A Path to Eudaimonia (Fulfilling Life)

(Today, I discussed with a simulation of the philosopher Zizek, in ChatGPT, and came to these conclusions.)

The Path to Eudaimonia: Navigating the Labyrinth of Fulfillment

Authenticity: Embrace Your True Self. Authenticity beckons us to peel away the layers of societal expectations and confront the discomfort of facing our true desires. It's about unmasking the performer within us and embracing the person we are beneath the roles we play. By pursuing our passions and interests without pretense, we align our lives with our inherent authenticity.

Engagement: Immerse Yourself in the Moment. Engagement is the art of being fully present in every endeavor. It's about embracing challenges and responsibilities with vigor, transcending the mundane routines that often numb our experiences. By immersing ourselves in tasks, we infuse life with meaning and vitality.

Meaning: Discovering Purpose Beyond the Self. Meaning lies in transcending our individual needs and aligning with a larger narrative. It's about seeking causes, relationships, and pursuits that resonate deeply with our values. By connecting to something beyond ourselves, we infuse our lives with a sense of purpose that transcends the ordinary.

Connection: Forging Bonds of Humanity. Connection underscores the essence of our shared existence. It's about building relationships that extend beyond superficial interactions. By engaging in empathetic conversations and fostering genuine connections, we remind ourselves of our shared humanity and create a support network that enriches our lives.

Reflection: Delving into Self-Awareness. Reflection invites us to venture into the recesses of our minds. It's the practice of questioning our thoughts, emotions, and motivations, fostering self-awareness. By regularly contemplating our goals, achievements, and desires, we gain clarity and direction on our journey.

Acceptance of Contradictions: Embracing Life's Complexity. Acceptance of contradictions recognizes the intricate dance of life's tensions. It's about understanding that life is a tapestry woven from opposing threads. By acknowledging these complexities and learning to find harmony in the discord, we navigate challenges with grace and resilience.

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Dealing with Challenges: A Mindset for Eudaimonia

In the face of challenges, this mindset serves as a compass, guiding us towards eudaimonia:

Integrate Authenticity and Meaning: When challenges arise, anchor yourself in your authentic desires and values. By connecting difficulties to what truly matters to you, you infuse them with purpose and make them stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks.

Engage and Reflect: In moments of adversity, engage actively and reflect on your responses. Immerse yourself fully in the challenge while maintaining a balanced perspective. Reflect on how the experience aligns with your journey toward eudaimonia.

Embrace Complexity and Connection: Challenges often come with contradictions and uncertainties. Embrace these complexities, for they are inherent in the human experience. Seek connection with others during difficult times, for shared experiences can provide solace and perspective.

In this way, by weaving together authenticity, engagement, meaning, connection, reflection, and acceptance of contradictions, you craft a roadmap for both the pursuit of eudaimonia and the navigation of life's challenges. Remember, this journey is a dynamic process unique to each individual, and it's through this very journey that we uncover the essence of a fulfilling existence.

The Unconscious

Much has been written about the influence of the unconscious in our daily lives - Freud, etc. On first reading one would disregard the unconscious as nonsense; but as one reads further, one almost immediately falls into the temptation of trying to read more into the subject, in hopes of understanding and controlling one's own unconscious forces (or subconscious, if you prefer) to one's own will.

But the unconscious is, after all, unconscious. Any attempts at short circuiting this energy will inevitably fail. There are no 10-simple-rules to improve our lives that will actually work, because the unconscious does not follow our conscious rule.

What if instead of trying to rule over the unconscious, one puts more effort at controlling one's conscious mind. This is what any religious person will tell us to do. The important word here is tell. They can only preach to do this - limit our desires, etc. - even if this will also inevitably fail. Aren't desires also the stuff of the unconscious? Although one can be aware (that is, conscious) of his desire for wealth, fame, etc; one is blissfully ignorant and powerless towards the origin of his desires - that is because they are unconscious.

This is why the divine experience of religious awareness can quickly turn into destructive religious fundamentalism. The fuzzy feeling of cleansing one's own sins (of conscious desires) will come back in the form of other unconscious urges, that may very well be destructive. This fact is obvious even to the religious people themselves, but for them this only happens in other religions. The reason for their blissful ignorance of their own possibility of destructive practices should be obvious now - the unconscious (origin of desires) is unconscious.

