Forever
As the stars die, and the light fades.
Beyond the definition of forever, there is only death.
July 20, 2009
October 05, 2008
Freedom ?
None are hopelessly more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. - Goethe
June 17, 2008
Brunei Videos
I was bored and a bit homesick so i decided to search up Brunei in youtube.
After the usual bunch of teenagers trying to do melbourne shuffles and typical tourist vids of local ceremonies and stuff i chanced upon this.
... which was just so awesome.
Raymond even does it in malay.
Lovely !
Heres his youtube user profile where he has alot more videos.
The simple Bruneian life, peaceful with lush tropical rainforests and beaches and no political or racial shit happening. Petrol only costs 53cents a litre (about 50AUD or 0.60 USD). No wonder angmos love it.
I'll choose Brunei over Malaysia or Singapore anytime.
August 19, 2007
God and the Devil
We are not like God.
Not only are our powers limited,
but sometimes we have to play the Devil.
February 19, 2007
For our Angsty Generation
I present to you, a quote from Nietzsche;
'To the clean are all things clean' — thus say the people. I, however, say unto you: To the swine all things become swinish! Therefore preach the visionaries and bowed-heads (whose hearts are also bowed down): 'The world itself is a filthy monster.' For these are all unclean spirits; especially those, however, who have no peace or rest, unless they see the world FROM THE BACKSIDE — the backworldsmen! TO THOSE do I say it to the face, although it sound unpleasantly: the world resembleth man, in that it hath a backside, — SO MUCH is true! There is in the world much filth: SO MUCH is true! But the world itself is not therefore a filthy monster!
So relax, chill, there is much to live and die for. Much more than yourselves.
To be selfless, that is a divine thing.
October 11, 2006
This, That and Convention
Today as i sat at home on my godsized bed adorned with abundant woolen sheets after my evening class at school, i prodigally ate a hard boiled egg. The process of which is not much dissimiliar to newton's observation of apples falling. And not surprisingly, another one of those deep philosophical debates about life and society and therein its entirety occured in this little head of mine. I am amusingly perplexed as to why a healthy normal 20 year old teenager with a decent social life (with its abundant flow of various happy chemicals) who isnt too much introverted as some university and especially most international students seem to be, would spend time to think so deeply and in such meditation about human life and society. Could i not just ignorantly enjoy my near beautiful life as a monkey would ? - having satisfied all his physiological, sexual, social and psychological needs ? Alas, i could not and i pondered on that. I could see why socrates or nietzsche or confucious did it for they were old grey man who did not have wives or children or family, and thus adopted an extended family of either scholars or disciples to listen to their rantings and musings which people much later on found amusing. But this view is deceptive. Could it not be that their lack of family and social life is not the cause of their musings, but instead of their choosing ? Did these people found the banalities of human life so fundamentally unamusing, that they chose to isolate themselves from the society and begin a lonely path of philosophy and of detachment ?
If we think of it materialistically, in terms of pure gain and of lost and interms of economy, philosophy in its purest essence is zero sum gain. Infact it could even equate to a form of de-gain, a mental suicide , a negative form of gain where nothing productive comes forth. Philosophy is related to depression, it is a form of thinking unnecessarily, thinking beyond what is required for daily normal healthy productive living. Could we not all live simply like machines where we did things efficiently and not spend unnecessary computing power on dead end topics such as life and its inherent purpose ?
And therein lies the potently nutritious cream of my discourse today, we are not machines. We are humans, and in this simple fact all is made right. We think unnecessarily because we ourselves are undivisible beings, mathematically impure constructs from which gain and loss has no meaning and philosophy though undesirable, inherently contrues and emerges from our being and our entirety. It is not something we can choose to have or to discard. It is inherent. It is what we are and that said, philosophy is a form of privillege for an intelligent living being much like ourselves. To think and ponder about the complexities and essences of life and beyond is to not only reach down and to enter into a spiritual world filled with the very essence of humanity and intelligence, it is to immerse ourselves into the wellspring of what is ultimately divine and godly. It is to for a moment however fleeting, to engage in the inner god of the human psyche, the closest humanity can reach godhood.
And yet there exists pathetic fools who question themselves for being philosophical - those who deny humanity and its associated divinity, and prefer to live like machines or as i prefer to call, domesticated cattles and these living dead exist on the lowest rung of humanity. Those who would prefer to trade the bits of their inner divinity for the superficial pride and association of their nationality, race or culture. And in doing so, they have turned their backs on the very essence of humanity and of all life, the great philosophical struggle of our being - negated by the very grand technologies created by the philosophical discourses that construe our being. They have became bastard childs of humanity, no longer a subset of humanity but a deformed and grotesque apparition of humanity.
