Contraria sunt complementa

I really like Asian philosophy - the mysticism, the underlying unity of the universe, the henotheism (of Hinduism at least), the spiritual path, the pursuit of harmony. It all just sits well with me. In fact, I know I'm not the only one who feels that way - so I decided to read The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism by Fritjof Capra. Since I'm currently taking an Asian Philosophy course at UMBC, I felt that it would be a nice complement (and since I'm not reading the textbook, I might as well read something).

The first thing I noticed was that the book was categorized in the Physics section as opposed to the Philosophy section as I had expected. After a rough overview of quantum theory, relativity theory, and the major eastern philosophical traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese Thought, Taoism, Zen), each chapter breaks down a different concept: the unity of all things, opposites as complements, space/time, emptiness, cosmic dance etc. (I skimmed the last couple chapters, I was starting to get overloaded). Much of the book involves taking a quote from Heisenberg/Bohr/random physicist and laying it side-by-side with a quote from an Asian philosopher to "prove" the connections.

In the end, it's strikingly persuasive. I didn't actually know anything about quantum theory when I started this book and now I know all sorts of interesting things like what makes up nucleons and a better idea of how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle works. It reminds me of how I took an existentialism class at CTY the year before I first took physics. I was immediately struck by how similar the aims of science and philosophy are - both seek to explain the universe and give meaning to our existence - differing from religion in that they use arguments and evidence to back up their claims, rather than faith-based assumptions. As my professor described it:

"Imagine looking for a black cat in a dark room. Now imagine that the cat is not actually there. The philosopher will keep looking for the black cat while the priest will claim to have found it."

Rather than summarize the most thought-provoking passages, I've included excerpts below:

"The illusion merely lies in our point of view, if we think that the shapes and structures, things and events, around us are realities of nature, instead of realizing that they are concepts of our measuring and categorizing minds." (88)

"Everything flows" - Heraclitus

"The most important characteristic of the Eastern world view - one could almost say the essence of it - is the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things and events, the experience of all phenomenon in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness. All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole; as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality." (130)

"Modern physics has confirmed most dramatically one of the basic ideas of Eastern mysticism; that all the concepts we use to describe nature are limited, that they are not features of reality, as we tend to believe, but creations of the mind; parts of the map, not of the territory. Whenever we expand the realm of our experience, the limitations of our rational mind become apparent and we have to modify, or even abandon, some of our concepts." (161)

"Contraria sunt complementa" [Translated: Opposites are Complements] - Bohr coat of arms

UMBC Application Essays

"The arts are a necessity, like food and water, for true civilization." (200-350 Words)

When Mrs. McElderry, my art teacher, told me that we would be spending four hours in the Uffizi, a legendary art gallery in Florence, Italy on our school trip, I thought it was far too much time. I was sure that in four hours I would have time to see the whole museum, carefully peruse the entire gift shop before buying a souvenir, and sit idly for at least an hour. But since I had no choice in the matter, I did not even bother to complain.

I entered through a large doorway, not quite realizing how far the building extended, and began breezing through rooms. I walked through a hallway lined with busts of famous historical figures from Sappho to Napolean Bonaparte. I paused in rooms where Aphrodite gazed outward and sighed. I stared at paintings so renowned that the mere fact I was in the same room sent shivers up my spine. After four hours, I could have been officially declared dead. My head had been filled with so many beautiful and startling images that I could barely function.

As I gaped at the building that now loomed impossibly tall, I thought to myself that the world would be a dull and unstimulating place without the Uffizi, without artists like Michelangelo and Giotto, without paintings like Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”. Art gives civilization meaning just as food gives a stomach meaning. At that moment, I was filled with so much hope and so much pride in what mere human beings had been able to accomplish that anything seemed possible.

