Black Lives Matter

so much is happening in the U.S. right now & it's absolutely heartbreaking. every injustice, every death, every video, every missing person, every hurting family—it makes me so sad, so frustrated, so furious. i am not a super outspoken person; i am quiet, a peace-maker, someone who tries to live in love & kindness, and i don't believe in anger or violence. however, i DO have opinions, i do have a stance, & i do feel angry. i'm not gonna pretend i'm the most "woke" & educated person on all social injustices but i'm not blind to racism, privilege, stupidity, corruption, etc. so i cannot stay silent. 

black lives matter. white privilege exists. we should be allies. black people need justice. all lives matter is not a thing. blue lives matter is not a thing. yes everyone's life matters. but y'all don't seem to think black lives do. that's why BLM exists. yes cops are people too. but no one's skin color is blue. they're not friggin' smurfs. they chose their profession. black people don't choose the color of their skin. yes there are good cops. but cops are still killing black people & getting away with it. they're escalating protests, hurting innocent & peaceful people, & using excessive force. their "non-lethal" crowd-control tactics are killing, are hurting, ARE lethal.

i have honestly been so overwhelmed by everything that has been happening. i go into a spiral on twitter looking at all the posts, all the news, all the videos, and all the comments to try to discern what's fake news, who's really instigating, if the police are justified in their actions (& so far i have not seen an instance in which they were). my heart breaks every time.

i don't have the words that can explain how i'm feeling, how black people feel, how everyone is feeling. i've seen & shared so many posts in the last few days so i gathered some in hopes that other people's words & posts are most eloquent than mine

On the protests/BLM/racism

On race being a "political opinion"

On "ALL LIVES MATTER"

On the sudden amount of racism

On our "leadership"

On privilege

On religion

On calling protestors "anti-military"

On civilian and police relations

What Is The Secret Of Happiness? | The School of Jessica Kellgren-Fozard

The Science of Well-being | Intro & Misconceptions about Happiness

G.I. Joe Fallacy

• Mistaken idea that knowing is half the battle
• Knowing something is not enough to actually change your behavior
• If we really want to change our behavior, we have to change habits

Savoring

• Act of stepping outside of an experience to review and appreciate it
• Intensifies and lengthens the positive emotions that come with doing something you love
• Boosts our mood:

1. make us remember the good things in life
2. helps thwart mind wandering, keeps us in the moment
3. helps increase gratitude

• Practice the art of savoring by picking one experience to truly savor each day

-Ex. nice shower, a delicious meal, a great walk outside, etc.
-Enhance savoring: sharing the experience with another person, thinking about how lucky you are to enjoy such an amazing moment, keeping a souvenir or photo of that activity, and making sure you stay in the present moment the entire time
-Make a note of what you savored

Gratitude 

• Positive emotional state in which one recognizes and appreciates what one has received in life
• Benefits:

1. increases mood
2. lower stress levels
3. strengthens immune system
4. lower blood pressure
5. stronger social connection 

• Take 5-10 minutes each night to write down five things for which you are grateful

-Revise and reconsider goals and aspirations that will not lead to improved well-being
-Practice savoring and gratitude every day for at least one week

Things we think will make us happy (but don't)

• Understand that simply knowing is not enough to change behavior
• Examples of what things won’t make you as happy as you think they will

Jobs

• what we think we need actually jumps up every time we get more
• this is a problem for kind of finding a good job that's going to give us a good salary

Money

• psychological wealth is not financial wealth
• Ed Diener's studies look at what the correlation is between your income and life satisfaction

-poor nation: true that as your income goes up, your life satisfaction goes up
-presumably if you're super poor, you're not actually getting your even basic needs met
-wealthy nation: not really seeing any correlation

• David Myers: "Compared with their grandparents, today's young adults have grown up with much more affluence, slightly less happiness and in fact a much greater risk of depression and all kinds of social pathology."
• Emotional well-being rises with your income but stops after $75,000. Why $75,000? Not really clear but they know that's kind of a plausible number at which you think money's not an issue
• Life Evaluation: "Imagine you could evaluate your life on a ladder numbered from 0 to 10 and the bottom is the worst possible life and the top is the best." Where do you put yourself on this ladder? What's your perspective on your own life? Not, are you actually happier, actually blue, actually stressed, but your own vision of your own life
• Even though our emotional well-being isn't going up after $75,000, we think our own evaluation of our own life is going up
• Mismatch between how we're actually feeling & how we're evaluating our real life
• high income doesn't actually mean happiness but it kind of makes you think that you must have a life that's happier when you're like, "I make $200,000. " When you think of that, you're like, "I must have a really good life" even though it's not actually translating to

Awesome Stuff

• Folks in the 1940's didn't have half the awesome stuff that we buy to make our lives happier
• science is learning is that thinking about stuff, kind of being materialistic, wanting stuff, and sort of striving to get it seems to actually make us worse off than we would be at baseline
• materialist attitudes that wanted stuff had lower life satisfaction than non-materialists

