I’ve always, always enjoyed reading..as a kid, I loved going to libraries, although I must say..a majority of what I read as a kid included The Babysitter’s Club, Sweet Valley series, and others like those…but regardless it has always been enjoyable to me.

As I went through high school, I never lost that love for reading (books that I want to read) but I just found less and less time to do so. I don’t think it was really until the summer after I graduated high school that I began to read a lot again, and re-discovered how amazing it was.

After starting college, I still tried to maintain some for-fun reading, but mostly it ends up being during the summer time that I get to do this. So, this summer (well – the 4 days left of it..) I’ve also been trying to get some reading done. The list of what I want to read just keeps getting longer and longer, and I order some of these books and they just keep sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read, but yet I can’t seem to give them the time of day!! I feel bad for them, really. I’ve been meaning to read Atlas Shrugged for a YEAR now (and I know this because I’d added this book to my Library last year..) and finally am just starting to read it!

I know that I really DO have time to read books for fun – I just have to make time for it. I think that during the year when I’m in school, it’s just harder to want to read for fun with my spare time because I already am reading so many books/articles/etc. for my classes… Who knows. But I just know – I need to spend more time doing it in order to read everything I want to…..

I’d like to take a moment to put a spotlight on a project that Hannah and I have been working on over this past month: Uberessay.com. Uberessay.com is a student resource and writing community that was founded by Hannah and I on the basis of promoting students to share their well-written papers and essays, as well as becoming a resource that students can refer to when writing their own papers for quality, insightful papers.

Although I’m no English and/or writing-based major at my school, I’ve always been sort of in love with writing… Okay, so I may sound quite nerdy, but it’s the truth. Somehow, when I’m writing an essay or paper, I will always find a way to be inspired or be somewhat excited about what I’m writing: in doing so, I allow myself to become fully enwrapped by whichever topic or subject I’m writing about, and thus actually learn something from writing. I may not have the best writing skills, and maybe I do kind of suck at citing correctly and using MLA-format the right way, but at least I still enjoy writing!

And that’s really just the point of Uberessay.com. Personally, when Hannah approached me with the idea, I definitely and instantly agreed to help co-found it, because it’s something that I hope everyone who wants to be apart of can become a member of. My hopes for Uberessay are to foster a community that promotes discussion and fosters learning for all contributors and readers, as well as to develop a reliable and decent resource that we can all (in the future, hopefully) refer to when writing our own papers.

So, if you’ve written a great essay this past year – and anytime in your college career – please consider submitting it! And, if you have any feedback, please let me know. I would love to hear it!

I wrote a response paper for a Chinese literature (taught and read in English) class earlier this year on Daoism, because we had read Laozi’s Daodejing and a portion of the Zhuang-zi. After reading the primary texts (or at least a part of it), I’d have to say I definitely made too broad of assumptions (if they were assumptions at all to begin with) in my religion paper I wrote on Daoism my senior year of high school (see Religion Paper Excerpts). I just think it’s interesting how my views on Daoism have changed. Obviously, I’m not suggesting I completely understand it, but from what I’ve read, this is just my own interpretation, which is all that matters for me, right?

Anyway, just thought I’d post this up… I also have it in PDF form, with the sources cited. Otherwise, here it is–

The Zhuang-zi and Laozi texts attempt to identify human’s vain desires for materialistic goods and temporal values, and in turn, suggest an alternative – the Way of the sage. Both texts are filled with contradiction after contradiction, paradox after paradox, all of which amount to one conclusion: that there is no answer, and that in itself is the answer.

Both Zhuangzi and “Laozi” highlight the emphasis humans place on fleeting values and tangible goods, such as wealth and jade. Laozi states that when the Way weakened, humaneness, rightness, intelligence, and wisdom emerged (84); he juxtaposes the Way with concepts that humans and society define as “good.” Zhuangzi, likewise, criticizes “knowledge,” arguing that human’s quest for knowledge triggered division and the “so’s and not sos’s” (117). Zhuangzi and Laozi’s critiques of human values stem from their argument that everything in the universe is constantly changing and transforming, and thus “the placement of value distinctions…[are] merely fleeting moments in the game of life that all come to naught” (Cook 66). Does this mean, then, that there is no point to knowledge, honor, wealth, and even virtue? What is virtue?

