looking for a talent: Finally Sucessful

      This is my final response to the book Be Different. In the end of the book he primarily talks about finding your voice or talents. In this whole book i've reconized that the author has been keeping up with the topic of how Asperger syndrome can really make your life a very hard one to live. He talks about how it can create a social barrier in you and can almost ruin your chances of people liking you whether its friends or girlfriends.This dramatically changes in the chapter i have reached where his focus is mainly on finding your talents. In a sense where moving from negative numbers to positive ones. I think that he is sort of finally revealing to the audience (reader) that you still can become successful if you have Asperger syndrome. Without telling us he is giving us hope that if we know someone or even are someone with this syndrome we can make a change.


      In the last pages of the book, he really elaborates on his abilities rather than his defects. He goes on to tell us about his success with a band and finally getting a girlfriend.Like i mentioned I think that he really does a great job with making the reader not feel like there under the water from all these defects that Aspergers are faced with.In one line he states "I was a loner when it came to creating my designs but i was a team player when it came to designing them". I think that this line shows that he really has realized the importance of other people. I think that he sees the world now in more of a technical way. Instead of seeing people like other living beings that disagree with him and make fun of his ways he now sees them as a way of extending his interests and helping him to create his ideas. Some people might call this selfish but i wouldn't agree. This jump to finally relating to people is so large that i would credit it as a success.




         All in all Seth Godin has done a great job of introducing all the conflicts in this book and then slowly fading out of them and fading into successes. Instead of overwhelming the reader with all the bad things he does a really nice job of evening it out to the good things of Asperger syndrome.  This has been a really great book for me because now I can see a whole new other way of thinking that takes place in the mind of an aspergian.(someone with asbergers). If i ever come to meet someone with this syndrome (which i probably will) this book will really help me to understand their cause a little more.

The Potato Eaters

I would recommend zooming in to see all the small but big important details. (Look at Faces)
        
       I really don't know why I like this poem so much. When I look at it I just can find a way to take my eyes of this thought provoking work of art. Maybe it's the lighting or the facial expressions of the people. Maybe I  will never know. Anyways all in all I definitely think this painting should get noticed so i'm including it in this blog post.In the painting portrayed named "The Potato Eaters"(by Vincent Van Gogh) 5 old ragged tired looking people crowd around a table. One lady on the right pours something that looks like coffee as two other people on the far left share a small plate of potatoes.All of the people look very famished and struck in the depths of poverty. At the top of the painting one stray light hangs aluminizing the table . From the men and women's hats I predict that it takes place some time in the 1700s in England. At first I couldn't think of any observations good enough to match this very sophisticated poem. After some thinking I came to my theory.This is that the lighting in the painting is part of the reason that this painting is such a good looking and intriguing piece.It really helps us to infer a lot about the painting and just make us want to think about the picture. Without it this painting would look like a simple work of art.



       When I say lighting I don't just mean the light itself. I mean all the different elements of lighting such as the shadows on the small walls and the dark spots on the peoples faces. I think that even the lamp hanging from the ceiling and barely lighting the table has lots of significance. The dark spots on the peoples faces lead us to think that they are tired. Maybe we could even go further and infer that these people are peasants that do hard work throughout the day. From there dark bony hands we could infer that they do there work mainly with their hands. The fact that the they only have one light which hardly lights their house could lead us to think that they can't afford another light because of their wages from their job. The lack of color in their clothes could lead us to think that they either didn't have access to other colored clothes or couldn't afford it. The overall darkness in this painting even sets the main, depressing, sad mood showcased.


     All in all this picture really does it's job.Whether it's supposed to inspire, or just press thought into someone it succeeds. In my opinion if a painting changes someone than it's doing it's job. This poem is doing exactly this. I could really connect this paintings characters to myself (sometimes). These people look like they are just waiting for something better to begin. I feel the same way sometimes when i'm in a bad mood or just sad overall. I get over it but I don't if these people ever would. These feelings that I share with this picture are definitely also shared in society. Anyway this is a great painting  and should be seen by everyone. Good job Van Gogh.


        

ALL Star Mentor goes to MATISSE

                     After reading Matisse's blog post Peak i've decided that he should me my mentor. His writing exemplifies the good writing habits that we have been talking about this whole year. For example he crafts thought provoking concepts and puts them in his first paragraph. He also does a great job at turning the blog post into a personal level by making many self to book connections. Including all this he gives a great summary to help explain/support his concept. All in all he has done a great job. Good job so far and keep it up.

The mind of an aspergian socially

          You walk up to your best friend very angry with your test grade. An F. You know your parents are going to be very angry and even you are really mad at yourself. You come up to him scowling all over with your eyebrows pushed down in anger. Im so angry you mutter to him as you pass him by. He glimpses back at you for a second and asks why. You reply  "I got a stupid F on my test and my parents are going to kill me". He starts to smile on the corner of his face and as he turns to look at you it gets broader and broader. For a second you wonder why he's smiling but the next thing you know you're covered with anger. "WHATS YOUR PROBLEM" you yell at him as you walk away in anger. Sadly this interaction is happening without people having the knowledge about people diagnosed with Aspergers and stopping it in it's tracks. The truth is the person who would smile in this situation with asperger syndrome is doing nothing wrong and just simply acting on his brains judgement. Because Asperger syndrome effects the way people think this choice of smiling in this situation would be totally normal to them and has deeper meaning.

