Month: October 2018 (Page 1 of 2)

For me, the mandala has become a symbol of peace and calmness. Anytime I see a mandala either that I drew or see one elsewhere, I can take a step back and breathe and feel at least slightly more mindful. Additionally, I prefer to relate my mandalas to something significant in my life. Recently, I came into contact with a pocket watch at a festival and I have been using it as of lately. Immediately, I noticed a mandala-like abstract design on the back of my pocket watch, which serves as the theme for this 3rd personal project.

A clock, just as in the stopwatch, appears in the middle of the mandala, and it goes to represent the importance of staying on time and not wasting time. Both of these are things I hope to do in the future. Furthermore, there are flower-like images around the centerpiece

Picture of mandala

Pocket watch

which relates to our current change of seasons in the falling of leaves, changing of colors, etc. Coincidentally, I purchased this stopwatch at the Jim Thorpe Fall Foliage Fest.

Regardless, this mandala is based off a pocket watch and is intended to keep in mind good time management habits and a motivator because the time one has is limited.

For my project, I have decided that I am going to have my team members write either why they think it is important that we speak out against social injustices, as Azza Soliman has in Egypt, or why they think equality in general is important. However, what this has helped me to realize is how separated the distance runners are from the sprinters on the track team. I have spent about two weeks attempting to speak to them about it, but I seldom come in contact with any of the distance runners because we do not practice together. This has created a sense of division among the members of the team, and I plan to use my personal project to try to be more friendly with the cross country members.

So while there is a divide between team members, I see this divide not as a negative aspect of our team, but rather as a challenge for the team to overcome as a whole. By eventually getting everyone’s thoughts on this, I will be able to create what I decided will be an art project that displays a map of Egypt, and a gender equality sign in the middle, which is made completely of the answers that the team members will write. This will have the explicit social message of gender equality, which is what Azza Soliman has fought for in Egypt. Creating this art project and simply being able to communicate better with other members on the track team will benefit both a presence of social justice and a sense of friendship among the team.  

In my last post, I posed a future aim to find information about why the US’s rates of meat consumers are so high, and to see whether or not a decrease in this percentage is realistic. 

According to an article in Psychology Today, though our society has gained much knowledge and awareness about the atrocities of the meat industry, we still have yet to moralize our preference for no animal cruelty into a set value. Having this shift from a meat culture into a vegetarian one has proved difficult for multiple reasons, one of which is from an economic perspective.

In the US, maintaining meat in one’s diet provides more “bang for your buck”, then not. Because of the US’s industrial scale production of meat, it is extremely cheap. Not only is meat cheaper than vegetables/vegetable based products, but it is far more nutrient dense. Therefore, it takes way more food to fill one up on a vegetarian diet than it does otherwise. This reality has allowed for meat to become a staple in the American diet. This is a hard issue to combat, especially considering the economic pressures that come with trying to feed yourself, let alone an entire family.

Another factor that persuades the eating of meat is its health benefits. Besides the fact that meat has a higher protein density than anything else, meat (particularly beef), provides heaps of iron, which has been found to be a critical component to our overall health. Though iron is present in other foods like quinoa, tofu, legumes, etc. the amount of iron in these foods is proportionally insufficient compared to the amount found within one serving of beef. Iron is essential in maintaining proper amounts of oxygen carrying red blood cells in our bodies. If our body doesn’t have enough iron, then we cannot produce the amount of red blood cells needed for proper heart and lung functioning. This can result in major fatigue, inability to breathe properly, and other major issues. As someone who is highly anemic, I cannot emphasize iron’s importance enough.

Iron’s importance is just one example of how overall health can actually be affected by meat, which may be one of the reasons Americans feel inclined to eat it.

In a different Psychology Today article about the declining vegetarians in the US, it was reported that back in 2005, 3 times as many US adults reported being “ex vegetarians” than current vegetarians, showing that about  75% of prior vegetarians had resorted back to eating meat. Out of those, 35% of them went back because they had noticed a decline in their health.

