ELP journal

Today we continued to work on our essays and projects. I've finished my group presentation for Political Science course on democratization in Russia, and so now I have more time for doing my assignments... and studying for PWT.
I've been doing my research on food and I'm surprised by the number of issues related to the topic. Food is a really interesting topic because it is something we all need but we do not know much about it. I wonder what people from 100 years from now will be eating ... will eating still be a pleasure? or would people just choose to take all the necessary nutrition by taking shots or pills? It is always fun to think about changes in the future.
It would be the best if I can finish writing my essay by the end of this week and go on to my project and other assignments, so that I can concentrate on my finals...
This term I have political science and public policy and both classes are quite fun.
Both classes require student's involvement and teachers are very interactive with students.
I also really enjoy taking PE because I love working out and I'm happy that for the PE in the winter term, we are finally allowed to choose a sport by our own.
I'm thinking of taking weight training or running... but I also wanna try on a some kind of marshal-arts... like Kendo or Aikido.

ELP journal

Today Rab gave us time to work on our projects and I really appreciated it. Now I'm constantly lacked with time... I've got my papars due on next week and this week end we have ICU festival !! Now I'm organizing time schedule and contents for my club, which is Japan-Israel-Palestinian Student Conference and because this is my first job for the club, I think I've been quite careful about it. Oh and I also have to remember that we have our last PWT this friday...
It is amazing how time passes so fast.
We will soon be having final exams, then autumn brake and the winter term will start...
I'm thinking of another ELP(?)class because I really want to develop my english... I wish we can have more info. about each English classes because I think many people don't have time to see each teacher of English classes.

ELP journal

Today we learned the ways to create i Movie and I was amazed how cool it was !!!

If I can handle it well, my group presentation will look so nice and professional.

However, I am worried about the coming two weeks.... We will be so busy writing essays, making presentations and also preparing for final exams !!!!

I've also got group presentation for other classes....and I just think this is too much.

But I also know that complaining won't make my life easier.... The best thing I can do is just to sit and work. And after all this, we will have autumn brake !!!

I hope that everything will be all right.

ELP journal

Today we watched a video on a misinterpretation that happens between political stances taken by politicians and what they actually do. The answer which was given by the speaker in the video was that politicians give very vague explanations about their policies so that their policies sound good and therefore they can get vote. Also, there was an interesting statistic which showed a relationship between a gov'ts spending on military expence and on education(was it?). Countries which spend larger amount of money on military spend less money on its educational programs and I was shocked to know that Japan usualy is at 3rd or 4th place for its military expence. I do not think the Japanese self-defence force as an military because it can not attack other countries in first place in other words, it cannot attack someone for its own benefit. However, it is true that Japan has the strongest military force in its region and it certainly does have certain impacts on other countries, like China and Korea. We also have couple of American military bases in our country and that also have considerable impacts and that I think is another reason why it is not right to say that Japan has a peace-loving country without any arm force. We are relying on the U.S., which probably has the most powerful military force in the world and, what else do we need ?
There has been certain amount of progress in abolishing nuclear weapon and I am grateful about it. However, I also think that we have to think about the weapons that we have today. Not as much as nuclear weapon, but other things such as missles and tanks are also very dangerous. There are also ongoing progress on these arms. I have been watching a NHK TV program series about American military force and its weapons. In the program it was said that now the U.S. military force uses less and less numbers of soldiers because they are replaced by machines. These machines are such as military planes and robots, that can be operated by computers and in consequence, no one has to get hurt.
It scares me when I hear about these things because I do not think that many Americans do not know that their country is developing such technology and actually using it to kill people in far away country. I have learned here in ICU that the media has the power to hide that it doesn't want people to know, and I think it is very frightening that people are voting politicians without knowing what thery are plannnig to do in the future...