People who have associated themselves more to a particular cause or ideology than to the beautiful thing called humanity. People who have swore allegience to this monster called convention and allow it to become maxims that dictate their lives - turning their backs on conscientious thought - giving it up for their respective conventions invented by the cultures they come from, instead of reasoning and searching for their own unique and special meanings and outlooks of life. A production line of ideology not much different from stalin's russia or mao's china. We see it today again but in a different form, instead of little red books or iron fists, we see it very obviously in certain societies with their distinctively naive and closed mindedness and a profound inability to relate to what is fundamentally very reasonable, logical and simple due to the idiosyncrasies practiced in their very cultures where convention and its associated maxims has replaced philosophy resulting in an extremely bland and tasteless society which depends on superficialities like food and skyscrappers to hide a human nature that has grown effeminate.
July 28, 2006
The Preamble
May i implore you to read slowly, even i cannot keep up with my poor english. It is the curse of any and every man at any and every level - to have knowledge and comprehension much more than your ability to express it.
As I sat in my room listening to Search of Sunrise covered up in sheets in the wee hours of the melbourne predawn reading the final few chapters of Alan Moore's hugo award winning Watchmen, i remarked at this quote in a panel from ozymandias, a protagonist of sorts.
"... thus began my path to conquest... conquest not of men but of the evils that beset them."
... it dawned upon me that no one man could ever have the capacity to do what ozymandias did if he were to succeed - but only in fiction. Not hitler, not alexander whom ozymandias idolized, not franklin with his great constitution, not king arthur, not emperor qin of china. Neither of these great rulers. Not einstein, not newton, not socrates, not nietzsche, not kant, not one philosopher. Neither of these great thinkers. Nothing changed humanity except itself. No one man, organization or event in history.
All these great people did were to reveal a portion of the human condition by which we all subtlely comprehend, identify with and are already originally imbued. The true supremity in all humanity, is the human condition - the universal understanding of pain, lust, greed, of reason and of comprehension and all its subtle shades of feelings and emotions that we as humans are subjected to. Decartes asserted that the act of thinking meant that even if all things were false and deceptive, atleast us, our conciousness existed. that the entity that was 'me' existed. and this was an inalieanable and indestructible basic truth facillitated by the very act of reasoning; inherent to all men. But the fact that this human conciousness decartes so prized - however great or miniscule - was bounded by the limits of the human condition is proof that the human conciousness on its own is not the ultimate entity given that all else was false, for what ultimate entity, unshakable in its foundations, would share congruencies with other conciousness ? Therefore since all human conciousness is congruent in that it all submits to the same human conditions, even decartes would be wrong. The ultimate and inalienable entity that existed in us was not the human conciousness, but the human condition of which the human conciousness is but a spawn. The conciousness is a subset of the condition without which the conciousness is but a child without its biological parents - an impossible being. It is a concious program by which it operates according to biological parameters on which its existence is dependent.
Thus this effectively means that no one conciousness or any scalable group of it can ever ever change the course of humanity be it a single man, a corporate organization, a goverment or a founded religion. That humanity exists as a whole and as a singular unit, with various parts creating the sum on which it exists. Humanity does not succumb to instruction or suggestion, it forges its own one path void of any influence. It will always be an amalgamation and sum representation of men in general. Thus what in reality thrives and moulds itself, is not such organizations or societies, but the human condition, merely polishing itself, with time.
That all the the observations of humanity we see in our societies; hitlers germany, the depression of 1910s, the industrial revolution, the enlightenment, the renaissence, classical antiquity, discovery of fire and the all the blandness and mediocrity of ordinary living and effeminate accomplishments and non-accomplishments throughout history and thus when extended, literally all aspects of human development, history, archievements and being; were but manifestations of humanity and its verily, human conditions. Labour in the form of concious thought and its supposed produce in the form of human archivement is not a genesis and result of or for change and improvement in humanity that we are so inclined to believe (but this is only prompted by our ego and arrogance), but merely the signs and symptoms of humanity by which it manifests and explores itself as a singular entity.
Thus that being said, it is naive for anyone to believe that they have the ability to change the lives of men and the destiny of humanity. Humanity has its own agendas of which we will always be a minute fractional representation of. To accept this implausibility of change and the existence of a larger humanity, one by which all men must resonate to by necessity of being, is the true meaning of humility and the true meaning of existence that men have laboured to archive (and in some cases attained) from confucious to nietzsche.
Thus the human condition is all there ever is to human counciousness, yours and mine. and everyone elses, today and in the past, and for certainty in all future. As human conciousness, we all but live within the framework set up by the human condition. It is the alpha and the omega, one that men has lived with through all ages and races, through black and white skin and all the shades of human skin colour in between, through the discovery of fire and the discovery of the neutron and even more from there. Men can think differently and wear different clothes and have different faces and throughly be unique in all sense of the word, but the human condition makes asses of them(us) all. And thus the human condition is the god supreme we all search but mostly fail to find. It is human destiny, and the reason for human existence. We are concious for these human conditions, and these human conditions allow us to be concious. This is all there is to the father and the son.
