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There is but one duty linked to the uniqueness of my existence: the ability to question and therefore embark upon experiencing the curiosity with which I seek consequential answers.

This was sparked with the paradoxal acknowledgment of my own brain. I find it fascinating that with the same organ, this organ called the brain, one is able to consciously experience the world around him or herself. Furthermore, the fields of neurobiology, psychology and other neurosciences are driven by the same organ that they question: the mind. The mind in itself is so fascinating that I am able to write such an observation as this using it as the tool to create a perspective from the third person. It is notsomuch understanding the concept and writing of it, as the mere idea of being conscious of the simultaneous processes that are occuring and experiencing the processes AS they occur.

It makes me drowsy. Worrisome. So integrated is my brain with the rest of my living being that I am unable to pinpoint it and focus solely on its existence - afterall, it bears no nocireceptors (pain) or anything else that would allow me to isolate it. And how does the mind manage to focus on itself while simultaneously acknowledging the fact that it must use itself to do this? The paradox realized in itself becomes the awkwardness of the moment.

Perhaps the fear of this realization is the idea that the brain itself is physically vulnerable. Encapsulated with sheaths of myelin and a boney skull, what more could protect this phenomena that has collectively advanced technology, society and driven globalization to microcosmic speeds? A simple disruption by another object, be it lasers or iron or any other solid, can damage the very tissues that systematically come together to create this dynamic organ. Yet, in contrast, the brain is the one that realizes that it is the most advanced of all other organs. Is this a fallacy? I am able to critique and analyze at the same time without an hindrances, only those insecurities and physical impairments that may disrupt a free flow.

Is emotion merely the reactions of peptides and hormones circulating via our bloodstream? Or are we able to maintain states of the mind where our neural centers can, in fact, change such that emotions are controlled?

I find it a tragedy that such a dynamic system, along with our existence in whole, is usually disregarded. The mind itself is thrown into useless obsessions with social drama, personal insecurities, and social expectations. Dulled even further with the conditioning of marketing, propaganda and other negativities of our human-constructed reality, the typical person seeks not the englightenment and joy of consciousness. It is almost a gift that is taken for granted. Philosophy is a revolutionary necessity for the advancement of science, and moreso other fields. Even art. The ability to think outside one's self, perhaps to critique the self or to observe existence outside of the typical view constructed with our eyes and our senses.

All of this sparked by a few pages of a neurobiologists' publication on emotion and reasoning! (See Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio).

It ocurred to me today that perhaps we are, in the present, coexisting with the past and the future. That is to say, as you and I exist, the past is also existing in a different dimension to whom we are the future. And elsewhere, simultaneously, is what we would consider to be our future, which is also existing and taking place as if nothing were out-of-the ordinary. And in this mess of things, time is obsolete and a mere moment. A neverending moment. How do we observe time? By the gradual aging of things, our own degredation to a point of death, and the changing of seasons and the like. But perhaps this is just degredation and cyclic - that time itself is infinite and therefore doesn't quite exist. And this future of ours, we must be a figment of our past. But for the future to exist as we exist, we must continue to live - for our very actions affect the outcome of their present (their past, and our future).

So in essence, it isn't useless.
It is a symbiotic relationship of life.
And somewhere lost in that is this grandiose idea of God.
Perhaps interconnected with the past, present and future.
And the only way to surely understand,
is to untap the paradoxes of our own brain.

It may seem useless. Afterall, a little gray and white matter thrown in with electrical impulses and blood circulations - but look at the abstraction that is a product of organic processes. And what is curious to me, even more, is the idea of the dream state - the ability of the brain to pull experiences from reality and somehow reconstruct dreams that almost always amount to some sort of significance in the individual's life. I wish more research would be focused on the content and construction of dreams by the brain, but I suppose before we get there, we ought to figure out its physical map and functioning. I wonder if we are our own obstructions to this level of complexity. Every other organ has been deconstructed and understood, and the dynamic role of the brain remains to be completed. I wonder if it's possible, giving the relativity of how the brain develops dependent on the individual...the tabula rasa, the clean slate, ready to be written and imprinted upon by experiences and the moments influencing the individual's life...


