Conjecture on the Nature of Relationships

Hi dear readers,

Today I want to discuss the nature of how we relate to each other. As I was talking to my niece the other day, I realized we always act differently based on our situation. This may be a given fact, however, the way we speak to our friends and the way we speak to our parents or teachers are two different things. A hierarchy developed at some point that is truly ingrained in us. The complication of the hierarchy, definitely, varies based on the individual.

And to the people who say, life is all about how we view ourselves, I won’t say it’s false, but there are so many unconscious layers of hierarchies through how we define reality, that it’s very difficult to view ourselves logically with our consciousness.

In a previous blog, I talked about mirror neurons. As kids start modeling the world based on the people around them, they also start categorizing people that are close to them. This categorization of how they should behave with certain people persist for a long time. The categorization happens in everything in life actually. I mean our perception is also a categorization based on our individual experience of reality.

But there is a hard categorization that can develop based on our early experiences. I was always very shy with my teachers. I believe that’s because I viewed the teachers as supreme authority figures that would yell at me if I did something wrong, in my case I was traumatized by getting hit by a teacher when I was a little kid in Bangladesh. My categorization for teacher-like authorities thus devolved into caution. 

I used to never notice what my body did. It’s amazing to notice and realize that we are a being that is controlled by trillions of cells. Our body is a compilation of different groups of living creatures from all walks of life. And we are just a complex being created by little organisms working in a hierarchy. Categorizing the world and then responding based on the hierarchy is a law of life in my opinion. Even stereotypes are just a categorization of different people. It’s created so people don’t have to consciously think about how to react to new people they see. 

Our brain is really primed for taking shortcuts. The reason we become better at everything we do is because we start taking shortcuts. And these shortcuts appear in the form of habits. And the habits are ingrained in our unconsciousness. Just like walking or running, we can start to notice new things as the things that were once difficult become habitual.

And thus relationships between human beings are the same, we become who we are close to. We mimic what the other person does and slowly we notice the slightest change in the other person.  

Translation

What I mean?

I feel like everything is abut translating. I started writing because I want to translate all the great stories I’ve read and heard into my own language. Because the translation process of how we experience the world seems to change dramatically as we grow up. I’m at a point in my life where I have options but I can’t seem to choose any of them. How I translated the world when I was younger and how I translate the world now seem to be so different. But in reality, I think it’s really not, I just have a tendency to believe that it’s different.

Childhood Experience

When I was a kid, everything was exciting. Everything had a potential to be a fun experience. It didn’t matter where I was, I just wanted to move my body. My translation of the world was very immediate. It was about my capacity to do things. I remember taking turns jumping. There were times when racing was all I wanted to do. I remember playing marbles, a game of carrom, playing soccer, and just wondering about. Everything that I was translating was through the anticipation of moving. My translation of the world depended on the immediate necessity to do something that increased my adrenaline. But I’ve forgotten a lot of this since recently. 

Adult Experience

As an uncle of 4 nieces, I’ve learned how babies and little kids translate the world, from the perspective of a supposed adult. I remember talking to my oldest niece a couple of months ago, it was just another day. But the way she described the world in front of her caught me off guard. 

I was just walking on the road, the same place that I’ve walked through for 16 years. This is where my school bus came everyday when I was a younger. So when my 6 year old niece started describing all the things that you can do in the space, I was startled to realize it was true. She started talking about hanging around the little pond that was nearby, going for walks in the grass, running and playing tag, and hiding behind trees.

She was very positive about the possibilities that the environment in front of her brought. I’ve become pretty oblivious to what’s in front of me. So it was very inspiring to realize that there are so many possibilities. 

I realized after some moments, that I stopped translating the world in that way at some point. I used to love playing tag when I was younger. I used to get excited about pretty much everything. I was even excited to be learning how to make buildings when I started college. But somewhere along the way, that excitement faded. 

Babies and kids also pretty much model the world through observation, though their perception of the world is highly magnified. That’s why kids nowadays love listening to and watching youtube videos all the time. I mean adults do it too, but the kids watch it at a different level. 

Before a certain age, it doesn’t matter how many times something plays, babies seem to enjoy the sound and the movement with a different intensity. Obviously they also like moving, but they also love watching a simple action or tune over and over again.

Psychological Experience

As a student of modern psychology, it’s very interesting to realize that the mind always wants to seek out novel experiences. How interesting something is depends on the brain’s exposure to the event. Babies first start by crawling, then walking, then running, and then jumping, and on and on. Eventually the experiences that they seek out broadens.

Learning how to do things by oneself becomes learning how to do things with other people. It’s a never ending process of learning by perceiving and observing. I realize I stopped looking at things, and just started creating. And that’s a flaw on my part. Because creating something new is the same as learning how to model something. It’s the same as learning how to run for the first time.