---

“It has been said that ambiguity pervades the human condition. Illustrate this sentiment by discussing a book you have read . . .” (600 Words)

Imagine that you are stranded on a lifeboat and your only companions are an orangutan, a wounded zebra, a hyena and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Imagine that you stumble onto an island comprised solely of carnivorous vegetation on which there is no life save a population of meerkats. And later in the middle of the Pacific Ocean when you are blind, thirsty, and starving you find another man drifting with the tides who, in desperation, tries to eat you. Is this difficult to envision? Would it be easier if I said that your companions were your mother, a Chinese sailor with a broken leg, and a cannibalistic cook? If instead of seeing the wonders of God’s creation, you saw your only companions murder each other one by one until you were the only one left alive?

This is the journey on which Yann Martel takes you in Life of Pi. The tale starts out simply enough with the boast that “this is a story that will make you believe in God”. In fact, it starts out with a young boy who has such strong faith in God that he is a devoted Christian, Muslim, and Hindu, much to the dismay of his religious mentors. He looks at Christ’s suffering and sees God’s humanity. He bows in Muslim prayer and feels an instant, irreversible connection with the earth and everything inhabiting it. He understands the universe through Hindu eyes, the finite within the infinite. He looks at the world as a marvel, as something to be appreciated and loved, even when adrift in the middle of the ocean. Pi’s story is full of hope and suffering, fear and jubilation, instinct and rationale.

Yet at the very moment that Pi convinces you of the existence of God, he gives you reason to doubt. He retells his story with humans instead of animals, and this time there is no hope, no jubilation, only pain and suffering. And without pausing he asks you, which story do you like better?

In this way, Life of Pi reads much more like a religious text than an ordinary novel. Pi is the prophet and these are his parables. His miracle is his survival; his compassion is evidenced by his care of Richard Parker. He too went into the wilderness and was tempted by the devil. Yet it is the smaller phenomena that drive the message home, the lightening that strikes three feet to the left, the dolphins that dance on either side of the lifeboat, the ever-changing beauty of the sky. He cannot make you believe in God; and he does not want to, he only wishes to present you with that choice. There is nothing ambiguous in the search for God, and yet there is nothing unambiguous about what you find.

As Martel explains in the Author’s Note, “That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?” In the end, it does not matter which story is true, it only matters which one you choose to believe. Life of Pi starts out as a story about the test of one boy’s faith and ends as a test for you, the reader. You can live in a world where there is no life after death, where people kill each other without pain of punishment, and where there is no greater purpose than survival. Or you can choose not to. It does not matter whether there is a God or not; it only matters what you choose to believe, and whether that belief nourishes you.

The Politics of Desire

Note: I wrote this a while ago, when I was in high school. However, I still agree with a lot of the conclusions I drew here, so I haven't deleted it.

Recently, I've been reading Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire edited by Merri Lisa Johnson. I picked it up on a whim from Barnes & Nobles - thinking that it might have some gems inside it's pages. Instead, it's totally changed the way I think about desire and relationships.
I've never had sex, I've never had a long-term relationship - so it's hard for me to figure out what I think about a lot of stuff. It's nice to read essays by women who are much closer to figuring life out than I am.

The first essay that caught my attention was titled "I Learned From the Best: My Mother Was a High-Femme Whore" by Paula Austin. Paula Austin is a black femme lesbian who's mother prostituted herself to support her family. She explains that gender expression is on the most basic level a performance. She acts feminine to manipulate a situation and gain control because in our society - that works. By using her femininity as a tool, she is reshaping it into something that helps her instead of hurting her. I'm not the most feminine person in the whole world - I don't wear make-up or high heels, I don't shave my legs. But I can see something beautiful in it. I like that for her, femininity is about how she views herself instead of solely about how everyone else views her. On the other hand, I'm not a lipstick lesbian. I don't want to be. And there's nothing wrong with that - it doesn't make me less of a woman. I have taken charge of my femininity in a different way, by rejecting the parts that don't fit me and accepting the parts that do.