Zhuangzi and Laozi regard the sage as one who lives in harmony with the Way and disregards such temporal temptations and values. The ability to live amongst the paradoxes and contradictions is what Laozi characterizes as “profound virtue” (83). According to Laozi, a sage “accomplishes things by doing nothing” and furthers teaching with no words (80). The sage exists amongst ordinary men, amidst argumentation and conflict, but has the ability to consider, take positions when necessary (without argumentation), and make distinctions (Zhuangzi 119). The sage’s purpose is to harmonize with the Way as well as teach humans how to be stripped of natural desires such as ambition, knowledge, and wisdom. The sage, by doing nothing, brings society into order (Laozi 81), because “by doing nothing, nothing is left undone” (87). How does “doing nothing” result in “something”? What can be attributed to as “undone”? What is the meaning of words?

Present in both texts is a continuous play on words and strings of paradoxes. Zhuangzi presents pages and pages of dialogue about flutes, finger-pointing, there-is’s and there-isn’t’s only to say that we don’t know if we “know that what [we] call knowing is not, in fact, not knowing…[and] what [we] call not knowing is not, in fact, knowing” (Zhuangzi 119-120). The paradoxes and contradictions in the texts (and the texts themselves) become physical manifestations of the Way: ever-changing, open to interpretation, and words that may or may not mean anything and may or may not make sense.

Laozi and Zhuangzi’s manipulations of words and twisting of ideas throw the readers (like myself) in all directions, leaving me wondering what it is that Zhuangzi and Laozi are trying to convey about the Way. Only after reading the endless paradoxes and anipulation of language can I finally begin to comprehend “the wordless teaching [of the Way] and the advantage of doing nothing” (Laozi 89).

In search of an article/study to write my psych paper on, I stumbled across a couple articles that seemed very interesting but too long (they had to be 10 or less pages) to base my paper on. I read one of them, “Common Senses: Water, Sensory Experience and the Generation of Meaning”, and thought I’d post some excerpts here–

“The thesis proposed is that the formal qualities and characteristics of the object – whatever it is – are crucial in that they provide a common basis for the construction of meaning. Equally critical to this discussion is an acknowledgement that (while acknowledging minor evolutionary adaptations) in general terms humans share common sensory and perceptual processes, although their experiences are, as noted previously, also composed of culturally specific beliefs and expectations, learned behaviours and embodied predispositions.”

“The article attempts to show that, although meaning is a human product, the environment is not a tabula rasa, but instead provides elements whose consistent characteristics are the basis for meanings that flow cross-culturally, creating common undercurrents in culturally specific engagements and interpretations.”

“Water’s diversity is, in some respects, a key to its meanings. Here is an object that is endlessly transmutable, moving readily from one shape to another: from ice to stream, from vapour to rain, from fluid to steam. It has an equally broad range of scales of existence: from droplet to ocean, trickle to flood, cup to lake…This process of transformation never ceases: water is always undergoing change, movement and progress. Captured in a cup or pond or lake, it evaporates or escapes and runs away: it is always physically flowing from one place to another in streams, torrents, waves and currents.”

“The overarching theme, which in many ways contains all of the other meanings encoded in water, is that water is the literally ‘essential’ matter of life and death.”

“The imposition of Christianity that subsumed Pagan cosmological beliefs reframed the ‘water of life’ considerably. Biblical descriptions demonstrate a shift from ancient visions of water as a source or personification of god-ness (primarily female) to a more ‘rational’ and abstract vision of ‘living water’ as the product of a single male God…However, even with the ascendance of the patriarchal Christian God, homologous Biblical imagery retained a vision of water as the essence of life.”

“With the Enlightenment, water became a ‘fountainhead’ of spiritual knowledge and wisdom, and eventually, under the weight of Rationalism, the ‘living water’ of the Bible was overtaken by a more Cartesian vision of water as H2O. However, the flow of ideas and images linking water and the spirit has not evaporated (Figure 4), and even in a primarily secular cosmos, water is still presented as the ‘essence’ of a living, functioning ecology of existence.”

“…a reality that water always contains the potential to be benign or harmful, and that the safety of interactions with it depends upon sufficient human control of the engagement.”

Source
Strang, Veronica. “Common Senses: Water, Sensory Experience and the Generation of Meaning.” Journal of Material Culture 10.1 (2005): 92-120.
Available for download (if you have a subscription) here. Or, e-mail me and I will send it to you.