When something is new, the process, the state of flow takes over. And everything becomes exciting. When thoughts stop, and the body just starts moving, that’s when you know you’re enjoying the experience. That’s, I think, why roller coasters still can induce such excitement cause you’re just experiencing the movement. 

The prefrontal cortex, or our consciousness, is loaded with so much information nowadays. It’s easier to see why cooperation will be the norm of society, but as a result, individuality will be lost. The excitement that is lost in the process of conformity as we become adults is something I want to study. I believe cooperation is key for society, but I can’t accept how individuality has become such a commodity. 

Architecture Experience

I believe, the process of modeling the world, is diminishing at an astronomical rate as we become older. The 9-5 jobs that have become the standard is making us very robotic. Robots are good with routines, I remember during college, I would get into a routine of just trying to create, eat, sleep, make stuff and just repeat. It bothered me how my routine each day was becoming my habit. That’s one of the reasons why I have a harder time enjoying the moment nowadays.

When I was in college, the first two years, we spent a lot of time studying what was in front of us. We measured and made models based on what we were exposed to. However, that initial exploration went 180 for me. By third year, we started copying modern buildings and stopped copying nature. The traditional norms of how buildings are built became our routine. The exploration slowly diminished for me.

It became harder for me to create by modeling regular buildings. There was no innovation. I started thinking about how light came through, or how people walked through the space, or how color affected perception of the space. When I started realizing that all buildings are so simple, it started bothering me why the complexity of life was being diminished so much.

Final Thoughts

As technologies connect us, the individual is starting to have an outlet for his/her view of reality. However, the technology is also a huge propaganda machine that is conforming society to polarized opinions. I believe the world today is significantly better, in terms of quality of life and experience. But what we’re exposed to on a regular basis, for example on tv, are the moments that are highly emotional. 

We remember these events, while forgetting how much more access we have. If the individual doesn’t creatively explore and translate what’s in front of them, then we will literally become robots. With AI technology, AR and VR just around the corner, the ways an individual will explore the world will change drastically. If the individual doesn’t take conscious control, people in control of the technology will eventually prime us to be more robotic.

But I don’t think that will happen if we can really creatively imagine and translate what’s in front of us. The creative individuals can take charge of the technology. It can lead to greater innovation. At least, that’s my hope. I want to translate what I see into new experiences. Through my writing, through my example and through what I build, I want to become a person that consciously translates my environment.

Fable's Story: Prologue Part 1

Fable ran through the forest, anticipating the breakfast that he plans to cook. 

Fable is an adventurous soul that recently moved into an organic modern-hut next to a river. His mind is very curious but recently he’s begun pondering about the reality of life, or at least the view that has become the norm, since his venture into the past. 

As his mind was taken over by heavy breathing, Fable knew he was close to his destination. He got up at 6 o’clock in the morning,  thankfully he still has a solar cell that tells him the time. 

Before his move to the hut, he was living in a condo in a modern suburban town. Fable recently realized he was practically a grown person. But he didn’t fully realize what that meant. Life has  been one big roller coaster as far as he can tell.

As Fable saw the halo of the sun, he realized he would finally soon get out of the forest. He’s actually been running for more than an hour today. It’s become a habit for him to run every morning at 6 o’clock. But Fable doesn’t actually understand why he’s been running everyday.

It all began 2 years prior to today’s event. Fable was curious by nature. He’s been told all his life what to do. But since he was so curious, he was always questioning every action. But in the year, 2150, when Fable was 22, he somehow warped into the past. 

This began his long journey. But for now, Fable just wanted to make breakfast, he could see his hut. As he slowed down his speed, he could see the river and his hut mingling together. It was a great site, it’s only been in recent decades that these huts have become the norm.

-Short Story, to be continued...

Philly Space

Fairmount Park

When I lived in Philly, I used to go running in Fairmount Park fairly often. It’s a very harmonic space because there’s different types of spaces along the way. By human nature, people tend to like ecotones. Ecotones are transitional spaces between two biological communities. I really liked running next to the Schuylkill River in the morning as it gave me energy to start my day. The environment changed my mindset and allowed me to experience Philly in a whole new way. Usually I was stuck in university buildings that don’t really value nature. 

Habits

I’ve been talking about habits in a negative light so far in the blogs because habits usually make us oblivious to our environments. However, habit formation can be really good for us as it makes us more functional as a byproduct of allowing our consciousness to have more freedom. When the unconscious takes over the rudimentary tasks, the consciousness can potentially have the option of focusing on tasks that are more difficult.

I remember noticing the complexity of Fairmount Park as my running pattern became habitual. There were days where I would automatically go to Fairmount Park to run, and then I would notice things that I usually would ignore. When something becomes a habit, one is able to notice the complexity of the environment. I’m intrigued by the adaptation of the consciousness because it’s really cool to know that we can always investigate and notice what’s in front of us even after looking at something hundreds of times. 

