Seeing Green

I started this blog after realizing that facebook is probably not the most appropriate place to discuss serious intellectual matters. As Lorraine puts it, "it's just a really advanced photo-tagging program". I also have recently realized that google is the greatest thing bestowed on mankind after wikipedia.


A few years ago, August 1999, I started high school at Westminster Academy in Ft Lauderdale, Florida USA. My first class of the day was Mr. Matthews ancient civilization class (9th grade history). It wasn't until 8 years later that I realized what an impact this class would have on how I would look at the world. I'm not sure whether it is because I have always had an interest in history, sociology and anthropology, or if this class was actually what initiated my interest. What I do know, is that there is hardly any other single class I have taken in my entire education which I remember so vividly, and can recite verbatim as though it was yesterday.


In the very first few classes Mr. Matthews explained to us the concept of history, and how we fit into the entire historical context of human existence. The world, and humanity has existed and is likely to continue to exist for a very long time. Our life as individuals compared to this very long period of time is more like a blink than the word lifetime usually implies. When we are gone, we will return to dust, and will cease to impact the environment around us. The only way to ensure that any part of who we are as individuals will survive beyond our death is to write it down.

All we have to discover about the lives of pre-historic man is his bones, tools, and pottery. Although anthropologists have been able to determine a lot from this limited amount of information, there are some aspects of his life we can never know. What did he like to do for fun? What did he fear? Who did he love? What was important to him in his life (other than not dying)?


Mr. Matthews statements on history motivated me to begin writing down details of my experience in high school that I felt could not be determined by any other means. I thought about what kinds of details and experiences I would want to read about if I could read the journal entries of a distant relative in the 15th century. 500 years from now what will people reading what I record want to hear? What will I want to tell them?


My experience from that moment until now has been unique, in the same way that everyone's life story is unique. From that point I spent 4 more years in Ft Lauderdale , and then proceeded to spend 9 months in Atlanta, GA, 1 month in Masan, South Korea, 6 months in Houston, TX, 5 months in Hong Kong, 2 months in Houston, 4 months in Atlanta, 4 months in Midland, TX, 3 months in Metz, France, 4 months in Baytown, TX, 5 months in Singapore, 3 months in Atlanta, 4 months in Singapore, where I am presently. Not included are the many stop overs and short trips in between which would be much to cumbersome to list in this post.

Going through this experience has had an enormous impact on how I view the world. When an individual goes through changes in their environment, there is a degree of shock, and adaptation to the changes. In the beginning I went through my experience always comparing the changes to some reference, South Florida, my "home" at the time. Then in the next move I would begin comparing the new experience to the previous residence, and "home". Over time, all of these references became blurred by their complex shared similarities and th e experiences began to fuse together in my mind as one. Eventually, the concept of "home" was finally questioned altogether. For my personal journey, I have developed a much more complex understanding of these places, and of the world in general. I see the world as one large complicated family, going through life in much the same way, facing the same challenges, but with a slightly unique perspective for each individual. nations, races, religions, preach that discrete groups of individuals share a common exclusive experience which is completely different from individuals in other groups. Through my experience I have seen that the picture is incredibly more complicated than that, and at the same time remarkably more simple.

If someone sits you down and puts you in front of a yellow wall, you will adjust to the yellow, and your experience of other colors is inconceivable because everything in front of you is only yellow. If suddenly a blue curtain falls down in front of your wall, your senses will suddenly experience shock. Your fresh memory of yellow is contrasted with your new experience of reality, which is now blue. Slowly you adjust to blue, and the distant memory of yellow slowly fades. Your reality is now blue, and you cannot imagine experiencing the wall as anything other than blue. If then you are shown yellow again, the two will exist in your consciousness together, instead of just yellow, or just blue. If the curtain is somehow able to be revealed and concealed over and over again at a rapid enough pace, eventually you will no longer be able to distinguish yellow, or blue. You will begin to see a new color which does not exist at all in either the blue or the yellow. At some point, you will see green.

I want to tell the world to see green.