It was not long ago that people were killed for speaking out, or having thoughts that went against what the elite wanted the masses to believe. It was not long ago that people thought the world was flat. That people with epilepsy was thought to be possessed by the devil. That people flying in the sky brought bursts of hysterical laughter. One would even have been tried as a witch for practicing herbal medicine. The things we belive as truth does not mean that it is true, rather think of it as all that the elite want us to know. There is a cap on the amount of knowledge we are allowed to have, hence the term forbidden knowledge.
Many things in reality are created to keep us ignorant sheep, to keep us from acquiring these forbidden knowledge. We are all too wrapped up in the grand illusion that is society to question the secrets of the elite. We are told from birth to death how we should live like good, obedient little sheep. Sheepdogs always prowling in various forms to keep us in line. New technologies are introduced to us if there is a way to make mass profit from us. They make us believe we need it through various advertisements, and also taking advantage of our mind that is so vulnerable to herd conformity: when we see our friends or family that have something, we too desire that certain something so we do not lose out. We are all consumers. That is our label. From birth to death we consume. We are given mass education (brain washing), to learn to work, to produce goods and services for us all to consume more. We are told we are worthless unless we contribute to society. We must work, we must earn money, WE MUST CONSUME! Everything we do, profits a greater power than us. We are sheep or cattle. Take your pick. Your entire life is dedicated to making those above you rich and powerful. You wonder why you feel your life has no meaning?
Fear is a powerful force. It is what paralyzes us daily.Fear of the smallest things, like forgetting something, or losing something, to fear of how our future might be, or fear that one might not be able to fit into society, after all we are made to believe that society is all there is, and thus if we do not belong to society our life has no meaning. Instead of living in the present, we now live constantly in fear of the future, and what is future really, it is too just another illusion that is time. No doubt fear rules us all. THEY use fear to rule us all. We must all act in spite of fear. THEY take advantage of our natural survival instinct which is fear, multiply it and enforce it through punishment, laws, media, parents, things that we interact with everyday, so we can have our daily dose of fear. They only control us, because we are afraid, call it fear mongering.
The media plays the biggest part in keeping us in line. They are the biggest sheepdogs of all. We are focussed on things like sports and celebrities. Just remember that what you watch on the evening news is filtered for your viewing pleasure. A wonderful way to manipulate how we see the world with a place in every home. Just think of how the media has changed your thinking, for example, what has become of your conception of beauty? For guys: strong, brave, muscular, unemotional, apathetic, aggressive, For girls: cleavage, stick thin, big eyes, small nose and chins, long eyelashes. Another example, your conception of ghosts: usually a female ghost with long black hair, disfigured face, wearing white. Hell, even your conception of good and bad: wealth and being beautiful is usually considered good because the media shows people who are rich and good looking to be treated better, and the opposite for the poor and ugly. The potrayal of such things in the media has such changed everybody's thinking drastically.
It would be ignorant for us to think that we know all there is, to think that the puny education we receive is enough for us to labelled 'smart', just because we understand how things work. These scientific theories seem to apply well into our universe, but that does not make them correct. Did mother nature come up one day and say: "Ok here's water, it is made up of h20.", nope she didn't. Why do you think scientists have been struggling to find a unified field theory? Simple, because it just does not exist. Different scientific fields of studies are just different thoughts. All we think we know about the world is what THEY tell us, and they will do just that, every single day we go to school, we watch television, we read the newspaper. Tell the masses the same thing over and over again till they believe it and accept it as fact. Even if it takes many generations to do so.
I believe the reality of what is going on around us is perhaps beyond what our dumbed down minds can conceive. Some people even reaching the point that they do not even want to think because they are so worn out by thinking academically, and choose to pursue false sense of satisfactions which is achieved at the expense of others; living under the illusion of the self-centered ego. Maybe that is the true purpose of education, to make us so worn out or so confident of our thinking that we no longer question any longer. We are just like slaves, they too, lived in a constant state of fear, however the techniques used by our slave masters have become so crafty and elusive that we don't even realize it most of the time. Slavery at its finest, controlling the slaves without them even knowing. They trick us into giving away what little freedoms we do have.
