If any individual human cannot be greater than the sum of parts of the human race, is there a dis-incentive to personal excellence? If anyone falls short of the ubermensch ideal, isn't it logical to say that someone else will pick up the slack and we can never have a net degradation to society?
And yet certain individuals in history seem to show themselves to be greater than the common clout by virtue of having diverted and being in control of large amounts of manpower. Either by charisma, or some impressive trait. It seems that the key to a strong legacy would lie in rallying the masses, and not a romantic devotion to personal excellence. Pity.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
On charity
Do people have the right to basic amenity and dignity if they do not contribute to society? I leave the disabled and incapacitated out of the argument as my moral view holds that the able should fend for the incapable.
However what about the stragglers of society? Many may view this as a straightforward black and white choice, especially those who've grown in a merit-based society as I have.
Viewing a youtube video of a man who gives of his own heart to everyone who cannot find the means to support themselves has set me thinking, and I realize, that these 'stragglers of society' will be omnipresent at least for now, and when the reality comes down to it, can you truly choose to ignore another suffering human life?
Everything has shades of gray, you just need to remove those tinted-mental-lenses.
However what about the stragglers of society? Many may view this as a straightforward black and white choice, especially those who've grown in a merit-based society as I have.
Viewing a youtube video of a man who gives of his own heart to everyone who cannot find the means to support themselves has set me thinking, and I realize, that these 'stragglers of society' will be omnipresent at least for now, and when the reality comes down to it, can you truly choose to ignore another suffering human life?
Everything has shades of gray, you just need to remove those tinted-mental-lenses.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Water
The water has taught me many things. For one, applying brute force CAN get you somewhere, but mostly with little headway and a lot of capsizing. The faint of heart will keep with the flow of the tides while keeping still, this ensures a greater capacity to stay afloat but little else in moving toward a specified destination. What is best then, is for a kayaker to always try to balance his capacity to stay afloat with a suitable force to propel him in the right direction. This will come with many refreshing baths in the body of water as one learns to better read the currents with his hips over time.
And just like everything else, and other hardly-linked analogies, the water is but a microcosm of life. Life has its currents and eddies; through hardship people can falter and curse their existence, or learn to overcome and prosper. Through windfalls people can create greater opportunities, or they could dig themselves a pit of unprecedented despair. And such is the tidal nature of life; all throughout an individual's existence, one could falter to an oncoming tide, or have fear paralyze the heart such that the current sets you adrift to somewhere you have no intention of heading. And just as I've learned, we will always falter but we must never fear, for every moment we move, we learn to read the tides and stabilize our futures, that we'll know where to act to head ourselves the right way.
And we must never float and feel complacent that we have not fallen into hardship in peaceful times, for the strength of the tides are not for us to command; and to its strength holds this adage,
The only constant is change.
And just like everything else, and other hardly-linked analogies, the water is but a microcosm of life. Life has its currents and eddies; through hardship people can falter and curse their existence, or learn to overcome and prosper. Through windfalls people can create greater opportunities, or they could dig themselves a pit of unprecedented despair. And such is the tidal nature of life; all throughout an individual's existence, one could falter to an oncoming tide, or have fear paralyze the heart such that the current sets you adrift to somewhere you have no intention of heading. And just as I've learned, we will always falter but we must never fear, for every moment we move, we learn to read the tides and stabilize our futures, that we'll know where to act to head ourselves the right way.
And we must never float and feel complacent that we have not fallen into hardship in peaceful times, for the strength of the tides are not for us to command; and to its strength holds this adage,
The only constant is change.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
The
Head cannot rule, where the heart is not in place
The irony? paradox? Of a life led by logic. I'm no genius, but it doesn't take a Vulcan named Spock to know emotion is the horse which cannot be bridled by logical thinking. Now I just need to punch someone for insulting my mother and let him take over my starship. Any suggestions blog-ry?
Inscribed 2/11/10
The irony? paradox? Of a life led by logic. I'm no genius, but it doesn't take a Vulcan named Spock to know emotion is the horse which cannot be bridled by logical thinking. Now I just need to punch someone for insulting my mother and let him take over my starship. Any suggestions blog-ry?
