Distractions and “lack of focus”

For all of us who haven’t studied formally any art of discipline or contemplated on our own the self-evident truths behind concentration and focus, we have probably lost focus and/or fell into a distraction (or many).

The fact of the matter is that distractions are just one part of not having focus.  While focus is important in life, it’s more important to realize why focus is important rather than blindly underscoring it without understanding the reasons for such emphasis.  Of course, taking breaks and meshing work and play every so often is enjoyable–so remember the word “moderation.”

Focus is important.  Why?  Is it because it helps us finish our work or be efficient with time?  This is a very subjective question with even more subjective answers.  But the answer would be  yes to the latter question, though not absolutely.

That is, focus helps one organize, execute, and complete things.  While this may sound business-like or even disciplinary, realistically it’s what we do even to brush our teeth.  When one decides to brush one’s teeth, the first is being in a place where this is possible.  Second, one must have the necessary utensils or materials to perform the act of brushing, communal living may require bringing utensils to the “place of brushing” or, most common, retrieving such utensils from a cabinet or counter top.  These utensils are commonly:  a toothbrush, toothpaste, and the materials: water.

What I have described above suffices as an initial part of brushing.  The actual act of brushing is not something of grandeur and quite commonplace, so I hope a lack of explanation does not disappoint anyone.

Completing the process of brushing may seem strange to be considered independently from “brushing” itself.  But it certainly is.  Completing the process requires the rinsing of the mouth, the cleansing of the brush, and possibly wiping of one’s mouth and/or the sink (if one it utilizing such a location).  These actions aren’t essential to brushing and so it should be assumed legitimate to classify them as completion of the action and not the simple performing of it.

As the last part indicates, “completion” is a part of brushing.  In fact, this is the third of the three parts of doing anything:  organize, execute, and complete.  Of course I am guiding you in this discussion, but let me have my biases.  Based on this train of thought, even brushing one’s teeth results in the aforementioned “process.”

While thinking of processes, let’s return to the idea of focus. Brushing is a habitual action, or at least I hope, and so doesn’t require much active focus.  That is, the organize, execute, and complete parts of the process can be done unconsciously since the average person has been performing such an action hundreds of times a year.

Focus, in the way we commonly think about it, is an idea involving active focus.  We visualize or strategize these three steps, not by name, but by principle and complete an action.  Many times, the steps themselves may be unbeknownst to us.  Here we can use a simple example of writing a research paper.  One needs to read through materials and organize ideas.　Then one beings writings, continues reading, citing, and developing the paper.  In the end, editing and some re-writing is involved to complete the paper.  Thus, we have the three step process again, which is not “planned” by most writers but is performed nonetheless.

Focus, however, is certainly involved in the scenario of the research paper.  I would still consider this as active focus, since the writer is actively going about performing certain actions and consciously completing each part, it’s just the words and thoughts employed aren’t necessarily organize, execute, and complete.

But active focus can be conscious as well.  This is the case for many successful people who plan out days and weeks, if not their lives.  This is also the case for successful events, programs, and other things of such a nature.

Although I mentioned that understanding what focus is is very important, I will not delve any further into the topic of focus–I will save this for another time.  Focus, as we understand it here involves the giving of clear attention to these different segments, since each part does not involve “bring toothbrush and basketball” or “bring toothbrush…” with the “…” representing any loose action which will be affixed to the bringing of a toothbrush.  As long as we understand focus along these terms, the short discussion of “distractions” which follows should be digestible.

So, as it stands, distractions are superfluous in any person’s life, and with the interconnectedness, globalization, internet, and free access to most things we have around us a world where doing a different thing every moment is more a reality than it may occur at first.

Distractions in many ways function as a lack of focus.  Whereas the person with focus can be described in any number of ways, such as using my explicative three-term theory above, the one without focus is replete with individual and disconnected activities. That is, while organize, execute, and complete exist in one form or another in the actions of the focused person, the unfocused person has ideas, desires, and goals but these are limited to those thoughts and ultimately completed haphazardly.

An important note is that these are considerably two very large extremes of “focus” and “lack of focus.”  This is not a question of average, rather a point that most people do not fall into the extremities of one side of focus or the other in the lack of it.  Remarkable about the “lack of focus,” though, is the ease by which distractions enter one’s plans.

