Week 10_3/31/16_Flag Design

 Key elements to flag design: simplicity and class. Representation and symbolism should be the most important aspects of acknowledgement.

Flags are a unique item that is used to represent a piece of land so that when seen it reminds people of the area that it is from. The city that I chose to represent is Lake Zurich IL. While they already have a flag, I decided to redesign it so as to make it more modern as well as more unique.

The original flag of Lake Zurich violates some of the ideas that were presented in the video. While the flag only uses a few colors, the designs on it are very distracting. The light post in the center of the flag is rather confusing and may even be off putting to others who are not from that area. It also says the words “Village of Lake Zurich”, as well as the date that the village was founded in September 29^th, 1896. The stripe at the bottom is very aesthetically pleasing. The circle and design in the middle, while it draws in the eye and grabs peoples’ attention, it does not have the best message as most people do not know what it stands for.

The flag that I designed for the city is simple but it also more fun. I used only three colors to create my flag. Yellow, for the constant sunshine and kindness of the people in the town. Green, for the rich landscape and many forest preserves in the area. Blue, for the large lake that the town is named after. I thought it important to keep the design simple, but also intriguing and fun for the people from there. There is a nice yellow border around the outside which makes the entire flag pop. The corners of the flag are a bright shade of green that show that the town is based on the idea of “being green” as well do all we can to recycle, help the earth, and respect the beautiful landscape we have. In the center there are 5 wavy lines that represent the lake and the fresh water that it brings. Each line also represents 4,000 people as there are about 20,000 people in the city of Lake Zurich.

My new flag for the city of Lake Zurich is very simplistic, but also has a lot of meaning behind the choices that I made. While it is interesting, it is not distracting. There is a lot of white space to keep it looking fresh and clean, as well as pleasing and more universally attractive to all. There are no words, pictures, emblems or seals. There are no small pictures. The flag will be able to be seen and recognized from far away, which was one of the concerns in the video.

While the flag is original and modern, it also strays from being offensive. The lines are untraditional on a flag, but they are incorporated from the previous design idea. They are not insulting or aggressive toward other land areas and truly represent peace and love for the area of Lake Zurich.

Prompt for 4/2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnv5iKB2hl4

This week, we're doing something a little different for the blog. I'd like you to listen to the brief talk above and do three things:

1. Give your audience, in tweet length (144 characters), a compelling reason to listen to the above talk or provide for them a serious criticism of the speaker's presentation methods.
2. Design a flag for your home city (if you don't have a flag -- redesign if you do). If your town already has a great flag, make it better. You may use whatever you wish to execute the design, but make sure your design is clear and attractive.
3. Use your 500 word post to justify your design choices based on the principles espoused in the talk. You may include more sources if you wish, but I do not require it.

In your comments this week, I want you, using moderating language and careful tone control, to rip apart your classmates' designs. You should rely on principles of design either from the video or another source, but I want you to give serious and specific criticism of the designs.

Week 9_03/19/2016_Love is not evrywhere

          According to Zizek, everyone should love everything around them because that is what made up their life. "But you see perfection in imperfection itself. And that how you should learn to love the world. True Ecologist love all this" (1:04:24 to 1:04:41). In one way or another, I do somehow understand why Zizek would think this way, but I had to disagree with it. People can not love everything in their life, and it is not possible to be able to love everything without a reason.

          To start thing off, Zizek said:"Love is not idealization" (1:03:58). It is true that people do not need a reason to love someone or something. According to the Bible, "Love is patient, love is kind. It always protect, always hope, always trust, and always preserve" (Corinthian, 13:4-7). But can you just love something without knowing what it is? We are living in a society where danger could approach at any given time, we are also living in a world surrounded by hatred. This is the reason why war and racism exist. People can not love everything and everyone. Love require an unconditional trust, and hope toward someone or something, but is that possible? No. Society had shaped the human mind into what they are today. We lived in a life surrounded by lies and doubts. Friends can one day become enemies, and your creator can one day became sorrow. In my experience, the people whom gave birth to me had taught me that loving something, or someone without knowing who they are is impossible as they themselves abandoned me on a corn field, alone under the summer heat.