There is still great virtue in restraining our desires, urges and appetite. Impatience brings folly, restraint prevents it. However, there must not be an impatience for restraint - as this is where destructive believes and practices come from. For example, it may be enough to keep ourselves away (that is, restrain) from the urge to steal from others. Impatience for restraint will instead impose strict rules such as, "all thieves must be sent to the gallows".  

In biology, there is a theory of homeostasis. It is a system of checks and balances involving many different biochemical structures and substances, only to keep a biological system in equilibrium. Pathology tips this balance one way or another, and result in diseases. Medicine seeks to restore the balance. Reflecting on our own experience as a biological system, it makes sense to maintain the equilibrium to stay in health. The yearn for better lives - more wealth, fame, etc. - should be seen as a natural urge. We must not stay away, or, give in completely to these desires. Rather, we should seek a moderation of the two (a balance of give and take) - seeking wealth and fame, in ways that may also benefit others - only to keep the equilibrium and reach an everlasting peace of our existence. 

The Private Reader

I.

I read a book last year called "Inventing the Individual"(1). It was about the origins of Individualism
as a movement, or a way of thinking. The book approached this topic from a historical point of view, beginning from early civilization to medieval times. The question of "How did we break away from traditional family values and become individualistic" was explored in the book by studying history through the written works of people in the past and trying to understand where individualism came from.

According to that book, it didn't start with the Renaissance, at least not originally, as was usually thought. The seeds of individualism were planted even further back than the Renaissance, and that was during early Christianity. It was during the early Christian age, that people were told that all were born equal. Before this period, it was generally accepted that we were not equal - some born to a higher status and others to a lesser degree. In this sense, the book argued, the people began to strive for equality and individual rights.

I think what the author have not stressed enough, was the role of technology in creating the Individual, especially with the invention of the printing press. What was revolutionary about the Gutenberg technology in the mid 15th century, the printing press, was that it allowed the mass production books. Before this technology, books used to be hand-drafted and copied. The mass production of books made them cheaper, more readily available, and hence books had a wider audience among the population than ever before.

II.

The way that books affect our mode of thinking and how it indirectly influence our way of life was extensively explored by another author, Marshall McLuhan(2). He found that books made people more private. Before books became popular, McLuhan suggested that the people lived in an oral world - knowledge and other information were passed around through the oral mode, that is by being spoken aloud or recited. Books changed that by allowing private reading, in contrast to public recitation.

McLuhan went further. He discovered that books also changed the way we process information, as they encouraged more systematic thinking. Books, through the written language, forced people to read word by word, paragraph by paragraph, and go from chapter to chapter, the way they were originally written by their authors. This is in contrast to the spoken language, which is more dynamic, as speakers may naturally vary their presentation even when they were presenting the same idea.

McLuhan also found that books changed language and literature itself. The printed word demanded more accuracy in terms of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Compared to the spoken language which put less emphasis on these constraints, books made language itself more systematic. Authors would discover that books have the potential to replicate errors in great proportion - as terribly exemplified by the mistake in the Wicked Bible that read, "Thou shall commit adultery"(3).

III.

Where do we stand today? Naturally we feel that we are at the frontiers of progress in the history of mankind. As technology get increasingly sophisticated from the 20th into the 21st century - from radio to television, computers to smartphones, internet search engines to social media - one may be forgiven to believe that we have progressed further than our predecessors. But not all of us would agree on this.

An easy challenge to the delusion of our progress, is to study and compare the effects of books (as we have discussed above), and the effects of the modern technology like the television and the internet. This task was done at least twice before, firstly when McLuhan compared books to radio and television (4), and more recently when Nick Carr compared the effects of books and the internet (5). What they have both discovered paid more homage towards books, than the rest.

Although radio, television and the internet are faster, more readily adapted, easier to use and much more updated compared to books, they fall behind on other aspects. Books may be slower to read, more cumbersome to carry around and take longer time to write and publish. But books, as we discussed before, demand more accuracy, more systematic thinking, and allow for deeper understanding in a subject. While having references, books are complete in themselves - they are devoid of hyperlinks and advertisements that serve only to distract us from the main content.

IV.