Distractions are innumerable and rife, therefore when considering a distraction it could be a 5 minute break turning into 3 hours or a hello on the street turning into a half-day unplanned “catch-up.”  While all these are fine, if isolated and not occurring one day after another, or worse, one after another, then they are problematic to one’s “focus.”

In other words, I am mixing the idea of focus with the notion of planning, completing, and having a schedule.  These are important points in moving forward and helping ourselves become successful.

In light of the fact that I have thematically written about “focus” and “success,” it would do this entry good if I give the readers (if there are any) a break.  Just remember, focus is not short-term, nor is it long-term.  Focus is disposition that a person maintains in actions.  Since we possess focus in certain actions, let’s try to maintain it in as many as possible–please remember moderation, since over-focusing is not without problems.

Body Parts! A History of Consciousness…?

Today I will keep this post as short as possible. It’s been a long day, and the fact that I’ve yet again changed the topic of my master’s thesis doesn’t bode well for my longstanding trouble with focusing on any one research topic. Whenever one finds something to work on, new light springs to mind about forgotten or newfound topics–at least for me, that is.

In any case, the topic of this post is a question of consciousness and a history behind it. As I mentioned in my last post, I was reading The Audible Sound, by Jonathan Sterne, who does a wonderful job of presenting new notions about how we conceive of things–that is see, hear, and observe them.

One of the issues he briefly touches upon was elaborated by a fellow student today during a session of reflections on the book. Sterne presents a picture of an early sound device which involves the use of an actual ear and its affixing to the sonic device to function as an ear may function for the human body. Now, this image may seem quite strange, but is it really? [note: I will upload a picture of this device later or tomorrow when I have the chance] [edit: 13 Feb 2007: see below for image]

Why I question the strangeness of technologies using human body parts is because contemporary medicine and society, in general, not only allow but support the use of mechanical structures and machinery to aide the human in his/her everyday functions. A prosthetic limb is a nice example of this. Electronic and mechanical devices in the body have become very common in present-day society. The student today presented pictures of an artificial lung/heart machine attached to a heart to help a human live.

When we consider the image of a life being saved by such advances in technology and medical thinking, we are happy–on average. But, what does this say about our consciousness surrounding human body parts? Taking human body parts and using them in mechanical objects is a great taboo, but the reverse is praised.

Furthermore, the use of limbs, flesh, blood, and organs to help, aide, sustain, or prolong human life have become commonplace. So, where do we stand in this continuum of the history of consciousness behind our body and our understanding of it?!

How would you feel if you had to use a phone that had an ear? But, maybe it’s not all that strange. For most, if they saw a person with prosthetic limbs, while not afraid or disgusted, they would take a moment to reflect, something which often results in pity for the person or gaiety for the fact that one is not in that position. Both of these emotions may be considered inhumane if considered the way I have presented them, and for obvious reasons people don’t follow this same train of thought.

However, it is worthwhile to consider all the contradictions we have in our minds about these issues concerning our bodies and the use of foreign objects in our body or the use of bodily parts in strange objects–including bodies of which they were not originally a part.

Next time you watch a movie or television show, read a novel or the newspaper, take a moment and think about the bodily experiences you are viewing and ponder the unquestioned assumptions with which you have been living.

Image: the Ear Phonautograph

Developed by Bell and Blake

Source: http://sterneworks.org/27/the-audible-past

Sounds…

So, as I briefly mentioned in an earlier post, I was reading an academic book on the history of sound.  One particular chapter I was told to concentrate on for reasons irrelevant to this blog was about the stethoscope and the revolution it made in medicine.  For all of you who are uncertain about what the stethoscope is, it’s that thing found around the neck of most doctors in movies and television dramas, the instrument a physician uses to listen to our chests’ and breathing.

Why was the stethoscope revolutionary?  Of course there’s relevance to the title of this post, but at first thought we might have thought it simply dealt with the notion that there was a new method to check our breathing and check our heart.  Indeed, I do find that checking the heartbeat is important.  Why?  Think about our pulses, reading pulses has been a historic trait of medicine for the longest time, including being found in both traditional Western and Chinese medical techniques.  Think about revolutionizing that.

