Snowball paper - My experiences Final

Snowball paper – My experiences Final Draft

As life passes by, we don’t take the time to fully experience it. We rarely pay attention to the small details such as: our past and memories, dreams, our existence. R.D. Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist, often wrote about existential philosophy. From excerpt 3 of Chapter 1 in his book, The Politics of Experience, Laing discusses that our purpose is to fully experience and conceive life to the fullest but instead we are disconnected and only a fragment of what the average human could and should be.

Chunk 1: R.D Laing’s argument

“Our task is both to experience and to conceive the concrete, that is to say, reality in its fullness and wholeness. But this is quite impossible, immediately. Experientially and conceptually, we have fragments.” According to Laing, the average human is only a fragment of what a human should be. One only lives daily life just to exist, but does not challenge one's self beyond what is necessary. People only use the five senses: touch, sight, hearing and taste but does not further the knowledge of their own body. "We retain-just sufficient proprioceptive sensations to coordinate our movements and to ensure the minimal requirements for biosocial survival to register fatigue, signals for food, sex, defecation, sleep; beyond that, little or nothing." Most people do not remember their dreams or childhood. Since people are not actively thinking about the dreams they had or think about their childhood or past, it gets pushed to the back of our mind. The thoughts and memories that are not visited often soon become forgotten. When something tragically happens, a person might push the moment out of their mind, refuse to believe what had happened. It is important to remember your past because the events/moments in your past shaped you to become who you are today and will continue to influence your life in the future. For example, it is possible that someone could devoted their future from something that had happened in their past. A daughter of a man that had pasted away from cancer could choose to devote her life into becoming an Oncologist. Remembering dreams is also important. Many people from different ethnicities believe that your dreams are a message to you; it may be from your body, or from your subconscious. Our behavior is based on our experience. We perceive things to be only the way they are. We learn to trust what we see as it is happening to be the truth leaving no room for the paranormal or phenomenon. Individuals are taught to behave through their experience and that defines who we are. If people were stripped of their experiences, they would take away the lessons that were learned. The outcome from that particular experience could change for better or worse. Therefore each individual has can have a negative or positive affect on one another.

Chunk 2: Reaction

When I first read Laing's argument I vaguely understood what he meant by "the ordinary person is a shriveled, desiccated fragment of what a person could be". As I read the article, I began to understand what Laing meant. It’s true that we do not experience our being. Not being aware of ourselves’ is the way we have been nurtured and raised. Individuals are taught to behave through their experiences. Therefore our experiences define who we are. With each new life, there are unlimited possibilities, but our society nurtures us into alienation from full embodiment. Through our nurtured experience, we are prevented from embodiment leading our experiences to be only fragments. It is easier to be distracted by the things that surround us, rather than sit around and wait to die. We all know it’s going to happen at one point or another. No living organism is immortal, but that does not mean that you should not live life the best you can just because you will die some day. In my opinion it should not be either distraction or full awareness, but a well balance of both. If you are completely focused on your body and physical being, then you will miss out on the wondrous adventures life has to offer. Sometimes it’s good to distract yourself as long as you acknowledge your physical being too.
Personally I believe my self to be balanced. I have my moments where I begin to think about certain thoughts, but I chose to distract myself from these thoughts. I have realized that I work best and stay focused when I am distracted. For example, when I have to write papers, I listen to music in order to stay focused. If I were to turn off the music, then I begin to get distracted and stare into space.


Chunk 3: Sensory Awareness

While doing the sensory awareness exercises, I found myself always getting distracted. Most of the time I would get distracted unknowingly. Then I would try to get myself focused on the activity again. Instead I would begin to focus on staying focused. Other times, like when we did the ‘Stand’ exercise, I would focus on my body and feel how my body is reacting to the exercise. I can very easily get distracted when I am trying to focus, but when I distract myself from my surroundings it is easier for me to focus. For example, while I am doing this assignment I am listening to music, sitting in an okay but not comfortable position. I think it’s all in our heads whether we stay focused or not.

Chunk 4: Childhood

“As adults, we have forgotten most of our childhood. Not only it’s content, but it’s flavor.” –R.D. Lang. As we grow older, our minds slowly forget about our past and soon enough our childhood seems like it happened a lifetime ago. Even though we aren’t constantly thinking our past, it still remains in the back of our minds.
Although I don’t remember every detailed moment from my childhood, I do remember certain memories. My memories and childhood experiences are very important to me. They have shaped me to be the person I am today. Some memories seem very random and others seem significant. Whether they are random or significant, enjoyable or regretful, they have brought me to this point in life.
I remember most of my previous birthday. Since I am the youngest all my siblings and my parents have always made a big deal about my birthday. We always had parties and as I got older they parties happened less often, but in their own ways made a big deal.
I remember most weekends or sometimes after school I would go to my cousins house. Now I live a block down from then, but back in the day we lived in a different neighborhood, but were walking distance. Other weekends they would come over and stay. I can still remember the silly games I would play with my cousin, Sam. We practically grew up together. Looking back at those memories makes me appreciate my relationships with people.
Sometimes when I hear a song or see something that reminds me of my past, I am able to recall the memory very well. I can remember the full experience, what I was thinking, how I was feeling and how it made me feel, things that were going on around me etc.

Chunk 5: Dreams

”Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious”- Freud.