For example, I realized the intricacy of the bridges that were nearby the park. The patterns that structurally made the bridge strong became more apparent the more I looked at them. I also noticed the river sides and how at one point in time people probably bathed in the river. There are all sorts of history and ideas that come about when the same object is investigated with a different perspective. The cool thing about nature is the knowledge that it’s always changing.

If buildings are able to mimic this change, then the capacity for new experience is also exponential. I initially wanted to write a blog about my progress with the organic wissahickon model. But I don’t have any habitual ideas on how to create it yet. So exploring habits and the types of spaces in Philly has given me new knowledge about what can be a possibility. Maybe repetitive emulation is key in the beginning for creating a habit, similar to how I started running.

Expectation and Exploration

Hi blog readers,

Today I want to continue my discussion of creativity and how I plan to integrate it with architecture. 

The interesting thing about creating something is the product that one produces. I never fully realized the power of creativity till I actually really started making architecture models. What you expect to create and what you actually make are two different things. When you begin to create something, the process takes over. What you conceptualize initially changes over time to something that mirrors your conception. But the concept that initially sparks the creation changes. Now you have a model that is spatially developed. This development creates new ideas that wasn’t noticeable beforehand. In reality, I don’t think creating organic space will be difficult, but rather it will be an extended iterative process, where building multiple layers of the same idea will produce variety of results. Because creativity comes from many attempts of the same process.

So far, in my previous blogs, I’ve been talking about all the flaws of architecture and the creative process. But there are a lot of things that work. Just the process of creating allows the mind to explore what is possible. When I was younger, I used to go to the roof of the building that I lived in, and wonder in awe of the sheer heights of the buildings and the different types of housings that existed. It was really cool looking down and seeing how people created all sorts of things. What amazed me was the fact that people built the structures with their hands.

Everything starts step by step. Say one brick at a time. Or one piece of wood at a time. The processes that we use in architecture usually starts one piece at a time. One of my favorite models is the Wissahickon model that I worked on. I was really captivated trying to mimic the shape of nature. I think I spent a month fully developing the model so that it looked like a natural rock. At the time I was just trying to copy the curve of the rocks. But now I realize, this simple process of one piece at a time allowed me to create something that was even better than the rock that I was basing it off from.

Wissahickon Model

For this blog, I’m going to attempt to recreate my Wissahickon model that I created from planer plywood. I remember spending two nonstop full weeks in the woodshop to build the model. It was a really fun experience for me even though it took a lot of time. The process of what I was doing wasn’t really difficult. But rather, creating the individual planer pieces took a lot of time. I had to measure the piece, then I had to cut it and sand it till it became the perfect size. And I did this for over 100 pieces. The simplicity of the process created a model that looked beautiful to me. I was very proud of what I created because I could see everything I did in front of me. Because of this step, I’ve decided to mimic this process throughout all the other models that I created during architecture school. Hopefully I’ll develop some cool models in the upcoming weeks.

Role of expectation

For today, I worked on developing a top view, a front view, a left view, and a right view. My expectation is to build upon the complexity that I created throughout my model. I did learn a lot every semester in architecture school. During the semesters though, I deviated from integrating the prior semesters and focused more on the main concept of each new semester. So my expectation for this exercise is to build upon what I’ve learned in architecture school and integrating it. I think if I keep exploring, my idea for what I think is organic will slowly evolve. The fun part will be the exploration.

Observation

Hello dear readers,

Today I want to transition from talking about perceiving something to the idea of observation. Once one analyzes something, at what point does one receive enough information to call it observation. Is observation and perception the same thing? Observing something requires conscious thoughts, but you can perceive unconsciously to an extent. However, perceiving something will eventually lead to observing something, by nature, if the cue is prominent. Though there’s a lot of variation regarding when one becomes conscious of something. The unconscious and priming controls a lot of what we perceive and observe. Our moods and emotions control the level of perception and observation.

The eyes

Recently, I re-read some sections of Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. I was curious about how the speed of thoughts increase depending on the nature of what you’re looking at. I was intrigued by the notion of the eyes dilating when a problem is difficult, and the eyes constricting when a problem is simple. So the more conscious effort a problem requires, the more dilated the eyes become. The eyes also seem to dilate when one looks at objects in the distance. And they constrict when one looks at objects that are close. The dilated eyes also find information more intriguing/beautiful because the mind is in observation mode. Unconsciously, the dilation causes the frontal lobe to be more active.

As I read more, I realize the eyes can say a lot about what we’re looking at. The environment controls the body’s actions and thoughts. And what we’re exposed to, at the photon level, affects our human consciousness. There have been studies that show that a person is more conscious under blue light. And the power of colors can have a profound effect on a person. But at any given moment, our unconsciousness knows everything but our consciousness is not aware. At what point does the realization occur that some things are more important? 