It’s kind of like a reverse snail mail (regular currier mail) versus e-mail.  With the development of e-mail, we can check our mail anywhere in the world, just by logging in electronically.  In the past, when one wanted to check, or rather, feel a pulse, one would use the hands.  There were different pulses and doctors took this into account, such as what is felt all around the body, since blood in fact is circulating throughout us even as you read this.  Therefore, the old method of checking the pulse was like modern e-mail, but checking the heart directly is akin to the mail being brought to the heart of who we are (most of, at least), our homes–or what we may call our homes, offices, dormitories, etc.

While these things sound interesting, what do they in fact have to do with sound?  Here’s a fact:  before the stethoscope–meaning, before its earliest prototype by Laennec (wiki link)–one listened to the heart by placing his/her ear against the chest of the patient.  Very inefficient considering the techniques used today, but to our unknowing predecessors, that was the best method around.  This, of course, involved the mediation of the skin, clothes (since many times it wasn’t skin-to-skin), and background noise, i.e. – the ear not pressed against the patient’s chest.

The stethoscope, as it evolved, provided a direct link into the sounds of the patient’s chest.  This was a revolution, because the physician now had the chance to “listen” and discern different sounds within the body.  However, the revolution did not stop at a simple invention, these new sounds irreversibly changed the way the physician considered “sound.”  Sounds had meaning, and as Sterne (from where I get all this information-amazon.com link) writes, physicians no longer sought only words from patients, but reflected on the state of their voice–think having a sore throat and how you sound, or a runny nose and the noises you make.

This revolution of “sound” was a change from simply “hearing a patient out” to “listening to the patient,” and that implied more than words.  It results in a paradigmatic shift in diagnostic methodology, since the internist now has the ability to diagnose a patient based on “empiric” data.  That is, these sounds can be used as sounds and not as the results, i.e. words, ruckus, noise pollution, irritation, but rather for their quality–think back again to the sound of your voice or sound in your chest when you are sick.

There are two reasons I decided to tell this story. One, it’s interesting, at least to myself.  Two, it’s this idea of change and how we look at things.  If you haven’t noticed already, perspective is something which I value very much.  And while I do not consider myself a post-modernist, relativist, or someone who believes that no truth is absolute, I do feel perspective allows us to see relationships.  Yes, this word is etymologically related to relativist, but it’s more about how things come about and how things change.  We need to remember that we are in a constantly changing word, and I don’t just mean that the Earth hasn’t stopped spinning (rotating) on its axis while it makes its revolution.

So, here’s the question:  how many things do we know of today, excluding say e-mail, computers, and cell phones, have changed within the span of our lives?  If you think about just cell phones, 6 years ago, most people did not have one, now look.  The world has and continues to change, paying attention while these things happen is very important!

For those of you who read Japanese, there’s an interesting book, the introduction of which I have only skimmed–but do plan to finish.  冷たいおいしさの誕生―日本冷蔵庫100年 (amazon.co.jp link) which can be translated as: The Birth of the Delicacy (Tastiness) of Cold – The 100 Year History of the Japanese Refrigerator.  We think cold is natural: cold drinks, frozen food, ice cream–imagine being in Florida, the desert, the beach, or any place with connotations of “hot” without something cold in hand–can you imagine it?  The fridge is relatively new, but we take it as ordinary–most of us, at least.

When and if I finish that book, I will write about it, in English, because it does seem very interesting.   With that, pay attention to how our cell phone’s may replace our laptops, not that this trend hasn’t already started…

Passwords and reading…

Sorry about the password-protected post, it was a bit personal.  While I don’t mind most people reading it, having it randomly read would be a bit unnerving.  So, if interested, I could send you (the reader) the password, otherwise, it was nice just to write it.

In any case, I am currently reading a novel called The Audible Past.  It’s an academic book which Sterne, the author, provides many compelling reasons for writing–in the introduction. You can check out most of the book’s introductions at Google Books.

I’m not going to tell you much more about this book, since I haven’t finished it yet.  However, the one thing I would like to discuss is perspective.  A long time ago, on this very blog, you will find that I wrote a post about miscommunication.  It was a conversation between two people who did not understand that they had different perspectives and subsequently miscommunicated all their thoughts.