Since I tend to go after butch/androgynous girls (keep in mind that not everyone I've dated is butch and that I'm not attracted to every butch girl I meet) - my classmates always tease me that I'm a closeted heterosexual (or a "heterosexual homosexual" as Kayte coined it).
Before reading this book, I could never explain why I like girls who look like boys. I couldn't explain why I didn't think there was anything wrong with using a strap-on. I couldn't explain why that didn't mean I "actually wanted to be with a man".

In "A Cock of One's Own: Getting a Grip on Feminist Sexual Power" by Sarah Smith, this exact dilemma is examined. Sarah Smith owns a sex toy shop and (perhaps surprisingly) sells the most dildo harnesses to straight couples. It's so easy to put sex into categories - anal sex is gay sex, vaginal penetration is straight sex, and clitoral stimulation is lesbian sex. But that's not the way it works at all - there's not one type of sex that only one group of people participate in. Sexual orientation isn't about what type of sex you like - I always forget that. It's about who you're attracted to, it's about who you want to spend the rest of your life with. I could have the same type of sex with a man as with a woman - but it wouldn't feel the same. I wouldn't have the same feelings towards the person, so it would be a completely different experience. I could "experiment with straight sex" but that's exactly what it would be - experimenting. That's why I can make out with boys and it doesn't mean anything - it was never going to mean anything in the first place.

Now that I think about it - there's no reason for me to be offended by people who experiment with lesbianism. The gay community is so anxious to prove that they're legitimate that they forget sexuality is fluid. Sexual identity and sexual behavior don't always match up. I might be attracted to butch girls, but that's not because I'm "trying to find a man" - it's because I'm attracted to women - butch girls aren't wannabe men. As Sarah Smith writes, "Cross-gender identification does not diminish one's biological girlness, I am coming to see; it expresses playfulness rather than poor self-image. In fact, integrating the 'masculine' parts of one's erotic identity may be a sign of good mental health despite a culture that would deem such thoughts perverse". I like the idea of playing with gender - of fucking with the binaries and figuring out who I want to be instead of who I'm supposed to be. I don't even know what it means to be butch/femme. Is it the way you look/what you wear? Is it a dynamic between two people? Is it a game?

Interestingly, there are no essays by butch women in this anthology. There is one essay by a gay man - everyone else is a feminine woman (ranging the sexual orientation spectrum).

Reading

For most of high school, I didn't bother to read much more than was assigned to me. I didn't have the time or the motivation to sustain such a noble hobby. More to the point, I was lazy.

This year, I've decided to turn a new leaf and never regretted it since. My pleasure reading has ranged from Manifesta to Lizard to Blink. In my book-bound forays, I've noticed a few things:

1. Nonfiction isn't the evil, boring genre I imagined it was as a small child at the public library. I literally avoided those shelves like the plague, fearing such horrors as being educated outside of the classroom.
2. I really like Asian literature. When I picked up Banana Yoshimoto, I had no idea what to expect. A friend had lent me her copy of Lizard and I had promised to read it. I was blown away by the language, shocked to discover it was merely a translation of a text originally written in Japanese. A student of Latin, I am incredibly distrustful of translations and can only imagine how beautiful the text is in it's original language.
3. Reading is a way more productive way to waste time than whatever I used to do.
4. I sound so much smarter when I can interrupt someone to say "That reminds me of a book I just read . . . "

But more importantly, I've come to think of reading as sifting through pages for a nugget of wisdom. Every book has some unique idea, some clever phrasing, some interesting action to shape the way I interpret my own world.
The most interesting thing about literature is the layering of perspective. I'm interpreting the author who in turn is interpreting how I'm going to interpret them. I hear a story from the perspective of a narrator who may or may not be omnipotent but in either case is very selective of the details it chooses to impart.
I take a very post-modern view of the world. For me, the ultimate radical act of life is to actively pursue change. It's so easy to let the world change around you without changing yourself. But that in and of itself, impedes change. And without change, there'd be nothing to differentiate the future from the present.