ELP journal

Today we started to discuss about Fukuyama reading.
At the beginning Rab mentioned that Fukuyama have changed his political stance twice and according to the researches done by my class mates, he was once a neo-conservative but after experiencing 9.11 in 2002, he became non-conservative. I am not sure what his current political stance is, but the important thing is that when the book was written he was still a conservative. A conservative usually is against applying science technology on any form of life, mostly because of his or her religious beliefs. Therefore, I assume that Fukuyama is also against the scientific technologies which he mentions in the book, such as designer babies and abortion. However, I couldn't really find out his biases in his writing. I think he is just stating facts and never really shows his personal opinions about any of the issues. However, if I had certain amount of knowledge on science or biotechnology, I assume that I could have found out some of his biases.
Rab also gave us a discussion topic on abortion and asked as to share our oppinion about from when the baby inside mother's stomach becomes a person. It is a very controvercial topic and I knew that countries have different laws to determine from when a baby becomes a person. I think in Japan, a baby is considered to be a person when it becomes three month old (in mother's stomatch). I personally disagree with the idea and I think that a baby becomes a person when it comes out. I am not saying that I don't consider a baby in mother's stomach as human and therefore we can do whatever we want to do with it. I just think that it is impossible for a baby to have human rights until it comes out. For example, if a mother who has, lets say, 5 month old baby in her stomach falls down and the baby dies. If we consider the baby as a human, it means that the mother, even if it was accidentally, killed the baby. However, she will not be punished and no one is going to blame her for killing her baby. There are also times when we have to kille baby in order to save life of mother and that case, also, is recognized as legal operation. Again, I am not saying that we should not kill babies in order to save mothers, but I think that it is important to keep it in our minds the fact that we have to kill babies at certain situations and under these special circumstances, the act of killing baby is justified.

ELP journal

From yesterday, we have been discussing about the Shipman reading, which talks about the theory of eugenics and ethical issues on race.
In the reading, the author discusses that the theory of eugenics was originally from the famous theory of Darwin, the evolutionary theory. The theory was brought to the U.S. and Germany and in these two countries, it developed in different ways. In the case of Germany, the theory was used by German (especially Nazis) to discriminate a certain group of people; the Jews.
It was surprising to know how much effort was put by Nazis to make Jews as their enemies, and I found some of the reasoning German gave were rather stupid. For example, Ernst Haeckle, a German scientist who brought Darwinism to Germany, argued that Jesus was not completely Jewish because his father was actually a Roman officer...
I laughed when I read about this but I also thought that I can laugh at such thing because I live in 21st century and also in a democratic country, where every person is given human rights.
In class, Rab posed a question that is the discriminatory act taken by German justifiable because they believed that their action was right.
I would not say it was justifiable, but I do not think that we can ask German to pay compensation for what they did in the past. It is because in the past, not only Germany but also every country has taken inhumane act to some other countries or certain group of people and I think that the reason why we could such cruel action to other people was because we did not know much about each other due to the lack of sufficient information technology or other communicating tools.
I think the best thing a country can do is to admit what it has done in the past and teach its people a true history, so that its people will not make a same mistake in the future.

ELP journal

Today we continued discussing about ethical theories, mainly about teleological theory and deontological theory. We also talked about affirmative action.
I searched about affirmative action few days ago because the term was on one of my research papers for my essay and I learned that affirmative action is also called as "Positive discrimination". I think the word has a point of using the term discrimination because it is actually a discrimination toward those of who are considered to be privileged.
I personally do not support affirmative action because it discriminates certain groups of people and thus, what it does to these groups of people is essentially the same as the discrimination toward people who are considered to have weaker social status, for example, the poor.
After having couple of discussion in class, I reached to a conclusion that teleological theory does not solve issues on gender and ethnic discrimination because there will always be some people who must suffer for the sake of achieving happiness of someone else.
I would like to learn about other ethical theories to see if they are better suited to solve these issues than the theories which we have studied in class.

ELP journal

Yesterday we talked about racial descrimination in class.
First we started to look at the U.S. consensus and its questions on race.
It was very interesting to see the changes in the varietion of racial types which are on the questuioneer, and one thing that I knoticed was although many of the races gradually varied in to smaller categories, such as Black became african american and negro, the white always stay as white. I thought the reason behind it was that white wants to stay to be the most superior race so that they do not want to create conflict among themselvs. We didn't think of the answer in the question, so if we get some time, I would like to hear other opinions about it.
I also didn't know that the U.S. government uses the sensus to detect possible threats to the country, such as cuban and arab terrorists and so forth.
I do not particullary think that the methoud is efficient, because people can easily lie about their race, but I also learned that in the past, there were peopel actually coming to you and determine your race... The fact that this kind of sysytem was invented by the government frightens me.
I do not know the purpose behind the national senses in Japan, which is held at this time, but I certainly think that there are some political reasons.
Through my 4 years of experiences abroad, I've been having chances to encounter people from different background and that really made me to get over with some of the stereotypic images that I had. For example, I did not have good impressions toward Koreans and Chinese before I made friends from these countries in my high school in Canada. I think by talking and becoming friends with them, I finally understood that there are no difference between me and them. We have emotions, feelings, thoughts, and above all, we are all human beings.
Therefore, I believe the best way to overcome stereotype and descrimination is communication.
Even if we learn everything about human rights and different cultures, without having real conversation with peole who are different from you, you cannot really understand and accept them.

