481. Embracing the Paradox, Compromise, "Back to the Middle" a la Shannon Switzer!

To not embrace a paradoxical, contradictory existence is to deny the notion of being human. Believe it or not, this is me, Victoria, actually trying to be clever. Maybe I can convince my sister to put this quote on her facebook! An old friend said, "Everything in moderation, including moderation itself!"

This list has emerged from several different conversations. First of all, my friend Shannon has been thinking long and hard about writing a book called "Back to the Middle," and we have had long discussions realizing that embracing "the middle" or the "compromise" of what has become "extreme polar opposites" (hence the origins and existence of , really weird, obscure "special interest groups" with a very linear, hedge-hog-like visions for issues that have non-linear multi-dimensionality) (1) requires acknowledgment of paradoxical relationships between these values/ideas and (2) requires "complex, nonlinear, layered understandings of reality" with multiple values stacking on top of each other like a pile of jenga blocks, and therefore requires "layered messaging" when speaking to wide audiences about these issues. This type of thinking requires us to view reality as a "prism" or "gradient" of perspectives rather than the very linear "us versus them"or "both sides of the story," because it turns out that most worldly issues are not two football teams butting heads with each other on a field.

Secondly, I had a reinforcing conversation with a Ph.D. student named Stephanie who rightfully griped about how her writing needed paradoxes and contradictions even though several writing instructors are uncomfortable with that notion. So here I am, my brain filling up with ideas... and now I need to do a blog brain dump.

EMBRACING THE PARADOX.

Beginning a list of paradoxical notions, as well as case studies.

(1). SOCIOECONOMICS AND CONSERVATION. The Paradox = "compassionate murderer" "kind-hearted hunter" aka "sustainable fishing and hunting" aka "take what you need for yourself and your local community, but nothing more" "love and respect the organisms that you need to kill for your own survival" ("go hug a fish and then eat it for dinner!")

The Extremes = (a) profit-driven socioeconomics, pathological killing-overfishing without considering the long-term health and viability of the resource (b) extreme preservation, extreme conservation, don't kill or take fish at all, animal rights activism. Do you enviroettes and peta people EAT any food at all?! Let alone have the RIGHT to eat food based on your campaigns?

(2). SOCIALISM AND CAPITALISM. The Paradox = "political/economic degrees of freedom and constraint, socialist baseline with capitalist frosting and a cherry on top." (this is the United States folks, whether you like it or not!)

The Extremes = (a) buzz words of capitalism, competition, selfishness (b) buzz words of socialism, collaboration, collectivity, lack of individuality

(3). RESPECT A SHARK. The Paradox = "sharks are beautiful, yet fierce creatures that have significant impact on the dynamics of the ocean ecosystem. Conserve the sharks, respect them at a distance, but don't go hug a shark."

The Extremes = (a) excessive mortality of sharks and waste of their meat for delicacies such as shark fin soup in the orient (b) testosterone-infested male stunt men with massive egoes go into the water and get filmed hugging great white sharks (aka Sharkwater)

(4). SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WILDLAND FIRE ECOLOGY. GOOD. BAD. AND IN BETWEEN. The Paradox= "controlled fuel accumulation of chaparral and pine forest such as to prevent large-scale conflagrations in extreme Santa Ana weather... but still... don't go throwing your cigarette butt out the window when driving through the forest!"

The Extremes = (a) "ignitions are the cause of fire" is a very instantaneous, short-term line of thinking; ignitions speak truth for a split second (b) "plants are the cause of fire" is a very long-term perspective revealing that fuel accumulation is a primary driver in terms of the scale of damage constructed by a chaparral/pine forest burn in southern California. (c) "Fire is bad" so suppress all fires and don't allow fires to occur at all in chaparral/pine forest (d) "Fire is good" plants and the landscapes have evolved/adapted to cycles of fire, we need to work with this landscape process such as to create an optimal management plant for the co-existence of humans within wild landscapes

(5). DON'T HAVE A KID IF YOU CAN'T DO THE WHOLE 20-YEAR, NOT 9-MONTH PACKAGE DEAL. RESPONSIBLE DECISION-MAKING AND FAMILY PLANNING.

The Paradox = If you can't give yourself a 20-year prison sentence to raising a kid and allowing him/her to fly from the nest as a functional citizen of society, then don't do it.

The Extremes = (a) Pro Life. The Christian Right to Life. All little single-celled humanoid organisms in your body need to live and flourish. They can't be killed even if the person stuck with the baby may not have the ability to raise it for a whole suite of reasons. (b) Pro Abortion. Humans are invasive species. Any human-like creature growing inside me is a malignant tumor in my body and a parasite to society. Massive fetal genocide, given that fetuses are truly "independently living organisms," like whatever.

