We are only in the business of making memories.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

Monday, November 9

How many people do we come across every single day?

If I walk down a busy street, like a rushing stream, face after face move past me. I do not acknowledge them, as they similarly ignore myself. Why should either of us approach the other? Why should we bother? We are but strangers, not knowing each others' quirks or penchants. As the distance between us becomes further and further, I quickly realise that I am once again lost in the sea of pedestrians, always moving, heading for some destination unknown to me. Our paths, however close they came together, never crossed.

What would it be like if we had stopped to chat? To bother to learn more about each other? I start to wonder, who are these people I have never met? What are the stories of their lives? Countless memories and rich expanses of experiences that made them who they are today, I will probably never know. My own life, my hope and dreams and aspirations remains unshared yet another time.

What joy we find in the company of those we love. Yet we choose to keep that circle small and exclusive. Why? To realise the potential of a friend in a stranger is one thing. To seek out that friend and multiply the happiness is another.

How many chances to brighten up hearts - not just others' but our own as well - do we come across every single day?

Thursday, October 15

What is the difference between living and existing? The former involves going through life with open eyes.

Do you go through life blindly? As a mere face in the crowd? As a dead fish floating down the river? No! We disagree fiercely. We are actively in control of our lives, making autonomous decisions at every instant to chart the course of our destiny.

But are these decisions sound? Are they made carelessly or after much contemplation? It is paramount to stay myself for a moment before rushing into a decision concerning several years - if not the rest - of your life. Without this period of reflection, how would I know if I am being true to my self while making the choice? The undeniable fact is that I can easily be mistaken due to my ignorance, my fantasies or my guilt.

If you want to live, never choose out of ignorance, fantasies or guilt.

When we were young, we naively decided that we would act on our parents' advice when in doubt, because we did not know better. Which school to go to, what clothes to wear, what food to eat, what friends to keep. In due time, we may realise that either this was what we always wanted, or that we found ourselves at odds with the now imposed lifestyle dictated to us.

If I wanted to be rich, famous, good looking and eloquent, then I started a successful business, went for a plastic surgery and completed a public speaking course. What if, at the end of the day, I still find my life empty and hollow? Are these fantasies of mine what I really want out of life, or are they just delusions of what I think I want?

How about times when, out of guilt, you decided to succumb to the pressure and allowed others to manipulate you? Sure, sometimes you feel that their demands are reasonable and so you willingly comply. That is not acting out of guilt. Acting from guilt is when you transgress against your own nature in order to appease someone else. When all is said and done, what is left is only a bitter taste in your mouth.

By recognising these trappings, we can make precautions to avoid them. Never rush into decisions that matter. I have to take time to understand my nature and self. I have to consciously choose a path that agrees with me, and my life would be richer and deeper. I would live, not exist.

Sunday, October 4

The central problem of economics is scarcity. Scarcity arises from two fundamental assumptions. First, the resources are limited. Second, that man has unlimited wants. It is easy to understand the former premise, that resources are limited. We have have finite amounts of people, of natural resources on Earth, of time. Even the sun will deplete its fuel for nuclear fusion in the distant future. As for the latter, is that assumption really valid?

The study of economics by so many educated in the world today has led us to believe that man is greedy. Man does not stop at one, or two, or three. Furthermore, the capitalist system promotes and encourages this sort of behavior. Only with great ambition can one get to the top of the financial ladder. Long before we come out of our adolescence, we already hold the notion that it is only "natural" to have infinite wants.

Is it abnormal for one to choose the simple over the extravagant? Is the lack of ambition just plain laziness or an individual's refusal to conform to the greedy ways of society? Or is it a little of both?

While one can always indicate and point out the presence of charity and philanthropy, these ideas are not widespread. The philosophy that reigns supreme in the economy though is profit, profit and profit. Is the cost of advertising worth the earnings from the extra customers? Will the returns from this investment be worth the risk? How much dividends am I paid this quarter? Will decreasing the price increase my revenue supposing the price elasticity of the good is very elastic? Should I work longer for the extra overtime pay? People want to maximize their earnings. They want to increase their surplus. Most people find nothing wrong with this, since it is the "rational" thing to do.