ELP journal

Today we watched a really funny video which illustrates racial stereotype of black man and white woman.
The stereotypes appeared in the video were that white women work out a lot and they sometimes go for jogging alone in the night. Other stereotype was that black man commit crime.
I have to admit that I had the stereotypic idea about black man and when I shared with my opinion with my group members, they also had same kind of ideas.
Then we learned how to make google presentation.
It is fun to correct good images and make original presentation to express ideas, but I really don't like the speaking part, which is, the most critical part.
I think I have to practice speaking part millions of times..
otherwise, I'm sure that will embarrass myself in front of my class mates next Friday !!!!

Radical Revolution journal 3

I read chapter 4 and 5 of Radical Revolution.
There are many amazingly smart people in this book, and at this point, I think that Ray Kurzweil, who appears in chapter 4, is the smartest person.
I cannot imagine how these people's brains work. I just wonder how is it possible for one to imagine what is going to be happening in 50 years or a century later ??
These scientists who do such thing certainly knows a lot about things in their fields, and thus are able to think about future possibilities.
However, the predictions Kurzweil have become reality and that gives certain credibility to what Kurzweil predicts about the scientific development from 2019 and after.
The speed of scientific evolution is so fast and things that are expected to be developed sound just like things than we encounter in Science fiction movies, but I think all these can be possible.
With all these predictions, our future can be described as heaven in a way that almost every person will become a super-human. People will have super strength and their brains will be connected to devices to support them.
There will also be emergence of robots which can behave just as we do.
I think all these developments can bring us a lot, but also take a lot from us.
For example, if develop ourselves by taking man-made devices in to our body and also to brain,
can we still be able to have an identity as human? Or should we change the identity to an identity of super-human? How will the change affect us?
These questions, obviously have no answers until the predictions come to reality and actually make changes. However, I think that is too late and it is important to limit the speed of scientific development. Because once a thing comes to reality, we cannot make a clock going back even the thing was a very harmful one.
Therefore, I cannot be optimistic enough to believe in the Heaven scenario and by taking the human nature in to account, I believe that our future is likely to be a similar one to the Hell Scenario.
Without any future scientific development, I think that the current world has already been turning into a hell like place for plants, insects, animals, and even for some people.
We have also discovered that there are those of who suffer from actions that we take.
For example, we all know how devastating nuclear arms are and how harmful the emission of carbon dioxide and green house gases are to the earth.
Yet, we cannot agree on one single treaty to regulate our actions.
Thus I think that we will not be able to cope with issues that arises from future scientific development.

ELP journal

Yesterday the first thing we did was to take our socks and shoes off.... I was a bit hesitated to do so because just before the class I had a PE class and was very, you know, sweaty.
Anyways, the reason why we had to do the activity was to see our feet and to categorize them in to groups. There were three types of feet in our class, the Greek, the Egyptian, and the Peasant.
My feet turned out to be the Greek, one which has the middle finger longer than the big toe. Most people in the class had either the Greek feet or the Egyptian feet, and only 2 people had the Peasant feet.
They Rab asked us to decide which type of feet is the most beautiful and the result was that people chose the feet which they have to be the most beautiful.
It was explained that it is natural for a person to believe that the group of people which he or she belongs to be superior than other groups.
People can categorize themselves in to groups by many aspects, such as gender, age, nationality, blood type, skin color, language, etc.
I think it is a human nature to do so because at the very ancient time, people couldn't live without forming groups or tribes. They had to stay together to do hunting and finding a worm place to sleep.
(I also believe that it is essential for a person to be with someone else, because we humans are made to be social, but maybe it is another story. )
However, I also think that forming groups could be dangerous because when you are in a group, you sometimes get a rivalry feeling towards other groups, without any specific reason.
I would like to know the academic researches about this tendency of human to form group.