While, today, I will not recreate that post, since it’s still here for everyone to read.  What I would like to talk about is perspective.  Sterne makes many interesting points while talking about the reasons he wrote his book and the reason to study the history of sound (i.e. – the audible past).  One thing that becomes clear is that he is not looking at history the same way everyone does.

To really study the history of something, we must take note of its significance and study it not history + it.  What this means is the common saying History is written by the victors/winners.  This is very important when considering what it means to write the history of anything.  In the case of sound, we could very well say today’s society has been immersed in a visual culture that most don’t realize has overtaken us, not necessarily negatively.

When considering sound, then, these distinctions have to be made.  But, what about other things?  And, more importantly, what about ourselves?  We narrate our own histories quite often, yet we don’t realize it.  When I meet someone for the first time and tell him/her where I lived before, I am narrating my own history.

How many of us realize that when we tell our own histories, the listeners may not grasp certain parts of our histories.  The significance of what we say is held in the fact that we hold important those certain things about which we speak.  But what if the listener cannot make those connections?  Living in different neighborhoods as a child could cause this divergence simply by locale, but then think about state, international, cultural, gender, and other differences and the divergence of these thoughts may become quite interesting.

We all use the same words to speak, but the meanings are slightly different based on how we have come to hold them in our minds (or hearts, depending on the context).  Perspectives, though, are different.  It’s not a few different words, it’s the collection of these differences and everything that makes us which places each of us into a different perspective.

Some of the literature which we have called great in the past, is simply because of the way the author placed us in the shoes of the protagonist and skillfully developed the perspective and story that followed his/her life.

Since I like to talk about scientific history, it would do everyone a lot of good to think about the paradigmatic shifts and changes in perspective from traditional Western medicine to modern biomedicine.  This is especially important because there is an odd theory that contemporary biomedicine is traditional Western medicine.

It’s quite surprising to find the misinformation that contemporary notions of science and scientific history tell us about the world.  It’s almost as though TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) is an alien science with miracle remedies of the past that are simply being scientifically proved one by one.  If only we understand that studying TCM, one perspective on the body and medicine, with another, that of contemporary biomedicine, could provide benefit in the realm of comparison but defining one based on the other is a bit ignorant.

An important note to be made is that the world is not made up of one or two perspectives, we live in a vast multicultural world.  To understand these different perspectives takes time and diligence.  But if we were to understand our own perspectives first, it would make seeing the others much easier.  That, and we might realize that while medical traditions are numerous, even in their own respective traditions, famed contemporary biomedicine and TCM, scholars and doctors disagree and find themselves “ideologically” separated.  [don't quote me on this last part, thanks!]

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It’s been a year and a half… and there’s the Arabic Galen for medieval China

Hey…everyone? Not sure if anyone is actually around since it has been almost a year and a half since I’ve really posted anything here. I’m thinking perhaps I should start posting more, but then again, this is something which I’ve said to myself a countless number of times since I first decided to start a “blog.” I’m not sure what I will be writing about or if this is the just the meandering post which has nothing follow it.

In any case, I thought I should mention something interesting. Most fans of medieval Islamic (aka Arab) medicine talk about the wondrous advancements, innovations, and exhaustiveness the tradition maintained during its heyday. Something interesting to think about is the connection these medievalists had with the world around them.

Today we live in a globalized world and connections aren’t difficult to draw upon, we simply have to try. But when we think of “history,” we normally divide areas, people, culture, and even time periods for ease and clarification. While this approach provides lots of benefits for us, including a simple way of understanding the past, it is likewise problematic for permitting the observation of the interconnectedness of the world.

This is where the Arabic Galen comes into the picture. As I mentioned above, medieval Islamic medicine is not heavily understudied and at the same time is not well-studied. One figure known to have been considerably respected among the medieval Islamic physicians is Galen (Ar: Jalaynoos, approximation). If we only consider a vertical world, then we can’t see the horizontal interchange present even during the time of the medieval Islamic physicians.