What you know as truth is what you have been conditioned to believe based on society and your life experience. Open your mind to new possibilities. That is how the truth shall set you free. This is how you will be aware and conscious of your own true nature.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Death and Technology
We now live in a highly globalized world, an age of technology, but have you ever wondered why technology was created? Well, technology was created with the intent of eliminating uncertainty and to provide convenience for our lives. The pervasion of technology into our everyday lives with the ultimate intention of eliminating all uncertainties from our lives certainly has achieved its goal, for now our lives has become much too certain. Our lives has become dictated by schedules, or timetables. Thats right, our lives are being run by the clock: Do you own your clock? Or does it own you? It is no longer you who determines where you should be at or what you should be doing, it is time. Everyday we find ourselves rushing to beat the clock, to stay on time, at the expense of our own lives. Day by day, we trade the time of our lives away for money. If time = money, and time owns us, does money own us too?
Our bodies are highly adaptable wonders, for example, if you do anything repeatedly, you can get used to that particular action. I'm sure the same can be said about adapting to live in a different environment. In this case, I'm talking about our bodies adapting to suit a environment with the convenience and ease of technology. We've become very dependent on technology to live our lives that we simply cannot do without it. While we are not yet totally dependent, we are slowly losing our ability to move and even to sleep without the aid of technology. This technological society exhanges our health for money, for example: Working long hours at the expense of sleep or meals, and sells it back to us in the form of medication, fitness centers and so on. Our bodies not only adapt physically, but mentally too. In the technological world where comfort and certainty is emphasized, our minds too have become increasingly afraid of the unknown, which is why we are constantly living in fear, fear of the unknown. We constantly ask ourselves: "How will this decision influence my future? Will I be able to lead a good life?", and thus, in pursuit of the 'good life', we sell our time, labour, thoughts, sometimes even our bodies for the sake of financial security.
Technology too tries to eliminate the ultimate uncertainty: Death. It is the ultimate goal of technology for us humans to find a way to become immortal. But think about this phrase: You never lived until you die. This phrase can be taken literally, I'm sure most of you have heard of people who had near-death or out-of-body experiences becoming totally different persons after. Ask yourself this: If you knew that you might die at possibly any moment, would you be living your life completely different? It's no suprise that most of us have not ever thought of death, or has thought of it but shrugged it off, thinking its more important to worry about the now. In this technological world, death is commonly denied rather than accepted. We usually try to save our sick with whatever cost for just a few more hours for them to live, we buy food ignoring the fact that animals have been slaughtered, we pursuit goals and ambitions that would not make sense if we knew of our eventual death.
Contemplation of death is extremely important to us because it reveals the unreality of our separate selves. Because the self that we define as our bodies, our names, our knowledge, our possessions, our self-image, will cease to exist when we die, that self is unreal and thus of extreme unimportance. To deny death is to deny life, Why? Because death is part of the life cycle, death is what completes our life. Living in this society, denying death and uncertainty; This fully insured, 100% guaranteed life that our social institutions suggest, channeled through the media, the schools, and often our parents, that is mapped out in advance to minimize uncertainty, is no life at all. Despite all our efforts to mitigate its uncertainty, life is fundamentally uncertain and out of control. Everyone senses on some level that our management of life is little more than a pretense by which we delude ourselves into believing in the permanence and stability of that which is neither. In this gigantic game of pretend, we feign belief in the normalcy of modern life, but no one really believes in it; hence the universal sense of emptiness and void underlying the adult world. From the very beginning, there is the feeling of living a life that someone else has planned out, a life that is not truly our own.
A life of uncertainty and learning from curiosity by taking risks is part of our natural instinct, instilled in our minds ever since we were babies. Instead of living our lives pretending we will never die, chasing goals, ambitions and false sense of satisfactions, live like you are going to die at any moment, pursue the things that truely matter, things that you can cherish on your deathbed, such as your own unique individuality, a free mind and an open heart filled with compassion for not only fellow humans but nature as well.
Our bodies are highly adaptable wonders, for example, if you do anything repeatedly, you can get used to that particular action. I'm sure the same can be said about adapting to live in a different environment. In this case, I'm talking about our bodies adapting to suit a environment with the convenience and ease of technology. We've become very dependent on technology to live our lives that we simply cannot do without it. While we are not yet totally dependent, we are slowly losing our ability to move and even to sleep without the aid of technology. This technological society exhanges our health for money, for example: Working long hours at the expense of sleep or meals, and sells it back to us in the form of medication, fitness centers and so on. Our bodies not only adapt physically, but mentally too. In the technological world where comfort and certainty is emphasized, our minds too have become increasingly afraid of the unknown, which is why we are constantly living in fear, fear of the unknown. We constantly ask ourselves: "How will this decision influence my future? Will I be able to lead a good life?", and thus, in pursuit of the 'good life', we sell our time, labour, thoughts, sometimes even our bodies for the sake of financial security.