That said, i believe i have solved all the questions of lifes meaning and purpose, however contradictory and arrogant i must be to arrive at that; for I am but a mere conciousness, a slave.
July 22, 2006
The Arrogance and Selfishness of Conciousness
Today i was confronted with an interesting observation of life.
If perhaps on the other end of the universe, or a point in the universe far away enough such that light had to travel through millions of years; and that therein existed a star system with lifeforms which had modern-day human intelligence with societies possibly more advanced. And this star system by virtue of some cosmic phenomena were to implode and self destruct, effectively wiping out all planets and the lifeforms and their relative societies and communities that rivaled our own that inhabited it; sending light radiating in all directions, including one towards our own solar system.
And in another part of space a few million years into the future from this event and a few million lightyears away from it, which i as the omnipotent divinity of my imagination and this scenario would set - as the present in our terms; We imagine a university student perhaps camping with his mates on a field trip, in the desert on a cold cloudless night. Out of curiousity, this student stares up into the starry sky up above, and sees a small flash of light, no larger than a speck of grime and no longer than a heartbeat. A twinkering of the stars.
And with that i shall end my philosophical scenario and start with its philosophical counterpart.
Would he be able to comprehend the course of events ? and even if he was told everything i have told you in the previous paragraphs, would he be able to take in fully with his conciousness this entire destruction of a solar system that was similiar to the very one he is standing on and living in and the resultant death of an entire plethora of species of lifeforms of varying intelligence, of millions of years of evolution and the willpower expended by said lifeforms to terraform their planets and systems. Millenias of strife, war, suffering, peace and progress that resembled our own ? All the questions and conciousness of life and the universe built ontop of each other resulting in permeating layers cyclic and ad infinitum of understanding, knowledge and will. The answer is he would not. For even with his vast and limitless conciousness and intelligence (as human) that we have so extolled in our civilizations, simply for the fact that he is 1 human and 2 a self-concious being, he can never grasp the true significance and sheer divinity of this alien civilization and its existential cycle. Neither can I and especially not you, my dear average reader.
And all this as a speck of light, again, no larger than a speck of grime and no longer than a heartbeat.
The destruction not of physical bodies or materials, not of the large ziggurats these lifeforms might have built , but the destruction and end of conciousness and imagination, a seemingly voidless entity within ourselves which when compared, is still insubstantial, to a collective greater civilization and its cummulative conciousness a few million years ago and a few million lightyears away.
And how many people would listen to this and just live on ? How many of us, perhaps including myself (idavertently, my (human) memory fails on occasion) will continue being oblivious to the ways of the world and of a greater divinity than our own. How many people would continue living their lives in their fucked up societies and complain about their fucked up lives and muse and work towards obtaining the petty goals they have set up for themselves and worst maybe others for them. And is it not shocking how much more relevence this has when we relate it with our lives and in the context of our societies which; in a few milliseconds in the extended future, in the lives of our progeny, would all end only to repeat itself. Consume and distill it all. and Then Behold, This is the sheer ignorance and pettiness the human condition has for its own existence and the existence of all life and being. I am repulsed by it, yet for such insignificant objectives of a beings life (when compared to the cycle of worlds) and the defacto knowledge of the plausibility of this chain of events, motivated by pure selfishness, I have to live on.
As do you.
And in the end of said observation, i cannot help but feel that perhaps all life and conciousness - however profound - will always only amount to so little in our lives.
June 04, 2006
Quote
I don't know. People always think that there has got to be a dark side to everyone, a closet with skeletons, demons under the bed. People think all kinds of things about one another. They feel compelled to make up fears and false assumptions about their closest friends. Truth is, I'll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So, we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind, a dash of optimism and a great deal of candour.... Tom Hanks
May 25, 2006
Tidbits
The Atheist
(from Stanley Kubricks 1962 film, Lolita)
Charlotte Haze: Do you believe in God?
Humbert: The question is, Does God believe in me?
The Wolf and its Oppression
(from wikipedia article, grey wolf)
American society's perception of the wolf was one defined by indifference, misapprehension, or outright hatred. With few vouching for them, wolves and other predators were destroyed en masse, resulting in a so-called "hunters' paradise" free from competing predators. To accomplish this, there was no limit to the extent hunters and trappers were willing to go in order to kill predators in large numbers. Besides traps, snares, and other mechanical methods, hunters would line carcasses with poison (usually strychnine), which would then kill the animals that preyed upon it. The corpses of affected animals would then themselves become poisonous, which tended to result in a rather long chain reaction of death. Essentially, wolves, like many predators during that time, managed to garner an incredible amount of hatred for a great variety of reasons, many of which were unfounded or embellished so as to fuel public cynicism and expedite the wolves' removal.A general environmental awareness began to take root sometime in the middle of the twentieth century that forced people to re-think former notions, including those regarding predators. In North America, people realized that in over one hundred years of documentation, there had been no verified human fatality caused by an attack from a healthy wolf. Eventually, they found out that wolves, being naturally cautious and rightfully wary of humans, will almost always flee, perhaps only carefully approaching a person out of curiosity. In fact, it is likely that any documented wolf attack (of any severity) to this date was, actually, from a feral dog, a rabid individual, or the result of some sort of human provocation.
