Exploring Methods of M, M, C, A, & Aggrandizing the Self

Part A - I had to give a little background of the purpose of the question so my friend would not get defensive and suspicious. I just told her that we were focusing on the concept of emptiness and asked her what she thought of emptiness. She was broad sometimes so I had to connect the questions back to her and asked the significance of the things she used to fill her emptiness. I was also trying to get away from the cliche answer, even though it came up, but she also gave me another answer.

So I asked her what she thought emptiness is and she said it was having no goals in life. I tried to connect the conversation to her so I asked her what goals does she have and she said at the moment, trying to get into college. I decided to dig deeper into the college thing so I asked her what is so significant about college and she said that it allows students to figure out what they career they want to pursue. We talked about careers for a while and she said most people pursue a career because they want the money. She emphasized a lot of money so I asked her why would people want so much money. She said people want to better the world and I told her that no one cares if you better the world (emphasis on the you). She said it does matter because people will ask her to continue to better the world and I asked if that is what she wanted. At first, she avoided the question but then she said yes.

It all comes back to the self; even if she said she did things for herself, she actually did it to get attention. I think people are pretty narcissistic, whether they do things to feel good about themselves or things so others can feel good about them. Basically, everything comes back to the self. I think her method of filling in her emptiness is typical. People create goals in life and when they fail to reach it, they look down on themselves. Goals are just another way to make the hole of emptiness bigger.

Edits 12/21/09:
Part B - There is this thing about my ponytail, that I never let it out. When asked why I never let my ponytail out, I usually just shrug and let the question slide but one time, I took the time to think about it. The initial reason why I tie my hair up is so that my hair would not bother me. But after tying it up for so long, people develop this urge to see it down. I thought about it and I think it is because I did not want to create this drama. People are like "lemme see yur hair down, leme see your hair down." And if I put it down, people would scream "oh my god, your hair is down!" So to avoid this, I leave it up. But one can also argue that I am seeking attention this way. I could just get over this drama; people do not stay on one drama, they move on. But it can also seem that I am trying to get attention by keeping my hair up and not let anyone see it down. And people tend to want what they cannot have, so if I do not let them see my hair down, it reinforces their urge to see it down.

I think having younger siblings is a good way to aggrandize myself. As an older sister, I have power over my younger siblings. I also realize that I seem to have more power over my brother (the youngest) than my sister. I tend to ask my brother to do me favors than my sister because I know that she would ask for favors in return. She has the right to ask me for favors but that makes me seem at the same level as she is so I think this is why I tend to ask my brother to do favors. Thus, my brother makes me feel "powerful," but I think it also has to do with age difference.

Psychological and Philosophical Theorizing of Cool

Emptiness is neither a hole in specific shapes that can be filled up with anything, nor is it a stomach that accepts chewed up substances that drops into it; it is not a lock with only one key. In fact, I think emptiness is a hole that can never be filled, or a stomach that is never satisfied with anything that drops down into it. Common themes of existentialism is the idea of alienation and the encounter with nothingness. God is a stranger to huamns, nature is a stranger to humans, humans are strangers to other humans, and one is a stranger to oneself. If one is alienated to all these things including oneself, then how does one know how to fill that emptiness inside. What external values or internal values does one seek if one cannot even understand the world or oneself. Even when people seem to have everything, "they still feel empty, uneasy, and discontended." One may feel fulfilled for a short period of time, but one will grow accustomed to these physical things and feel empty once again.

Data suggested that wealth only gives a temporary feeling of happiness. I think this can also be applied to emptiness; wealth (or whatever one seeks) only allows one to feel happy for a while. Psychologists call the idea of getting used to something in life, the Adaption-Level Phenomenon. A Columbian graduate described life as "a cycle of wanting, fulfilling, and wanting again" (Smith). Basically, we want something to fulfill the emptiness inside us but then after a while, we adapt to that "something" and we go back to wanting something else to fulfill the hole. She also said that "[if] you’re happy being unhappy, then congratulations, you’ve found a way to break, or at least cope with, the cycle." Does is apply to emptiness? If you are happy with the emptiness, or at least learn to accept it, you have found a way to cope with the adaption-level phenomenon cycle.

