A Child's Imagination

As a child I had quite a large imagination. In fact, I can safely say that my imagination is larger than the imagination of anyone I know, which possibly explains my mild paranoia, my fear of the dark and my fear of some toilets.

But as a child with a large imagination, and as a current young-adult living with the continuum of this enlarged imagination, I know that without it the world would appear dull to me. My imagination keeps me entertained, even if most of the time it frightens me to the extent beyond where scary movies attempt to reach. My imagination has also assisted me thoroughly in my educative journey.

Had I not been an imaginative individual, I doubt my creativity would be at the level that it currently sits. In a split second, I can think of things that most of my fellow classmates deem 'strange', 'unusual' or 'weird'. But just like the way I have, they soon succumb to the fact that my ideas are not as repulsive as they claim them to be, rather they ignite the spark which hones in all attention that is otherwise rather difficult to acquire.

Straying from my imagination's aiding in my academic progress, if you have watched the newly viral video shown above, you will understand the reason as to why I found it necessary to speak of this incident that has brought forth immediate reactions based on hilarity. The video above shows a toddler reacting rather heavily at the fact that his father caught his nose, or caught his ear. Some may view his reactions far-fetched, exaggerated, yet I view his reactions as an early sign of high intelligence later in life. This toddler can see things that others cannot, and indeed, his father is laughing at him now, however I am predicting that this child is no laughing stock in his future.

Critical awareness only benefits humans later in life, when they disperse away into realism from living a life circulated around imaginative thinking. If one cannot start at the realm of imaginative thinking, then when they reach the realm of critical awareness they will suffer and fail to be as critical as academia requires. Differentiating from my sister, who unfortunately does not share my wild mind, per se, and differentiating from most of my peers, I have found this to be somewhat true.

Imaginative thinking should be encouraged more in the education system, for I believe it plays a role of large importance, larger than that of critical awareness. This child is an example of the strength of the mind and how it alters perception so as to allow him to believe that his ears and nose are detachable. 

"I Trust Science, not Miracles!" How L'oréal is Pushing Scientology to Promote its Latest Product

The movie starring Tom Cruise, Knight and Day is on television at the moment. I am sitting with my mother and father watching it whilst peeling an orange, being mindful to peel each white bit away until all I am left with is a crisp, round bright orange fruit. My night has been quite simple thus far, until the movie was halted to make way for the advertisements scheduled to come on and a lady advertising a new L'oréal hair dye appears on the television screen and says that she trusts "science, not miracles!"

My parents, having been born in Lebanon, are still not accustomed to the undertones in advertisements, thus they had not reacted the way I had, leading me to write this. What I heard in an advertisement that was meant to be about cosmetics was a stab at religions which follow God or Jesus or both or neither while glorifying the benefits of Scientology, a religion that of course Tom Cruise is an advocate of. In those allegedly innocent five words targeted towards a larger sale of a mere hair dye made by the already successful L'oréal, a meaning of larger proportions was released - was it coincidental that this advertisement was continuously played in each ad-break for a movie starring Tom Cruise? I think not. Why would a large French cosmetic company with a reputable name and an outstanding net income of over forty-four billion Australian dollars to this day pay for a mere slot at around midnight on Australian television when most potential buyers of this beauty product would be asleep when they could easily afford an advertising slot at a more successful hour? 

Upon looking for links between Scientology and France I only found that in 2012 France sued Scientology for fraud. The fact that a French product is possibly aiming to push for Scientology in the act of subliminal advertising messages is quite possible, because a lot can change in two years, and while France simply believes that Scientology is a cult and considering the French government has adopted a strong legislation against cults, I do not believe that there is not one person within the French government who believes in Scientology, or at least one person in the head of L'oréal. This advertisement is too casually subliminal to not have somebody behind its cunningness. 

This entire cunningness is worrying to me not only because my parents are not accustomed to English enough to think critically but those accustomed to English like my sister who cannot think critically and do not have a background in some general knowledge would, and did, completely ignore the message being sent out in that seemingly innocent beauty advertisement. The outward public demeaning of religions is unacceptable. There are twenty-one religions in the world today, demeaning all twenty-one of these would call for even more wars than we have had. Although the availability of religion may offend free thinkers and scientists, the proper way to approach the stating of one's beliefs is to do it in a blatantly obvious manner, so that one may decide for themselves whether they do or do not agree to what one is preaching. 

My parents, for instance, had no way of defending their opinions from the opinions of the cunning Scientologists behind this L'oréal advertisement. Everyone should indeed have a freedom of opinion, in the same way that I have opinions about why I partially follow Christianity, however I do not use my opinions to demean others. I also do not subtly state them - I either state them in discussions or do not state them at all. While Andie MacDowell, the lady in that L'oréal advertisement does not, according to my quick browsing within Google, appear to be a Scientologist, I am standing by my claim that she might be part of Scientology, otherwise she would have noticed that what she was saying in that advertisement is demeaning all religions except for Scientology. 