True Love

• certain number of people got married & they got asked are those married folks happier than the non-married folks? if they are happier, how long does it last? 
• married people are in fact happier in that first year or two. there is this honeymoon effect where you report being happier. but sadly, after that, it goes back to baseline

Perfect Body

• folks that lose weight, folks that are stable on their weight, & folks that gain weight—at baseline, they're about the same, but four years later, the folks that lost weight are actually in the worst category
• they're the ones reporting the most depressed mood & it's almost like double the kinds of depressed mood that we see in other folks
• people who'd eventually get cosmetic surgery were already worse than other folks
• does beauty really make us happy? do these changes in beauty we think are going to make us happy, like losing weight, or changing our hair, do they make us happy?
• these extreme changes in our looks or maybe even having these looks goals at all seems to actually reduce our well being

Good Grades

• getting a grade higher than you expected is way less high on a happy scale than you expect
• you're still kind of mostly happy, but not as good as you expect, not really any different from getting what you expected on getting 
• getting lower than you expect is way better than predicted, it's not actually going to affect your happiness that much

Why we have misconceptions

• How much do genes and life circumstances play into happiness?

-50% genetic set point for happiness
-10% effected by life circumstances
-40% controlled by actions, intentions, habits that people bring in

• We can work hard to be happier. The problem is that we are working towards the wrong things.
• The mind all the time is delivering to us these intuitions about what's going to make us happy, what's correct, etc. with full force, like that's the right answer, but it is just wrong.
• In the 1940's, people aren't seeing commercials and advertisements for things on TV and on the Internet in nearly the same way as now. all those things seep in, pushes material culture

Sometimes, the things that our brain are telling us to do are either not true or lead us astray. How do we deal with that? Mindfulness and mindful noting of different thoughts. These things that you have these cravings for are really just thoughts. Thinking of them as such can cause you to take a step back & really look at whether those things are helping you.

Introduction to Visual Studies: Fantastic Art

Fantastic Art

• one of the major art movements of 20th century
• radical, reactionary, controversial, challenged what constituted as art
• "anti-art" that gave rise to exploration of subconscious mind & other-worldly senses
• explores the absurd, bizarre, imaginary, whimsical, grotesque, etc.
• examination of "the other" challenges idea of abnormality

History

• originated in 1916 as reaction to WWI & coming to a close before end of WWII in 1940
• stressed growing interest in alternate way of living/thinking as a way to counter destruction of war & threat of developing technology
• threatened by Futurism which embraced technology, speed, machines, violence

-Fantastic artists felt robbed of their individuality
-needed to save it through personal interpretations of imagination, emotion, instinct 

Fantastic art has 2 unique styles

Dadaism (1916–1923)

• Zurich, Switzerland, reaction to WWI
• artists denied conventions of world, opposed accepted norms
• promoted absurdity, nihilism, irrationality
• called for deliberate chaos & randomness to reflect senselessness of war
• strove to stop violence as well as traditional art/culture through radical creations & behavior
• anti-art: stood against things that were beautiful
• called for rebellion against society's principles which were believed to contribute to the war
• explored the naive or childlike nature of art

Surrealism (1924)

• grew out of the chaos & nihilism of dada --> interest in dream world
• explored realm of imaginary & unreal
• explored states of unconscious mind 
• artworks were more positive in content & purpose
• reaction to war: encouraged people to cure themselves by tapping into unconsciousness
• psychoanalysis
• union of conscious & subconscious coexisting
• "pure psychic automatism...an attempt is made to express...the true functioning of thought"
• embraced chance, juxtaposition of ideas, forms, & meanings

Independent Artists did not want to adopt an art movement's goals or affiliations

• portrayed what they found meaningful & important
• inspiration stemmed from imagination, private dreams, memories, experiences

-Henry Rousseau

• inspired by nature & belief in ghosts
• supernatural, haunting, theatrical iconography

-Marc Chagall

• based work on memories of his native village
• paintings were poetic & nostalgic representations of his past
• people/animals defying proportion & gravity
• influenced by expressionist & cubist movements
• refused to analyze meaning of his images, viewed them as presentations of self

-Giorgio de Chirico

• most influence on surrealism
• troubling, bizarre, disturbing imagery
• reflect mood of the time characterized by social, political,  economic, industrial change
• metaphysical paintings w symbols of ancient antiquity & modern invention
• revealed a way of creating an alternate world by combining familiar & strange images

Human Emotion: Emotion Elicitation

Emotion processes

Reactivity: type/magnitude/duration of response to internal/external environment & have significance for personal goals

Regulation: processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have/how they experience & express them

Understanding: knowledge about whether we or other people are experiencing emotions (can we accurately detect them in ourselves & others)

Tools & Methods used to elicit emotions

Film Clips

• Used to elicit positive, negative, neutral feelings
• Emotion processes: reactivity, regulation, understanding 
• Advantages: good ecological validity (dynamic, socially embedded) 
• Disadvantages: require high cognitive demands (thematically complex & cannot elicit full array of emotions) 