Technology too tries to eliminate the ultimate uncertainty: Death. It is the ultimate goal of technology for us humans to find a way to become immortal. But think about this phrase: You never lived until you die. This phrase can be taken literally, I'm sure most of you have heard of people who had near-death or out-of-body experiences becoming totally different persons after. Ask yourself this: If you knew that you might die at possibly any moment, would you be living your life completely different? It's no suprise that most of us have not ever thought of death, or has thought of it but shrugged it off, thinking its more important to worry about the now. In this technological world, death is commonly denied rather than accepted. We usually try to save our sick with whatever cost for just a few more hours for them to live, we buy food ignoring the fact that animals have been slaughtered, we pursuit goals and ambitions that would not make sense if we knew of our eventual death.
Contemplation of death is extremely important to us because it reveals the unreality of our separate selves. Because the self that we define as our bodies, our names, our knowledge, our possessions, our self-image, will cease to exist when we die, that self is unreal and thus of extreme unimportance. To deny death is to deny life, Why? Because death is part of the life cycle, death is what completes our life. Living in this society, denying death and uncertainty; This fully insured, 100% guaranteed life that our social institutions suggest, channeled through the media, the schools, and often our parents, that is mapped out in advance to minimize uncertainty, is no life at all. Despite all our efforts to mitigate its uncertainty, life is fundamentally uncertain and out of control. Everyone senses on some level that our management of life is little more than a pretense by which we delude ourselves into believing in the permanence and stability of that which is neither. In this gigantic game of pretend, we feign belief in the normalcy of modern life, but no one really believes in it; hence the universal sense of emptiness and void underlying the adult world. From the very beginning, there is the feeling of living a life that someone else has planned out, a life that is not truly our own.
A life of uncertainty and learning from curiosity by taking risks is part of our natural instinct, instilled in our minds ever since we were babies. Instead of living our lives pretending we will never die, chasing goals, ambitions and false sense of satisfactions, live like you are going to die at any moment, pursue the things that truely matter, things that you can cherish on your deathbed, such as your own unique individuality, a free mind and an open heart filled with compassion for not only fellow humans but nature as well.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Deconstructing Capitalism
Many of you might know, the current economic system we are employing right now is the capitalist mixed economy system. I'm sure you should also know how this economic system works in general. This post is an attempt to deconstruct capitalism, to help you discover, recognize and understand the underlying and unspoken ideas and framework that form the basis of this economic system in 2 parts, the political aspect and the social aspect.
The Political Aspect
The very fundamentals of capitalism is already a contradiction, as the ultimate goal of all firms is to have complete domination over the market, however the government must do everything they can to prevent that from happening in order to keep the system going because if a firm has too much market power, it can choose to set prices or produce at whatever quantity they want, and also the firm will not be motivated to improve the quality of the good due to lack of competition, thus resulting in market failure. Although firms having complete domination over a certain market are rare, there exists firms with a considerable market power because they have a large share of a particular market. These firms are your multinational corporations(MNCs). Because of their importance to a country's economic growth, they can use their power to sometimes change government policy by threatening to withdraw from the country's economy. To get these MNCs to set-up in their countries, governments usually offer incentives such as tax breaks, finished buildings with full utilities, free movement across borders and much more to them. These MNCs, taking advantage of these incentives, will occupy many countries across the world, and use all of the countries's resources for production. The target of these MNCs are usually third world countries, however, countries where they can exploit the people by giving them low wages for long labour hours are also ideal. The workers, even though they labour, do not own the goods they produce, nor are they paid the true price of the good as it is sold in the market. The capitalist system is based on creating large amounts of profit at expense of workers. These MNCs are also a menace to the environment, as they hold the production power to strip Mother Earth of whatever resources she has left. However, governments still encourage them to work in their countries, allowing them to exploit workers and destroy nature all in the name of economic progress. Still think the government is 'for the people, by the people'? They make various laws such as taxes to keep much of the state wealth in their own hands, because they want only themselves and MNCs to be able to afford the cost to the means of production. The average worker, with his lowly wage, will therefore never make enough money to take the means of production from them, thus they become trapped in the vicious cycle. The main reason for the government to advocate this capitalist economic system is because they feel at ease and strengthened in this economy; they recognize their power in this economy, the worker however, sees in this economy its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhumane existance.
