Where joy hides and how to find it-Ingrid Fetell Lee
You can view the talk by clicking on the following link or by visiting TED.com
Where Joy hides and how to find it, this is title of the talk, and instead of approaching the topic subjectively, the Speaker forces her hidden agenda that to discover Joy, one ought see and appreciate Color and colorful things.
So if that be the case, then according to the speaker, a blind person can Never experience joy. Right!
The speaker then goes on to define the feeling of joy to be mysterious and elusive, but can be accessed through aesthetics, which the Speaker claims to have originated from the Greek word, Aisthomai, which means, “I feel”, “I sense”, “I perceive”.
This makes the adroit listener to wonder, if it is all about “I”, then what good can it bring to “us”
Elaboration of the Aisthomai concept in layman term
In other words what makes you joyful need not be the accepted universal standards, for if you were to use the physical attribute as defined by the word, then it is always about “Self” and “Self joy”.
Just take the Speaker’s examples that brings joy to her which she mentions, Vintage Yellow Car, the clever Steel art, and rose colored glasses. The question would be, how many of these would in fact trigger the feeling of joy to the layman?
How would a man or a woman who had not eaten for a couple of days react? Or the person who is living in a tent in LA, with the rain pouring down, drenching all that she has would do when she sees a vintage yellow car. What would her reactions be? will she jump in joy and dance up and down?
Honestly, none would happen, definitely not to those who are challenged either with vision issues, color issues, blindness, or with poverty and helplessness.
This is where we see the Speaker confusing her joy giving triggers to be the standard for all. We know for sure that is not true.
It is not the Colors on the Schools that matters but the education behind the walls
We see then the Speaker questioning as to why Schools ought to look like these?
In fact her objective is to ridicule as to how dull most schools are in terms of the coloring on their walls, of course everyone can see that she is trying hard to push her color agenda through.
But the answer would be, what is wrong with those walls ? After all, all these years they were like this, and they did well and fine, why would there be a sudden need to paint them with oblivion colorful foolishness?
Just for enlightenment, the purpose of a School is meant to Educate a student. The word Educate is from the Latin word, Educos, which means, to draw out from within.
In other words, all the things that are needed to be learned are latent deep in the Student and teachers and the School merely ought to provide that spark which would trigger that action.
There is a Science backing that every student is born great
Well now coming back to point, Scientifically there is this explanation how every child born is a genius.
According to the Science of Biology perspective in the beginning there is just this single cell, called the Zygote, which is formed when the spermatozoa of the man and the ovum of the woman, unites, this cell is so intelligent that it later produces 100 trillion cells, and lo and behold, we have a baby born, created with uniqueness and intricate knowledge abounding in all of its cells.
It is indeed a heartening fact that up until the age of 3, all children have their creativity at around 200% above expected standards. But by age 7, that creativity dwindles down to 30%.
Would you believe that? But that is hard fact. The reason: Children are constantly bombarded by their parents and their teachers to conform. Those that are rebellion are often punished and victimized.
In other words, with the right teachers, every student could become a Nobel laureate.
We said all that just to make a point that it is not the color or the colorful things that which the Speaker was more concerned in a school that counts or matters, but what matters is the right attitude.
If you are given the task as an architect to improve the Security of a School, then do just that
We see and hear the Speaker mentioning the Sandy Hook Elementary school, where mass shooting occurred in 2012, and according to the Speaker, the architect Svigals and partners, understood the need to create a building that is secure but wanted to create a building that was joyful, and so they filled it up with Curves.
What does this tell you? Idiosyncrasies at its heights and that Svigals and Partners ought to be sued for knowing well the importance of creating a secure building yet still prioritized individual preferences for Joy.
Again, why would this feature as an example, an architect filling up a school with Curves.What are their motives? Is it not crime to proselytize individual agendas that are scrupulously meant to cause harm to children?
Generalization and Redundancy-Not again!
The Speaker then makes a passing remark that adults who exhibit genuine joy are often dismissed a Childish. There is a big concern here for us, the concern is, The Speaker never defined joy in the first place with clarity except for the association of color with it, which any sensible thinking person would consider lame and more so, here we are seeing the use of a new term “genuine joy”, are we now to understand that Joy has different levels of differentiation, if so what they?
The talk merely has redundancy spilled all over. Upon careful observation, you will find the speaker solely identifies the intangible feeling joy to Color and colorful painted things alone and nothing else.
This is prompts us to question her latent motives. For she mentions something like this, “We all start out joyful, but being colorful opens us to judgment” how does she know that we all start out Joyful?
Is joy not an intangible feeling, which cannot be quantified? How can one individual’s joy be generalized to be the universal quantifier of the masses’ joy?
Speaker’s domain knowledge on the subject is merely restricted to the color agenda that she is holding on to promote, this is pathetic.
Two years of Scouring the world yet still the illustration given is flawed and carries serious biases
The Speaker then mentions how she spent two years scouring the world looking for different ways that people have found joy and that quest had eventually led her to the work of Arakawa and Gins.
According to the Speaker, these artists believed that these kind of Environments [according to the speaker, anything and everything which is not Colorful is unacceptable] are literally killing us and thence they went on to create an apartment building that would reverse Aging.
Incorrect citing of mentions
This is an absolute Incorrect mention of the works connecting these artists. For the benefit of the readers, Arakawa considered himself to be an “Eternal outsider”, and an “Abstractionist”, for he is a mathematician by major, and like any other mathematicians, his concepts of beauty and joy would for sure be too Abstract for the normal minds to understand and comprehend.