We must not forget these virtues of reading, as we readily embrace the latest gadgetry and fashion. As we lose the habit of reading, we lose along with it our connection to the past. The history, folly and wisdom of our predecessors are forgotten. We would also lose the virtues of reading itself, that would have made us not only wiser and learned, but also aid our critical thinking and reasoning.

Some may claim that we have not lost the habit of reading - it is only that we are reading on a different medium nowadays. Granted that, I suggest that he picks up a book now and then. I would also add that he should choose a good book, one that was written in earnest from the heart of the author. Then he can judge the difference between reading on a screen and on a printed page.

History has come a long way in creating the Individual out of the general public, but we are today quickly dissolving into the masses again. Public opinion takes a stronger hold on us today, as news spread like wildfire on social media. Gossip, slander and biased views also travel further than ever before, only to corrupt our minds. So let us not dismiss the Gutenberg technology that once produced the private reader. Every book stands quietly independent in itself, and in this way every individual must follow suit.

...


References / Recommended Reading 

(1) Inventing the Individual (2014) by Larry Siedentop

(2) Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) by Marshall McLuhan

(3) The Wicked Bible (1631) published by Barker & Lucas

(4) Understanding Media (1964) by Marshall McLuhan

(5) The Shallows (2010) by Nick Carr

* Image: The Astronomer (1668) by Johannes Vermeer

Living In the Dark Ages

Enlightenment. A wonderful term to mean the use of our own understanding "without another's guidance", as Immanuel Kant put it two and a half centuries ago. But are we today enlightened? Or are we ourselves guilty of still depending on another's guidance in this day and age? I argue that we Easterners, especially my fellow countrymen, until today, are sadly, still not enlightened.

I think we simply lack the philosophy that would allow us to become enlightened. We are still drowned deep in the ocean of our dogmatic beliefs. We still believe for example, in supernatural powers, and it is no rare sight to see our people invoking supernatural causes to solve real world problems. No matter how highly sophisticated the technology that surrounds us (e.g smartphones, wifi, gps) we still believe that our troubles and ailments are caused by witchcraft or supernatural beings, and we cannot accept the possibility that we may be at fault for causing them. We somehow refuse to accept responsibility.

Now that's it! We just don't want to take any responsibility. And that's why we are still living in the dark ages. In fact, the characteristic feature of the Dark Ages, if we remember from history, was the witch-hunt. Back then, innocent women, charged with the accusation of using witchcraft to cause harm to their community, were burned at the stake. And all that happened because the people in the dark age society refused to accept any responsibility. They blamed witchcraft and the supernatural for what happened to them. More importantly, they did not use their own understanding, and instead drew hasty conclusions, guided by their dogmatic leaders. And so do we today.

Enlightenment is not the arrogant use of Reason to replace Beliefs. It takes a lot of effort and courage to use Reason. So we cannot say that the use of it is arrogant. Perhaps we say that, because we ourselves lack the effort or the courage to use our Reason. We prefer other people telling us what to do, when to do it and how to do it. That way, we cannot be blamed if something bad happens. We cannot bear the "dizziness of freedom", as Kierkegaard put it.

And so here we are today, trapped in the darkness of our false beliefs. We entrust certain people to guide us along the shortsighted exploration of our lives. We see history only through the lens of our guides and let them tell us the laws that are already set in stone. Of course, we still benefit from the outside world that lends us their scientific knowledge and technology. And we fool ourselves into thinking that our society have progressed because we possessed these technology. In fact we make it our aim, as a country, that one day one of us will win the Nobel Prize.

But we will never win the Nobel Prize if our aim is to win it for its own sake. It will never happen that way. But we cannot see this, because we let others tell us that winning the Nobel Prize should be our aim, when in fact, winning the Nobel Prize is only a by-product of becoming an enlightened society.

Gravity

1. Sole Survivor

Gravity is a film about two astronauts, stranded in space by an accident, struggling to make a safe return to Earth. It's visually stunning, and its simple plot belies its vivid and realistic depiction of the story.

We can compare it to that Tom Hanks movie, Castaway. In both stories, [spoilers!] there were really no plot surprises: we knew very well that the lead characters will survive the fatal accidents, albeit barely.