The Hunter and his Mistake
(from wikipedia article, Grey Wolf)
In the early twentieth century, some significant research performed in the blossoming young field of ecology led to an important realization about the relationship between predators and the land. Aldo Leopold, a botanist, forester, and naturalist of the early twentieth century (who is now world-renowned), was at the forefront of this new science. Early in his career during the first quarter of the twentieth century, he encountered a pack of wolves in the mountains of the southwest. He described his encounter thus:"We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.
"In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy; how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable side-rocks.
"We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view."
—an excerpt from "Thinking Like a Mountain" (A Sand County Almanac)
Encounters similar to Leopold's were being repeated throughout North America. Early ecologists were the first to recognize the fundamentally flawed rationale behind the creating of the "hunters' paradise." It soon became apparent that overzealous deer, lacking predators, could cause unimaginable devastation to a landscape by browsing every edible bush, tree, and shrub, thereby preventing new growth from ever reaching prominence and ultimately reducing entire ranges to a state of utter desolation. In other words, "...just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. (Leopold)" Eventually, the deer herd itself would starve of its own inordinateness.
The Drug
(from wikipedia article, MDMA)
The primary effects of MDMA include feelings of openness, euphoria, empathy, love, and heightened self-awareness. Its initial adoption by the dance club sub-culture is probably due to the enhancement of the overall social and musical experience.The MDMA experience is referred to by users in almost unanimous, overwhelmingly positive terms. Effects that are reported by users include:
* intense euphoria
* a feeling of connection with other people, especially if they are also using the drug
* a marked decrease in the salience and expression of anger, rage or other negative emotions
* the feeling that something "tremendously important" or "fundamental and positive" is occurring
* intense feelings of love, closeness and mutual understanding with complete strangers
* a child-like sense of wonder at the world
* a sense of mental clarity
* a relieving sense that life's problems don't matter
* a sparkling aura in the visual field
* visual distortionsHeavy doses of MDMA can create additional, hallucinogenic effects, such as:
* people having animals heads (anecdotally, this specific phenomenon is very common)[citation needed]
* animated patterns on people's skin
* being lost in an overwhelming, whole-body sense of pleasureThese experiences can be quite surprising to first-time users but are, in the majority of cases, never felt to be threatening.
...The death of British teen Leah Betts may be the world's most widely publicised MDMA-related fatality, and resulted from her consuming too much water due to concerns over dehydration.
The Experience
(from Erowid.com)
After 45 mins, the most sensational feeling I have ever felt took over my body. It is still to this day, undescribable. As I stood on the balcony overlooking the dance floor, I looked down on the masses, in a trance with glow sticks, and high energy dance, the DJ, spinning one amazing track into another. I felt a total rebirth, this music being played was music I had heard many times before, I even owned it, but this time, they where different. They were almost like remastered. I began to dance, I felt a calm rush fall over me, a need to become one with the beat.After sometime on the dancefloor, I decided to walk around and start socializing. Much to my surprise was I not only walking as I would normally, but my speech and recollection was much more intense and logical. I was walking up to complete strangers and engaging in conversation, something unheard of for me in the past. I would only communicate with friends of mine, or people who I was introduced to, never would I introduce myself or start up conversation. People became so warm in my eye's, the only thing I could think of was, how can I possibly find the time to hug everyone in here. Shortly after my hour long walk and socializing, a friend came and got me, and brought me up to the 'chill out' room, where he promptly put Tiger Balm on my temples, back of my neck and under my nose, I sat there in amazment. Then something was stuffed up my nose, it was a warmed up Vicks inhaler, HOLY COW, what a rush.
That was followed by a man with a white fuzzy cowboy hat, and this white glass looking thing, with powder in it. It was a bumper, and there was K in it, I did it all worried it maybe Coke. After 5 mins, my high was amplified beyond what I can even describe
The Religions
(from wikipedia article, Abrahamic Religions)
Abraham (ca. 1900 BCE אַבְרָהָם "Father/Leader of many", Standard Hebrew Avraham, Tiberian Hebrew ʾAḇrāhām; Arabic ابراهيم Ibrāhīm; Ge'ez አብርሃም ʾAbrəham) is regarded as the founding patriarch of the Israelites whom God chose to bless out of all the families of the earth. He is a critical figure in both Judaism and Christianity, and is a very important prophet in Islam. Accounts of his life are given in the Book of Genesis and also in the Qur'an.Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are sometimes referred to as the "Abrahamic religions", because of the role Abraham plays in their holy books and beliefs. In the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, Abraham is described as a patriarch blessed by God (the Jewish people called him "Father Abraham"), and promised great things. Jews and Christians consider him father of the people of Israel through his son Isaac; Muslims regard him as the father of the Arabs through his son Ishmael. In Christian belief, Abraham is a model of faith, and his intention to obey God by offering up Isaac is seen as a foreshadowing of God's offering of his son, Jesus. In Islam, Abraham obeyed God by offering up Ishmael and is considered to be one of the most important prophets sent by God.