More so, there is nothing colorful [ according to the speaker, only those that are colorful will be considered Joyful ] in Mathematics, for this is the Factual science with Abstract leaning that can span complexly imaginative thought process beyond the reasoning of a designer major.
Now coming to Arakawa’s wife, Gins, who studied Physics and eastern philosophy, of course they did have a common ground between them in the form of Physics major, but none of their works can be attributed to “Ant-aging” as to what the Speaker is fondly mentioning about instead they had invested interests in “life span expansion”, which is altogether different from what the Speaker is aiming to mention.
Thus we see here that the Speaker draws inferences which are flawed and self-hypothesized.
Connecting Ice Cream Cone with Sprinkles with Joy-Would you believe this?
In all honestly, if joy is an intangible experience would a mere ice cream with sprinkles trigger that to you? The illustration seems so naive and deprived of a legitimate understanding and more so it is totally flawed on the part of the speaker to assume that her version of joy triggering emotions is the same across age, gender and ethnicity.
This only shows the Speaker’s limited time allotment in pursuing the Research needed for caring a talk like this.
For all practically purposes, everyone would agree with us, that neither an ice cream cone with sprinkles nor the colorful rainbow streak that the speaker quite often mentions will trigger a jot of joy to the majority.
Most are fed up of the rainbow color and consider it to be too much of a pinch to the eyes. We are not sure when was the last time people ever took time to look at a rainbow streak with amazement, of course, we all know it is due to scattering of light, and how would this trigger the joy in each of us.
Will a Ice cream cone with Sprinkles trigger Joy in a teenager or at least in a 3 year old?
What if you were to conduct this experiment, just by giving an ice cream cone with sprinkles to a 3 year old, don’t be appalled if the child says “No”. Research says, Children prefer chocolates to ice cream.
How about a teenager, would an Ice cream cone with sprinkles trigger his joy? Maybe you can try this out, give him a choice between a X- Box and an Ice cream cone with sprinkles and see which he would choose?
It is always the “I” centered aspect of the Speaker that prevents any good coming out from the talk
Quite liberally the Speaker is heard using words and statements that convey Universal acceptances to what she considers and assumes as final verdict, which is considered a mildly draconian attitude and annihilates all ethos of good presentation.
Take for example the following statement from the Speaker, “though we’re often told that these are just passing pleasures”, the question here would be, who told you that?
No more Generalization, please
If joy as what the speaker defines it to be, “feeling good for the moment”, then for sure the tangible forces that contribute to this experience would be relative and thus should not be generalized by using words such as “Shared humanity”
What would bring Joy to the People of Cape Town, South Africa
Head to Cape Town, South Africa, which is experiencing acute water shortage and the majority of the public are suffering indescribable woes.
Just go there and ask what would bring joy to them? An Ice cream cone with Sprinkles, a streak of rainbow, or water to their homes.
More so, compare USA with Nigeria. If a person in the US requires an immediate medical attention, all that he or she needs to do is to pick up his/her mobile and call
But that is not the way things happen in Nigeria, say, if a 7 month pregnant, mother, needs medical attention, she has to walk 10 miles to the nearest clinic.
Thus Shared humanity found in the common experiences of this Physical world, is not really a shared experience.
Emmanuelle Moureaux multi colored nursing home and non backing the claims with research
Finally the Speaker mentions the work of Emmanuelle Moureaux, where she has designed a nursing home using multicolored spheres to create abundance and then she mentions as to how people subjected to MRI showed high levels of apprehensive anxiety when shown Angular objects in comparison to round ones and then concludes that curves sets us in ease.
Foremost there is no Research backing for this, and it is a mere speculation from Research perspective and that would mean, the claim does not hold water.
Secondly with regard to Emmanuelle’s work, it is her work, and that does not mean, all those entering the nursing home will even feel happy leave alone the concept of feeling joyful.
There are substantial research published that shows the human brain has a toleration level of accepting a mere 3 color combination, and anything further than that will result in chaos in the human brain.
If you don’t believe, look at the products in your household and count the colors on these products, they will always be around the acceptable 3. But the speaker seems to have no clue as to what she is talking.
The talks starts off with a promise as to where Joy hides and how to find it, but according to speaker the only place where joy is found appears to be in Colors alone.
No substantial evidence is cited for the claims, and more so, the talk is very vague and largely assumes and inflicts the individual’s opinion as universal.
Concluding Remarks
The Speaker mentions that it took 10 years to find the relationship between the physical world and Joy, but her talk is flagged with contradictions.
Why do we say that? If you had observed the presentation, the Speaker condemns that our culture is geared in the pursuit of happiness, and not joy, and then goes on to assert that by finding joy, we would have the resources to create a Happier lives. Does it ring bells? If Happiness is not Joy [according to the Speaker], then how would joy make one Happier?
If joy is feeling good for that moment, and happiness is feeling good over time, then all of the people would prefer, Happiness, except for drug addicts who live for the moment.
Finally, according to the Speaker, the feeling of joy is mysterious and elusive, if this is true, then why would the speaker ascertain that Joy is connected with our fundamental instinct to survival?
How could a mysterious and an elusive nonphysical attribute dictate the individual’s survival?
In the event of time and the money that had gone in towards writing of this post, we wish to stop here. Most of the research work suggested by speaker are not relevant to the presented talk, and more so, some of the quoted works do focus not Emotional well being, but that cannot be confused with Joy.
For every individual’s emotional being is uniquely unique and cannot be hypothesized that would only result in a bias.
In brevity, how do we rate this talk?
Substance less, contradictory and filled with individual biases