2. Isolation

Although both Gravity and Castaway are about surviving tragedies, there is a subtle difference between these two films. If in Castaway, Chuck (Tom Hanks) was left in solitude by the accident (stranded on an island and abandoned by his longtime partner); in Gravity, Dr Stone (Sandra Bullock) was already living in solitude before the accident (traumatized by her daughter's death), and the tragedy (space accident) actually brought her back to society (to tell a most interesting story).

In other words, in Castaway, the crash made the survivor lonely; whereas in Gravity - the crash saved the survivor from her loneliness.


3. Don't just stay alive

This difference can also be seen in another way. By the end of Castaway, Chuck retells his misadventures and how he plans to "keep breathing, because tomorrow the sun will rise..". Isn't this scene similar to the one in Gravity, when Dr. Stone confides the loss of her daughter to the other astronaut, Kowalski (George Clooney)? 

So Chuck's attitude to "keep 

So Chuck's attitude to "keep breathing" (or just stay alive) despite his predicaments is similar to Dr. Stone's attitude for the most part of the movie. Dr. Stone started where Chuck left off. However, she soon realizes that her attitude has to change. She couldn't just stay alive, but to actually fight to stay alive.


4. From Blind Optimism to Idealistic Pessimism

What if Chuck's blind optimism - "tomorrow the sun will rise, who knows what the tide will bring" - is also a recipe for future disappointment? Of course "the tide" can bring miracles; but it can very well bring more disasters. To hope for a miracle is to give up on our own effort, and so, make us more vulnerable to disaster. 

That was how Dr. Stone reacted to her daughter's loss. She would have not survived the space accident if she persisted in this attitude - only hoping for a miracle to happen. And it was not a miracle that saved her, but her own wit (projected to Kowalski in the form of a hallucination).

By quoting Kowalski, "Houston, I have a bad feeling about this mission", Dr. Stone signaled her new found attitude: 'I don't think this will go well, but I'd do anything to make sure it will.'

National Ideals and the War on Corruption

What we lack today in Malaysia are our national ideals. What are we working towards? Whom do we want to become? What do we want to achieve as a nation? 

Whilst only a decade ago we had some belief in our ideals such as Vision 2020, now that we are approaching the deadline we seem to have lost that vision. Could it be something so bright that it blinds us when it's nearer? Or perhaps like a visual illusion, could it have disappeared as we approached it?   

... 

The only national ideal Malaysians may think of nowadays is for us to become a country free from corruption. Most, if not all of our complaints today we would blame on corruption as the root cause. But let me discuss here, why 'War on Corruption' is futile - not unlike 'War on Terror' or 'War on Drugs'.  

The main reason why it is impossible to win these 'wars' is because in these battles, we are our own worst enemies!  

For example, what is really the 'War on Terror', if not Terror itself? And how can we really eliminate heroin addiction, if we only substitute it with just another drug, methadone? 

Those points may be easier for us to accept, when a harder case to make is to say that corruption is fought with, well, more corruption!  

... 

How can this be? If government officials do not accept bribery or abuse their power surely there'll be no corruption. So there is no need for more corruption to fight corruption.  

But this is like saying if people stop doing drugs there will be no drug addiction, or, if all terrorists..  

It is the waged 'war' against corruption that is actually the problem - the war that most of us would think is most needed today. It is a problem because the way this war is fought is by using the enemies' weapon against them - only that (in this war) we are our own enemies! 

As a result of fighting in these wars - against terror, drugs, and corruption - the weapons (bombs, drugs, bribes) are used twice as much: once by the enemy, and again by the heroes. Regardless of who wins the war, it is the people - who may not be the enemy or hero - who would suffer the most: twice bombed, doubly drugged, and robbed again for the second time. 

… 

While stricter laws and stronger law enforcement may help catch corrupt officials, it is not difficult to observe how these measures may actually worsen corruption by causing higher bribes, as it becomes harder for the corrupt to cover up their tracks and so they would pay more.   

Also, in plain view, aren't fines and prison sentences served by convicted corrupt officials only a form of 'bribery to the public'? That is, they may be forgiven for their corruption as long as they can also pay to the public a certain amount of money and time in prison. 

So long as we, members of the public, accept 'bribery from the corrupt', we also have to accept that there will always be corruption.  

... 