The Social Aspect
Capitalism encourages ownership of property. Everything becomes turned into property owned by someone: tables, chairs, oceans, forest, airspace, ideas, sometimes even people! Something is either yours or mine, there is no share: "Wanna share? Sure, pay me money.". This is how many conflicts arise, because everyone is fighting over the right of ownership to things. We humans love the joy of giving; however, because we were all taught to think the capitalist way, we are prevented from doing so. Capitalism has reduced everyone to acting based on economic decisions to maximize personal gain to earn one owns living. From a 'give' to a 'get' way of living, selfishness runs rampant through our veins. This concept of maximizing personal gain has changed our social life greatly in other ways as well. People are willing to go to great lengths just to maximize personal gain, for example, boot-licking, spreading false rumors about your competitor, becoming someone else totally, or even murder! We have also become very afraid of being judged negatively, for the fear of losing 'face'. This 'face' is our exterior looks; it is how we appear to others in our economic relationships that define us. In this capitalist world, we are all individuals with varying amounts of economic worth, and 'face' is directly related to our economic worth. If we lose 'face', we might end up losing economic worth, and the opposite might be said when we gain 'face'. If you feel this world is very 'fake', you are probably right because everyone is trying their best to up their economic value, by putting up a false exterior with hopes of being judged positively, thus increasing their social status and reputation, or 'face'. And who determines positive and negative traits? Why the media and government of course. Which traits were positive and which were negative. For example: hardworking is deemed a good trait, because it implies one is constantly working, and is most likely to achieve most profit; while laziness is deemed a bad trait, because when one is lazy he is not working at maximum efficiency and productivity. In order to determine our productivity value, we were forced into education and as such, we turn to various forms of entertainment such as video games and materialism to escape this harsh reality.
Sparked by the Industrial Revolution and the efficient productivity of the capitalist economy, the increase in technology developments led to globalization across many countries. Because of globalization, people now have shallower relationships with other people than they would normally; it is now possible to buy everything online without even leaving your house, just to state an example. This would lead to difficulties in understanding and adapting to each other uniqueness, which would be the cause of many conflicts.
To compare us to farm animals: 1)A farm animal has loss of freedom, in a sense that it is restricted to where it wants to go, or when it wants to work, 2)The farm animal exists merely for the sake of production; it does the same routine everyday while awaiting its death, 3)A farm animal has no choice but to work, because if it does not work it will be left to starve and die. Does this situation look familiar? Well its because we are in the same scenario: A single capitalist employs an army of workers at wages just sufficient to provide for their basic necessities, the worker thus becomes a slave, he is no longer a free productive being because he absolutely must produce to meet his basic needs. This leads to the worker being separated from the act of working, because work has become a meaningless activity with little or no satisfaction. An average worker works 8 hours per day and sleeps 8 hours per day, but if the worker does not treat work as part of his life, am I right to say that we only truely lived less than 1/3 of our lives?
People form the basis of every economy, if there are no people, there would not be economy. No economic system can ever succeed if the people are not happy.
The Political Aspect
The very fundamentals of capitalism is already a contradiction, as the ultimate goal of all firms is to have complete domination over the market, however the government must do everything they can to prevent that from happening in order to keep the system going because if a firm has too much market power, it can choose to set prices or produce at whatever quantity they want, and also the firm will not be motivated to improve the quality of the good due to lack of competition, thus resulting in market failure. Although firms having complete domination over a certain market are rare, there exists firms with a considerable market power because they have a large share of a particular market. These firms are your multinational corporations(MNCs). Because of their importance to a country's economic growth, they can use their power to sometimes change government policy by threatening to withdraw from the country's economy. To get these MNCs to set-up in their countries, governments usually offer incentives such as tax breaks, finished buildings with full utilities, free movement across borders and much more to them. These MNCs, taking advantage of these incentives, will occupy many countries across the world, and use all of the countries's resources for production. The target of these MNCs are usually third world countries, however, countries where they can exploit the people by giving them low wages for long labour hours are also ideal. The workers, even though they labour, do not own the goods they produce, nor are they paid the true price of the good as it is sold in the market. The capitalist system is based on creating large amounts of profit at expense of workers. These MNCs are also a menace to the environment, as they hold the production power to strip Mother Earth of whatever resources she has left. However, governments still encourage them to work in their countries, allowing them to exploit workers and destroy nature all in the name of economic progress. Still think the government is 'for the people, by the people'? They make various laws such as taxes to keep much of the state wealth in their own hands, because they want only themselves and MNCs to be able to afford the cost to the means of production. The average worker, with his lowly wage, will therefore never make enough money to take the means of production from them, thus they become trapped in the vicious cycle. The main reason for the government to advocate this capitalist economic system is because they feel at ease and strengthened in this economy; they recognize their power in this economy, the worker however, sees in this economy its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhumane existance.