©2006 MK

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Hm so Jimmy was asking me about Nepal, and being as ignorant as I have been lately because of work and school, I just read the headlines about it..

That's amazing. The entire country is up in protest against this last Hindu king, and the government opens fire on it. This is so much like the Communist oppression in history, especially China. Shooting people, and this King claims he is Hindu? I won't kill animals, but I'll kill my own people. At least the UN spoke up and said something, not that words matter as much as action, but I would be quite curious to see what will result in this. I think I'll go along the lines of what we've learned on Machiavelli..

At one point, even the military will turn against a leader because in the end, soldiers were and are civilians. Ruling by fear and oppression, like dictators and monarchs, results in a populace that has no sense of nationalism - and if a state government lacks that, they're pretty much screwed. You can't win hearts if you kill their neighbors. They'll hide in fear with these curfews imposed, and that is a foundation for upcoming retaliation and protesting.

Too bad the US and Bush are so fuckin self-interested. I'd intervene. You want to influence the world with "democracy" and "liberties"? Fuck Iraq, here's a great opportunity to help out a democratic transition occurring. The Nepalese seem to want to end the dictatorship and transition to democracy - Iraqis didn't KNOW what the hell democracy was and it wasnt ready for that change.

Jump in when it's happening, and you've made yourself an influential and loved actor amongst these people.

This sucks. I'm just going to end up being an academian writing truths and theories all my life while assholes dominate the political and military sectors. Maybe not. But I'd certainly rearrange the priority with which the US involves itself in international conflict. We're just sittin around like dumbshits letting this perfect opportunity go by..I mean it's rare to find a state where the people are WANTING democracy. We imposed that shit on Iraqis, and now they're standing around in a boiling civil war still not sure what the hell "Parliament" means. Nor do they really care.

Argh.
Back to writing term papers.
This Nepal event is actually quite curious..I wonder what Fukuyama would say.

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It's funny how your body lashes back on you for getting a full night's rest after you've subjected it to random, incoherent hours for months. Needless to say, today was somewhat of a drowsy struggle..that ended on an interesting note in my class after work. You'd think that after working for 7 hours the last place you'd want to go is a drive to campus for an hour and a half class, but this is a little different.

We discussed the inefficiency of NGO's and their claims to "Humanitarian Intervention." Classically, NGOs have been seen as non-governmental actors with a moral and "good" intention behind their efforts. Yet today, a non-governmental actor includes all non-state actors...ranging from the "humanitarian" to terrorist and guerilla groups. (By the way, "Guerilla" is a Spanish term meaning "little war", from "guerra" meaning "war", haha I'm sure many wouldn't know.)

Why has this humanitarian push become so difficult and seemingly counterproductive? Well, according to this author Michael Barnett, it's the change of times. Transforming the historic NGO from volunteers working out of pure heart to a bureaucracy managing finances, accounts, and distributing positions to professionals and skilled workers comes with a price. Also, the growing dependency between the state and the NGO has narrowed the gap of interest and distance. Are NGOs apolitical? No. Providing aid in a conflict region, is, in essence taking a stance unless you plan to distribute aid to both conflict parties involved. That would mean that the UN and others would have helped maimed and dying Serbians alongside with the massacring of the Bosnians, but this was not the case. Well, in the case of the Bosnian-Serbian conflict, the Dutch ran off and abandoned their peacekeeping role resulting in the massacre of over 80,000 Bosnian men and boys. Lawsuits pending against the Dutch government by families of the victims.

Contracts and other administrative demands lead to inefficiency in midst of a crisis. Bureaucratic meetings, competition between NGOS for the same donors, all lead to bickering internally while the recepients of aid wait or even die before any result of funds used come to the rescue. I argued in class there is this phenomenon of "fad chasing" amongst NGOs, to assume the latest role that donors perceive as humanitarian efforts.