We also continued to learn the proper way of essay writing and maybe I have said the same thing in my previous blog entry, but I found the class very very helpful.
I studied all the rules concerning essay writing in my high school but now I don't remember a thing....
It is scary how much you can forget when you are not using your brain.

ELP journal

On last Friday, we had a class at ILC and we watched several interesting video clips.
I didn't know that there are many web-sites which introduces artist's creative works for free, and I am definitely going to use them for my studies.
About the videos we watched, I found some of them very creative and innovative.
For example, I really liked the one with many mouths. I thought the idea mouths going against junk foods and starting revolution was catchy.
In contrast, I didn't like the Meatrix because I generally don't like watching parodies, especially when it is animation. But I thought the idea of it was very good.
After watching couple more videos, I found that how strongly can visual /audio tools affect our ideas, comparing with materials in papers.
For example, in animation, we can put our theme in to a very simple story, which is easy to understand for many people. But at the same time, we can also illustrate the story with attractive pictures and sounds that can grab attentions from audience.
Soon we will be doing a group project, and I would like to use this sort of tool to make the project creative and mostly, fun to watch.

ELP journal

We got to discuss about the Ohinata reading yesterday.
Over the weekend I didn't have a chance to read Ohinata because I didn't have the paper.
So obviously at first I didn't understand what the reading is all about but my group members explained about it very well. And I also got the point that the reading is a boring piece.
We also learned the academic writing style in English and I found it very useful. I've been writing essays in English since high school but it is still difficult for me to follow every required steps for writing essay.
Maybe it is a different story, but I sometimes cannot agree with the whole point of essay writing.
I found it very uncomfortable to state that my argument is right and thus it is also difficult for me to put efforts to prove my argument. It is because I do know that there are so many things that I do not know about the theme of my essay.
I assume that the difference between Japanese and American style of writing may come from their difference in ways of arguing.
I would like to learn more about essay writing because I am not satisfied with my way of writing and I really want to improve it.

Radical Revolution: journal 2

I've read chapter 2 and 3 of "Radical Revolution".
I like this book because in each chapter, it always introduces some new scientific technologies which are under development. For example, I found the idea of filling a space with full of technologies very exciting.
Also, by reading these chapters, I got a bit more idea about the heaven and the hell scenarios.
Either it is heaven or hell, it is caused by a radical and rapid revolution in science.
I basically believe that scientific development is good for us. One obvious reason is beacause it can halp our lives for many ways. For example, there are people who have incureable disease and waiting for new treatement. For them, scientific development is a way to save their lives.
However, I am also worried about development. Because as it was written in the book, I think that the development is uncontrolable.
When we discover something new, we usually discuss either it is good for us or not. However, it takes long time before we reach to conslusion and there are even times when we cannot reach to conclusion because of complexity of issue. And while we are discussing, there are always some people who are using the newly discovered technology.
In this way, we are not able to control or manage the result of our technology.
I would like to know wether the book is going to introduce some thoughts similar with mine.

ELP journal

On last friday, we did a little psychological test in our class.
We were asked to think of our favorite color, animal, form of water, and to imagine a white room.
Then we were asked to give 5 adjectives for each of three things.
It turned out that the adjectives for color are the personal qualities that you want to have, and adj. for animal represents characteristics which you want for your boy or girl friend. Then form of water represents your ideal form of love and adjetives for the white room represent your image of death. I thought the test was interesting but i don't really know if they are right or wrong because I've never been in a relationship with someone ... and so obviously i don't know much about love.
One thing i found very interesting was my image about death. I found that I'm affected by christianity more than I thought. I am not a christian but I've been studying at christian school since kinder garden. I wonder how other people who have different religious beliefs imagine about death.