The Social Aspect
Capitalism encourages ownership of property. Everything becomes turned into property owned by someone: tables, chairs, oceans, forest, airspace, ideas, sometimes even people! Something is either yours or mine, there is no share: "Wanna share? Sure, pay me money.". This is how many conflicts arise, because everyone is fighting over the right of ownership to things. We humans love the joy of giving; however, because we were all taught to think the capitalist way, we are prevented from doing so. Capitalism has reduced everyone to acting based on economic decisions to maximize personal gain to earn one owns living. From a 'give' to a 'get' way of living, selfishness runs rampant through our veins. This concept of maximizing personal gain has changed our social life greatly in other ways as well. People are willing to go to great lengths just to maximize personal gain, for example, boot-licking, spreading false rumors about your competitor, becoming someone else totally, or even murder! We have also become very afraid of being judged negatively, for the fear of losing 'face'. This 'face' is our exterior looks; it is how we appear to others in our economic relationships that define us. In this capitalist world, we are all individuals with varying amounts of economic worth, and 'face' is directly related to our economic worth. If we lose 'face', we might end up losing economic worth, and the opposite might be said when we gain 'face'. If you feel this world is very 'fake', you are probably right because everyone is trying their best to up their economic value, by putting up a false exterior with hopes of being judged positively, thus increasing their social status and reputation, or 'face'. And who determines positive and negative traits? Why the media and government of course. Which traits were positive and which were negative. For example: hardworking is deemed a good trait, because it implies one is constantly working, and is most likely to achieve most profit; while laziness is deemed a bad trait, because when one is lazy he is not working at maximum efficiency and productivity. In order to determine our productivity value, we were forced into education and as such, we turn to various forms of entertainment such as video games and materialism to escape this harsh reality.
Sparked by the Industrial Revolution and the efficient productivity of the capitalist economy, the increase in technology developments led to globalization across many countries. Because of globalization, people now have shallower relationships with other people than they would normally; it is now possible to buy everything online without even leaving your house, just to state an example. This would lead to difficulties in understanding and adapting to each other uniqueness, which would be the cause of many conflicts.
To compare us to farm animals: 1)A farm animal has loss of freedom, in a sense that it is restricted to where it wants to go, or when it wants to work, 2)The farm animal exists merely for the sake of production; it does the same routine everyday while awaiting its death, 3)A farm animal has no choice but to work, because if it does not work it will be left to starve and die. Does this situation look familiar? Well its because we are in the same scenario: A single capitalist employs an army of workers at wages just sufficient to provide for their basic necessities, the worker thus becomes a slave, he is no longer a free productive being because he absolutely must produce to meet his basic needs. This leads to the worker being separated from the act of working, because work has become a meaningless activity with little or no satisfaction. An average worker works 8 hours per day and sleeps 8 hours per day, but if the worker does not treat work as part of his life, am I right to say that we only truely lived less than 1/3 of our lives?
People form the basis of every economy, if there are no people, there would not be economy. No economic system can ever succeed if the people are not happy.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Education: The death of innovation?
I recall a time when i was sitting in my CATS(creative applied thinking skills for those who do not know) class when i was thinking about what was i actually trying to learn there. Well, the answer is pretty simple, it is to teach me how to think creatively as the module name states. The tutor shows us a number of ways for us to think creatively, and expects us to apply these thinking skills to our everyday lives. Fair enough, but my question is: Isn't telling us how we should think a form of restriction to the many other ways in which we can think creatively? Which leads me to question education as a whole, is the true purpose of education really to educate, or is it there to dumb us down, to restrict the number of different ways we can view the world, or interpret our experiences?