Reddit has seen my point, but has made the link from L'oréal to Atheism. I moreso see it linking to Scientology, especially considering the advertisement itself and Tom Cruise were on in the same timeframe. I could be overthinking some coincidence but the way I see it is that it is no coincidence at all. At a time where younger generations are being told to think more critically, Scientology has taken the leap to above and beyond the movie industry to try to convince firstly buyers of cosmetics to place no belief in any miracles. I am glad that that advertisement came on tonight and that I could it red-handed, per se, because after pointing out my interpretation to my parents and my sister I could see them thinking twice in their expressions. 

I think that in order to live harmoniously subliminal messages should cease to exist unless they are presented in satirical instances such as a comedy act wherein the receiver of the messages presented is aware that what they are being exposed to is a cunning opinion and that they also have the ability to withhold their own. 






References

Reddit post:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/13dpqh/loreal_gets_it/]

Number of religions:
[https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1005120500015]

Scientology status by country:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_status_by_country]

Scientology news (article about France suing Scientology):
[http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/france/120202/france-labels-scientology-business-not-church]

L'oréal's net income:
[http://www.4-traders.com/LOREAL-4666/financials/]

Cluttered Desks for Authenticity

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

― Albert Einstein

 

For as long as I can remember, I have had a messy side of things – things, because I share things with my sister such as our bedroom, our bedside tables, our closets, and most importantly, our desk. Consider it a form of segregation, which also happens in the backseat of any car – I on the left, and her on the right, always.

My side of the desk has, for as long as we have had a desk, been cluttered. It has been vandalized, chipped into pasted on, blu-tacked and covered in all sorts of pens, accessories, papers, newspaper clippings and notes. Quite recently, it has been home for educational resources, and a photoshopped image of myself standing beside Jack Black. Below Mister Jack Black and I, an illegal green laser, a pair of sunglasses, a glue stick, a Jagermeister collector’s tin with over fifty HB pencils in them, a Harry Potter wand and an X-acto blade, headphones, and Lord knows what else is hidden near or underneath these things.

I have always had a cluttered desk. I would not, however, call it ‘messy’, nor ‘untidy’, nor ‘dirty’. It is certainly not smelly, nor is it sticky, nor will you end up having eraser pieces on your elbows if you sat there for a while. It simply is a home to all my collectibles, all my academic sources and all of my miniscule to-do-lists and not so miniscule booklist. It is now five pages strong, that booklist, and there is more ink than white on those five pages, an ever-growing list of books that I want to own and read.

I got to thinking, though, that perhaps there is a sense of authenticity in a cluttered desk, that mess is more than just junk, that mess implies a want for learning, a display of critical awareness. Like the above quote by Albert Einstein, what does an empty, rather tidy desk signify? To me, a tidy desk signifies the mind of a person who collects bits and pieces from Officeworks, displaying a sense of ownership over a piece of wood and a few journals, and nothing else. Those journals may not ever be written in. Those journals may end up being eaten by the owner’s cat, or dog.

I have thus come to a hypothesis, if you like, wherein I believe that a person whose desk is overly tidy has no room for a cluttered mind, for cluttered thinking, for thinking which suggests thinking itself, rather they look at things in a simplistic manner – whereas a person with a cluttered desk can stand the strains of cluttered thinking, resulting in a new form of organization that spawns from what ‘simple’ people view as ‘mess’.

I am by all means not intending to demean or offend those who have a nicely cluttered mind and a very tidy desk – if that is the way that you happen to operate whilst critically thinking, then I by no means commend you. But I am demeaning those who put on an act by purchasing a great desk and keeping it looking like it was the day that they had bought it because they never actually used it. I am simply seeing this occurrence through my own perspective, through a lens I have finessed to the extent where I start to hypothesize in the absence of beakers and chemical equations because I had never quite cluttered up my imaginary science desk, per se.

Perhaps I have scraped the surface of something that someone will now take with them and excavate, or perhaps I have just made you feel as though I am a horrible demeaning person. I beg to differ, though. I am just exploring an observation made by myself. My sister’s side of the desk is quite tidy, and not as cluttered, and her mind cannot formulate the things that I can, at the level that I can, hence I saw it appropriate to hypothesize in this manner.

For years, the books I collected would stay in mint condition because I saw them as collectibles rather than ‘use-ables’. I would look at them with pride as they were locked away safely in storage, and I would cringe at the touching of them by others. Now, I feel differently towards new books. Now, when I see a book, if it looks brand new then I think that it has not been delved into at a proper level enough to allow one to fully comprehend it, whereas if there is a book with crumpled paged, a lined spine, and a curved front or back cover, then I know that it has been read the way it was meant to by the reader, and that it was used for its purpose.

I suppose that is the same idea that I am trying to get to with my desk hypothesis. A cluttered desk means a cluttered mind, and neither of those things while cluttered are cluttered in the negative sense, rather in the positive sense.