color, animal, water, and white room

Beige

calm

natural

tender

soft

Cat

smart

capricious

soft

flexible

mysterious

Rain

natural

rhythmical

silent

calm

rough

Room

clean

silent

bright

plain

stainless

ELP journal

On last wednesday, we discussed about ethics in our class. We learned about 6 ethical theories. I've had heared of some of these theories in a NHK TV program called "Harverd 白熱教室"(Harvard's Heated Discussion Classroom). This program shows a class of Justice, which is thought by professor Michael Sandel, at Harvard. I like topics such as philosophy, ethics and moral, so I was happy to get a chance to learn about the subject in class. An activity we did was to read a story and examine what ethical theory you use when making decisions. The story is about a diamond mine which open up for public once a year. One day, while couple of visitors are inside the mine, an earthquake occures and they become trapped inside the mine. The only way to save the visitors is to pull them up by using a rope. After reading the story, we were given all descriptions about all 13 visitors, from their age to their personal relationships. Based on these information, we were asked to decide who to put the visitors in numbers in the order of priorities of saving them. It was amazing how we thought differently and in my group, although we had discussed for about 20 minuts, we couldn't reach to a single agreement.
I would like to know if there are specific reasons to determine one's ethical theory.

ELP journal

Today we learned how to do well on presentation.
I thought the class was really for me because I've never been good at presentation. When I stand infront of people it makes me feel so nervous and even panic. I sometimes struggle with words that I can normaly pronounce well and I make many gramatical mistakes.
Then Rab tought us the ways to look professional and confident. He also thought us gestures to be avoided during presentation, such as looking up/down, repeating certain words, and reading from text. Then we actually presented ourselves to the class, and when following all these instructions, people really looked confident.
I believe that I'm going to be doing many presentations at ICU and also outside of the univerity... and I do not want to make people fall asleep while I'm talking.
I think I am lucky to have many occasions to do presentation here at ICU because if I screw up my presentation at work, it can really hurts you in many ways.
I'm going to apply what I learned today on my presentation that we are going to have in our class.

ELP journal

In today's class, we had our first P&D. I was not comfotable with doing P&D this time because I was not sure if I've got the main idea of my book right. The book I read is "Dogs and Demons - The fall of modern Japan" by Alex Kerr. I chose this book because I'm interested in politics, especially the politics of my own country. I also think that I should learn about it because although I am Japanese I do not know much about Japan. It is partly because I went to high school in Canada but I do not want to use it as an excuse.
After presenting my book to others, I felt that I need to quickly go through the book again because I realized that I've already forgot a large part of the book.
My group members presented two books, "Things fall apart" and "The sky train". They both sounded interesting to me, but especially the latter. The issue between Tibet and China has been one of my interests and I actually attended to a lecture by the Dalai Lama last June. Not only the issue of Tibet, but I am also interested in the ethical issue as a whole. At ICU, I'm participating in Japan Israel Palestine Student Conference and as you know, there is a big ethnic issue between Israelis, Arabs, and Israeli-Arabs. I wonder if we are going to look at any ethnic issues in class.
Overall, I really enjoy sharing our thoughts about what we read because there is always something that you can not find out by yourself. And as my self being a bookworm, I just love talking about books and I wish we can have more of this kind of occasions in this term.

ELP Journal

Day before yesterday, for the ELP class, we spent two hours at a computer lab. at the ILC building. I was excited to attend to that class because Rab told us that on every friday we will be using those cool Apple desktop and doing something exciting, something fun.
First off, we were thought how to use Gmail effectively. I learned many things that we can do with it and I found that it will be a very helpful tool for our studies. I sometimes tend to avoid using technology and go with a old fashioned ways. For example, writing my research papers with a pencile in my hand. But considering the amout of work I have to do at university, there is no way not to use technology. After that Rab showed us two music videos on youtube, which the contrasst of the two videos was a great analogy of two kinds of papers. One is a paper whichs' ideas are from various sources and are well connected and the other paper which is made of similar sorts of ideas and is not so well organized. I thought this analogy was great because by watching these videos, the difference was so obvious. Not just the importance of writing papers with different ideas, but I also learned the effectiveness of images and sounds. I would like to learn the ways of using visual and audio tools for our studies such as presentation.
We then looked at some stereograms on the internet. I was not able to find some of the patterns and images hidden in pictures but many of my class mates were excited to find them. I was surprised of how decieving some things that we see can be and how difficult it is for us to find out that we are tricked. This experience reminds of me the biased information that we find in our everyday lives. These information often look trustworthy because we tend to believe that if they are on TV, or written in a book, they can be trusted. But as we have been learning here at ICU, we sould not just trust what we hear and what we see. Instead, one must have a critical mind and think wthether something infront of you can be trusted or not.
Overall, I found the class very fun and useful and I'm looking forward to take the next class on this coming friday.