While we sleep the unconscious self takes a journey exploring thoughts in our minds. I believe that dreams are important, most of the time they represent something. Or try to tell you something. Through dreams the unconscious self is able to reveal hidden desires, wants/wishes, fears. Although our dreams aren’t reality, they are an alter reality that our unconscious self creates. Sometimes a dream can also show a memory that we experienced while we were awake. Our dreams are able to create an alter reality where we are able to runaway from life’s problems. Since we repress these feelings while we are awake, while we are in the dreaming state our conscience spills the repressed thoughts and feelings into our unconscious mind. Many people don’t remember their dreams, and when they are able to remember, often overlook it. “Sleep is often the only occasion which man cannot silence his conscience, but the tragedy of it is that when we do hear our conscience speak in sleep, we cannot act and that when able to act we forget what we know in our dream”. Here Laing is trying to say that when we are awake we can’t or barely remember our dreams, therefore not being able to act upon them. But when we hear or see our dreams we are unable to do anything about it. Trying to make sense of our dreams when we are able to remember them is a challenge. You could interpret your dream to be one thing, and when you tell someone else, they could interpret it differently. I know that every night I have dreams and I am usually able to recall my dreams. Sometimes outside noises or what happened to us that day or the thoughts we have when going to sleep influences our dreams. To make sense of my dreams I usually tell someone or keep thinking about them until they become clear to me.

Chunk 6: Thinking

Before this unit, I never really thought about my way of thinking. It was usually that I would do or see something and a thought would come to mind. I was not usually aware of the way I thought. My thoughts are; feelings that I have, emotions I feel, reactions to events and information. My way of thinking is perceived from my experiences and that makes me think the way I do.
According to R.D. Laing, "What we think is less than what we know: what we know is less than what we love: what we love is so much less than what there is. And to that precise extent we are so much less than what we are". Laing is trying to argue that we as people think in a way that only benefits us and think only of our interests.
The three goals we wanted to get out of this section was: becoming aware of your own thinking, consider and critically analyze your thinking, and improve your thinking.
We first started this unit by doing math problems and then analyzing the techniques we used to figure out the problem presented to us. The first thinking strategy that was presented to us was to try asking questions instead of directly trying to get the answer. Then we went into puzzles and riddles and tried to analyze the techniques for problem solving. Many people tired to find the answer by looking for clues that might have been given, trying to think of all the components and aspects. Others tried to visualize, or experiment.
“ Some things take time, practice and thought to get good at. Thinking is one of those things. If you’re good at thinking, hard situations become easier. How would you train yourself to become a better thinker.” – Andy Most of the time people think automatically. If a person I trained or adapted to thinking a certain way then that is his/her way of thinking and who is to argue that their way of thinking is wrong. The way a person thinks is their perspective, not everyone is the same and neither are their thinking strategies. Although I pay attention to my thoughts, I don’t really pay attention to my way of thinking. I have a tendency of where once I begin to think of something I can’t stop until I figure out what it is. I agree with Laing that people don’t pay attention to their thinking strategies and maybe if we did our way of thinking would be better. But again who’s to say that our way of thinking is less than what it can be. People do have strategies of thinking but don’t really try to understand how they’re thinking.


Chunk 7: Feeling

Apart from being alienated, Laing also believes that we are also disconnected from our true feelings. Some of the questions that we explored in this sections were: Why do we get emotional over little things? Why do I feel the way I do? How do your experiences influence your feelings? What/ Is there a difference between feelings and emotions?
Although we may not acknowledge our feelings and/or emotions, they are present in our behavior on a daily basis. A feeling can range from something as simple as being happy and excited to something very complicated that you cant even explain, which may lead to anger and confusion. Throughout the day it is very easy for you to have different feelings at different moments. These feelings are usually connected towards your mood or tone throughout the day. Alternate to feelings moods are more long lasting. A mood can last an hour, a day, or a couple of days, whereas a feeling can last for a few seconds or minutes.
At the beginning of class each day we wrote about our feelings, both physical and emotional in order to recognize how we feel and why we feel that way. We also made a list of feelings that was endless. Each feeling was different and although they may sound similar each feeling was very different than the other. To name a few of the feelings; sadness, sorrow, confusion, anger, rage, disappointment, failure, failed, excitement, joy, annoyed, pleasant, agitated, irritated, embarrassed, shy, lost, loneliness, rejection, acceptance, tried, jealous, envy etc and then there are the emotions/ feelings that are indescribable. When you try to make sense of those feelings are any feelings it usually leads you to feel another way. I think it is impossible to ever not feel anything. Maybe there isn’t a word to describe how you feel but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t feeling anything. There is also the feeling of repression when you try to force yourself not to feel a certain way. Sometimes people try to put up an act around others and in trying to manipulate the other person, somehow manipulate themselves.
There is also the argument that we tend to chose friends based on how they make us feel. We have the entertaining friends that make us laugh and have a good time, or we could be that person for someone else. We have the friends that flatter us, the friends that find flaws in us to make themselves’ feel better, the friends that we trust and can tell anything, the friends that we know will always be there and we can lean on etc.

After reading R.D. Laing’s article and analyzing it throughout the unit I somewhat agree that a person is much less than their potential. But from Laing’s view point it seems as if a person is completely alienated and disembodied. Some may argue that they are fully embodied. There is a balance where a person is embodied but also distracted, but in my opinion its not possible to be just one in this society.