Now Louis Dupre, a philosophy professor at Yale University, argues that we find things to repress our feelings of emptiness. He says that we are too busy with life (family or work) to notice the absence and once family or work is gone, we feel the absence, the emptiness in our lives. But how do we know whether or not we are trying to fill the emptiness or we are repressing the feeling of emptiness? If John C. Thomas thinks that young adults are aggressive and violent because it is their way of coping with their emptiness, are they really trying to fill that emptiness or are they averting their attention away from their feeling of emptiness?

Buddhists believe that if we are in the state of emptiness, then we have reached a "state of conciousness." When we have reached that state, we are free from all sufferings (Wikipedia). Lama Zopa Rinpoche believes that realizing emptiness means knowing that our perception is merely an illusion (Chodron). Whatever we see, is only labeled by our minds and exists only through name or the label. Once we realize our emptiness, we reach the stage of enlightenment. Taoists believe that being in the state of emptiness is equivalent to having a "pure mind."

Merchants of Cool

Corporations make 150 billion dollars from teenagers only and thus, teenagers are compared to Africa. The only reason corporations are able to make this much money off teenagers is because they need to look good. And since teenagers today have a larger population than their parents, it is easier for corporations to just target teenagers and make the maximum profit. Teenagers get their money from parents, who feel guilty because they do not spend enough time with their kids so they make it up using money. Therefore, I think the solution, or one of the many solutions, is to find another method to please teenagers without money.

The other problem is the number of advertisements teenagers are exposed to during their lifetime. Everyday, they see approximately 3000 discrete advertisements; they may not be aware of the advertisements but the advertisements are there. I think these discrete advertisements affect teenagers when they decide how to look cool. When they seek to look cool, their brain remembers these images from the advertisements, so teenagers imitate the images without consciously knowing where the idea come from. It is like a reaction they get from their brain (the bloop-bloop-bloop) when they think of ways to become cool. But I do not think the advertisements are the target of the solution. Advertising is the best way to inform the world of the useful and harmless products that are out there (if there is one). Yes, corporations are using advertisements to make profit, but I still think that if parents did not give their kids money, corporations would not be able to make money off teenagers. It is unhealthy to base parent-child relationships on money because if the money is not there one day, how else can the parent keep the child happy?

Advertising is one way corporations make money off young people. The other is to make "the market" feel like they have power, that they control what are in stores. When the guy found a group of kids and asked them for their feedback on what is cool, the kids felt that their opinion mattered, that they change the "hot" products. John felt that he was special when MTV went to his house to interview him and he fell for the trap; that corporations use one person to generalize the whole population. People on the streets felt cool when marketers of Look Look took pictures of their looks so they felt comfortable flaunting the looks. This is how corporations turn feelings into a weapon again teenagers. They make you feel important, significant, and then they grab all the information they can get out of you so they can make products you would like to buy to make you feel even more "good" about yourself.

Art Project 1 on Flickr

My art is a mirror; like most people's. Now that I think about it, it is funny how we tend to mirror our problems, instead of making hammers. I personally think that hammers are hard to come up with so we mirror our problems. The guy in the video is in the subway station, listening to his iPod. He gets home, goes straight to his computer, talks on AIM, and plays MapleStory to escape his real world. In MapleStory, he can do things he normally cannot do in the real world.

Honestly, I was not really thinking when making this video. I was just having fun with the programs and techniques. But that is what technology is for: to have fun. This art does not make me think, or feel but it was boring. I think this art is just a reflection of my life, and to be bored looking at the video says something about my life (like the movie during the capitalism unit).

I had fun making this project. It was a compilation of my brother's and my ideas. He was also learning how to make animations so I think this project was a good experience for the both of us. I think this experience just shows how technology can bring people together; my brother and I got a little closer and it was our first project together. So I guess technology do good for people (after learning all the bad stuff about it).

Informal Research - Internet

"Cool (aesthetic)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_(aesthetic). Wikipedia. Web. 3 December 2009.
This article defines the word cool in different contexts and discusses how the word applies around the world. It contains the theories of cool; two of we talked about in class: cool is defined as what is uncool and being cool is about not caring about being cool but you would still be caring. Being cool is another way capitalists manipulate us to buy cool products.

This page gives a lot of information on how the word cool and the usage of the word cool came to be. It is great to see how the word cool is brought up around the world and whether or not it is similar in the United States. I am also now aware of the types of physical items corporations produce and how these items reflect their views of "cool."

