Sunday, November 12, 2017

where do you fall?

It has been a busy two months, flooded with robotics competitions, newspaper deadlines, and the looming thought of college applications. I often think that I spend more time contemplating a task, rather than doing it… \_=.=_/


Yesterday, I attended an event called the Social Impact Youth Summit, hosted by Gooddler at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The conference involved high schoolers across the Bay Area listening to various entrepreneurs and philanthropists speak about their work.


Though I cannot promise that every presentation kept me at the edge of my seat, I did learn that many organizations are turning away from nonprofits towards profitable businesses focused on social impact. Their reasons mainly center on the fact that nonprofits are constantly in search of money, impeding its ability to work, eventually beginning the entire cycle once again when a similar nonprofit takes the place of the failed predecessor. Another talk focused on the second tier disaster that is organizing donations at relief stations, as many of the items are not applicable and simply stored in warehouses for many years. Images of crates of untouched bottled water and bags of clothing, strewn across towns hit by natural disasters, highlight the inefficient management of in-kind donations, and the public’s use of relief drives as garage cleaning opportunities.


The following presentations covered the fostering of empathy through VR, as well as the practice of using gold particles in the bloodstream to determine the precise location of cancer tumors. The conference wrapped up with a talk from a woman whose business was inspired by following cows around in India. She saw how villagers, isolated by hours from the nearest city, were held back from the improvement of their lives. Yet the belief that education and technology is the panacea for poverty did not fit the villagers, despite the iconic image of human evolution stemming from a hunched ape, to a bipedal man, and now, to a man once again hunched -over a computer. Technology as an enabler, not the solution, was the root of her business, which connected the indigenous art produced by the villagers in India, to stock image libraries, where purchases of their patterns and designs for clothing, website templates, and other mediums would produce a recurring source of income.


Her argument made sense, as the world obviously cannot be lifted out of poverty by turning everyone into an app developer. Merging existing assets and complementing them with technology proved to be her social impact.


Overall, the conference had me confuzzled at the true purpose of social organizations, which aimed to help others, but ultimately had to help the organizers to some extent as well, whether it meant turning into a profitable business or getting rid of a few extra sweaters. As Professor Ananya Roy put it, charitable deeds ultimately fall somewhere between the “hubris of benevolence and the paralysis of cynicism.” You feel the need to “do something”, but for whose benefit? (Ack, don’t slide into the cynicism).

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Anywho, aside from writing this to procrastinate college apps, I read a blog that really resonated with my current mood. Plus, the author is a super amazing student who studies robotics, has insightful worldviews, and blogs more often than I do despite being in college (shame on me ;-;).


What happens when you hit a slump, not necessarily a burn out, but a loss in energy after working consistently for so long towards something? And when that milestone is reached, whether it is successfully passed or failed, where does new energy come to continue the motions? Life almost feels like treading water, where a cease in action would mean sinking, but even the hardest kicking will not make you fly above.


Aside from the the feeling of hitting the ceiling (or I guess bobbing on the water surface), the blogger also explains the nuances of emotions felt as an adult, as opposed to a child. It made sense how a child has a concrete reason for happiness or sadness (usually a birthday gift, or a dropped ice cream cone), while it is harder to justify or identify the cause of emotions felt from an older person.


At times, despite studying subjects I like, running activities that are enjoyable, or even hanging out with friends, there are inexplicable sessions of sadness, or disconnection. While thankfully temporary, these moments are impossible to pinpoint a cause or end of. Perhaps a chronic lack of sleep is a factor for random moments of listlessness and existentialism. Tying back to the social impact summit event above, what impact can truly be made by working crazy hard towards a goal that is ultimately burdened with external conditions?


But even mentioning dissatisfaction comes with the guilty thoughts of being privileged and therefore undeserving of sad emotions. I know that one can only live relative to her own experiences, but making comparisons become almost unavoidable once you lift your head to mass shootings, climate disasters, and general the-world-is-really-terrible-sometimes sentiments.


I don’t really expect to have an answer, or for someone else to. But it is comforting to know that feeling alone or helpless is not necessarily an isolated feeling. So if you have time, take a nap, write a blog post, and share the feeling of confuzzled dependency on circumstances with someone. Then get back to work :)

I do not have a spinny desk chair :/