Hello, world.
I spend a ridiculous amounts of time in front of my computer typing my thoughts in a semi-private blog, so I thought it might be worthwhile to channel those energies into a more formal and structured outlet.
This blog was born from a break up, but I hope it grows to much more than that.
I love the intricate, interconnected patterns that tree branches form, especially those of rain trees. Huge, over reaching canopy of beauty above, one picture made out of a trillion details, one tree with innumerable branches, leaves, crevices, different stories from different angles. Order in the chaos, simplicity in complexity, untold beauty in the commonplace, unity in variety. Visual beauty representing a beauty that goes much deeper, a beauty and truth that transcends.
I like photography and aim to post photos.
I like ideas and throwing them about in philosophy, though I’m not formally trained.
I enjoy singing and drawing and writing.
I love nature and animals and being outdoors.
I feel strongly about environmental issues and LGBT rights.
And because of some recent major upheavals in my personal life, I presently also find myself engaged in issues related to religion.
I’ve been trying to organize my posts better, so here’s a breakdown of the type of entires you might find here (by categories, which can be accessed on the right hand side of the home page):
1. Artwork
Any post which feature my original drawings, doodles, paintings or perhaps even crafts I will put in this category. Most of the time I tend to make Artist Trading Cards, or ATCs, because they’re more convenient to do. You can also check out my ATCs from the navigation bar above.
2. Biodiversity and Nature
Any post that features or talks about animals, plants or just nature in general will be here.
3. Exploring Ideas
This is where I expect most of my post to end up. Previously tagged as ‘opinion’ or ‘philosophy’. These will be posts in which I explore ideas and concepts, sometimes to expound my own opinions or sometimes to question and figure out what I believe. May be reflective or philosophical in nature.
4. Expression in Words
Here you’ll find original poetry or poetic prose, or you might want to call them pseudo-poetry. I generally only write this sort of thing if I’m feeling particularly emotional or depressed, so there probably wouldn’t be too much of these. (Hopefully!)
5. LGBT
This label doesn’t tell you about the type of entry, but the content, so it will always overlap with one of the other categories. However, as this is a main theme on my blog, I think it deserves its own category. Anything and everything to do with homosexuality, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or non-mainstream gender and sexuality issues.
6. Personal Musings
The second most common type of entry will probably be this. These entries will be shorter versions of entires in ‘exploring ideas’, expressing a random thought which crossed my mind without delving too deeply into the issue. Alternatively, they will also feature musings (or whining) of a more personal nature.
7. Photography
This should be self explanatory. Posts that contain my original photography.
8. Religion
Like ‘LGBT’, this a content category, because it’s one of the main themes on this blog.
9. Shares
Shares refer to sharing and linking content from else where on the web, where the article, video, quote, image etc that I’m sharing is the main point of the entry, or acts as a significant springboard for the entry.
I hope thats helpful! Thanks for stopping by and comments are always welcomed. :)
Wow.. I never thought about the tree that way.. amazing!!
Happy blogging!
Priyanka :)
sorry for the lag in reply!
thanks for commenting. x)
happy blogging to you too! :) :)
I just watched this video clip the other day, and while reading your ‘about’ page I thought it might be of some interest to you (tree related, kinda). Of course I could be wrong; wouldn’t be the first time.
I have another link you might find interesting, but I’ll hold on to that one for another time. I enjoyed your two most recent Gandhi posts, which made me think to share this other link. It doesn’t have much if anything to do with Gandhi, but I think it follows in his footsteps to some degree. Let me know if you are interested. ;)
Oh, and thanks for stopping by my blog and taking the time to check it out a bit. I’m not usually one to follow links or comment much (I keep myself pretty busy), but felt compelled. Take care. :)
Hey, thanks for sharing the video! Sorry I didn’t see your comment till now, wordpress marked it as spam for some reason. O_O
Yeah, gotta love fibonnaci numbers and their patterns in nature. XD this person has a great 3 part video that explains it in a really cool, quirky and awesome way, if you’re interested. really love her videos:
Sure, I’d love to see the link. :)
And no problem, I really like the messages you’re advocating in your blog. :)
You take care too, and have a great day!