             In the situation I described instead of the aspergian just acting rude or mean they really are almost doing the opposite but the normal world can't seem to figure that out. In this situation like the one i read in my book the person may just be smiling because they are happy that there friend isn't mad at them and is  just mad at school. The aspergian is honestly just worried about their friendship with the person. The book goes on to tell me (which you probably can infer by now) that Aspergians (people diagnosed with Asbergers) have a very hard time reacting well to and noticing small emotions. As quoted in the book "I knew enough to run if a guy came yelling and screaming at me with a baseball bat but a girl with a subtle expression on her face...as she smiling at me? Laughing?Quizzical and curios?.I had no idea" on page 99.

             All in all I find this type of thinking very interesting. I think it's very important to know all this stuff if you know someone barely or even have a friend diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. I think that this way of thinking even helps me "understand" my parents a little better even though they definitely don't have this syndrome. I hope that someday everyone will come to understand that we all react differently to things being introduced to us. People should know not to get angry or even creeped out if someone acts differently than we expected because we are all different inside.

           

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Be different No really be unique Blog post

              Im currently re reading a book called Be Different by John Elder Robins.  Even at my first pages of this book i'm already immersed into a complex way of thinking that is very amazing to me. I feel like I need to give a brief introduction about the book so I will continue to do that. Basically the book is about the life of a person that has and is diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. For a quick explanation Asperger's effect's your brain by making you think much differently. For example someone with Asperger's might find solving math problems and finding theories very easy because there brain works more systematically almost like a robot. In a sense the brain want's to find the rule for solving an equation (life or math) and then finds the answer and moves on. All this may seem like a lot of great traits to have but it comes in a bundle with some other bad traits. Some of these problems associated with this syndrome can be having a very hard time with socializing whether it involves talking to a friend or asking out a girl etc etc. Be different goes very closely into the positive traits of Asperger's syndrome.
          
    
           I really want to go into the topic of the positive traits of Asperger's.  Like i mentioned before Asperger's syndrome can really corrupt your social life but it can also enhance other things. The author explained that he had an incredibly hard time socializing with his classmates for along time. He also was very rude at times to other's because the different brain type he had. He recalled on one chapter that he started getting happy when someone came up to him looking sad and said that there grandfather had died. His reasoning was that he didn't want the person to be sad and he was happy because he was glad tht the person wasn't mad at him. Event's like this would happen to him all the time and yet in his later years he managed to save someone from a burning car with a second's reaction and tie a tourniquet to save the person from bleeding.


           I can kind of connect with this type of thinking because my grandfather and possibly my dad have Asperger's. I might even have a small case of it myself. This book has really kind of helped me to help understand my grandfathers and dad's behavior. They anger me a lot sometimes but know I can really help understand where they are coming from. As much as they might act very different sometimes they honestly are just going along with there differently developed brain. I now know that some of the smartest people in the world have this syndrome and if i do have it im proud too have it.

The Gift Conspiracy of society

Im still currently reading Linchpins by Seth Godin and I have come to the end of the book. This part of the book is mainly on gifts. This may seem like an unrelated topic for this book but really its not as your about to read.A gift can range from a christmas present to holding the door for someone to spending extra hours for someone. As defined in the book a gift is something extra you do for someone without expecting something else from someone. As the book goes on to tell you is that gifts a long time ago where a way showing your wealth without wanting something in return. During caveman times as stated in the book the rich people would give lots of gifts to everyone. Now in society we are much different we expect something in return for our gifts and we don't give gifts as much and rather wait for gifts to be given to us.We only give gifts for a "reason". We even give gifts to "show love" for someone else. I personally think that all these things are very messed up.

I want to really, first explore this concept of expecting something in return. I think that this is a very bad way of thinking about gifts. Since gifts are supposed to be something that you give without expecting anything from it giving back defeats the purpose. The gift giving than seems to almost turn into an exchange 1 dollar for four quarters, a quarter for a gumball. I can understand the feeling of wanting to give back because the gift really changed you What I really don't like and can't understand is this big problem. The big problem is that I feel like people feel like you have to give back because if you don't you will be in debt with the person. They may not even want to give a gift back but are afraid of being "in debt" of the person. The person giving the gift may not even care if they receive something else. The next thing I want to explore is only giving gifts when you have to. This is like only holding the door for someone on their birthday or only working hard for your boss on the day before your paid break. This is very bad I think also. The thing people don't tell you is that gifts are used primarily for they themselves nowadays. Not for the people they are giving it too or the store they bought it from. but them. While they are giving you for example an ipod (at least for some people) they are gifting themselves relief that there work on your behalf is over. again some people are different than this but there are numerous people that fit this category perfectly.The last thing I want to talk about is giving because you want to show your love. This definitely is an arguable matter because it can be good but in certain occasions it's bad. For example if you really don't love someone but "show your love of them" by buying them a 10,000 dollar ruby necklace, thats no way to show your love.

In conclusion gifts have really become a very unjust trend (for certain people). Even I have experienced this and can really connect with the people who have experienced it. Heres the story:My sisters friend bought my sister something without even thinking about what my sister wanted for christmas. She probably had hoped that my sister would get her something she wanted and that's just what happened.In the end sadly the people looking for an exchange win. The last thing I want to leave my reader with is the idea that gifts have become to commercial and seem to be about how much money it is. I hope that this blog post changed you in some way for good. If you want to read more about this concept may sure to read Linchpin by Seth Godin.