(6) THE SCIENCE-RELIGION PARADOX. THERE IS NO TANGIBLE EVIDENCE [PROOF] FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD(S), BUT AS LONG AS THE UNKNOWN EXISTS, YOU CANNOT RULE OUT THE HYPOTHESIS THAT THERE ISN'T A GOD.

Most people are not black and white in terms of their views of science and religion. They are hybrids, mixed bags of values that are usually associated with a scientific community or religious group. The sad reality is that the media portrays science and religious groups as polar opposites rather than mixed bags of complex values, and this form of reporting is hindering the progress of "skeptical co-existence of science and religion alongside each other." This issue is a huge can of worms on its own, and I shall pursue it in a later blog.

(7). THE FUNDAMENTAL PARADOX OF HUMAN-ENVIRONMENTAL EXISTENCE. The Extreme = "Net human impact on the environment (usually measured in carbon assessments) can go down to zero. The REALITY = The fact that you exist, occupy space and time, consume resources, and excrete wastes, and potentially even replicate, you as a human are fundamentally impacting and altering the environment, whether you like it or not.

I am starting to realize that the notion of "sustainability" or "the foreseeable short- and long-term co-existence of humans and their Earth habitat as to which they evolved from in the first place" requires "embracing the paradox" in most lines of thinking. Essentially placing reigns on short-term impulsivity, sacrificing for long-term visions and goals. We as humans need resources and tools to survive; it's just that we need to learn to use these resources and simultaneously setting a stock aside for the short- and long-term. In sustainability, it is almost like we need to treat this planet Earth as a "global refrigerator / global cellar" where we as a collective need to find a way to store a major portion of the reserves such as to continue a long-term supply of materials/resources for the perpetuity of ourselves, individually and as a "global society."

Aside. The notion of "regular irregularity" or non-sustaining patterns and cycles.

Okay! How exciting! I'm going to email Shannon this blog! I think she should write a short opinions piece to a newspaper or magazine such as to encourage her and launch this book idea!

KeyWords: embracing the paradox, back to the middle, compro-

mise, moderation, shark, sacrifice of extremism, prism,

compassionate murderer, kind-hearted hunter, socialism,

capitalism, degrees of freedom and constraint, fire ecology,

cause of fire is plants, fire is good-bad, science-religion paradox,

sustainability, global refrigerator-cellar

370. The Prism and the Mirror Box (Stokastika Photography Shoot)

It's funny how a bunch of little ideas just lay around unfinished, undone, all over the place. I just have one long trail of unfinished ideas, to which I am slowly accumulating, organizing, and cleaning up. Such was the case when I attempted to transport a 'mirror box' and 'prism' to the car upon return to Santa Barbara in December 31, 2008. I picked up the mirror box, remembering how I made it during the time I was visiting Tariel, and then I realized I performed a photoshoot with the mirror box, but never finished it! I never placed it on line! And so it goes.

The mirror box and prism are fundamental metaphors in perception of a common system--for example stakeholder perceptions of a common set of resources, or a common landscape, a common environment. The mirror box represents multiple different perceptions of the same system, but the prism not only reflects, but has transluscence. Transparency. The goal is to find common grounds--extract the common stuff that represents all of our core needs for existence.

This is what it says on my Stokastika Portfolio:
"I came back to Santa Barbara the day before New Years, only to realize I needed to move the mirror box and the prism to the car. I made the mirror box and purchased the prism in downtown Santa Barbara (back in May of 2008). I was inspired that my friend Tariel had a prism, so I was determined to have my own!"

215. Biologically Incorrect Cartoon, From Gender Mirrors to Prisms

Biologically Incorrect cartoon, Terra and Buz, from gender mirrors to prisms. Yesterday I saw prisms at Paradise Found, a new age shop in downtown Santa Barbara. It is where ~#~ got his prism in his room. He said I could borrow his, but I want to keep it in his room, for sure. I told him about my experience in the shop. Well, I was stunned. I had never really "consciously" been in a New Age shop before. I remember Seth reminding me how Sedona, Arizona was a total New Age hippi town, but I could only imagine.... ~#~ said that most new age shops all around the country have the same stuff. Hindu trinkets. Buddha zen section. Incense that made your nose go crazy and your head hurt. Everything is overpriced. I said I could say I am 3-5% associated to new age shops. I'm cool with all this spiritual consciousness stuff, but uh... after seeing 200-dollar crystals and some free calendar featuring 8 or 9 gods. I randomly chose Sheeva, apparently some MALE god (looks female, though, make up, earrings, the works) who is some ultimately consciousness god. Uh-huh. I was overwhelmed, but turned off at the same time. I told him about this very cool shop in the gut of a brontosaurus off of Cabazon. He's been there before. Hadleys, maybe. The shop had some new age stuff, but indian stuff, some useful trinkets (like swiss-army knife thingamabobs), but less consciousness stuff. It had more the feel of a gift shop of a natural history museum. But it was in the gut of a fake brontosaurus, right next to a morphologically incorrect T rex dragging his xss on the ground.