That is, Zhu Ming and Felix Klein-Franke have written an article in which they mention Ibn an-Nadim (d.990 CE, Baghdad) who quotes ar-Razi (d. 10th c. CE). Ar-Razi talks about a man from China who comes to study with him.

To keep this short, as the story goes, the Chinese man ends up staying for a short period and in the end does a crash course in Galen. While we may consider transmission normal, we must remember that this man first came, learned Arabic (classical, of course) and then learned the books of Galen, which he purportedly to have translated into Chinese. Not only was this man a genius, he employed Chinese shorthand techniques when he physically copied down the orated text.

My point of brining the Arabic Galen up: a man leaves his home for knowledge, learns a foreign language (which people complain about learning today, even with all our methods), and then masters a classical text to take it back to “his” people.

I’ll talk more about this another time, especially after I’ve learned a bit more about it myself. Transmission is an interesting topic, but rarely are we aware of how often these things take place in our everyday lives.

On the news side of things…

Looks like I may actually be able to live in Japan:
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20061123p2a00m0na004000c.html
Smoking and I don’t go well together…

And, on a more interesting note, why call the police when you can visit them directly:
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20061126-015954-3004r

Not quite keeping up…

I’m sorry about not keeping up with this blog as I had promised in some of the earlier posts.

Well, this weekend, at least for those of us in the United States, is Thanksgiving Weekend.  For those who are unaware of American customs, it commemorates the Pilgrims’ (supposed) feast with the Native Americans.  You might say it gave the Pilgrims a sign of hope for the future of their society and lives in the “New World.”  All that aside, are we really thankful during Thanksgiving?

Think about this common Muslim saying about Thanksgiving:  everyday is thanksgiving for us.   Is this really true, and, not just considering Muslims, are we, as people, truly thankful?  Christians say “grace,” Muslims say the basmalah, and even culturally we have notions of thanks.  Looking towards Japanese culture, traditionally one starts by itadakimasu, literally meaning “I (will) receive” in a humble way.  Of course, all three examples I solicited have something being said at the end of the meal paralleling their counterparts.

To narrow the topic a little more towards food.  I would like to do especially because we are officially over 1 month past the end of Ramadan (the month of fasting in Islam).   So, even if we have these customs–customs that are universally practiced even in the examples of the groups I have provided–does that mean that those who practice them are thankful?  What does it mean to be thankful?  Depending on what we’re being thankful for, there are different ways of testing ourselves (not other people!  no self-righteousness, please).  When it comes to food, it might be hard to conjure up a concrete method of discerning our state of gratitude.  However, difficulty never defines possiblity.

A good way–albeit one of many different ways–to test if we are thankful is to see how we treat food.  First, how picky are we?  Picky is different from having a preference or even–as the Japanese call it–being nigate (literally ,bad/painfully-handed, or meaningfully, bad with) some type of food.  Having a preference simply means one likes to eat certain things and dislikes other things.  Being nigate simple means that in all but the worst case scenario one would avoid the food in question.  However, being picky is different–and here I’m referring to overly picky, since everything in moderation is, of course, doable, allowable, and sometimes recommended.  When one is picky, one is more concerned with the food than being thankful for the fact that one has food, being thankful the benefits of food in general, and being thankful for that moment of food.  This is a personal state that one must inquire within to ascertain, so try it out.

As usual, I can’t seem to get to more concrete with my examples or ideas.  Even though it’s a bit conceptual and very subjective, please do try it out.  We don’t change who we are by taking leaps, we do it by becoming more conscious and changing things step by step.

Well…if anyone is still reading this,  I might end up receiving a lot of complaints referring to how I don’t know anything about diets–especially when one considers my own diet.

keep up with your meals!

Chances,

What’s in a chance? If you had the chance to learn a new language, would you take it? Or, is it that the chance to learn a language would simultaneously represent a chance of losing your chance, say, to complete your big project. (The economics that I’ve learned, which is quite remedial–I feel like I’m being arrogant when I say it’s remedial, lol–would call this opportunity cost). If the ooportunity cost for the chance at learning a new language is the chance to lose something else, would you take it? So…what’s in a chance?

