You're Right, You're Beautiful

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First of all, take your pick- I’m going to use beauty as the example, but it applies just as well to any of the others. The question is subjective vs. objective

1- Subjective beauty is true. Right? I mean, if I think something or someone is beautiful, it’s true for me. There’s no real questioning of that. You might disagree, but you have to acknowledge that my subjective opinion is true for me.

2- Objective beauty is untrue. Or at least, unknowable. Either there is no such thing as objective beauty (do you think there’s actually an objective answer as to who is the most beautiful woman in the world?), or else there’s just no way for us to have any contact with it. Even if you managed to briefly touch objective beauty (somehow, you manage to be right that your living room chair is the world’s most beautiful chair), how would you ever know? What possible abilities would you have to tell the difference between your opinion and some sort of external idea that is “true”?

3- If subjective beauty is true, and objective beauty is untrue, or at least irrelevant and unknowable, then universal beauty must be true. As in, if there isn’t any objective beauty, then everyone’s subjective beauty is equally true. It’s true for you, and that’s it. Maybe a better way of saying it is that everyone’s sense of beauty is only true for them, and therefore outside of yourself, your opinion has no more meaning than anyone else’s. Therefore, you have to acknowledge that, except for your own personal tastes, anything that anyone thinks is beautiful is as true a statement of beauty as any of your feelings on the matter. If that’s true, then you have to conclude that everything is equally beautiful, except in terms of your personal opinion. The guy who selected which design New York City was going to use for its garbage cans might very well have thought it was the most beautiful garbage can around, or even the most beautiful possible? How can you be sure he didn’t?

So, everything you think is beautiful, is. And everything you think isn’t, someone else might think is, and so is. So no matter what, you, and everyone around you, is right. And I think that’s beautiful.

Two Steps forward, Take a break?

The problem with technology is that progress means we make it easier and faster to do something that used to be more difficult.
The problem is that this means we get lazier in relation to each of these things.
The problem is that we still have to do them, we just have to spend so much less time and energy doing them.
And then they don't really matter anymore.
And then what are we left spending our time doing?

High Fructose Corn Syrup, Response

1 comments:

Dr.Philomena kayal said...

The risk of becoming obese is 40% higher among children who have one obese parent. For this reason it is extremely important to educate children to eat correctly since the first years of life. All these consequences must spur parents to improve and make children’s lifestyle more healthy. http://www.phentermine-effects.com

I received this response to my comments about the new high-fructose corn syrup ad campaign. It reminded me of a friend of mine's experience he recounted to me.

He was traveling for work in the outskirts of Denver, didn't no the area, and decided to go to some fast-food place for lunch. While he was there, he saw a family come in- a mother, grandmother, and three daughters, aged 7, 11, and 15 (or so). The mother ordered the same super-sized (or equivalent) meal for each of them. And when neither the 7 nor 11 year-olds could finish the meals, the mom said to finish their food because there are starving people in africa who would do anything for so much food. The moral being, if you don't finish all of your food, you are wasteful and insulting all of the people who don't have the opportunities that they have.

It kind of struck me when he said this, that I remember hearing that phrase when I was a kid. That seems to be just one of those American parental phrases (or was when I was a kid)- "finish your food, there are starving people in ______________"
I think the ideas that foment obesity in America are much more deep-set than people (or at least I) thought. They go back to America's idea of itself as the land of plenty, the land of wealth. And just as the American Dream has gone from, if I work hard then I can give my children a better life, to, I want and deserve more now without having to do more- so has the American idea of the land of plenty and opportunity turned into the idea of the land of excess and indulgence.

Maybe we're all making each other fatter.

And in the news today...

As I often do in the mornings, one of my first activities was to check google news. The top three international stories were as follows…

1- McCain needs a big push in the upcoming debate to stop Obama’s momentum.

2- Madonna and Guy Ritchie to announce divorce.

3- Fighting at Thai-Cambodia border kills 2 people.


Really? That was number 2? Subsequent headlines that didn’t make the top three include:

The breakdown of talks between Georgia and Russia (and so possibly more violence)
A drunk man tries to hijack a Turkish plane.
Firefighters’ ongoing struggle to contain the fires burning down LA.

But Madonna trumps all that.

America, Fuck Yeah!!!

A Political Phew

So, another presidential debate. And I do agree with what every commentator that I saw subsequently said- that McCain did nothing to change people’s opinions in this debate. Whether you think McCain or Obama won, McCain, being behind, had to achieve a goal that he didn’t reach.
But, more than that, it was refreshing to hear the two of them talk because neither one is an idiot. At least they both have a good command of the English language, and an comprehensive understanding of the issues at hand. So much better than a monkey for president! For me it’s genuinely a relief to have two actual candidates (alright, alright, with the exception of Sarah Palin!).
And I do more agree with Obama, and I do really think that, for where we are right now domestically and internationally, what he offers in terms of hope and change is truly necessary- but I will say here that I think John McCain would make a good president. I don’t think for what we need right now, but generally a smart passionate qualified candidate.
In politics, everyone keeps talking about “crossing the aisle” and being “bi-partisan” like it’s the impressive few that manage to do it. Well, besides the fact that this should be the norm (it seems to be part of the job description, in fact), really “crossing the aisle” (which is a really weird quasi-wedding reference, by the way) means respecting qualified people and their ideas. As long as people say my candidate is great and yours is terrible, there’s not really going to be any actual debate or dialogue. Saying I cross party lines but people on the other side don’t know what they’re talking about is somewhat contradictory.
So I will say what most of my friends won’t- McCain is a qualified candidate. I’m not gonna vote for him, I hope you don’t, and I really hope he doesn’t win, but at least the choice this year is between legitimate candidates.

Water-Boarding, The Follow-Up

So, the follow-up to my water-boarding experience. After we did the water-boarding for the video, people immediately started responding to it. As a result, the director of the music video we did for “Sacred Cows” called me up and said that we had to shoot more water-boarding footage, since we only had one real scene of it, and it was all from five feet away or so. We needed a few close-ups of it.

Well, I wasn’t exactly excited, but I understood her point and agreed to do it. After all, in spite of your very unpleasant the experience was, I had gone through it, was fine afterwards, and so how bad could doing it again be?

So, a few days later, I found myself driving over to her place around dusk to shoot more water-boarding. And my entire body was shaking. My hands just wouldn’t stop. I kept telling myself to get some control. I mean, I had already done it once, I had survived functionally, and I’m a martial artist, which is all about control of the mind over the body. And no matter what I just couldn’t stop the shaking.

I guess no matter how much my mind had gotten over the experience, my body was not ok with doing it again. No matter what I thought.