I also told ~#~ that I take a few "new age" items, like plasma lamps from Spencers stores and apply them to represent some holistic symbol of the dichotomies of specializations of science and stakeholders in general. The rock crab film has a plasma lamp. The next film (hopefully with lobster) will probably feature a prism.

Prism, see through, open mindedness, all questions at all directions. Find the common stuff in the middle. It's all the same, even though it seems different.

I guess this cartoon represents a joke that ~#~ told me. He introduced himself, "Hi, I'm ~#~, and I'm a human being." I forgot the context of the joke, but ironically that was a very cool thing to say to me. I truly always wanted to meet a human being.... I mean a human being in his or her entirety, unclassified by any arbitrary specialization. That's how I felt when I met a few actors on set for the movie Made of Honor with Patrick Dempsey. I always wanted to meet a holistic human being.... That's what actors are. They are and do everything (except for all the nuts-and-bolts BEHIND the camera).

And the second thing the cartoon represents is that in terms of male-female relations, I think I am starting to understand... at least one person.... Before, it seemed like a wall with all males, except for my dad. A mirror, you see different sides, but you don't penetrate and see the common stuff in the middle... like a prism... and I'll be dxmmed I sound New Agey. (Written May 22, 2008)

An Event Horizons of Piracy: Communicating Stories Through the Language of Film

http://www.geocities.com/stokastika1/eventhorizonpiracy.pdf
Above is a pdf file of the "Event Horizons" of Piracy story.

In reflection, what an interesting assignment. I remember the day that Michael Hanrahan passed out in class a very peculiar piece of paper. It was a paper with a Pirate-Hunting Treasure Map... hmmm... something you would give to your cute little five-year-old next door neighbor, I'd say. Yes, we were given something to color and something to draw lines and connect the dots. I think the oldest student in the class was 29 and I was 25 at the time (still feel that way though). Youngest maybe 19 or 20. What can I say? In the end, we may be adults, but it's back to "kids principles" in the end. Back to the roots. Same with Martin Kennedy's sedimentology class in spring of 2006. We had to color in sedimentary layers in a certain type of sequence map. A small group of "grown-up" geologists learning how to hone our coloring skills. Absurdly, comically, pathetically cute.

And so, with our Treasure Map, Michael asked us to create a story, and tell this story with use of the universal "Film Language" (or what I like to call "spacetime reasoning," as applied in film, geology, geography, some elements of physics, and I am now applying to ecology for my research). Michael gave us our "video vocabulary" previously, and so we had to write a script. I became wildly imaginative, and managed to write the story above, "An Event Horizons of Piracy," which was based on the movie Event Horizons, which I watched with Jesse of California Sound Studios about a month before. I obsessed with that movie, mostly with the notion that the closest distance between two points is not a line but a curve and bend in spacetime. This short story I wrote has had so much impact on me the last couple of months that I even invented a song last night about the two-year Event Horizons in my life, now coming to a close:

It's been two long years
Today, who would've known?
That a giant, jagged boulder
Smoothed-out to a rolling stone

The Bent Event Horizons
Of my scattered spacetime
Is coming to a closing
As two points merged on the line

And so these two distant points
Met as [infinitely] close as possible
Let along the entire bent-bent curve
Your mind will have to travel

never give up
never give up
never give up
your ideas

never give up
your ideas
for that's all
you ever had

your only
rolling stone
of spacetime
for the flow
of your mind
that you know
prism smoothed
to rolling stone

never give up
never give up
never give up
your ideas

never give up
your ideas
for that's all
you ever had

even if it takes
an Event Horizons
and a severe
Spacetime Lag

never give up
your ideas
for that's all
you ever had

never give up
your ideas
for that's all
you ever had

for where it begins
is where it ends
is where it begins
all over again

So, yes. Event Horizons has been playing a key role in my mind right now.... I think this is by far one of the most creative assignments Michael has given us. Or maybe it seems unusually creative because it's a "university assignment" merged with child's play. I admit I turned in the assignment late (though I had the rough draft already written). Michael emphasized that nothing has to be in chronological sequence. You can easily jump around in space and time to make an interesting, yet coherent film. And that is exactly what I did. Event Horizons. Warping spacetime. I went from the beginning. Jumped to the end. Skipped the middle. And then the character had to mentally suffer through the drama of all the events in the "middle." Hope you enjoy my short story!