The Relationship
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Everything is Misunderstood.
May 17, 2006
Subtle Beauty
Rose by Mark Ryden
January 18, 2006
The Average Teenager and abit of Philosophy
The average teenager nowadays is almost always angsty and angry at the world, feeling impotent at the perceived faults and failings of society and yet feeling doubly gay about themselves for the fact that they have the capacity to think that way. That perhaps one day when they grow up into adults, they will exert enough impact and influence on society to actually change it.
It seems to me that everyone thinks somehow, in some sense, one way or the other , they are superior to their average fellow men. That their views and opinions seemingly hold more weight that their compatriots, and that somehow they are more human than the next guy and so we judge, we judge everyone we meet, everything we see. We find obvious faults with almost everything not realizing when instead the fault inherently lies in the fact that we are all but only humans and that by definition we are fundamentally flawed and imbued with the vices of greed, sloth, wrath, pride, lust, envy and gluttony. My dear readers, that is the crux of the problem with society and in humans in general - we are not perfect, we are only human. Imperfection exists not due to the lack of design or implementation in society but due to the inherent human condition. Dont blame the people who generalize, dont blame the rascists, dont blame the politicians, blame the human condition.
How convenient is the observer, he who sits on his glass throne and critiques everyone else, yet does nothing to avail it. His arrogance grow, as does his isolation and ultimately he turns narcissist and feels omnipotent. For who else judges mankind. Yet they know not the scores and scores of people who have walked through the same path, and that they ultimately belong to the largest common denominator in the sense that they form the core group of what it means to be human. In an ironic sense, the people who think they are special, or superior are just simply the mediocre people that make up human society. They walk a coerced path, they actively blame but passively accept - they conform to peer pressure, to suggestion and to the authorities and are satisfied with merely placing blame and believing in the ideals that one day, somehow, someway, as long as they believe hard enough , reality will bend their way.
Perhaps this is the new religion of the 21st century. I dont know what people would like to call it but perhaps it should be called delusion. People nowadays have much less free will and thought than say the people in the 18th or 19th century. Sure we are more educated, sure we have cars and planes to bring us about and mobile phones to communicate but do we actually innovate more in terms of thought and philosophy ? do we think about all the other things in life and find a way to live them out - to live out our own lives ? absolutely not. What we do today, is follow what is conventionally accepted. If the scientist in country X says this stuff is good for you, you eat it. Everyone goes to school and learn the same stuff that everyone else is learning. There is no expectation by the people in position for you to actually innovate, to talk back and to discuss what you've learned. Instead rather it is usually discouraged, the teachers of our teenagers mostly just wish that their students accept whatever ideas that are being taught and reproduce it at the exam. Nobody truly gives a damn about religion, they have no faith. We worship objectivism. And life falls into a mere mechanical process. We grow up, take our exams like everyone else, perhaps go to university and are finally supplied to the body called economy as fresh meat to turn the cogwheels of our modern society. Peace has given us complacency, and people have become nothing more but intelligent farm animals. We've lost our individuality, in its stead , the voice of human society and the one conciousness of the system speaks to us. It beckons us to accept, beckons us to produce, beckons us to consume. And amazingly, its these nitwit bystanders who stand passively alongside the course of developing human history, finding fault and critiqueing anything and everything they find, yet never putting in enough effort to change the status quo - that fuel the stagnant society they so wish to change.
Society needs change, and its supply of change comes from its influx of healthy young adults with their spontaineity, radicalism, extremism and fresh new ideas which today are increasingly being stifled and streamlined by the secular and selfish institutions that aim to mass produce well manered, pro-society and obedient straight A students, that are easily incorporated into society. Petty people who practice double standards. Practicing their individuality in the mere form of thought. Satisfied as long as their needs are met and through superficilities like preferences in music, clothing and food. What ever happened to the passion, the vigor that people had for their various causes and believes.
No one truly fights for anything anymore. We all just follow, and accept, not the leaders but the system. Perhaps we are all just mere cells that make up the one organ called the human society. We are in effect a living entity. Like the cells in our bodies, we have become cells in society. Functionally believing our own state of autonomy and uniqueness while actually faciliating what is actually the human society. One singular body made from inter-dependant units which believe they have individuality where in reality they do not. Is this evolution ? forging organisms together to produce a whole greater than its sum. Or is it a devolution of the human individual - its reduction to a mere machine.