All of this is not to deny the reality of corruption, any more than we can deny terrorism and drug addiction. The point is that we cannot eradicate these problems by their own elements - it would be as lighting fire to fight fire, or pouring water to reduce the flood.  

To fight fire we need the fire extinguisher, and to reduce the flood, proper drainage.  

The root cause of corruption is greed, so changing the people in power is irrelevant - because greed comes with power. But if we all strive for some national ideals, then anyone in power would stay away from corruption - not because then they are afraid that they can get caught (they can pay to escape that), but because, striving for the national ideals, the people in power would choose to be honest.  

  

This is why today, as ever, we need our national ideals! 

Here are some suggestions:

1. Environmental - Keep Malaysia Clean & Green
2. Cultural - 'Berbudi bahasa amalan kita', Our Arts Our Heritage, 'Malaysia Boleh'
3. Scientific/Technological -  Malaysia Space Program, Malaysia Medical Project
4. Social/ Health - Make Our Streets Safe, Healthy Is Easy
5. Education - Future Leaders Project,  Read Malaysia 
6. Economy/Business - Local Products with Global Quality

*** 1Malaysia fails as an ideal because it is not one - we are already one Malaysia - and so it is merely a statement of a fact, not an ideal. A vocalist's ideal is not just to be a singer (that is already who she is), but to be famous, win awards, etc.  

Some may claim that we are still racially divided in this country, so he wants unity, and that is his ideal. The irony is that he'd be the same person who claims that the slogan 1Malaysia is redundant. 

Perhaps he is like someone who wants to be a vocalist but refuses the title of a singer. Maybe he doesn't really want to sing, or what is more possible, deep down he knows that in fact he cannot sing. Then perhaps he may rightly refuse to be called a singer, if after all, his singing is poor.

Act First, Plan Later

We must act before we plan. But wouldn't this lead us to recklessness?  

In fact, to plan first leads us to recklessness easier than to act first - as one could either make a reckless plan and adhere to it religiously, or one can break his plan through recklessness. 

... 

To have to act first, makes one responsible for his actions, and makes him conscientious from the very beginning, as no plans can be blamed for any disastrous outcome.  

Whereas to plan first before any action is taken, takes the consequences of each action away from their causes - because only the goals of the plan are considered - and this can make the person less responsible for his actions, especially if he follows a misleading plan too closely. 

... 

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't make plans at all. Instead, we should only make plans after we have taken some action - i.e plans should be made to change the direction of our actions, and not to tell us, from the beginning to the end, all the specific actions that we must take in order to reach our goals.  

Moving, Fast and Slow

When I went out for a walk recently, this thought occurred to me:

Roads take up a lot more space than pavements. Of course, this is only because vehicles are bigger than the humans driving them. Therefore roads must be wider than pavements. But perhaps this also makes roads a lot less efficient in the utility of space - that is, they allow less people to be on them to function well, compared to pavements.

Of course, we can travel a lot faster and further by road, but we often spend more time on the road to get to our destination than we do by walking on a pavement - as we will get tired if we walk too far.  

So the use of pavements is limited by our energy to walk, whereas there is virtually no such limit for driving on a road (as an engine does all the work to move a vehicle). Maybe this is why people spend a lot of time on the road, and also resources on both the vehicle and road itself. And because of this, the advantages of roads such as further and quicker travels are offset by the huge resources and time spent to travel by road.  

... 

This contrast between roads and pavements can perhaps be used to compare the digital and pre-digital technology (new vs old). For example, the Internet offers faster and wider-sourced information compared to previous technologies, and the limits of those pre-internet resources (e.g books) do not apply to the internet. 

But don't we also spend a lot of time and resources on this limitless information technology - as we do on the roads? Compared to walking on the pavement, the more we use the road - instead of reaching our destination more efficiently - we spend more and more time and energy on the journey itself.   

And so with the Internet compared to pre-internet information technology, instead of arriving at any good understanding of a particular subject, we become more and more caught up in the search for that understanding itself. 

Please Lose It

1.  Sexting App

An interesting development in the arena of digital technology is the release of the new iPhone app, Snapchat. Usually, we take photos in order to keep and share them with our friends - but this new app actually sets a time limit (maximum 10 seconds) to share our photos before they get deleted permanently.

