Changing it up...

So this will probably be the last of my posts on this particular blog... I'm changing over to another personal blog that deals with just my day to day shit. so this is it... I'll also be starting another blog soon that is totally dedicated to my photography but that'll pop up later and most of what goes on there will probably end up on my personal blog too (I can't really say yet). I'll announce that when I make it...

...ok well maybe I wont Vote Obama

yet another reason why I vote Obama

Atheism in Place

For the final project I wasn't sure exactly what to do... Looking over what I've done over the last few weeks I've found, not surprisingly, that most of my work has a somewhat atheistic purpose to it. Part of the reason I'm so aggressively atheist is that I feel that religion is such a prevalent thing in our society thats just not questioned by society at large. I think what bothers me is the relativism that goes along with having these beliefs. That said, as an artist I'm told that one of our duties is to challenge and question politics, society and culture. Even if I wasn't an "artist" I feel that in this day and age superstitions and the relativist ideology should be done with.

What I'm going to attempt to do now is, within this posting, restructure my already existing posts into a coherent statement about atheism and the natural world...

• My views and interests could be seen in the first thing I did. Starting with excerpts from my "Rivers and Tides" discussion:

1. "Not to get too philosophical but everything in the universe is part of nature but as humans we’ve learned how to use those natural properties to our advantage."
2. "Humans see themselves as outside of nature and we see nature just doing what it does. In the sense of the word Goldsworthy is using it puts a moral weight along with it. Nature is amoral so it would make sense that it wouldn’t feel like destruction..."

• I was much more outwardly critical of my "Mapping and This American Life" discussion. I've really thought hard about how critical I was of ths sound portion of the show and I've come to conclude that I should have been more critical and spent more time tearing it apart. I spent some time in the discussion boards with others talking about this part of the show specifically. I should reiterate that I don't think that sound doesn't have an effect on a persons mood but it doesn't have an effect to the degree in which it was discussed on This American Life: Mapping. Sound/music by nature is abstract and without "meaning." It is humans that create meaning to sound/music. What I'm trying to get at is simply that there aren't inherently "sad" or "happy" sounds. By human or any animals (although that changes from animal to animal) perspective there are pleasant and unpleasant sounds. The fact that the idea of a sound having some sort of inherent meaning that came from the same religion that locked up Galileo Galilei for figuring out we weren't the center of the universe why would anyone buy into this? Oh yeah... DOGMA. Here is a quick quote from my criticism of that:
  

"...the idea that the Catholic Church coming up with a feeling and a superstition assigned to that sound was, well, its amusing really. Then they kind of finished that idea up with a music critic that wrote a book that gave the Church’s sound assignment a “new suit” for the new age. Of course I’m highly skeptical that the book, like the Church’s definitions, has any real scientific fact or study behind it to make it at all relevant. I would guess it’s just the articulate rantings of a music critic. I haven’t read it so I wouldn’t know nor am I musically educated enough to be able to but I would think that a PHD in Psychology would write a book about such a thing."

I think thats a good intro to what I'll end up with. As you can already see I'm very critical of anything unsubstantiated. In the last part of this class we were asked to protest using our body as a mode to protest something... of course I picked religious institutions. There's just something so strange and counter productive about this to me.

In a way all of my projects (more so of course the last two), my writings and my walks were all protests of religion. I'm not so naive to think that I'm going to change the world with my art and writings but I do hope that I can affect people to think about things they normally wouldn't in ways they normally wouldn't. You see no one person has "it" but I think most people have some incite to the world. We're all just meandering through life trying to make sense of it and I believe that if you believe something to be true you should arrive at that belief on your own after careful consideration (and I should qualify that by saying that I'm not talking about whether or not I believe the chair I'm thinking about sitting on exists I'm talking about the kinds of things we take for granted that have a real impact on your life, my life and the world).

I placed this picture at Salpoint High School... It came down fairly fast... it was one of the "bases" of the "A" I marked into Tucson. This project was a blatant attempt at showing another side of faith to the public. This was just another institution for "learning" that is such a contradictory in terms.

I should have spent more time discussing this "tag" that I left in a wash that was fairly popular for tagging... The reason I feel like this deserves more attention is because of what the quote says and where it was placed I think has special meaning and could exist as a single piece without the rest of the quotes in the "A".

If you haven't already, you should click on the photo because its hard to see in the smaller preview where the quote is in relation to the other taggings...
This is important because the Epicurus quote poses a problem for the theist.
The problem of "evil" and the problem of omnipotence.
If you look closely there is a red blob that looks like blood dripping on the top left.
On the bottom right is a statement in gold that says "FUCK BLOOD" and as we all know (or should know) that the "bloods" are a gang. to me this reads as a gang statement showing gang territory.
The significance, to me, is that this is "evil" by most peoples definition. Gang members tend to be more religious than most people. So if there is this god that is believed in then why allow this "evil" by his followers?