Static photos

• IAPS (international affective picture system) or Emotional faces
• Robust elicitor of emotions
• Emotion processes: reactivity, regulation, understanding
• Advantages: low cognitive demand, low language demand
• Disadvantages: limited range of emotions, human facial expressions can be exaggerated

Relived emotions

• Recalling/trying to retrieve memories & go back in time to relive the memories as strongly as possible
• Autobiographical memories vs. Shared memories
• Emotion processes: reactivity, regulation, understanding
• Advantages: personally relevant & engaging, good ecological validity
• Disadvantages: idiographic stimuli (not standardized), high memory demand 

Dyadic Interactions

• Interactions btwn people (differences btwn who the people are)

Human Emotion: What is an emotion?

1. Emotions motivate behaviors

• Push us towards achieving goals
• Help us shy away from dangers & threats

2. Emotions are a social glue

• Bring us towards others
• Keep us in lifelong bonds 

3. Emotions are critical to our health

• Underlie our mental well-being
• Promote physical well-being

Theories of emotion

ANCIENT GREECE- sees emotion in conflict w reason & rationality
Hippocrates: 4 humors (need a balance of all 4)

1. Black bile 
2. Yellow bile
3. Phlegm
4. Blood

Aristotle: Moderation principles
    Finding a balance, not having too much or too little emotion


ENLIGHTENMENT- thought more about what an emotion really is
Decartes

• taxonomy of emotions
• text: Passions of the soul- description of bodily causes, effects, functions

Spinoza
Hume
Darwin

• evolutionary approach
• emotions weren’t irrational but served a survival purpose
• emotions evolved & were not specific to humans

William James: father of psychology

• emotions are secondary to physiological phenomenon
• Stimulus —> physiological response —> emotion
• Ex. Snake —> heart racing —> fear

Cannon-Bard:

• Physiological responses alone cannot explain emotion, they’re too slow
• Stimulus (snake)—> subcortical brain interaction (registering what's happening)—> simultaneous of physiological response & experience/subjective quality of fear

Schacter-Singer: 2 factor theory of emotion

• Appraisal of physiological experiences defines & determines emotional response
• Physiological reaction —> Cognitive evaluation —> Emotion
• Ex. Stage 1: Snake —> Physiological —> Stage 2: Cognitive Elaboration (way you think about what the physiological approach means) —> fear

Lazarus: Cognitive theory: cognition necessary for emotions to occur

• Ex. Snake —> Cognitive thoughts about it —> Physiological —> Emotion
• no emotion w/o cognition

Components of Emotion

• Emotions have a valence (flavor: positive, negative, neutral)
• Have an aboutness (about something, eliciting or intentional object, trigger)
• Serve a purpose or function: vital to our survival, enables pursuit of goals
• Multi-component response

-Subjective experience
-Outward display of behavior (bodily action)
-Physiological aspects (autonomic system)

What an emotion is not

Mood: long lasting state (days, weeks, months); no eliciting object (aboutness)
Feeling: subjective representation of emotion, private experience to individual
Affect: broad, all encompassing umbrella term; refers to general topic of mood, feeling, emotion
Personality trait: stable individual difference
Cognition: do not have facial expressions, not always physiological arousal

Categories of emotion

Basic/Discrete:

• Emotions as discrete categories
• Biologically fixed, universal
• Basic emotions: anger, fear, happiness
• Complex emotions: combination of basic emotions, culturally influenced & constructed
• Theorists: Paul Ekman, Decartes, Silvan Tomkins

Dimensional:

• Combination of several psychological dimensions
• Emotional landscape map: Pleasant, Unpleasant, Anxiety, Boredom
• Wilhelm Wundt, James Russell, Lisa Feldman Barrett

sometimes my brain and my heart don't know how to talk
& my smile doesn't know how to reach my eyes
& my hands don't know how to hang on to the things
that are most important to me

sometimes my heart beats too fast in the quiet
& my brain thinks too much in the darkness
& i'm paralyzed by all the words i tell myself
when it all gets really bad

april playlist

Julia- Jeremy Zucker
Lying- PRETTYMUCH, Lil TJay
Aphrodite- RINI
Big Picture- Audrey Mika
Tell Me Why I'm Waiting- Timmies
Yellow Hearts- Ant Saunders, Audrey Mika
Hope It Hurts- Dabin, Essenger
After The Sun- RINI
Autopilot- Tiffany Day
Oceane- RINI, Olivia Escuyos
Boys Ain't S***- SAYGRACE, Tate McRae, Audrey Mika
Vulnerable- Selena Gomez
Blueberry Skies- Audrey Mika
She- Selena Gomez
Crazier Things- Chelsea Cutler
Some Kind Of Disaster- All Time Low
Meet Me In Amsterdam- RINI
My Friend- Hayley Williams 
Y U Gotta B Like That- Audrey Mika, KYLE