This self-deleting (or self-cleaning) technology is actually not new, as most internet browsers already long have an 'incognito' mode that purposely deletes our browsing history. Of course, some commentators are quick to associate Snapchat with the 'incognito' mode, and speculate on the real use of this new app - to do 'dirty' stuff without getting caught. As 'incognito' mode was nicknamed porn mode, Snapchat is being recognized as a sexting app. 


2. Beyond Us, Agony of Loss

Let's attempt to distinguish two non-exclusive kinds of loss: subjective, and objective. 

Subjective loss is when something is not within our reach. Objective loss is when something is not within the reach of others. In other words, something that is subjectively lost is beyond us; when something is objectively lost it is beyond them. An object can obviously be lost both subjectively and objectively, but it can also be lost only subjectively, or vice versa. 

Let's take a familiar example: when we lose a pen. This is a subjective loss, as the pen is beyond our reach. However, this is not necessarily an objective loss, as we believe the pen must be 'out there' - misplaced, or stolen, either way - the pen is still within the reach of other people. So it's only a subjective loss (the pen is beyond me, not beyond others). The lost object can be a key, remote control (in those good ol' days), or even a certain fact (person's name, a certain topic from a textbook, etc.). 

We can also speculate that a purely subjective loss (like losing a pen) is almost always a painful experience. This agony is experienced, as the effort to retrieve the lost object may also reveal our impotence to keep everything that is within our reach from getting lost. Hence, this realization turns into a frustration.


3. Beyond Them, Please Forget

As there are purely subjective losses, perhaps there could be purely objective losses - things that are lost from others, but not from ourselves (beyond them, not beyond us). One good example of a purely objective loss would be Snapchat, the self-deleting photo sharing app.

Before we talk about Snapchat, we can use the example of a lost pen again to illustrate an objective loss. This time, however, we have not lost a pen, but curiously, another person has lost it. Another way to look at it, is that in a subjective loss, we've lost a pen that must be somewhere in the office; whereas in an objective loss, the office has lost a pen, but we know where it is. Of course, we can suspect mischief in such objective loss (all of you don't know where it is, but I do). 

But isn't this objective loss also useful to cover our shame (as it may hide our guilt in the pen situation)? Perhaps this is where Snapchat, and 'incognito' browsing mode have their roles in our digital age. 

These self-cleaning tools could be a response to the all-too-efficient way the digital world remembers. There are certain things that we'd like others to forget, but the digital world never forgets - unless it's given specific commands to do so. And to make matters worse, more and more memory backups are created precisely to avoid digital memories from getting lost. What a world we live in.


***

Image source: http://www.lolbrary.com/post/37696/snapchat/

Human Migration

Many people flock to big cities and leave their hometowns when they are still young, but old enough to live independently. What better reason could there be to move into the city than its greater job opportunity, which promises better life than to remain in smaller hometowns. We might compare new city immigrants to prisoners who have just escaped prison, prematurely celebrating their escape. How unfortunate for the escapees, however, when they will eventually realize that they haven't actually escaped from prison life. They have merely moved from one cell to another - only this time it's bigger and crowded with other prisoners. 

Is there no escape then?

Perhaps there is - but not in moving places. No doubt, it is easier to escape prison, than to escape prison life. However, the tyrannies of prison life will hunt the escapee anywhere he goes. The only way for the prisoner to achieve freedom is to really deserve it. An innocent man, when falsely imprisoned, may suffer from injustice. But to soothe his suffering, he finds consolation in his innocence. A guilty man has no such privilege. No wonder he always brings his troubles with him, in and out of prison.

Denial Makes the Memory Grow Stronger

1. 

I have previously discussed the analogy of a bucket for our mental faculty of storing information, that is, our memory. In that analogy, I likened the size of the bucket to the sum of our understanding, or conceptual knowledge. Whereas the filling of the bucket itself, I compared to bits of information, or factual knowledge. 

So I concluded that in order to be able to remember more (and forget less), we'd have to get a bigger bucket.  In other words, we'd have to understand more concepts - and avoid overloading our memory with meaningless information, which could overfill the bucket and cause a lot of spillage. 

Now I'm interested in thinking about why our memory does not always work - at least not for our sake - and why we remember certain things and not others. And this has lead me to reflect on the paradox that we remember best those things we try hardest to forget. In other words, denial makes the memory grow stronger. (Pun intended. That famous phrase "distance makes the heart grow fonder" is actually quite relevant here.)*

2. 