          With that being said, the only way to support Zizek point is sympathy instead of love. You can sympathize your life, your environment, and people. And from that, if thing goes right, develop to love. Such as what my parent did. Seeing a kid in a paper box alone on a muddy ground on the cornfield, they sympathized, and took me home. Now that we had been together for 18 years, the sympathy during that summer day had turned into the love that I had today. My creator is a part of life, but there is no way I for me to love them. Love requires time and commitment, it can not being given to anyone and anything.

Week 9_3/19/16_Ecology as the new Opium of the People.

         


            To Start off, I can say that I agree with Zizek at the beginning of the video called "In Examined Life" (0.42 sec.) where he is trying to argue about our daily perceptions on how some wastes disappear from our lives and we never think about it again, whereas trash on the other hand may leave your home but doesn't disappear. He then connects this rational idea to what is called ecology. Ecology can be defined as the political movement that seeks to protect the environment from pollution. He compares this concept of ecology to ideology which helps form reality ideas according to Zizek (1.32 min). I believe he compares these two concepts together in a way to help promote new ideas on how to help the environment. (1:58 min) Zizek is trying to tell us it about temptations of meaning comparing it to human catastrophes. At about (2:00 to 2:30 mins), He says how it would be better to be in the middle of a catastrophe knowing that you're being punished by God rather than being punished because it just randomly happened and goes back to saying thats where ecology and ideology enter. This is a very confusing point. I feel like he is jumping from one topic to another and trying to compare them with each other. They don't really match together if you take a moment to think about it. How can us as humans who are destroying the world from our actions such as factories, automobiles and wastes be a punishment from God?

         At about (3:09 mins) I totally agree with Zizek when he says the world is a balanced world and is disturbed by human actions. Our actions are what caused Global Warming, the extinction of certain animals and many of the diseases that are in the world today. We aren't aware of the damage we are implementing. "If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all of life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish."- Jonas Salk. At (4:01 mins) Zizek says nature doesn't exist and it is a series of unimaginable  catastrophes. But we benefit from it. I believe that humans are what make it a catastrophe with our disturbance to nature. At (5:34 min) Zizek begins to say how ecology is beginning to take over Karl Marx's theory of "Religion as Opium of the people". Opium according to the Oxford dictionary can be defined as: A reddish-brown heavy-scented addictive drug prepared from the juice of the opium poppy. Used as a narcotic and in medicine as an analgesic. Pretty much saying with the definition of ecology that it is becoming the drug of our daily lives.

       Karl Marx believed as religion being the opium of people because it was thought that the oppressors use religion as an excuse to keep the people from doing such things. Oppressors could use the religion guilt in a sense to get people to do what they want when they want. (6:02) Zizek is saying the same thing when conservatives set limits on scientists when it comes to new discoveries. Except that they use Ecology instead of Religion as an excuse. I Also agree with Zizek at (7:00) when he says that humans shouldn't forget we are not just theorists or scientists who study nature, yet we shouldn't forget that we ourselves are part of it.

Overall, in this video Zizek had some very interesting views and some very poor views. It is a little confusing at first to understand what he is exactly talking about, but if you watch over it twice you'll interpret what is being said better.



Sources:

Cline Austin, "Religion As Opium Of The People", atheism.about.com, 2016.

Oxford dictionary for definitions of Ecology, ideology and opium.

Week 9_3/19/16_Becoming More Artificial

            In the video titled “Slavoj Žižek on Examined Life,” Žižek argues that even though we know that nature is being destroyed, we don’t do anything about it because we are unable to imagine nature being destroyed (8:23). Therefore, we act as if we don’t know nature will be destroyed (7:37), even if we do. His solution to this problem is to not strengthen our roots in nature and learn to appreciate it, but to cut ourselves off altogether from nature and become even more artificial and technological (8:46). This would mean we would not treat the world as a beautiful nature that we are a part of, but as masses of technical terms and formulas that make up a singular existence. As a result, we would act based on logic, and the most logical thing to do would be to take more care of nature and make sure we don’t destroy it because doing so would be at our disadvantage. I find this very radical proposition not practical enough to carry out because I do not believe we are capable of such act, but theoretically, there are solid reasonings behind his words.