"Radical Evolution" Book journal 1

Prologue: The Future of Human Nature/Chapter Two: Be All You Can Be

Before start reading this book, I was not sure if I could have much interest in this book. It is because I knew that this book is about science and I do know well that I am not a scientific person. In fact, I like TV programs and stories related to science, but most of the time, I cannot truely understand them. I also felt that those newly invented scientific technologies are things that are not really related to our lives and even if they have possibilities of becoming usuful to our daily lives, it will take somewhat 20 or 30 years to be popular.
This is why I was so amazed when I read the first two chapters of this book. First, I did not know how various the topics of the field of science is. There are scientists working for scientific development in medicine, military, biology, sports, etc. Almost every aspects of our lives are being analyzed by scientific research. Not just things in our lives, but scientists are also trying to develop mankind itself. There are various possibilities that scientists are trying their best to make possible. When I read about these possibilities I thought that they are like things in science fiction movies and books or TV games. For example, human becoming able to regrow it's own body parts, to work 24/7, and to gain strength of Olympics athelete. However, as I read that there are actually many organizations in the world, such as Defence Advanced Research Project Agency in the U.S. , which are doing scientific research by goernment funding and the ways they function, I realized that these are not the things only in movies and books, but they are becoming reality.
At this point, I am not sure which one of the three scenario human being is following. But I am eager to get an idea about it by reading this book.
About the book in general, I liked the way author writes. He seems to be always neutral and he does not give his own opinion about scientific research or development that he introduces in the book.

ELP journal

Today was the first day of ELP class. It was nice to see familiar faces in class.
Everyone seemed to be excited about the new semester and so was I.
Our new teacher Rab talked about the syllabus of this semester and what he expects from us. It seemed to me that this semester will be a bit harder than the last semester, because there are more group working and essay writings. But I also understand that all of these works are designed for us to acquire the skill of critical thinking, which is very essential for our academic studies but also for our lives. I have to admit that during the last semester, I didn't put my best effort into my studies and my final report reflected that exactly. Today, I thought of the reason why I came to ICU and the purpose of being in this ELP class. Now I'm determined to try to perform best as I can.

TED journal

Oliver Sacks: What hallucination reveals about our minds

Oliver Sacks, a recognized neurologist and writer, talks about a specific type of visual hallucination called “Charles Bonnett syndrome”, which he found in his patients. This syndrome was found in 18th century and its name was taken from its founder, not himself but his grandfather having visual hallucinations. The syndrome happens to those of who have totally and also partially impaired visual and it shows people various kinds of visual hallucinations, usually things that have nothing to do with patients themselves. For example, one of Sacks’ patients Rosalie, a 95 years old lady who is blind, sees women in bright colored Eastern style dresses climbing up and down the stairs and cats and dogs walking toward her then stopping at a certain point. She said to Sacks that when she was seeing these hallucinations, it was like watching silent movies because though there were colors and motions, there was no sound. She also claimed that some of the faces she saw were often deformed, such as a face with one big eye or teeth. Sucks explains that as a person loses a vision, the visual parts of its brain no longer get any inputs and they become hyperactive and excitable, which lead them to create hallucinations. The other patient of Sucks, who does not have problems with her eyes but with visual parts of her brain, sees different sorts of hallucinations. She sees particular cartoons of Kermit the Frog, in Sesame Street and like Rosalie, the frog’s face was often deformed. Sucks explains that recent technology has made it possible to see the brains as it is hallucinating, and it has been discovered that the type of hallucination depends on the area of brain being activated. For example, there is a part of the brain which activates by watching cartoons, and when the part gets injured, one starts to see hallucinations of cartoon. There are also areas of the brain which activates when seeing faces and inside that area, there are also parts related to eyes and teeth. This is why when people have hallucination of deformed face, they find particular part of these face strange. To conclude his story, Suck says that those of who have this type of visual hallucination tend not to acknowledge them because they are afraid if they are losing their minds and they are also afraid of considered as mad by others. He states that it is important to know that visual hallucination is different from psychotic hallucination, which has strong interaction with its patience by addressing, accusing and seducing him or her. Visual hallucination has none of this addressing because it occurs naturally as a result of brain activity, and therefore, those of who have these hall hallucinations should let others aware of there worries.
Before listening to the talk, I did not know that there are different types of hallucinations and there is something like “Charles Bonnett syndrome”, which could be explained through medical analysis. I believed in some ways that hallucination has something to do with one’s mental problem but I think it was just another stereotypic image that I had. I also thought of the times when there were stereotypic thoughts that were even worse than the one I had. At these times, people were thought to be cursed if they have hallucination and they were often ostracized by the community which they belonged to. The other thing that I thought of is that the possibility of people who left their names in history because of their special features, such as being able to hear and see the God or an angel, or the Satan and demons. There are also famous authors and artists who are thought to saw mythical visions and reflected their experiences in their artistic works. I believe that since it is only recent year that we have made it possible to actually confirm that hallucinations are caused by our internal reasons and not by external forces, there were fare numbers of people who actually were having hallucinations but were considered to have special abilities. Though there is no way to find out who had hallucinations and who did not, for me it is just interesting to imagine. This talk has also reinforced my impression about brain as the most mysterious and undiscovered part of our body though we are using it every minute of our lives. I hope that farther research on brain will result in finding medical treatments to those of who suffer from diseases that we are not able to cure today.