Consider this.

Though there is sufficient food for everyone, 500 million people are still suffering from hunger and disease and even die because they are too poor to buy the food that is already there.... The obese are seeking new cures and the malnourished are offered no remedies. Many pets are pampered while hungry children are forgotten. Is this not a strange phenomenon that historians and economists of future times will undoubtedly consider mysterious and inexplicable?
- Edouard Saouma, 2nd World Food Day, 1982

I do not expect you to believe the statistics above, after all, this statement was made more than twenty years ago. But the situation we all know fairly well enough to be true. Our present theory of economics will never allow us to solve these problems. The present theory wills us to believe that scarcity unavoidable and inevitable.

I want to believe otherwise.

Thursday, October 1

Today is Childrens' Day celebration. In my school, we do not celebrate this day anymore. I reason that this is due to us students growing older into young adults, and not being considered children anymore.

When does a child become a teenager, or even an adult?

A 5 year old is a child. A 15 year old is a teenager. A 25 year old is an adult. When do these changes happen? Does a child become a teenager at 13 years old? Does he change into a teenager the moment the clock points to midnight on his birthday? When does one become an adult? At the exact time and date he was born, 21 years down the road?

If you pour a bottle of table salt onto the floor, we say that there is a pile of salt on the floor. What if I take away one grain of salt? Is there a pile of salt on the table? If I take away another grain is the pile of salt still remaining? Suppose I continue to remove the salt grain by grain until there is only one grain left. Do I call that a pile of salt on the floor? At what point did the pile become a sprinkle?

It is impossible to choose any single point to distinguish between a pile and sprinkle. Any point chosen would be purely arbitrary and not absolute. Similarly, there is no clear line between child, teenager or adult. The transition between these categories is fuzzy and continuous. It is not a discrete change from one form to another. As we grow older, we become less and less like a child and more and more like an adult in a gradual process.

That being said, I see yearly birthdays as an arbitrary choice. One could celebrate their birth on any other day and any other time. Why celebrate our birth yearly? Why not monthly or biennially? Why at midnight and not at the exact time we were born?

Like a pile of salt, and like our status as children or adults, many other things cannot be clearly distinguished and are merely arbitrary decisions made by other people. For example, the metre was historically defined by the French Academy of Sciences as the length between two marks on a platinum-iridium bar, which was designed to represent one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole through Paris. A second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. How about the number of hours in a day? Why are there 24 hours? Why not 10? Why not 20? All these distinctions are results of other peoples' judgments.

Most of us live in this world abiding by standards and rules other people have set and defined for us without us even realising it.

Wednesday, September 30

To a theist, the meaning of life is something determined by God before hand. Before God created everything, God had an idea of what He wanted us to be, and created us with a plan for us in mind. Thus, to a theist, essence precedes existence.

To an atheist, existence precedes essence. There is no such predetermined essence to be found in man. What essence we have is purely defined by how we create and live our lives.

Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterwards.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

There are implications of this view on human nature. An existentialist experiences anguish and absurdity. He realises that existence is inherently meaningless, or that a meaningful life can at any point lose all its purpose. He also realises that he, and only he is responsible his entire life, except for the very origin of this responsibility.

I am responsible for everything except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world, not in the sense that I might remain abandoned and passive in a hostile universe like a board floating on the water, but rather in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

An existentialist cannot avoid responsibility. The inescapable condition of human life is the requirement of choosing something and accepting responsibility for the consequences that follow. An existentialist cannot blame others. Any choice made is a choice made alone. This freedom is not something that we can claim or set aside. It was thrust forcefully upon us the moment we began to exist.

We can choose everything except the choice of being able to choose in the first place.