Better than Lebron? You decide

Zero = God ----> Faith?

The Pain Scale by Eula Biss is an essay of contemplative topics. The subject of Biss’ essay revolves around the pain scale that doctors often ask you to use to measuring your pain. The scale she argues, quantifies pain that is relatively different to each person. However, medical practitioners insist that the scale is a universal parameter. What one might consider 0 the other might consider 10. Biss believes that 0 should be the fixed point that serves as a way to quantify other degrees of pain relative to it.  Notwithstanding, the number zero is also an inaccurate number. It is a number that behaves different than the other numbers. It cannot be reliable because its behavior cannot be predicted. Furthermore, Biss compares the number zero to Christ. Thus, probably starting up a conversation about the possibility of questioning faith?

                Biss makes the argument that scales are useless. A combination of abstract concepts with quantifying measures renders scales as useless parameters.  For instance, a number (measure) plus an imaginary number (pain) do not add up (a+bi). They are merely separate principles that do not conjugate well. In addition, I hypothesize that Biss also argues how science sometimes tries to study religion.  Just like zero and pain don’t add up mathematically, neither do science nor religion. Knowledge and religion both give rise to the synchrony of the mind/body. Just as your mind tells you a different measure of pain than your body, religion to your mind might be different disregarding the knowledge that you possess of it.

Michael Pollan Why Bother

Environmental issues seem to be a thought stored in the sub consciousness of societies all over the world. Societies contemplate the complication and the risks but yet, take no action to resolve the problem. In Michael Pollan’s article Why Bother, he discusses the negligence that people have toward this issue. Pollan being one of those people that was ignorant, realized after Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth that he didn't want to change his light bulb. Pollan discusses the pros in changing your lifestyle to "green", can behoove society. While he also lists the cons of how one individual cannot subordinate their "evil twin, some carbon footprint doppelganger in Shanghai or Chongqing" (89) to do the same, you have to sometimes act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will. (90). Pollan claims that small gradual goals that include support from pinnacle hierarchical representation and money can lead to a better future and change the way we live.

Pollan main argument discusses the “disease of the modern character”-technology. Technology, because of its ability to adapt to new forms of cheaper energy, has each assigned us each a specialization or a role. It has divided us and made us more “individualistic” in a sense. Technology voids the whole idea of labor and makes people’s lives less laborious. The very thing that gave civilization its blessing, will be the one that utterly destroys it. The reasons not to bother are many and compelling, at least to the cheap-energy mind. (91) Pollan ends his argument by declaring that one person can make a difference and trigger a viral social change" (93). It only takes one movement, to create a domino effect on the block, then community, then city, and so forth up until life on Earth will change for the better.

Work Cited: Pollan, Michael. "Why Bother?" New York Times Magazine 20 Apr 2008: 19+. Rpt. in The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing. John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 6th ed. New York: Pearson, 2012. 88-94. Print.