After realizing this pattern, I figured that many of these health concerned people were/are probably unaware of 1) iron and its importance, and 2) one’s ability to sustain healthy levels of iron through daily supplements. From this, I concluded that if Americans were more aware of the fact that one can feel just as healthy without meat as they do with it, that they may be less likely to quit the vegetarian lifestyle due to health related reason, and that there may be more people willing to join the vegetarian lifestyle.

I realize that educating people about iron and their ability to feel great without meat wouldn’t necessarily lower the US’s number of carnivores by a huge amount, but it’s something. After reading articles proposing the two reasons above and various others, I feel that it may be more realistic for people to try and take steps in reducing their weekly meat intake, instead of finding ways to turn all Americans over to the vegetarian lifestyle.

Sources:

“Why Do Most Vegetarians Go Back To Eating Meat?” Psychology Today. Accessed October 24, 2018. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animals-and-us/201106/why-do-most-vegetarians-go-back-eating-meat.

“Why Are There So Few Vegetarians?” Psychology Today. Accessed October 24, 2018. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animals-and-us/201109/why-are-there-so-few-vegetarians.

As with my last sketch collage, I focused on Kurlansky’s Nonviolence : The History of a Dangerous Idea as my source of creative inspiration. Looking back on my last discussion, I noticed that the practice did not feel as meditative as my original collage, most likely because I had not set specific parameters for my focus and allowed myself to narrow in on some of Kurlansky’s points that I found personally conflicting or troubling. In order to redirect my focus, I decided to choose more specific inspiration for this practice – I chose my top six favorite rules/observations of nonviolence that Kurlansky lists in the appendix:

1. The problem lies not in the nature of man, but in the nature of power
2. Despite all of society’s promotion of warfare, most soldiers find warfare to be a wrenching departure from their own moral values.
3. The state imagines it is impotent without without a military because it cannot conceive of power without force.
4. Violence does not resolve. It always leads to more violence.
5. A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings.
6. Behind every war there are always a few founding lies.

Below are my artistic reflections of these observations. These sketches ended up being much more crude and cartoonish than my others, most likely because I spent much more time analyzing the meaning and translating it into art than on actually finessing the details of my work. I found that choosing narrow and specific concepts and forcing myself to convey them through symbolic imagery was very useful in diving deeper into the meaning of each statement. Representing a written idea through art requires utter commitment to your own interpretation of that concept, and I am finding it is a really powerful way to solidify my understanding of texts.

Throughout the past couple weeks, I have been continuing to work on eating vegetarian. I shared this video with some of my friends and family. I think it explains well that eating even partially vegetarian can make a difference. The video talks about a movement towards making vegetables and grains a center of the meal rather than a large piece of meat.

I recalled voting that occurred last year in Massachusetts when I watched this video. I remember discussing in some of my high school classes the different laws that we were voting for in Massachusetts. Question three was passed and prohibited farmers from raising animals in confined spaces that prevented lying down or turning around and the sale of products from animals confined in that way. I remember arguing that this bill may not be good because it would raise costs for local farmers and simply cause us to import more meat rather than raise it within the state. Now that I look at the bill from another view point. I think it is a great movement towards protecting animals and giving them a right to living comfortably.

I have begun to lean towards the viewpoint that people do not need to be completely vegetarian to improve the quality that animals are living in. This is a larger lifestyle change that in which some people are not ready to commit. Perhaps what is needed is a larger emphasis on eating dishes that are vegetable and grain centered and working on limiting meat intake. I am thinking of sharing vegetable and grain centered recipes with friends and family to help them practice the habit of eating less meat.

