the snow ball paper

snow ball paper
by kyle shaw



after reading Laings argument and after the class i realized that humans as they are at this time in this culture are shells of their former self's, alienated from thereself and from the world around them,But i also think its not to late to convert ourself back into enlightened humans again. we can change back if we allow ourself to notice our emotions,dreams, thoughts and memories from our everyday lives.

When i first was reading the article i thought this guy has a lot of crazy ideas about the body and the mind and how we live our life. When i first read it i honestly thought he was full of crap, that he was simply trying to justify why he himself is so weird and isolated. And try to prove that its normal for people now a days to act like this, but after rereading a couple of times and hearing other opinions about him he seemed to make a lot of sense. He also backed up all his arguments so i couldn't prove him wrong. He says that being normal isn't a good thing "normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years" and "there are forms of alienation that are relatively strange to statistically "normal" forms of alienation. the "normal" alienated person, by reason of the fact that acts more or less like everyone else, is taken to be sane." he is saying its bad to be "normal" and can be dangerous to others. That we miss most of our lives feeling,dreams, childhood etc because its the norm in society. "normal alienation from experience" was really confusing and i don't understand much from it. But from what i do get it talks about how we distract ourself and that we are only a shell of that we could be. That we are zombies that act without thinking or feeling. We are so used to acting or do something that we complete ignore our bodies and our feelings as we do it. How because we don't realize our own experience we feel alienation in our own bodies Reading his paper was the first step to reaching enlightenment, i saw what i needed to work on and i saw what i was doing so wrong in the first place. Even tho i was a bit skeptical about it, it was the first step towards me learning and becoming a real full inbodied person.

when i focus on my body to notice how i'm feeling i tend to right about noticed how much energy I have. Most of the time i'm tired, sleepy and sore but the times when i'm hyper or well rested i can focus better and not get as distracted. Also the overall temperature around me. when i'm warm i get relaxed and lazy and i can feel my body lose tension, but when i'm cold i can feel myself get wide awake getting goosebumps all over my body, everything getting all cramp and compact so i get get some heat.I always feel like one ways or another that i'm distracted. if i'm focusing on my body i forget about my thoughts, my feelings and my emotions. When i'm focusing my my thoughts i ignore my body. I think its impossible to be completly in sync with everything at the same time. One can focus on different things but they have 2 do it at different times.

"As adults we have forgotten most of our childhood, not only its contents but its flavor."
when i first heard this i thought it was 100% false, that i remembered my childhood and everything that i did back in the day. But as i began to think about my middle and elementary school days i saw that many if not all of my memories were faded. i only remember little clip, not as much i had thought. I also didn't remember the feeling of childhood, i needed something from that time or i needed to go to a certain place in order for me to have clear memories( including how i was feeling at that time.)

One of the only memories i have that are crystal clear is of my 5th grade graduation. Even without the pictures and the video its still clear, feeling and all. I remembered how scared i was getting up on stage in front of all the adults and teachers and fellow students. i remembered that my heart was pounding and that i was sweating so much, t felt like 200 degrees in that gym. I realized that how i could remember alot more things from the past. get into the mind frame of how i once was. And in order to continue i need to be very observatant of my feeling.

how we deal- i think most people in the world hide from there feelings,they are scared to express because in society some emotions and feelings are frowned apron.

how we should deal- i think that it differs from feeling to feeling. Certain extreme feelings should b held back in order to stop yourself from doing something u might regret for example if your upset and angry at a person u wont hurt or kill them when your in that state.

when i first read Laing's argument i was little skeptical but after thinking about it and how i personally handle my feeling i think that he is right. we tend to ignore them until they become so extreme that they start to have a physical effect and our body is forcing us to notice. Or when the feeling is "bad"(upset, angry etc) we try to distract ourself so we can take your mind off it. he feels that this will further alienate ourself from our bodies and our experience.

i noticed after focusing on my feeling and emotions at a certain time everyday that i am tired and annoyed almost 100% of the time, i think this is because a certain place and action triggers a feeling, and since everyday we basicly have the same schedule i feel the same way everyday. I think that it is a shame that people don't focus on their feeling more of the time but in some cases it could be a good thing. If some1 is emotionally unstable it can be dangerous for them to focus on their feelings. Even some are on medication so they can be distracted and "feel" happy and calm, putting them in the situation could put them and others around them in pain.

At first i didn't want to try it at all thinking that i would b a better person and stay in reality instead of a mind numbing fake world. Then i realized the machine was like a drug or a video game so i thought about the question in a different way.I would try the machine for a short period of time, so that i can see what the fuss is all about first hand. the problem win that is that i might form a addiction and if that happens i would taint reality because all i would be thinking about would be the machine and not be able to enjoy the real world i live in. If u think about it the world is full of "pleasure machines" that distracts u from the real world. Like for example drugs,porn,films,music,tv etc, this is further reason why i would try the "pleasure machine". Because in real life i tried many of those and since it the same concept i wouldn't want to be a hypocrite.

i have always thought of dreams as a film that goes on as u sleep and didn't really go any deeper on the subject but after reading his artical i realized it was more like a reality within our own bodies and minds. " ...interweaving of the different experiential modes..." in dreams we are trying to tell ourself things, they can reveal our hopes and fears and i think its a shame that many people including myself forget dreams shortly after having them.

i have had this one dream over and over, its when i'm drowning in a undersea cave and i cant get my way out and i'm running out of air fast. After thinking about the dream and having it about the 3rd time, i thought that the cave and me drowning represents someone in my life holding me back and i'm trying to get away but i cant seem to make it. i think that every dream has a deeper meaning than u first believe. That its a way of your own self screaming at u, telling u that deep down what u fear,hope,love, and think.

"does school turn us into robots or better thinkers?" i think that it is meant to make us better thinkers but along the way with all the all the rules and rituals of the day it makes us turn in a "robots" or "zombies". the schedule of school turns into the same thing same day after day after day. And in that process we start to just act and follow rules instead of think for ourself, this causes people to ignore their experience and alienate themself proving what Laing said to be true.

i In conclusion after the course i feel that i am closer 2 my goal. i'm not there yet but i'm getting closer, if i focus on my experience more i can revert from a shell to a full person like i was born to be.