If one of your friends had promised to get you a birthday present, and when the day came, he didn't give you any, there are two possibilities why this had happened. It could be that his memory has failed him and he'd totally forgotten it (either his promise, or, your birthday); or it could be that he remembered his promise, but for any reason (like being broke, or too busy) he couldn't afford to fulfill it. 

Of course, if you were to ask him about it, even when he remembered but was not able to do it, your friend would have still told you that he has forgotten about giving you a birthday present. So from this scenario we can look at the two ways to interpret the word 'forget': either as a lapse of memory ("Oh sorry I forgot!"); or, a denial ("Ah, just forget it!").

We could also look at this dichotomy of meaning, as between the passive verb ("I always forget.."); and the active verb ("I must forget it!"). Interestingly, we can be in totally opposite situations and still use the same word. In one situation, we regret not to remember something; whereas in the another, we regret remembering too much.

3.

Maybe we can trick ourselves into remembering any useful information by trying hard - not to remember it, but - to actually forget it. To put it simply: try hard to forget something, and it will stick in your memory. 

___

* When a loved one is not around us, we'd have to try hard to forget that person. Or else it would be too depressing to be constantly aware of that person's absence. Ironically as we found earlier, what happens when we try hard to forget something, is that we remember it even more. Hence, distance makes the heart grow fonder.

Of Games and The Illusion of Control

As a part-time gamer, I admit to sometimes losing myself to computer games. In fact, I have just spent the holidays getting totally absorbed in some of them. And of course, it was only because they were so much fun - especially to play online games with friends.

I have also reflected on the gaming experience itself, and I thought, perhaps what is fun about it is not that gaming is an effortless activity. Games are fun not simply because they let you be lazy. They can actually be quite demanding - even if not physically so - as they require our time, energy and concentration. Easy games can quickly bore us. And despite how much a gamer can be lazy in real life, he often does give his best while playing his favourite games. 

However, we are not that far mistaken when we think playing games are fun because they are easy to do. But what is really so absorbing about them is that they let us believe that we can achieve great things with only a little amount of effort. So the lazy hypothesis is not that far off after all.

For all kinds of games that we play - on the computer, boards, cards  - we may have the illusion that we are in full control of how we want to play these games. Whether to move the pawn or the horse in a game of chess, for example, we think is our decision. But it is not.

As the saying "The house always wins" has always reminded gamblers, never mind how good you are at playing cards, and no matter how lucky on the slot machines, the casino will always get your money eventually. That is because card games and slot machines are designed to let you believe that you can win a lot of money for very little effort - even if you never do.

We might also unashamedly generalize our thoughts on gaming here to other sports - I mean the really physical ones like football, or tennis. Of course, we have always regarded sportsmen to be the shining exemplars of hard work. Footballers and tennis players must train hard for extensive periods of time, that we can never mistake them for average video gamers.
 
 But looking beyond the physical aspect, perhaps we can compare sportsmen to gamers.  After all, don't all sportsmen also believe that they can achieve great things with little effort. Of course it is not easy to actually play professional football, but in the end doesn't it all comes down to kicking the ball past the goal posts? You score a goal, you win the match, money and fame.

Scoring a goal gives such a rush of great feeling, even for the spectators. But after all those manic celebration, can someone remind us what a ball kicked into a net has achieved for all of us?

Alright, don't let me spoil your party. Even so I think my point is still valid. It is our nature to find the easiest way to get the most valuable things in life - be it picking the right number in the lottery to win some money, placing the pieces in chess to win some honor, or kicking a ball past the goal posts to win both money and honor.

The irony is that we end up spending more time and effort than how much we thought we would in playing these games and sports, only because of the illusion of how easy it would be to achieve the things we wanted through these activities in the first place. I can run a business, kill enemy troops, and build an empire, only with a few clicks of my mouse. But all I have done was to waste the time and energy, that I could have used to achieve those things in real life, in front of a laptop screen.

Well, borrowing Nietzsche's words, I'm only human, all too human.

Art as a Mirror

1. The analogy

What makes art? What makes music? 