[EDITED - to correct obvious vocabulary and grammatical mistakes]
January 12, 2006
Wacky Days and a bit of Philosophy
[INTERMISSION]
Give me a sec while i put on my earbuds.
*adjusts & adjusts* alright its smooth
Damn, low batt.
*hooks it up to the pc, yadda yadda yadda*
*puts on forever today by dj tiesto*
alright
[INTERMISSION ENDS]
These few days have been wacky, as you can obviously imply from the title of this entry. Strangely i cannot recall much without the sheer use of willpower. So let me think realllly hard.
Lets start off with Dec 31, New Years Eve. I was at marco's place and he has a huge place. Apparently he speaks either spanish or portugese and he has these really great friends, and makes really great alcoholic fruit punches. Thats all i can remember though.
Between 1st and 7th of Jan, i've been out with random people, mostly playing cs and dota at a cybercafe and then hanging out for snacks at the local hawker stores. Somewhere between then, i also went to labi and i met a few folks, most of which were scuba divers on our second trip to labi. On our second trip to labi, we went to another place instead, and apparently this was the _one waterfall_ that everyone was talking about. Here was a beautiful waterfall and directly in the path of the water falling, there exists ropes for people to climb up the waterfall, in the waterfall. To get up a waterfall with water falling hard on you is a rather interesting experience. You'd think that it would be difficult with all that gravity and water acting on you, but that wouldnt be the case. Rather the water hits you so hard and loud on your head and face, that you can hardly see or hear anything but water. It also messes with your sense of direction so half of the time people just slip and fall back into the water. 3 of us, out of 7 or 8, managed to climb up this liquid monstrosity, and we explored the rapids up till a sharp corner.
And this was probably among one of the most beautiful and amazing nature experiences i've had in my life. Up the rapids, the water was flowing on smooth bed rock filled with pot holes, it broke off occasionally to form two vertically seperated but converging currents - each on two alternating levels. I'am not too sure if you can imagine that, but its really something really astonishing. Further up on the rapids, there were these natural seats carved perhaps by time and rocks into human fitting bedrock where you could actually sit in it and have currents pulsating on your back for the ultimate spa/jacuzzi experience. I swear, one session in these nature spas would restore you by atleast 10 years back to when you feel like you just got your first erection or turn on. And just when you think you heard it all, theres the monkeys.
Not only do they have natural jacuzzis up there, there were also monkeys who served you alcohol. Once you made yourself comfy on these bedrocks, half a dozen monkeys would jump down with pen and paper to take your cocktail order and serve you anything you fancy. We all ordered a few coronas and san miguels and just chilled out at the ultimate nature chillout lounge.
Nah i was fucking joking about the monkeys.
After the monkeying session and other random stuff that i'am feeling lazy to write about, we went back. Luckily this time there were no leeches. Thank the reinvented god.
The next thing that comes into my mind was the 7, 8 and 9th of January. Thats sunday, monday and tuesday. We had a huge party at adams place, and i got really high on redbull and vodka. The strangest thing ever was that when i puked, there were leaves in my puke. These were full leaves about 2 cm in length, and they looked like oxidized tea leaves. I didnt really know what the hell they were but i sure was surprised that theres leaves in my stomach. Perhaps they were something else and perhaps i was high. I did eat satay before i puke though but i swear to god, they had the exact look, shape and consistency as tea leaves. Either the satay was cooked with some sort of herbal leaves or i was actually eating grass. But oh well, i'am still alive so thats a great thing.
Before my great puking session there was also a snake wine drinking session. More specifically cobra snake wine from Vietnam that our hosts obtained from a certain minister in Vietnam.
Now let me describe this intriguing object.
In a very general sense, it is a typical ~600ml whisky bottle, with the typical double arched slender shape at the sides and a flat bottom, the wine bottle has a larger width then its height , but this width slowly decreases and tapers off to form the neck and the cap section of the bottle. The bottle can be described as fat and flat. What was inside it was a baby or adolescent cobra, coiled at its ends which rested at the bottom of the bottle, with its head rising spectacularly into the typical cobra agitated stance - with its head spread horizontally out and its jaw opened slightly to reveal a forked tongue. Surrounding this spectacle was ginseng roots and what was probably rice wine. The hosts saw our iminent fascination with this and brought us shot glasses. I had 2 shots of this rather flavourful wine, on which the second shot i nearly puked. The wine didnt taste that bad, tequila and vodka straight up is much much more worst, but the psychological image of the snake and everything really does make the typical non exotic wine drinker feel like shit.
[EDIT - i found a picture of this online, dont you just love the internet]
After the snake debacle, we chilled out and listened to assorted folks playing the guitar and singing. We had a few slighly morals and philosophy debate. This (rather cute) british girl believed that it was the innate function of every person to be materialistic and want more, and that those people who are not inherently materialistic are ignorant. I argued that people have a choice to be materialistic or not, and that people are merely forced to conform by peer pressure from branding and the media to have the idealistic notion that more stuff is better. That the happiest people, are indeed people from the undeveloped nations (Statiscally, happiest people are the Filipinos), and whether relevant or not, i would gladly choose to be happy than to have more. Though between being happy and knowing more, I would choose the latter. Cause i do agree with her that happiness does require abit of ignorance about human affairs and the human condition.