I’ve seen those videos, very cool, but I’ve never watched the movie “Gandhi” before. I think I’ll give that a try next. Here is that link I mentioned before:
Enjoy, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. :)
Hey, I’ve just finished watching the zeitgeist: moving forward. Thanks very much for sharing. I really liked it and have to agree with most of the general ideas it’s promoting, although I feel my knowledge about economics and politics is way too lacking to make any proper critiques or in depth comments. (although i’ve NEVER understood trading/stock markets, that has always seemed to be a bafflingly huge thing where people bought and sold nothing.)
I feel slightly dubious about some of the things they say though. especially their blue print for the ‘perfect’ society on a new earth. Don’t get me wrong, it sounds like a fantastic ideal, and many parts of it sound feasible and should be implemented asap (or bits of it have already be implemented in certain places).. like the idea of public commodities ie having a system of cars/transport the way we have libraries: you only ‘own’ them when you need to use them. But on the whole it has a ‘too good to be true’ kind of feeling.
Another example makes me want to take what they say with a pinch of salt: the film starts out by warning against false dichotomies (ie ‘it’s genetic’ doesn’t mean it’s predetermined) but later on seems to do the same thing in the opposite direction: put a lot of emphasis on environment while not talking about genes, stressing that we’re the victims of our environment and upbringing. Also, at one point they say that ‘human nature is competitive’ is a myth and what we need is compassion and love etc. I think we need for compassion and love probably IS a bigger part of our human nature (ie it’s a greater need), but I think saying our competitive nature is a myth is falling into the false dichotomy trap: we’re NOT either all love and altruism, NEITHER are we all selfish with dog-eat-dog-world mentalities.
Another, possibly more significant thing (after watching) that made me feel more dubious and made my guard go up even more: i realized that i’ve seen parts of the first zeitgeist movie before. Have you seen it? I saw the section about the christ myth, and i was really excited when watching it. but, when I tried to do more research on some of the claims it made, I realized that a lot of it was just… complete bullshit. So I was pretty disgusted that people could and would make up such outlandish claims and make it into a ‘documentary’. So… I find it quite difficult to really trust this film now, although I do like its message and ideas a lot and on first impressions felt the urge to share it with everyone I know.
“…I feel my knowledge about economics and politics is way too lacking…”
If you watch the second movie “Zeitgeist: Addendum” it doesn’t go into detail on economics and politics, but it does a great job of explaining the monetary system (more too it that the average Joe/Jill realizes):
“…blue print for the ‘perfect’ society…”
Not ‘perfect’ just better.
“…‘too good to be true’…” It’s not a ‘today’ goal, but more of a tomorrow mindset. We can’t hope for a better tomorrow if we’re not doing something to get there.
Nurture vs nature: we are products of our environment (thoughts, actions, likes, dislikes, beliefs…). Genetics determine our physical appearance and little more (regarding who we are). There is little to no human nature; mostly human responses to environment. The whole concept is a slippery thought exercise that requires a lot of that ‘thinking outside the box’ stuff. It’s a lot to take in. Don’t toss it over your shoulder (like “…a pinch of salt…”) never to look back. ;)
I have seen “Zeitgeist The Movie”:
http://vimeo.com/13726978
Keep in mind that just because you can’t find proof of something doesn’t automatically make it false or doesn’t exist, and even if you do manage to prove a detail false, it doesn’t make the concept as a whole false. Facts aren’t always the easiest things to find in this world. There are almost always at least two sides to every story and the truth tends to be found somewhere in the middle quite often. Add to that some people would prefer the ‘truth’ be their truth. To help you with your fact finding mission I ran into this “ZEITGEIST: THE MOVIE COMPANION SOURCE GUIDE” PDF file:
http://zeitgeistmovie.com/Zeitgeist,%20The%20Movie-%20Companion%20Guide%20PDF.pdf
One last link I’d like to share with you is “Who Is Peter Joesph?”:
http://vimeo.com/9471418
It does a great job of explaining what “Zeitgeist The Movie” is, isn’t and how it came to be. As with any and all information, it’s best to understand it as best you can, take it for what it’s worth, questioning everything along the way.