 Doing as Žižek suggested would mean we would have to act as if we have no feelings towards nature at all. We cannot be completely logical because we have emotions. However, according to Žižek, this is part of our problem. He claims that we think that nature we have today is the best possible one, one that is balanced and reproductive, but are disturbed by humans (2:53). However, nature, in fact, is a series of unimaginable catastrophes that we profit from (3:57). Therefore, it is illogical to think that we must appreciate nature and leave it as it is. Instead, there is no nature and so we can’t act based on what we think is best for it.

This notion of thought leads to what Žižek claims to be our course of actions. We are only able to see what is right in front of us, and therefore are not able be concerned by what we know is happening in the world such as global warming and other ecological catastrophes. Even after confronting them, our feelings towards those ecological catastrophes will not last because we come back to our comfortable lives where there are no catastrophes. Moreover, if we truly love nature, we will ignore all the ugly parts of it that causes catastrophes, just like how we love our loved one (9:52). That is why feelings towards nature must be cut off. If we become more artificial and technical, we will clearly see that the ecological problems must be solved for our benefit. This is how ideology relates to ecology. How we perceive nature plays a crucial role in how we treat it. Žižek suggests that we must treat it as nothing more than formulas.

All in all, even though I don’t think this approach to ecology can ever be possible, I believe the logic and theory behind it makes sense. It is easy to think our love for nature makes us take better care of it, but it may be the very thing that destroys it. As a person that likes to act based on logic, I find this idea intriguing and although it can’t fix all of our problem, if we do indeed get rid of love of nature and be able to condemn it as a series of catastrophic instances, we may be more eager to fix it instead of leaving it alone. 

Week 9_3/19/16_Taking Care of Our World

       When watching Zizek’s videos, I had no idea what was going on. His accent was very strong, and the way he presented his ideas were very confusing. Not to mention that all of his nervous ticks (sweating, wiping his nose, and pulling his sweaty shirt off him) were very distracting as well. But in the first video, I really liked the point Zizek was trying to make. In the first video, Zizek stated that people do not really care about the environment. The overall point is talking about the environment and the importance of ecology. At :30 Zizek states “part of our dialy perception of reality, is that this (the trash) disappears from our world forever. I would have to agree with Zizek, because most people do not really like to acknowledge that problems like this exist. The problem is that trash does not disappear (1:02). It is there, and it is not going away.

       Zizek seems very passionate about this subject, and that is what makes the videos easier to watch. He refers to the phrase “temptation of meaning.” Zizek states “one of the elementary ecological mechanisms I claim what I call temptation of meaning. When something horrible happens, our spontaneous tendencies search for a meaning, it must mean something.” (1:38). I agree 100 percent with this claim Zizek makes. It is true that when something bad happens, people always look for an answer as to why it happened, or what did they do to deserve this. No one really accepts what happens, and sometimes it can be hard, but people always look for answers. Tying that into nature, when something bad happens in the environment, people often ask “why did this happen?” And in nature, most incidents are because of humans. Zizek makes a point that “nature is a perfect thing, disturbed by humans.” (3:30). Again, I agree because I know that I am guilty. I do not purposely go out and start wildfires, but there is the occasionally flower picking, or in the woods, breaking off a branch because why not? People get so worried and want to take action about global warming and air pollution, but they do not realize that it them causing these problems to the environment.

       People in the United States waste a lot of materials whether it be food, clothes, etc. I find it funny that Zizek makes a sort of joke towards that. He states “you can have half of a hamburger, some of a cheese sandwich, you can have a muffin, and some juice.” (4:52). I found this humorous because he shows a fridge in the dumpster area and there is still food in it, which shows clearly that people waste food.

       Zizek is very passionate about ecology and the environment, and so should we. This is the world we live in, and if we want it to last, we have to take care of it. Recycling is something that has become popular, but people still do not recycle. Taking action to get more recycling bins and more recycling options is a step forward to help make our world last.