Author Archives: Pupel Barua

Show & Tell

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https://www.youtube.c­­­o­­m/watch?v=Q6iK6DjV_iE

I am a big anime fan, so I decided to choose a recent film directed by Makoto Shinkai, one of my new favorite anime directors due to his extremely acclaimed and highly successful movie, “Your Name”. Makoto Shinkai’s newest movie, “Weathering with You, addresses themes of adolescent love and Japanese myths, while simultaneously exploring how we influence our environment.  The movie focuses on two broke teenagers: a runaway high school boy, Hodaka, and the “sunshine” girl, Hina. According to myth, a weather maiden appears once in a generation whose existence will cause endless rainfall in Japan. Hina, who can manipulate the weather by stopping rain to let the sunshine in, decides to partner with Hodaka and cash in on this ability by charging people money to pray the rain away. Turns out a lot of people want sunshine and so they’re able to start a small business of it. As you would expect, this causes serious complications when her abilities begin to get in the way of their relationship.

I chose to discuss this movie because “Weathering with You” is a giant allegory for how humans perceive and grapple with climate change. A central plot element is the rainstorm in Tokyo – and how weather affects, and can be affected by humans. Hina’s ability to affect the weather parallels to how humanity has an opportunity to avert the worst-case outcomes of climate change. Unfortunately, Hina struggles with her powers much the same way that contemporary society struggles with addressing climate change. Even with the ability to solve potential environmental catastrophes, it does require significant sacrifice. For Hina, she must sacrifice significant parts of her relationship with Hodaka in order to save Tokyo – a sacrifice that Hodaka is unwilling to take. The tension of doing what is best for society, versus doing what’s best for the couple more selfishly alludes to how society must choose between short-term selfishness and long-term selflessness in order to address climate change.

  1. This film takes inspiration from a Japanese folktale, are there any weather-related myths or stories that you grew up with?
  2. If one person had the ability to change the weather, what are some issues that might arise from that?
  3. Do you believe climate change is more dependent on individual consumer sacrifice, or a larger corporate-scale sacrifice?

 

 

1.3: False Optimism

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The Uninhabitable Earth by Wallace Wells is a very ominous piece of writing.  Throughout the entire text, there has been constant examples of things that have gone wrong in the world due to climate change and how mankind has brought about this destruction. So it is suprising to see Wallace say, “But those horrors are not yet scripted (31).”  He talks about the struggles that future earthwill face and yet talks about having a child that will experience this future. It made me realize that his previous comment, “The thing is, I am optimistic (31),” really defines the direction that he takes with the rest of his writing.  He is confident that these issues engineered by humans can be controlled by new innovative solutions that could be discovered. I found this approach counter productive because his optimism feels lackluster. He gave over 15 pages of reasons the world is doomed. Comparing the doom to events in history such as the holocaust “150 million is the equivalent of twenty-five Holocausts (28).”  He states things like, “By the end of the Cold War, the prospect of nuclear winter had clouded every corner of our pop culture and psychology (29).” He is very convincing with the world’s demise that it is hard to follow his optmistic logic.

1.1: Training for the Professional

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I started my job about a month ago and it has been tough to learn this new industry. I work in the commercial/residential leasing space and I was given a home-grown manual made by my predecessor. The manual describes how to complete necessary processes for the business and it is well made because it is organized thoughtfully, making it very easy to navigate and find necessary information to complete tasks. The author made subject headlines to separate specific topics and created a step-by-step process for every stage, included images and little notes to clarify confusing steps. I found this to be very effective in my learning but there are things the author did not consider. The author assumes that I have a background in this industry so there is a lot of crucial information that is not described, since the assumption is that I would already know industry terms and abbreviations. The actions I am told to take provide no context as to why I need to do it this way. This lack of information is not effective, especially for the reader because this was originally was designed to be my onboarding, training document to understand the industry.

0: The Zen Circle

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Simple definition: Enso (formally spelled ensō) is a sacred symbol in Zen Buddhism meaning circle, or sometimes, circle of togetherness. It is traditionally drawn using only one brushstroke as a meditative practice in letting go of the mind and allowing the body to create, as the singular brushstroke allows for no modifications.

When I first learned about the ensō, it changed how I think about Buddhism.  I am a Buddhist by birth, and my family has been for many generations. The buddhist practices may differ slightly from different cultures but has the same core beliefs.  I always had a hard time describing the way I think about things and why, as I am not a scholar nor a bhante (lord/priest/monk).  I met a friend who had a tatoo of the ensō, and he explained to me what it meant to him.  It made me realize that something so simple and imperfect, had profound meaning and it help clarify my thoughts.  It helps those who meditate upon it to reach a higher level of consciousness.  It is a Zen symbol of the absolute, the true nature of existence, the duality within life and the imperfection of all things.