When we speak, we produce sound waves that can have varying pitch and rhythm, and yet our speech is not considered music. So why do we consider Beethoven's fifth to be a piece of music, when it is also essentially made of sound waves produced by an orchestra? Also, if we can write an essay, or draw a picture, both using pen and paper, why must we distinguish one scribbling from the other?

I think the reason we discriminate speech from music, written passage from drawing, lies in the analogy of the mirror. And the analogy is, that art (which includes music as one of its forms) is anything that can act as a mirror to our soul.  


2. The mirror

A mirror, as we learn at school, works by reflecting light. We can say that it is usually made of two layers. It has a transparent layer made of glass. And behind the glass there is an opaque layer of coating, that can be made of substances such as silver or aluminum.

The glass in itself will not reflect much light, although it can act as a two way mirror if we place it between two rooms with different lighting levels. The glass between the two rooms will reflect images of people in the brighter room, whilst making them visible to those people in the dark room.

Of course, when a glass is coated with an opaque substance, including shiny ones like silver or aluminum, the coating layer acts as a dark room. When we look into this glass mirror, we stand in the brighter room, so to speak, and so we can see our reflection in the mirror.


3. The music

Speech is simply a tool for communication. No one would argue otherwise. But who can tell what is music?

If music is simply an art form, then we can probably test our analogy and compare it to a mirror. Like a mirror, a musical piece must also be composed of two layers. It must have a 'transparent' component, and an 'opaque' layer. 

Its 'transparent' component is made of the features that music share with speech, or the features that make music easily understood. These include the explicit information that a piece of music may carry, such as its mood, and the literal interpretation of the lyrics that may accompany the music. Just like when we listen to somebody speak, we can immediately get the tone of his speech (happy, angry, formal, playful) and the information the speaker is trying to convey to us; so in music, when we listen to a song, we can tell whether it is a happy, or sad song, and what the lyrics may literally mean. (Thus, music can be transparent)

However, by being merely 'transparent', a piece of music can only carry a certain meaning, or rigid interpretation, and so we can no longer appreciate it as an art form. This is how we perceive our national anthem and ringtone, to give some examples. These have a direct and literal meaning to them - a national identity, or a call alert.

Therefore, music must also have a 'deeper layer of opacity', to act as a mirror. This is the incomprehensible, obscured part of music. It can be compared to the dark room on the other side of a two way mirror, or the silver coating of a glass mirror. This is the part of music that makes it a mystery to us, and distinguishes it from speech. To illustrate, imagine you calling a friend and then reading him a paragraph from a news website. Then, you suddenly start singing the next paragraph to him.

At first when you read the news to your friend, he would listen and immediately understand what you are talking about. However, when you start singing to him from the same news website, you will almost certainly confuse him, and he may also begin doubting your sanity. Of course, if you can sing well, that paragraph from the news which was originally only a piece of information, can be turned into music quite easily, by the peculiar way you read it aloud.

In other words, singing starts when we cannot be sure why the singer speaks in a certain way. Ironically, even though we could not fully 'understand' his song, we can still very well enjoy it. This is only because music, like a mirror, can show us our reflection. 


4. The reflection

Even after comparing it to a mirror, we may still wonder how music can produce our reflection. The answer lies in how we try to make sense of the peculiarities of music. This is similar to the way we try to make sense of the strangeness and obscurity of other forms of art, including painting, poetry or sculpture.

What we may not have realized is that our interpretation, or the way we make sense of the strangeness of a piece of art is unique to each of us. This is not just about how we differ in our preference of one art over another. In fact, just like how a good mirror can show us a clear reflection, a good piece of art will reveal our reflection clearly.

As mentioned before, our reflection is produced in art when we attempt at an interpretation. This is because our interpretation is inextricably linked to our past experience, knowledge and personality - all of which are unique to each of us. For example, Beethoven's fifth symphony may sound the same to all our ears, but we inevitably will all perceive it differently. Some may say, "It's the sound of Fate". While others may agree with a Youtube commenter who thought, "Star Wars sounds like this". 





By showing us our reflection, art can be a useful way for us to find out more about ourselves. But we must also be careful, as our obsession with art, like an obsession with looking at mirrors, can only be a further proof of our vanity (read: narcissism).

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The top image is that of Narcissus, by Caravaggio (source: Wikipedia)