TED journal

Devdutt Pattanail: East vs. West - the myths that mystify

To begin his talk, Pattanaik tells an Indian myth of Ganesha, the elephant headed god, the scribe of story tellers, and his brother Kartikeya, the worload of the gods. One day the brothers went on a race, three times around the world. Whereas Kartikeya took the words literally and flew around the world three times, Ganesha just went around his parents three times and claimed that he won the race. When Kartikeya asked his brother why, Ganesha answered "You went around "the" world but I went around "my" world - and what matters more?" Pattanaik introduced the story in order to explain the difference between the two worlds, one is "the" world, which is the world as it is and "my" world, the world which one perceives. "The" world is objective, logical, factual and scientific. It asnwers questions of "how", such as how we are born and how the sun rises. "My" world on the other hand, is subjective and emotional. It is the world based on perception, belief and myth, telling people "why" we are born and "why" the sun rises. Every culture tries to answer the questionof "why" on its own way and it comes up with its own understanding of life. This subjective way of thinking descends to generation to generation, in the form of mythology, such as rituals, symbols and stories. Therefore, by looking at myth, we could have good understanding of different culture, in other words, different behaviours of people. For example, in western myth, it is believed that everything has one and only life and this belief creates the tendency of making specific goal or objective in one's life. It leads Westerners to be in favor of linier thinking, binary logic, standardization and search for absolute truth. In Eastern myth, on the contrary, the main belief is "what goes around comes around". Life is considered to be infinite and cyclical, and people feel comfortable with contextual and curvaceous thinking, fuzzy logic, descision making based on opinions. As a former businessman, Pattanail considers that the lack of understanding these differences creates many problems in business fields. When doing business, Westerners look for logic and strategy, formula to apply for certain situations. However, Easterners, particularly Indians, rely mainly on their intuition when doing business. Since one's intuition cannot be put in to a formula, Westerners feel great stress when doing business in India. To make the situation worse, it is usually "my" world that is better than "your" world because one considers its own world to be the most rational and others to be irrational, not realizing the fact that people from other cultures are thinking exactly the same thing. I enjoyed listening to the talk because after having read "Geography of Thoughts", I have been interested in the topic of cultural difference between East and West and I wanted to know more about how the differences affect to real world, which was little discussed in the book. Also, one thing that I thought to be surprising was how quickly people in field of business adopt themselves to the situation of rapidly changing world. Pattanaik is currently working at Future Group in Mumbai, as the chief belief officer. His job is to help managers understand their emloyees, comanies and customers by teaching them local mythology. The need for such position was founded by the CEO of the Future Group, who intuitively noticed that his business will never be successful in India without understanding between Eastern and Western cultures. I agree with Pattanik's oppinion that in today's world, where people and information moves rapidly one place to other, it is inevitable that we face crush of civilization. However, I also believe that if we look carefully at a culture we are going to face and try to understand it , we will be able to cope with problems that arise from our differences.