Sources:

The Humane Society of the United States. 2017. “Working to Protect Farm Animals” Filmed September 2017, Video. 2:49. http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/campaigns/factory_farming/

WBUR. 2016. “Mass. Voters Approve Question 3, Banning Certain Farm Animal Confinement Processes.” Accessed October 22, 2018. http://www.wbur.org/politicker/2016/11/08/question-three-animal-confinement-results

Over the past few weeks, I have remained steadfast to my commitment to pursuing a plant-based diet that continues to exclude all meat products. I am, however, unsure as to the effect it has on others. Last night, for example, I was taken out to dinner by my closest friend here at Lafayette along with his mother who was visiting him for the weekend. Chosen by him, we went to a steakhouse.  Not to my surprise there was only ONE entree on the entire menu that I as able to eat. It seemed as though one did not attend that particular restaurant unless they wished to exclusively consume meat. This brought to my attention that there is a stark divide between restaurants that provide “meat-centric” food options and those that provide alternatives such as vegetable based entrees. My conclusion is that most Americans are either substantially interested in trying to incorporate non-meat items into their regular diet or they are completely disinterested in this vegetable loving shift from the status quo.

Here in the United States, due to our complex network of supermarkets and our industrial farming industry it is considered the norm for one to eat meat for at least two out of their three meals each day. This continues to surprise me as each year new studies are released that encourage Americans to attempt to diversify their diet- if not for the wellbeing of animals then for their own personal health and well being. Furthermore, vegetarian diets are much more affordable than those of our meat eating counterparts. Despite the nearly endless supply of a variety of meats offered at the supermarket, it is still a much more economical choice for one to adhere to a vegetarian diet as the cost of fruits and vegetables has always significantly lower than that of meat.

Overall, I am still committed to pursuing a vegetarian diet and I do not think that this will change any time in the near future. My only mental reservation is that we as vegetarians must to more to encourage a shift in diet for all Americans from that of  almost entirely consisting of some sort of meat to perhaps only eating meat once per day. In the end, I do not expect these results to come quickly, however, I am interested as to how I can help to expedite the process of change in shifting the status quo surrounding meat consumption and vegetarianism in America and decreasing the polarization between the two groups.

This is the second round of meditative sketch collaging that I have done for my personal project. I decided to spent a little more time focusing on the meditative aspect of this practice, so I made a playlist of calming music and rented out a quiet study room in the library so I could focus all my energy on my art. Surprisingly, this collage came out much less unified than my last one, which was interconnected with a flow of life energy symbolized by the flowers present in nearly every sketch in the collage.

The disunity in this collage is probably due to my personal conflict with the material that I was analyzing. For this collage session, I set my intention to focus on expressing my interpretation of Kurlansky’s Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea. I noticed I had a very strong reaction to his depiction of Christianity, especially in its history of being manipulated by state powers and being brokered as political leverage. Many of my sketches show typical symbols of institutionalized power controlling images Christianity or censoring/shaping a faith to fit their agenda. This was difficult for me as I am uncomfortable seeing my religion depicted in this way in Kurlansky’s text, but found a release in expressing this discomfort through art and claiming ownership over my own interpretation of his claims. I genuinely do feel more at peace with the text after this particular session.

During this past week, I    have been practicing a form of Buddhist meditation called Zazen or Zen meditation. Zazen means “seated meditation’ in Japanese. There are two different ways to practice this form of meditation, however both require a seated position (on the ground or a chair), and the back must remain straight. Your gaze is low and focusing on the ground two or three feet in front of you. The form of practice is called Shikantaza, which means ‘just sitting’. When doing this, the meditator does not focus on a specific subject, the goal is to remain in the present moment as much as possible. It consists of being aware of what passes through your mind, without focusing on one specific thought. The second way to practice Zen meditation, which is the form I  practiced, is called focusing on breath. During this exercise, as you breathe in you count one number, starting with ten and counting backwards. When you get to one, start counting over again. If you get distracted or lose count, start over at 10.

This form of meditation was extremely helpful with making me feel more centered and grounded. I    tend to think and worry about the future a lot of the time, and practicing this exercise helped bring me back to the moment and focus on what needs to be done that day. I    had an especially crazy and emotional week, and concentrating on my breath gave me a form of distraction and I    was able to channel my energy into something productive, which lowered feelings of anxiety.