Apart from that, I also told them that humans have the largest dicks among all primates, much to their amusement. Perhaps this is no small feat if the word primate conjures up images of chimps and bonobos in your mind, but think of the gorilla, usually 2 to 3 times the average human in size and weight, yet only having 4 cm of erected wang for sex. This is unrelated but, personally i think that sex is an integral part to human evolution, and that evolution favours those who give better sex to their partners.
Apart from that, we jumped into the pool at the party which was awesome. After that, we just socialized and talked alot. Roger took lots of pictures which i will probably be posting in another seperate entry. At about 5am, we went to serasa beach to look at the stars which were awesome. It was a perfectly clear sky, visibility was awesome and you could see a whole 360 degrees worth of stars. Later, we went to Shahbandar, which was a recreation park, and hiked up a hill or two to look at the sunrise, and that was awesome too. Stars and sunrise - very nice combination. After that, we had some indian and malay food and went home.
I remember i had to do this wacky christian praise music video-audio editing for one of our customers. With all due respect to religion, this was 5 mins of few hundreds of people singing and coordinating hand movements along the lines of world peace, love and breaking the chains of mistrust and selfishness. To see a few hundred people with their faces so full of awe and abandon to me is a very sad image. I find it very hard not to correlate such an image with that of nazi soldiers, maoist-styled communism (everyone with their little red book) or george orwell's 1984. Also the sheer idealism these people have with the one-sided ideals of hope, love and peace borders on the obsessive and fanatical.
I slept after i finished my work, and we went to the border when i woke up. This was the 10th. We had awesome chicken wings, stingray and fish, and then after that we went home and i slept early.
Then today or atleast, 3 hours ago, which was the 11th. We .. hmm lets not talk about today :)
That much be such a spoiler. But oh well, shit happens.
Life is fun. Someones gotta enjoy it, why not you.
January 04, 2006
Interesting Games (and their theories)
These are somethings i've came across while i was reading one of francis fukuyama's book and various internet and wikipedia articles. I dont really remember it very well but these must have been some of the most interesting things that i have come across in reading.
Disclaimer: These are just my own interpretations and definitions of the experiment, based on what i have read and my ability to recall most of them. I have included their appropriate links in wikipedia so that readers who are more interested can futher fully explore the topics at hand. Man i fucking feel like a lecturer.
The theory basically starts with the analogy of two men , both prisoners, who are trying to bargain their way out of jail term. They can choose to either cooperate or defect. If both prisoner defects, both of them go to jail for a shared sentence of 5 years each. If both prisoner cooperates, both of them go to jail for 6 months. If a person cooperates while the other defects (backstabbing of sorts), he gets what is termed the 'sucker's payout' and he alone carries the full penalty of the sentence which is 10 years while the other prisoner runs off scott free. Both of these prisoners are not allowed to talk to each other and makes his choice individually and it is assumed that both prisoners are trying to avoid or lessen jail sentence.
To summarize a person (the prisoner) can choose to either play nice (cooperate) or defect (be an ass);
If he cooperates, there are two possible outcomes.
1. His opponent cooperates, and he gets 6 months in jail
2. His opponent defects, and he gets 10 years in jail
If he defects, there are also two possible outcomes.
1. His opponent cooperates, and he gets off scot free
2. His opponent defects, and he gets 5 years in jail
By comparing the two possible choices a prisoner can make and its subsequent 4 outcomes. The most rational choice for any person to make is to defect. And this is interesting because it models life alot - it always is a logically sound decision to make selfish choices and to backstab people you come across in life. But if everyone was truly a logical person, they would all choose to defect and everyone would go to jail for 5 years, instead of the obviously better alternatives (getting scot free, or 6 months in jail). Therein lies the crux of the prisoners dilemma, of thinking what the other prisoner would choose.
In the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, the game is replayed an X number of times with a large number of computer programs, where X is known only to the game master and unknown to the participating programs. X is a huge number, so that each program gets to play another program much more than once. Instead of penalties, the computer programs get points if they win. And the method to win the most amount of points - as proven experimentally - is to follow this set rule:
1. Be nice
2. Retaliate
3. Be forgiving
4. Non-envious
Which is completely antithesis to the methods and mindset required to win a single prisoners dilemma game. This also mirrors life much more accurately, as when you backstab people, there are obvious repercussions. Ultimately since humanity is effectively a collective whole and are interdependant on one another, the obvious choice is to cooperate with one another.