I know Sherlock Holmes can observe really really well. That means, at any given moment, his consciousness is always on point. He can also rely on his unconscious to a large extent. He is very aware of what he sees unconsciously. Every dilation that occurs is also engraved into his consciousness. Or he has access to more synapses that cross-wires his brain. He can recall and visualize at an extraordinary level because he can locate what his unconscious is doing. I suppose he’s a super conscious being with a crazy working memory.

But that doesn’t explain why observation is not the same for different people. Can one train to become better at observation, like training the working memory? I guess the obvious answer is yes, but what actually happens that causes the brain to focus on specific cues. Is it all related to childhood? So what we’re exposed to as a child and what we pay attention as we grow up is highly correlated. My questions arise because I want to understand how can we allow the consciousness to observe without conscious effort. One thing about Sherlock Holmes is that he is always alert. But being alert takes a lot of toll on the conscious mind. And human beings have a natural tendency to form habits as a result of wanting to decrease the conscious mental load.

Perspective

Studying how people observe can be a very effective method for understanding how we react to different shapes and forms. Because I want to study organic architecture, I want to understand how a person starts caring for his/her environment. A lot of what we see is imbedded already in our mind. The new environment that is created will impact the individual based on their perception and observation of the whole environment. If all environments start to look the same, then the mind stops caring for it. Working with lights, materials, and different forms will affect how individuals react to a certain spaces. However, habituation does always take control eventually. And space can become dull. So maybe directing movement to make people observe specific forms can change their perception of the environment.

Looking vs Perceiving

I want to explore the concept of looking today. We live in a world where seeing is everything. Seeing also seems to be the most crucial element for perceiving reality. But is it really? To me, looking at something doesn’t really trigger significance. Rather, when I am perceiving the event, I actually start caring about the event. I want to explore the concept of when we actually start noticing what’s happening in front of us.

Looking can be a very unconscious event. I want to explore when the consciousness takes over and looking at something turns into the concept of perceiving something. Because perceiving requires conscious effort. You have to use your senses to perceive something. It’s not the same as judging, but rather being aware of what’s there. Judging requires analysis, I want to understand what’s in front of us after the fact of looking but before the act of judging. Because judging is also pretty automatic once you perceive based on your senses. But does that mean the judgement is ingrained automatically in the unconscious based on the environment?

Recently, I watched a Ted talk by James Howard Kunstler. And I agree with his analysis of the ghastly tragedy of the american suburb. When I studied architecture, I was surprised at how much I focused on the architecture itself and not the environment that it was located in. I studied in Philadelphia, so when we designed, the environment was occupied with the mundane elements of everyday life. It was packed with apartments, houses, and shops that are the norm of cities. Because it was so normal, everything was meshed together, I started disregarding the environment and started focusing more on how people would react once people arrived at my design. 

But I realize now that perceiving the environment and then looking at my design go hand-in-hand. Since I was copying the environment without realizing that the environment also needs to start inviting people in, the environment has to be a space where people can relax. My problem with Philly architecture is with its design of fitting people inside rather than allowing people to experience the space. Apartments are generally compact, divided by roads and major destinations. There’s very little interaction outside besides people walking from place to place. And major destinations, like center city and old city, are where people congregate. And I want people interacting everywhere.

When I went to Tokyo, I was surprised at how people were more likely to be outside at all times. The train system allowed for bustling people at all times. There were people riding bikes in all spaces. Of course, there were also cars, but there was a hierarchy that made it more acceptable for the cars to exist. But in american cities, cars generally overwhelm all types of spaces.  Especially in places like Philly, where it bothered me that there were so many cars. I used to bike all the time in Philly, so I have more experiences with the roads, but overall the space designed for people to live in generally were bounded by big roads. It would be nice if there was more of a hierarchy between where people walk, bike, drive, and interact.

Now with the discussion, regarding perception, I think generally we do perceive a great deal the first time we arrive at a destination. We look at the surroundings, we get familiar with what stands out, all the different shapes, and the movement of the space itself. But that happens the first few times, and then we slowly become used to the space. I want to lessen habituation and increase perception. The idea that our transportation systems and the noise of our environment taking control of our space should be erased. The architecture that I designed became bulky and standardized because at the time I wasn’t able to realize how interacting with the outside was crucial. I was focusing on the interior space without realizing that the exterior was already having unconscious effects on the individual. 

It becomes hard to justify designs that deviate from the norm. Architecture nowadays still exist mostly in rectangular shapes because the process to create structure is easier that way. This doesn’t solve the problem of people interacting with the space though. If people keep building space with just looking and using it as shelter, then the interaction between human beings is going to diminish. If people continue to stay inside and not interact with each other, then we’ll be living in a future with thousands of vertical skyscrapers but no interaction between people.

Sources used:

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tedspread

William James meant when he wrote, “My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.”