Sorry to be hogging up your ‘About’ page. Feel free to delete all of this if you like. Might I suggest a ‘Contact’ page? :)
Hi, thanks for your reply. :)
I think you give genetics too little credit, as well as human nature. I personally don’t think that humans are ‘by nature good’, or ‘by nature bad’, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have tendencies or are prone to certain ways of perceiving things or certain ways of doing things due to our evolutionary history. genes do more than determine your mere physical appearance (but they also aren’t the ONLY things that determine physical appearances), they determine all the workings of your cells and the way your brain develops and production of hormones and neurotransmitters and nerve signals which determines/influences everything from your mood to whether you feel hungry/thirsty to how you learn and remember new things.
the video warns against making a false dichotomy (you don’t have to choose between nurture and nature! in fact, you shouldn’t!), but then makes the same mistake in the opposite direction (giving too much credit to nurture and ignoring nature).
“Keep in mind that just because you can’t find proof of something doesn’t automatically make it false or doesn’t exist, and even if you do manage to prove a detail false, it doesn’t make the concept as a whole false. ”
When you watch the first zeitgeist, did you attempt to do your own research to double check what it’s saying first? What I found wasn’t unverifiable or controversial things with different people claiming different ‘truths’, but simple, verifiable things like… does this story of this god exist? and… does the stars/sun actually do that?
For example, he listed so many gods which shared characteristics with the jesus story, I thought it was incredible, I thought it was great. I watched the video clip once through, and then on second viewing, I’d pause it and googled every single god he mentioned. And… some stories lined up, some sort of lined up if you want to look at it that way, but a many were outright not true. I felt cheated. Same for the astrological claims. I can’t remember the details now, but I can look for critiques of it online if you’re interested.
of course a few false details doesn’t mean the entire concept is false, but it does mean that unless i have OTHER reasons for believing in that concept, I should put the concept aside because there’s nothing to support it. Finding fIt also means that I’ll find anything he says harder to trust. If the video can make claims that are patently false, it shows either negligence (the maker of the video didn’t spend enough time researching the topic) or manipulative (the maker knows his claims are controversial/are not 100% true but states them like they are undisputed facts and neglects to mention the other side) or downright deceptive (the maker knows they are false but presents them anyway to make his case sound stronger). I don’t have the time to research and verify everything for myself, so if the maker does present some false information (for whatever reason), this means I wont be able to discern truth from falsehood.
but thanks for the links and the pdf, i’ve give them a look. :)
After proofreading this I’ve decide to add a disclaimer:
The following may sound judgmental, but that is not the case. I’m just stating facts. ;)
A Google search does not qualify as research. There’s lots of information out there that isn’t available with a simple search (ie: scholarly sources/journals), and what information is available will surely come with conflicting views and opinions. Add to that the fact that there is no 100% static truth. Everything changes, including facts. Sometimes facts don’t live up to our expectations, but that doesn’t make them any less factual.
If you want to be knowledgeable on any given subject, you’re gonna have to do some digging, comparing your findings, using reason, logic and common sense. Question everything, because there are no ultimate sources out there. You may find some more reliable than others, but no one is perfect and everything is open to interpenetration. I strongly recommend watching “Who Is Peter Joseph?” and reading that PDF file. I’m on page 39 (no promise I’ll finish it) and I’m finding it very enlightening.
Hey I nominated your blog for The Commentator Award. http://thejolynproject.com/2012/06/04/give-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving-the-commentator-awardreader-appreciation-award/ Thank you for commenting on my blog!