Look at where aid is distributed the most yearly as opposed to the regions where aid is most needed. According to the article, "For instance, of the top 50 recipients of bilateral assistance between 1996 and 1999, the states of the former Yugoslavia, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq received 50 percent of the available assistance...In 20002 nearly half of all funds given by donor governments to the UN's 25 appeals for assistance went to Afghanistan" (pg 731). He goes on to remark on these statistics that "if funding decisions were based solely on need, then places like Sudan, Congo, northern Uganda, and Angola would leapfrog to the top of the list" (p 731).

But these top needy recipients are all in Africa. Given that many major NGOs are situated in the United States and Europe, there is a political interest. The US has nothing to gain from these countries, so its relationship with NGOs would stray from these countries and head for other regions of conflict. The old argument being that Africa is Europe's problem, a result of colonialism that ought to be dealt with by nations such as France and the UK. In all this technicality, the African citizens suffer day to day. What would be a feasible solution if "humanitarian assistance" were really the sole goal of all these NGOs?

It is, of course, easier to criticize. But we came to the conclusion at the end of the discussion that money is a powerful factor in NGO behavior. You can deny it, but to hire professionals means you pay them because they, too, have financial responsibility living in such capitalist and money-driven states. No paycheck, no service. He who owns the gold, rules the table. Contracts are often misreported or completely made up to continue funding into the NGO, even if they are inadequete or obsolete in cause. States don't have moral incentives to support NGOs, they have financial and political interests - sometimes supporting humanitarian efforts are diversionary and more cost-effective than employing military intervention.

Also, projects such as refugee camps have consequences - both socially and politically. My professor took the example of the ICRC's efforts to establish refugee camps for Palestinians in neighboring Arab countries. Sounds good, no? Not if you're setting up ghettos that other state's don't attest because that means Palestinians wouldn't HAVE to assimilate into their countries. They're isolated, targeted and shunned by society for being more of a financial strain. They have no chance to move because they are imprisoned in these camps. Furthermore, in places especially of the region of Rwanda, refugee camps became a target for the militias because they could easily infiltrate these camps without officials able to distinguish them from the refugees. Stealing millions in food and other aid products, these militias would sell them on the global black markets for profits for the ability to purchase more weapons to kill.

How do you stop this, when humanitarian efforts are in fact contributing to the conflict?

If I knew, I wouldn't be sitting here writing about it.
It's quite a complicated situation, and not to criticize the role of NGOs in general, afterall there are some successful and wonderful ones, such as Doctors Without Borders and the American Red Cross. But these two are also faced with ongoing external pressures, political squabble and institutional hindrances that are straying them from their historic and initial mission statements.

Anyway, that was interesting to discuss.
If I wasn't so lazy I'd write more about the articles I've read for this class, they bring a very realistic perspective to the inner-workings of the world system.

Quoted: Barnett, Michael. "Humanitarianism Transformed." Perspective on Politics, Vol. 3, No. 4 (December 2005), pp 723-740.

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The market harbors a selfish and destructive behavior, especially in the case of multinational corporations. Incentives for profit accumulation have, in essence, been achieved at the cost of global development. Following Joel Bakan's book, The Corporation, "As the corporation comes to dominate society-through, among other things, privatization and commercialization –its ideal conception of human nature inevitably becomes dominant too…The corporation, after all, is deliberately designed to be a psychopath: purely self-interested, incapable of concern for others, amoral, and without conscience-in a word, inhuman.”


Hahaha.
This term paper is going to be the shit. Now if my roommate would stop smoking up the damn place with weed every time I got back from working 9 hours or class, we'd have a better bid going. Not that I got anything against weed, I mean she stole my damn pipe, but like Buddha pushed on..Everything in moderation.

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