"Fog Machine | Disco Balls | Lava lamps | CoolStuffCheap.com" http://www.coolstuffcheap.com. CoolStuffCheap. Web. 7 December 2009.
As the name implies, a site that allows you to buy cool stuff at a cheaper price. Ranges from motion sensor spotlights to stick anywhere night lights.

Shows how capitalists label products as "cool" to get us to buy their products. I think that some of these products are useless, stupid, like the light up beer mug (why would you need that?) But this might be a good site for Christmas shopping (you never know).

DJD. "How To Look Cool on the Internet." http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1554284-How-To-Look-Cool-On-The-Internet. Writing.com. Web. 8 December 2009.
A guide on how to look cool on the internet. Basically a list of things you should do to make yourself look sociable; even if you are not. Ranges from creating networks on websites to bragging about yourself in the "about me" section.

I was reading through the list and I was basically disapproving every one of them. I don't know if this person was making fun of the fact that people want to look cool on the internet, but everything that was listed was uncool. It is listed under the comedy section, about eight months ago, so I think this person was just being smart about it.

Informal Research - Interviews and Surveys

Amber and I were cold so we decided to go into the corner store to interview people. The first person we interviewed was a woman; she looked like an undergraduate. She was unique in her own way because she was cracking jokes like "I'm cool" with the head movement and leaning her weight on one leg. Then she stood back up and said "just kidding." I would say that is a typical cool; you crack uncool jokes and then say "just kidding" to justify yourself, or to make yourself cool by knowing that what you said was uncool. Common answers she gave were when we asked her to define cool and she said "depends on what you define as cool". We asked her to define cool and she said "trendy," "calm," "chill." She also said that "it was okay for young people to look cool." It was funny when we were interviewing her because she did not know what to say when we asked her questions; she said she "never thought about it."

Then we asked another customer at the corner store. He said that "being cool is being nonchalant and indifferent." Being cool is not about worrying about being cool; "it doesn't have to do with cool anymore." When asked why he thinks teenagers want to be cool, he said "that it is a stage teenagers go through," like puberty and drama. He said he didn't know what was cool and whether or not nerds are cool but he did mention that he is surrounded by a lot of them. He took some time into thinking who is the coolest celebrity. He gave us her name and said that "she devoted her life to better people." Then we asked him who was the coolest person in his high school and he said that the person was "new, on the lacrosse team, and all the girls wanted him."

Lastly, we interviewed one of the guys that worked at the corner store, Anthony. He was biting his nails when we asked which celebrity is the coolest. He said "definitely not celebrities" and that it was "a hard question." His final decision was Cameron Diaz, because "she did a lot of charities." Being cool is about "contributing to society." He said that "cool is a positive thing; people think what they do is cool." When people do something and society approves, they keep doing it and think that it is cool. I asked him how does the think the word cool came to be and he said that "the weather is cool. You felt good" and you were cool if people felt good about you. When we asked who was the coolest person in his high school, he said his father before we finished but then changed his answer to himself. He was "well-known, did not gas, outgoing, and didn't fight with people." I asked him if his father was cool and he said yeah; his father taught him everything and gave him life. I told him that his mother gave him life too and he changed his answer to his parents are cool.

I interviewed my friend and I figured it was more interesting if I wrote it out:
Are celebrities cool? Duh.

Ew, how so? I mean in terms of tv show; 'cause the drama keeps you watching and you realize how good looking the celebrities are. Like in the new Taiwanese show "Hi My Sweetheart," are you watching that?

No... Alan Luo man cute. And the thing is man (mad) good.

So cute = cool? Nah, they ain't cool; 'cause they are a total different person. Maybe Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood.

So they are cool? Yeah.

How so? 'Cause they man (mad) nice at singing and have nice personality, I guess, dawg.

So having a skill and being outgoing is cool?Yeah, dawg.

I interviewed one of my family members and I brought up the cool paradox. She said that people have different views on cool and that she does not know what makes someone cool. But she did say that she was cool; joking like anyone else would? I then asked her whether it was uncool to say that someone called him/herself cool and she said no. Then I told her that I was cool and she said that I was lying. I guess she then understood what I meant by whether it was uncool to call oneself cool.