Week 4: The School of Life (videos)
Assignment: Choose one of the sunday sermons from The School of Life (24 to choose from). I’d like you to write a reaction to the video as a comment on this blog post. Tell us why you chose that particular sunday sermon, what you learned, what, if anything, you heard that you’d consider incorporating into a system of self-care as an idea, a method, a design constraint, etc. Include the video’s title and link in your post.
DUE: By Midnight Sunday, Oct 7
Evan:
October 7th, 2012 at 1:53 pm
Ken Robinson, Sunday Sermon: https://vimeo.com/21195297
Watching a Ken Robinson talk is always a delight. His _Schools Kill Creativity_ TED Talk was a moving 20 minutes on how the education system fails to embrace creativity through by embrasing a linear based path. The Sunday Sermon talk echoed some of the same points. The takeaway of this talk however is that when you’re in your element and you’re passionate about your goals, it’s inevitable you’re going to meet new people, form healthy relationships, as well as come across new opportunities. This is all comes from a place of finding spiritual fulfillment and passion within one’s life.
Fundamentally, the core of the talk is worth baking into a self-care system: be passionate about what you’re doing. Generally speaking, if you’re mentally and spiritually drained by what you do, it’s obviously going to have a negative impact on your health.
Myles:
October 7th, 2012 at 2:32 pm
http://edu.mkrecny.com/class/diyhealth/week/4/assignment/sunday-sermon
Sam:
October 7th, 2012 at 3:05 pm
Susan Greenfield on Storytelling https://vimeo.com/33716283
The title turned out to be deceiving, but I initially chose this talk because storytelling is a skill that I am very interested in but am historically not too good at. I took a couple of memoir classes as an undergrad that I certainly didn’t excel in, but I am so drawn to a good storyteller that it’s always in the back of my mind to give it another shot. Susan Greenfield’s talk wasn’t so much about storytelling in this sense, as it turns out, but it was still very interesting. She focused more on “telling” (in quotes because it wasn’t like she was giving tips on how to write a compelling story) our life stories, the search for personal meaning, and how the direction our society is moving in will prevent this.
Of the many examples she gave, one resonated deeply with me and is something I would definitely consider incorporating into a self-care system. Another example she gave I so completely disagree with that I want to mention it as well, even though it’s probably not something I would personally use in a self-care system. But I’d like to talk about both.
First, what I agreed with. She spoke at length about social networking and how, by creating less need for in-person interaction, we are finding a greater need to seek validation and attention. To me, social networks tend to be an echo chamber of requested interaction without response. Friends will post pictures, thoughts or accomplishments that amount to “look at what I did!,” and the rare response tends to be along the lines of “I have also done that!” I’ve certainly engaged in this as well, and maybe I’m just not posting the right kind of information to elicit the engagement I’d like. But overall, I get the feeling that so many posts are made with the intent to prove one’s worth. Her description of this as an “existential crisis” I don’t think is an overstatement, and I think this would be very interesting to explore in a self-care system.
When she began talking about video games, however, I have to disagree. I’m not a gamer any more than a commuter playing a game on his bus ride, but to say that video games don’t care about the story is a poorly-researched accusation. Focusing only on violent war-simulation games is closed-minded especially considering the long-established rise of the indie-gamemaker, who tend to make more story rich, adventure- and puzzle-based games. Sure, games give you the opportunity to do things over to get a different result, but is that not a story on its own? No more or less effective than a novel whose story is always the same?
Carl:
October 7th, 2012 at 10:11 pm
Richard Layard attempts to lay out the importance of happiness and his path to achieve it in this video, “On Happiness”. His group, Action for Happiness Movement, is suggesting that helping others is the key to achieving happiness. He talked about how doing a good deed triggers the pleasure centers of the brain in the same way that chocolate does; he mentioned that society probably wouldn’t exist today if this weren’t the case. I can see how this is true, but I’m not quite sold that doing this in a pervasive way is achievable. He talked a bit more about factors that work against happiness, like income and distrust., and that all seemed reasonable.
