimented with because it is something that is situational. It depends on the space and atmosphere which differs in various people.

So to conclude I think my experiment really needs reworking. The atmosphere needs to be reworked to a non humorous one. It needs to be quiet and ominous. People need to be quiet and let the expirament playout instead of wanting to be so involved and be the center of experience. I also think using a different box would help. Not a cardboard box, of course. I mean like a wooden box with a padlock. I would poke holes for air. I think making it seem more inexcapable would make the person inside feel much more helpless. Clausterphobia is a fear I do not see to the extreme all to often. Most of the time I just see a very small uncomfortable nature. My idea really needs to step outside the realm of being just an expirement so something much more.

I know we have more expirements to go next week, but the one project so far that bothered me the most was William Wallace setting his hand on fire. Now, this irritated me because it wasn't based on fear in my opinion. It was based on stupidity. Fear is an emotional state, not a physical one. Causing physical harm to yourself was not. Not to mention it was right next to me. What would have happened if the actually burnt himself? If it misfired? The project should not have been allowed. He could have lit the room, himself, or someone else up in flames and I just find it completely stupid for him to have even considered doing that.

In my last post you saw me talk about the one kid who talked about how fear is controllable. I still disagree with that until this day. I think is opinion is not very open to the possibilities of what fear is and can be to someone. For a person to never have truly experienced fear, I think it is unjust to make a decision like that and to be so bold as to state that fear is controllable when to many it isn't, but you can read my last blog to understand why I say this.

I look forward to seeing the rest of the expirements play out this week. Hopefully they really play on fear instead of just coming up with some random test. I think to really know fear, it has to be a fear you actually have felt and known. This should be a personal expirement I think because in order to know what scares a person you need to know why and have it actually effect you, otherwise you are wasting your time trying to scare someone.