Are there really things such as chances?! Is a chance simply something unexpected that we realize and decide to pursue? We have chances to eat food everyday and we have chances to learn a language every so often. Perplexing, though, is that we do not categorize the two chances to mean the same thing. “Obviously,” one might claim since the chances are clearly separated. But, isn’t that just a form of perspective? Food and learning languages are quite different in the form of action, the completion of action, and the action’s benefits.

The perspective of chance draws heavily from the position of the participant. Say you have two people: one is a single man, a governor, and the other is a married man, father of a family. If these both these men are given the chance to learn a language and we base it only on the immediate and obvious benefits of engaging in such action, what would we conclude? In the end, superficially we can confirm that the chance of learning a language has many meanings.

Chances as opportunities have many perspectives. But, the kicker, is that we haven’t talked about the different ways of receiving these chances, the local social value of such chances (i.e. – different time periods or places view them differently), and just an individual person’s desires and wants.

What need to constantly remember how every moment of our life is a chance, but, are we paying attention?!

Chinese–people, language–can we define it?

So, who are the Chinese? If someone were to ask you, “Who are the Chinese?” How would you answer the question? Think about it.

There is a language called Chinese. However, Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong would consider these three chinese-s different languages. Even today, the putonghua (the common/people’s language) is what we refer to as “mandarin.” Within China itself, we see cantonese (also spoken in Hong Kong), as well as fukanese (spelling?). There’s also shanghainese, taiwanese, and many other variants–more properly termed dialects. So, there are a lot of dialects. Some, then, might consider this like India, many languages. However, in China, they all use that character writing system–it is because they have the character system that the dialects can all use the same “character alphabet”–although that is misleading in itself. So, my first point is that why do they speak so many different languages, if, in fact, they are all considered Chinese? Would the average Chinese person consider himself/himself Chinese if he/she was asked who he/she was by another Chinese person, or, would that person identify himself/herself by some other distinguishing factor? Now, if the questioner were not a Chinese person (不是中人), how would this change the questioned Chinese person’s (see note below) answer?

Now, what do you call the East Turkmenistan freedom fighters? I like to call them the people of Xinjiang–termed the hui (回) chinese. Although if you look up the fight for independence in northwest China, are they really Turks? Or, are they Chinese? Or, are they in the middle somewhere? If you look at one of the ways Islam entered into China, it was through that route, hence the hui (pronounced huei) being ethnically Chinese but religiously Muslim. For more readings on this look for books by Sachiko Murata–The Tao of Islam or Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light–both deal with issues of China and Islam, I think!

Now, if you look through the perspective of language again, we will lose focus once more. Japan imported its writing system from China. So, when you see that Japanese has three systems of writing, the kana and the kanji, it makes much more sense. The kanji are the Chinese characters–kanji (漢字) meaning the ji (letters, zi if you read Chinese) of the kan (Chinese, han if you read Chinese). The kana are two phonetic alphabets, the hiragana and the katakana, both which represent the same sounds. Combining the three Japanese is written. Sure, Japanese sounds are quite different, but there are many Chinese loan words. So, would we consider Japanese an extension of Chinese? The writing system was drawn from China?

What makes the Chinese (see note 2) Chinese? Is it the writing, the speaking, or some other facet of culture? Can one really extract from a people and define them based on specific trait. And, if we do do that, can we take this principal and universally apply it to every culture, nation, or ethnicity?

I realize I have only been asking questions as of late. Please bear with me. I will give explanations or more history some time soon! I started thinking about Chinese because of two reasons, both equally relevant. First is because I have restarted my formal study of Chinese. Second is because of some recent talks I’ve been having via AIM with Yaser (who’s blog you can view if you look through my links at the right).

So, reading this I hope we can think about two things, one is what does Chinese really mean? Is it the group of people assembled under the various dynasties and lands ruled under these dynasties claiming to be Chinese? The second is about the Chinese language. How should we look at the Chinese language?

(note – again, anyone living in China or regions where China is predominantly spoken – mainland and Taiwan, not the Malay or Singaporian Chinese…that’s a whole different story that I haven’t thought about yet!)

(note 2 – the Chinese here can mean either the language itself or the people. The reason I do not attempt to distinguish between the two is because I find it highly entertaining to examine both, and of course you have to change focus a little bit for each.)