In the name of happiness I have recently made some large changes in my life; perhaps this is why I chose to watch this particular video. In any system of self-care, happiness is an important factor. This is especially true for people who are already in a compromised state of health (though I’m not sure these are the people in a position to help others as Layard would suggest). He had a list of ten items at the end of his talk: rules of thumb for leading a happier life (I can vouch for several of them). Other than physical exercise, it would be very difficult to actually integrate these into a self care system as anything more than encouraging saying when you launch an app. They are a bit like fortune cookies (the modern ones, which aren’t actually fortunes at all).
[ Video: https://vimeo.com/19335075 ]
[ Reposted from my blog http://www.carlj.us/post/33132483684/richard-layard-attempts-to-lay-out-the-importance ]
Michelle:
October 7th, 2012 at 11:26 pm
John Lancaster – On Enough – http://vimeo.com/17778471
I’ve been grappling with this question over the last year or so: why do we want things? Why do we feel the need to have more things or buy new things? For that reason, John Lancaster’s video on “Enough” peaked my interested. He talks about ‘richness’ as a relation between people, that is mostly powered by greed, fear, and envy. He claims that seeing people with things we don’t have makes us feel loss and that most people would rather earn $50k and live in a neighborhood earning $20k on average, than make $80k and live in a neighborhood with people making $100k. We want what other people have, he says.
It was sometimes hard to relate to what Lancaster was saying because he spoke in huge, sweeping generalities about humans as a whole, about the Chinese wanted things that Western world made enviable, about a remote city in Indian and their advertisements and billboards for ‘Elixir Greens’ a new housing complex located next to the site of the pesticide plant in Bhopal, India that leaked in 1984 and killed tens of thousands of people. Lancaster believes that we are on a ‘hedonistic treadmill’ and that happiness is always just out of reach.
All this to ask whether we can start to think that, well, we actually have enough–enough money, enough everything. And we need to realize that we cannot continue to have more since our resources on on Earth are, as a matter of fact, running out.
He recognizes that there is no magic way to stop consumerism, since our current economy is based on us buying things. But he does ask that we be more mindful about it.
There are a few takeaways that I think can be directly applied to health and our work in this class:
1. We easily get habituated to things and they no longer become desirable.
2. We can use our strong imaginations to imagine consuming something in great detail (from why we want it, to going to purchase, to making the purchase, owning it, using it, sharing it, etc) and then become tired of it without actually having it.
3. The subconscious never hears negatives, so when we say to ourselves “no food, no food” all the subconscious hears is “food, food”
Blythe:
October 7th, 2012 at 11:45 pm
http://blythest.com/post/33135167052/diy-health-response-to-on-perspective
Jihyun:
October 8th, 2012 at 12:45 am
I watched Lawrence Krauss on Cosmic Connections (https://vimeo.com/31056022). It is very interesting that he mentioned our body is made of atoms from different universes and the oxygen on the earth is created by creatures. That makes me think human bodies and the world from a different point of view. I have never thought about the connections both between universe and me and between others and me. Now my body seems likes a marvelous organism. So every organism is made of atoms. I imagine a self-care system which shows what we take consists of what kinds of atoms so that people are able to be aware of what they are eating. For example, milk contains magnesium(mg), iron(fe), etc. Furthermore, the self-cafe system recommends what nutrition you need more to be satisfied with daily recommendation intake. This will be really helpful to make our body in nutritious balance.
Olya:
October 8th, 2012 at 12:58 am
Ruby Wax on Loving Your Ego.
http://vimeo.com/10578751
The reason I picked this video is because I have been lately practicing to fulfill my needs better. All needs: intellectual, physiological, emotional. The title of this video sounded like I could gather some useful information on how to improve my self-satisfaction course. I really liked Ruby’s personality and even though everything she said I have heard before, listening to her, and specifically to her, reassured me that I am on the right track and motived me to do more of the things I did little of: meditation, standing away and creating non-judgemental, compassionate containment. I certainly felt it from her.
D.I.:
October 8th, 2012 at 8:42 am
http://itp.nyu.edu/~dis244/blog/?p=1280