Passion Project Update #2

In the past two weeks me and Neeha made lots of progress. Since we have the creative freedom to take this zine where ever we want it, we had many things to create. We've made three mini zines, one painting, and a drawing. Also a very exciting thing that I managed to do recently is contact another zine maker in Georgia. She is going to send me her zine, and very soon I will send her Onism, the zine Abhishek, Trinity and I made last year.

Passion Project Update

This semester, Neeha, Trinity, and I are working on a zine. We are planning to make this zine more cheerful and spontaneous than the last. So far I'v made 3 paintings and one collage with Neeha. Trinity is writing an article and we have decided the title of the zine.  I'm proud of how much work has been completed and excited to work on much more.

Jeremy Rifkin's Empathetic Civilization

In our GT class we discussed Jeremy Rifkin's thoughts on empathy. He argues that human empathy is beginning to extend to all of life in the biosphere. But I think that empathy is limited between different people.  Not everyone is capable to imagine the extremes of putting themselves in someone else's shoes. Depending on that someone, we can only feel a limited amount of empathy. For example, it will be easier for a student to feel the empathy of failing a test than it is for them to feel what a cancer patient may be feeling. Some feelings are easily reflected upon while others are not. It tends to be easier to empathize with people who are experiencing something we have may have already experienced. The possibility of global emphatic consciousness is idealistic. Although convincing, there was no proof that increased empathy could save global problems. The world's most pressing issues such as global warming, poverty, and disease have many more factors that are unaffected by human empathy.   I don't think we can extend our empathy to the entire human race well enough to make an impact.  Empathy allows us to feel what others feel to some limit. But is that enough to make a change? "The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action." (David Brooks)


Brooks, David. "The Limits of Empathy." The New York Times. The New York Times, 29 Sept. 2011. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

"The Empathic Civilization | Jeremy Rifkin." About. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

Passion Project Update

So far I think our passion project is going well. We have a folder with a decent amount of work in it, including paintings, collages, and articles. We also have the cover made with a set title. The only obstacle I really faced in the first 2 weeks is, I didn't know much about zines. This made it difficult to think of exactly what to include in it or make for it. But after talking to Doug Wainwright about his zine and how he created his I felt a lot better. He told us that it didn't really matter what we put in the zine and to just write/create whatever came to mind. Since then I have discovered many different topics to write about and tons of things to include in the zine. A list of things that we still need to do includes distributing the zines to other zine makers (I'm just going to call them that) and actually assembling and printing the zine. We also have to create a few more pages for it. Some future obstacles include getting it printed and distributed.