This is a great seguay into my one of my last walks in which I walked for Feminism. God, his profits and the religious stories tend to be pretty anti-women. This all seeing all knowing being happens to be in everywhere but still manages to have a male form (pretty convenient). In all the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic religions women are not people they are property like a car or a pet. That is one of many reasons for my view as a feminist. The problem with religious dogma is that the beliefs hold on things that cannot change because if they do the religion falls. Or you get what is called religious apologetics. Once you have to defend old superstitions, to me thats just an admission of crap that isn't true and doesn't work.

This was a recent video that I came across and it illustrates this point quite well. If you can explain something without god then why include god?

In my first walk I wasn't very good at using blogger so I had some issues with getting the images to display correctly... but in spite of the overall aesthetics of my formating I would like to reflect on it in the context of this discussion. Part 3, having to do with touch, isn't really about anything but the superficial sensation of touch. The funny thing about touch, and all senses really, are both objective and subjective... I know thats hard to grasp for some but everyone experiences the subjective feeling of touching an object and that is translated as a quality of the object being touched. Those qualities are objective qualities that others can relate to. So how does that have anything to do with what I've been talking about up until now? Well it actually has a lot to do with what I've been discussing. Every ones senses tell us from the day we're conceived some sort of information about the world around us that we then have to make sense of. The senses that I speak of are touch, taste, hearing, seeing and smelling. Some say their are extra senses that some lucky few posses but I wont use this as a forum to talk about what BS that is. Anyway... this is important, because these senses tell us about the world they are simply tools that living things have evolved. These tools aren't perfect but sense we have no other tools to exchange and compare thats all we get. Those tools don't always work perfectly. But there is another sense that people seem to think they have and that is this sense of some sort of holy being. I find this sense troubling because it is completely subjective in every way. In other words, the pictures you see from this project like this one:
It is easy to imagine by just looking at it what that might feel like based on your subjective experiences and you would be close if not compleatly right when you got there and felt it for yourself... I could also just simply describe it to you in words and you would still have an idea of what kind of texture it had. But when you do that with this holy spirit idea there's no objective way to describe it.

I couldn't say it any better than that

I couldn't avoid my protest even my walk to discover the "gamer" culture in and around the Tucson Mall area. You know what it is? It's ignorance. I'm so outwardly atheist and oppose religion not because I feel like god abandoned me or that I was hurt in some way because of it. Nope, I just can't stand how uninformed and how ignorant people are of the universe and the only life they have. There was a project done by a fellow classmate that I skimmed over a bit and my head almost exploded because of this statement: "...there is no wind on the moon nor is their gravity." So after reading it carefully I realized that she was paraphrasing someone else but it's still unclear to me whether or not she realizes there is gravity on the Moon... you can check it out here and tell me what you think.

"I see the human animal very much part of the "natural" world simply because there is no such thing as the "unnatural" world. I just find it funny how people see themselves outside of nature and feel the need to "reconnect" to it but its something you can never escape from."

This is a quotation from my first project that is very much a reflection and a foreshadowing of the projects to come... But I want to take a moment to consider what I'm really saying here. Partly, if not mostly, why people see themselves "outside" nature is because of these funny little books that tell us that we're special. We surround ourselves with things that we created and make ourselves feel bad about our very nature. EXAMPLE:

“Save sex for marriage.”

Translation: “If I can’t have consequence-free sex, neither can you.”
Acceptable Response: “I pledge myself! Give me a promise ring!”
Unacceptable Response: “So how did that work out for you?” Or, “Where exactly does the Bible say that?”

So I'm going to end where I started in this post, with my last project. I visited these places of worship with every blasphemous ideal against what is held to be true... If I stand or enter a place like the one pictured above and their god was really watching (according to their doctrines he has to be but it doesn't matter because he knew I would be there anyway) He would strike me down so fast... I would like to think I'm a greater "evil" than the starving children in Africa or really anywhere. Yeah I know, "I couldn't begin to understand Gods will." Save it... I've heard it all. I don't want to hear apologetic rhetoric I want understanding and that can't be gained from a dismissive statement that doesn't say anything. My protest is a challenge, much like the blasphemy challenge, but not to prove to me but to anyone who will view my work and challenge themselves in there own lives.