Firstly, the basis of all education - Spoken and written language. Spoken and written language serves as an ease of communication between people. The basics of spoken and written language involve identifying labelled objects, for example, an apple is well, an apple. By giving labels to objects, we are restricting our imagination, for example, you can't think of an apple as anything else but an apple. Another flaw is when we reduce beautiful things to just a mere objects by just labelling them. A person who makes the decision to murder someone else reduces the victim to a person, but the victim could be your close friend or family.In fact, in the last sentence, the term 'someone else' is already a form of reduction, as 'someone else' implies not yourself, or someone you are not familiar with. On paper, the victim is just a casualty figure, nobody knew him, so nobody cares, after all, he is just another person, but for the people that actually knew him, he is so much more than that. Little wonder why the world is such a cold place to live in. You might wonder now, well if we avoid spoken and written language then how are we going to communicate? There's body language, the language that we naturally knew, the language we did not have to be taught. Most of the communications between people are done subconsciously, through body language, rather than spoken language, after all, actions speak louder then words.
Secondly, science. Simply put, science seeks to explain nature in physical terms. To me, science is just another religion, the only difference is that religion seeks to explain nature in spritual terms. People widely believe that science is the model of truth. In scientific terms, theories are proven or disproven by conducting experiments. If the experiments give the same results as interpreted by our senses every single time we did it, then the theory is considered true. This scientific method has been our concept of truth. Applying the concept to our lives, if nobody else has sensed us, then we never existed. Is this why we humans have this desire to enforce our existence on other people through social status and power? The phrase: "My family is my life." or "My friends are my life" comes to mind, without other people, our very existence would have been denied by the scientific method. But some of you might say: "We only learned science in primary 3!" , true, but our parents have been enforcing this concept of truth since we were babies. Science gives rise to a new breed of people called skeptics, using the scientific method of thinking, are unable to conceive that of which they have not sensed before, as their imagination is now limited to which science defines as true.
Is there another concept of truth? Of course there is, that is through your intuition. Something is an intuition when it really seems to be true, but you cannot give a reason as to why it is so. Our intuitions are our instincts, our gut instincts. Sometimes it's better to trust your intuition, because if you do not trust yourself, who else can u trust?
These assertions might be too big a generalization to make and there's no way i can prove this to be true, at least not by the scientific method, but my intuition tells me so. This post is just food for thought, to look at education in a different way. Next time you think of an uneducated person, do not think of him as a brute just because he acts and thinks differently, rather, think of him as being innocent and able to form his own ideas about the world without any restrictions, because he is no different from a baby.
Firstly, the basis of all education - Spoken and written language. Spoken and written language serves as an ease of communication between people. The basics of spoken and written language involve identifying labelled objects, for example, an apple is well, an apple. By giving labels to objects, we are restricting our imagination, for example, you can't think of an apple as anything else but an apple. Another flaw is when we reduce beautiful things to just a mere objects by just labelling them. A person who makes the decision to murder someone else reduces the victim to a person, but the victim could be your close friend or family.In fact, in the last sentence, the term 'someone else' is already a form of reduction, as 'someone else' implies not yourself, or someone you are not familiar with. On paper, the victim is just a casualty figure, nobody knew him, so nobody cares, after all, he is just another person, but for the people that actually knew him, he is so much more than that. Little wonder why the world is such a cold place to live in. You might wonder now, well if we avoid spoken and written language then how are we going to communicate? There's body language, the language that we naturally knew, the language we did not have to be taught. Most of the communications between people are done subconsciously, through body language, rather than spoken language, after all, actions speak louder then words.
Secondly, science. Simply put, science seeks to explain nature in physical terms. To me, science is just another religion, the only difference is that religion seeks to explain nature in spritual terms. People widely believe that science is the model of truth. In scientific terms, theories are proven or disproven by conducting experiments. If the experiments give the same results as interpreted by our senses every single time we did it, then the theory is considered true. This scientific method has been our concept of truth. Applying the concept to our lives, if nobody else has sensed us, then we never existed. Is this why we humans have this desire to enforce our existence on other people through social status and power? The phrase: "My family is my life." or "My friends are my life" comes to mind, without other people, our very existence would have been denied by the scientific method. But some of you might say: "We only learned science in primary 3!" , true, but our parents have been enforcing this concept of truth since we were babies. Science gives rise to a new breed of people called skeptics, using the scientific method of thinking, are unable to conceive that of which they have not sensed before, as their imagination is now limited to which science defines as true.