The game of Reason and Logic
This is a game played between two participants and one experimenter. The two participants do not meet face to face and the experimenter gives the first participant a fixed sum of dollar notes to which he is free to divide in two sets of any amount. This participant we will call the splitter. The splitter presents the other portion of the dollar notes to the other participant. And this other participant whom we will call the decider gets to decide whether or not to accept or reject the offer. If he chooses to accept the offer, then both the splitter and the decider pocket their respective portions of the money. If he chooses to reject the offer, both the splitter and decider get nothing.
Those are the technicalties of the game.
In a hypothetical solution, the amounts given are usually 10 pieces of 10 dollar notes and the splitter splits 90 dollars for himself and offers the decider 10 dollars to which he would either reject or accept.
Now for the decider, he has two outcomes:
1. He rejects the offer and gets nothing
2. He accepts the offer and earns himself 10 bucks
If he was playing against a machine, or a monkey perhaps, he would readily choose option 2. Against humans however, an overwhelming amount of people in experiments conducted worldwide choose option 1 - prefering to get nothing rather than let the splitter get away with 80 dollars more than him. Reason and logic predates that 10 dollars is better than nothing. but morality and ethics tells us that everyone rather get nothing than let another person get an unfair share of the money. It is as though we are preprogrammed to 'educate' other people to be fair, if not to everyone, then atleast to us.
Another interesting fact is that if the decider was offered 90 dollars while the splitter reserves 10 for himself, overwhelmingly, deciders choose that it was alright for themselves to pocket an extra 80 dollars more than the splitter. It can be interpretted that since the splitter offers 90 dollars for the decider, he agrees to the fact that he will pocket only 10 for himself, and this forms the rational basis for the decider to accept the deal. Or the decider can just be a selfish person who practices double standards and use that as a convenient excuse to pocket much more money. Readily, people would choose to accept the deal almost instantly.
The bottom line is that humans are intrinsically selfish creatures yet are dependent on one another to survive and flourish. However if they feel that there would be no significant repercussion, they will readily betray people to gain profits for either themselves or their affliations at the collective cost of other people. This forms the basis for corruption and graft in society.
In this experiment, 3 people are involved namely the actor, the participant and the experimenter. The participant is drafted by the experimenter and introduced to the actor as another participant. The experimenter then tells the participant that they will be conducting an experiment to gauge the learning ability of people under physical punishment.
The the participant and actor then seats in between an opaque screen that seperates them visually. After that 45 volt shocks are administered to the participant for him to appreciate the severity of the punishment that will later on be applied and used in the experiment against the actor - which the participant believes is another participant.
The game starts by the experimenter having the participant ask the actor a set list of complicated questions to which there are 5 answers. Everytime a wrong answer is given, the participant is required by the experimenter to provide a punishment in the form of increasing electric shocks (from 45 to 400 volts). As the electric shocks are applied, the actor plays prerecorded audio sessions shouting and pleading for the participant to stop. At voltages beyond 120, the actor bangs on the wall and cries for help. At voltages beyond 300, the actor stays silent and stops yelling.
From wikipedia, If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:
1. Please continue.
2. The experiment requires you to continue, please go on.
3. It is essential that you continue.
4. You have no choice, you must continue.
If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.
Those are the technicalities of the experiment.
Before the experiment was conducted, it was reviewed by other peer psychologists who unanimously agreed that only true sadists would give shocks above 300 volts and these made up about 5% to 10% of the sample population.
However after the experiment was conducted, Milgram observed that 65% of the participants administered the strongest and final 450 volts shock to the actor. Similiar experiments carried worldwide also gave a similar outcome and the number of people administered the final 450 volts shock fell in between 61% and 66%.
This translates to that ~63% of us would readily harm or injure another human being under the suggestion of an external body. A subtler interpretation would be that ~63% of us and possibly much more, will simply just take the suggestion of an external body. This means that we as humans pretty much just absorb whatever ideas, ideals and philosophy that we learn in the 12 years of compulsory schooling, society or peers and mindlessly accept them in our lifes, regardless of our own belief systems and reasoning. We are a generation that readily conforms to thoughts and ideals taught to us and we readily accept them and model our lives on them.
Science has seen a revolution in that thought is done methodically, empirically and logically. However social science and civics is still stuck in the communist 1940s where ideas and thoughts are simply ingrained into us. Children are born and led through a path of suggestion and design, they are not taught to have independant thinking. Rather they are taught not to question the authority. To accept things as they come. Being different in a community where there is a preset norm, is to be an outcast and treated differentially and this acts as a leverage to force people back to accept preset norms. Its a very Orwellian picture. It is no surprise how german military workers read shakesphere and listened to mozart while they gassed their Jewish counterparts and buried their rotting bodies with ease, perhaps even grace. Scientifically, they were sound, but civically, they were nuts. This sets up the argument for the double standardness of human morality and ethics. Verily, it is just used as a convenience. There is no such thing as morality and ethics, these are just preset social norms.