Walking: Intersubjectivity

So this exercise I was kinda excited about because its fun to mess with people... and this time I had an excuse...
But unfortunately my dreams of freaking my friends and coworkers was halted by the realization that most of the things I thought of doing, which I wont go into, would probably end badly for me in my work environment. So I decided to do something more modest...
I fake laughed and not just at funny things but also awkward moments like when Doctor Hibbert from the Simpsons would laugh (where I drew my inspiration).
First I should mention that I laugh a lot and I've also been told on many occasions that I have a great and infectious laugh. I wasn't counting on it but my coworkers caught on within an hour and called me out on it. They knew there was something up so I caved but didn't give up because I wanted to see how strangers would react that weren't accustomed to my laughter...
I had a mixed reaction because of my choice moments that I would laugh and my kind of laughter. It made me wonder though, sometimes, if thats how people actually react a strangers laughter, because I was paying so much attention, or was it because my choice of laughter was strange...
Well I can say for my own experience that theres definitely some people who just laugh funny and when you first hear them laugh you kinda stop for a second to make sure that that laughter is as odd as you think. Theres also the forced laughter thats usually a kind of "kiss ass" laughter that can sometimes just, of course I'll never know, be a funny laugh. I work in retail as a sales man and I definitely got some looks that felt like the person thought I was giving them the "kiss ass" treatment. Either way my coworkers were entertained...
At home later in the evening my girlfriend didn't even hesitate she knew I was being weird and she called me out in less than 10 minutes... As much as I like messing with people I have a hard time keeping a straight face... yeah I suck at poker...

Walking for something beyond myself

So when I read this assignment I was a bit put off. I'm not going to go into great detail why but I will give you some examples. You see I have chosen people that surround me that have a "fuck you" kind of humor so they tried to get me to walk for a number of things (they weren't short of ideas) like walking in protest for the color orange... you might, like I, ask why? "because of Thursday." Or how about "walking for bachelors to help keep them from the trap of marriage." That one has meaning because a friend of mine just got married... needless to say we had some laughs but I couldn't use any of it. My girlfriend didn't really have much to say about it until she remembered me saying that I considered myself a feminist a few days ago... she challenged me to walk for feminism and to really consider what feminism is and how it is seen. Where else would I go to do this but the Tucson Mall (its close, A/Ced, I work there and its 90% womens stores). Like my other walks I was nervous to take pictures so I'll just summarize because this was feminism overload...

Working in the Mall I see where people shop because I see their bags and probably the most popular stores for women are Forever 21 and Victoria's Secret. So what is it about those stores that makes them so popular?

Lets start with Forever 21 and its name... what does the name imply? That women peak at 21? or that women want to be 21 and sexy forever? Okay, who wouldn't? I've always wondered what the name Forever 21 meant. To me the title is pretty offensive because I think it does imply that women peak at 21 and thats not just wrong but offensive in so many ways. Also I have quite a few friends that say they can't shop there because it's way to small... they aren't big girls. If anyone knows what the stores intended meaning is please tell me.

Victoria's Secret isn't bad at all I don't think and I'll tell you why. First of all yes the models in the window, catalog and pinned up all over the store do show a distorted view of what women "should" look like. Advertising as we all know is full of that kind of thing for women and men (and yes more so for women). Unfortunately these kinds of techniques work and personally I wouldn't want to see my hairy scary ass in advertising so THAT kind of thing doesn't bother me. Even with that kind of add campaign they still cater to a, no pun intended, larger variety of females. I personally don't see anything wrong with wanting to be/feel pretty and thats what this store facilitates to most women.

I'm not going to go into terrible detail about the rest of my walk because there is one store that offends me in sooooo many ways that it dominated the rest of my thoughts for the entire walk and I couldn't focus on anything else. The store that I find to be probably the worst in the mall is Club Libby Lu. This store is racist and counter feminist in almost every way possible. My mind was racing with too many thoughts to write down so once I calmed down a bit I began just writing this entry. Your probably wondering why I say racist? There are two wigs you can buy there and both are blond. So I thought that whole Barbie thing was over... nope! I shouldn't have to go into why and whats wrong with that in this day and age to an educated audience so I wont. So the point of the store is to get young girls, age I'm guessing 6-9ish, to come in and get their hair done, makeup done and to look like a pop singer. Okay, when you say it like that it may not sound too bad but when you see "the finished product" its FUCKING CREEPY! Girls that age shouldn't be sexualized at that age nor should they feel pressure to be a blond skinny and all that other crap. Whatever people had wrong with Barbie and her play set this store goes far beyond that. There is no excuse for this store and what it represents and if I had children there is NO way they would ever enter this store.

I'm done now... I'm going to go relax for a while...

Modern scientists know more than God...