Is there another concept of truth? Of course there is, that is through your intuition. Something is an intuition when it really seems to be true, but you cannot give a reason as to why it is so. Our intuitions are our instincts, our gut instincts. Sometimes it's better to trust your intuition, because if you do not trust yourself, who else can u trust?
These assertions might be too big a generalization to make and there's no way i can prove this to be true, at least not by the scientific method, but my intuition tells me so. This post is just food for thought, to look at education in a different way. Next time you think of an uneducated person, do not think of him as a brute just because he acts and thinks differently, rather, think of him as being innocent and able to form his own ideas about the world without any restrictions, because he is no different from a baby.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Identity Crisis
Hello all, for my first post, i will start with a poem:
"Oh yes, I am a sheeple, and oh so proud to be.
I am way too smart to believe in a conspiracy."
What's sheeple? You guys might ask. Sheeple is sheep and people combined, referring to how people act like sheep, they will believe anything that other people tells them, especially authority, these people are usually ignorant(sometimes to the point of being know-it-alls, and they can go on about how the government or some religious figure is always right), and the worst part is they influence(or try to) one another and they all become ignorant. These people only care about living their happy lives so they can have all the love and sex and video games and pretty looking stuff they want. They rely on the authority, media and friends to tell them the 'best way' to live their lives, and they try to follow it as closely as possible whether they like it or not, because they want to be accepted in society. "Wow! The best way to live my life! And for free too! These guys are great!" is probably what is going through their minds, but these information hardly comes free, the true cost behind these information is...
Your IDENTITY.
Think about it, if you allow others to influence your actions, the way you dress, speak, look or even think just so you can be accepted by others, then you are becoming a slave to their approval, and you are also going to end up dressing, speaking, looking and thinking just like them as well. When you look in the mirror, who do you see? Yourself, or someone else standing there? Your best friend peharps? Whose life are you living, your life, or someone elses?
I'm pretty sure some of you are self-conscious, because you are afraid of getting rejected for being different, some even to the point of totally hating yourselves because you are sick of not being able to be yourselves. "Either you be like us or you find yourself a new friend." they say, I say you go ahead and find another friend, who is willing to accept you for your differences, someone who sees you for your differences and not for your similarities. After all, being different is how we recognize each other, think of somebody and you will think of how he is unique and special as compared to other people.
In conclusion, all i want to say is to live your life your way, no matter what your parents, friends, government of even the media say you should live your life. Next time someone tries to tell you what to do, make sure not to get influenced by him unless you really agree with him, if not in the near future all that distinguishes you from other people would be just a name...
"Oh yes, I am a sheeple, and oh so proud to be.
I am way too smart to believe in a conspiracy."
What's sheeple? You guys might ask. Sheeple is sheep and people combined, referring to how people act like sheep, they will believe anything that other people tells them, especially authority, these people are usually ignorant(sometimes to the point of being know-it-alls, and they can go on about how the government or some religious figure is always right), and the worst part is they influence(or try to) one another and they all become ignorant. These people only care about living their happy lives so they can have all the love and sex and video games and pretty looking stuff they want. They rely on the authority, media and friends to tell them the 'best way' to live their lives, and they try to follow it as closely as possible whether they like it or not, because they want to be accepted in society. "Wow! The best way to live my life! And for free too! These guys are great!" is probably what is going through their minds, but these information hardly comes free, the true cost behind these information is...
Your IDENTITY.
Think about it, if you allow others to influence your actions, the way you dress, speak, look or even think just so you can be accepted by others, then you are becoming a slave to their approval, and you are also going to end up dressing, speaking, looking and thinking just like them as well. When you look in the mirror, who do you see? Yourself, or someone else standing there? Your best friend peharps? Whose life are you living, your life, or someone elses?
I'm pretty sure some of you are self-conscious, because you are afraid of getting rejected for being different, some even to the point of totally hating yourselves because you are sick of not being able to be yourselves. "Either you be like us or you find yourself a new friend." they say, I say you go ahead and find another friend, who is willing to accept you for your differences, someone who sees you for your differences and not for your similarities. After all, being different is how we recognize each other, think of somebody and you will think of how he is unique and special as compared to other people.
In conclusion, all i want to say is to live your life your way, no matter what your parents, friends, government of even the media say you should live your life. Next time someone tries to tell you what to do, make sure not to get influenced by him unless you really agree with him, if not in the near future all that distinguishes you from other people would be just a name...
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