Inscribed 2/11/10
Monday, November 1, 2010
" "
Hark, is that a dagger I see before me
Crisp, icy steel with an edge glinting
As fine as my line of sanity
Unbloodied un-perverted
Undulating un-repressible
Calling:" "
I see her, frozen with wide-eyed fury
glaring at a geist of untouched emotion
calls for catharsis
I cannot move, I cannot call to her
As she stands, statuette of ration lost
Calling: " "
The weapon so cold,
so familiar so old,
Holds no malice but for the wounds
the thoughts inflict-
AS Razors they shred into every inch of the human
ripping the conscience grinding the justification stripping the logic
until at last naught is left but
the senseless thought
Duncan must
die
again
" "
Crisp, icy steel with an edge glinting
As fine as my line of sanity
Unbloodied un-perverted
Undulating un-repressible
Calling:" "
I see her, frozen with wide-eyed fury
glaring at a geist of untouched emotion
calls for catharsis
I cannot move, I cannot call to her
As she stands, statuette of ration lost
Calling: " "
The weapon so cold,
so familiar so old,
Holds no malice but for the wounds
the thoughts inflict-
AS Razors they shred into every inch of the human
ripping the conscience grinding the justification stripping the logic
until at last naught is left but
the senseless thought
Duncan must
die
again
" "
Memory
All alone in the moonlighttt~~~...
Nope, that's not what I'm talking about blog-ry. Memory, such a b*tch, our excellent little subjective representation of personal realities. Meaning it's so unreliable, someone please make me into robocop with a 100 TB HDD, thanks.
When I think of her, the good times, the fun times, the excellent times where she is without fault and issue comes to mind, my little *ing fairy which I gave up. Then I have to FORCE myself to remember the reasons why I made the choice in the first place, and it always isn't easy... It never is...
Sigh memory, why do you do this to me? Granted such a mechanism is extremely useful in preserving basic sanity, cause if I can remember exactly how my canoeing trainings and ninja BMT trainings went, I would probably be a bitter bitter man on anti-depressants. But still, not this way... I need a object reality to focus on when my emotions are swaying round the charts, if only you could help me blog-ry.
Oh well, as I always believe, there are many reasons humans can't be trusted, and memory is one of the natural causes. Back to mugging.
Inscribed 1/11/10
Nope, that's not what I'm talking about blog-ry. Memory, such a b*tch, our excellent little subjective representation of personal realities. Meaning it's so unreliable, someone please make me into robocop with a 100 TB HDD, thanks.
When I think of her, the good times, the fun times, the excellent times where she is without fault and issue comes to mind, my little *ing fairy which I gave up. Then I have to FORCE myself to remember the reasons why I made the choice in the first place, and it always isn't easy... It never is...
Sigh memory, why do you do this to me? Granted such a mechanism is extremely useful in preserving basic sanity, cause if I can remember exactly how my canoeing trainings and ninja BMT trainings went, I would probably be a bitter bitter man on anti-depressants. But still, not this way... I need a object reality to focus on when my emotions are swaying round the charts, if only you could help me blog-ry.
Oh well, as I always believe, there are many reasons humans can't be trusted, and memory is one of the natural causes. Back to mugging.
Inscribed 1/11/10
Yay new blog!!!
Dear Blog-ry,
Today is my first time getting to know you and fill you with my innermost thoughts and discourses, so before we get on with the sexy-sexy, I shall start off with being formal and less of a creep -- how are you? I have to compliment you on being one fine looking piece of code today, so let's get on with the blogging.
A blog holds many reasons to us, dear or otherwise. It's a place we can vent our frustrations in the relatively (false) anonymity of the interwebs, where we can expound on our obviously superior knowledge (to like, ya know, people who care), or we can type in upper-lower case just cause it's so cool. HaHaZzzz, iM So FaRNeE SioLLL!!! Or we can just use this online code to kill some time... And that's what I'm doing dear blog-ry, I'm gonna need some time with you to kill off precious productive time.
Definitely I've had a blog before. What? Stop glaring at me like that blog-ry, no reason to get jealous now. But as I was just looking through things written in the past, it's funny. Hypothetically, people looking back on the past should see how much they've matured and how they may have been fools in the past, but there is just this bittersweet nostalgia that lingers, and furthermore 2 years away from education must have really lowered my bombastic-languageness by quite alot. I have changed, I have learnt definitely, but from 2 years back till now I'm still made of the same mettle, the same base and I don't know if that's good or bad. I look around me and so many people have changed and grown, but at least from what I can tell about those closest to me, they're made of the same base from back then as well, just that we've never noticed these things about each other. Back then I had such a shock when fly-boy signed on, when Kerpal chose to become a doctor, when Casanova went to NYU (I love the code-names), but now that I think about it, it was bound to happen. And that's what I love about my friends, through thick and thin through time and tide, we may change but never too much, and we can always tune to the same wavelength. BFFs 4eva!!! (gag*puke*)
Dear, blog-ry, it's an emotional time for me now that I'm going through, and I could so use a shoulder but online code has no shoulders. So oh well I'm just going to have to spam more of your delicious code! I was just thinking in the shower... somehow (don't ask me how my thoughts formed, I can't rmb them myself), we always hear 'I'm a lover not a fighter', but will anyone (who is not a pirate, bruce lee, chuck norris, or batman) openly declare 'I'm a fighter, not a lover'? In this day and age where we hold violence in disdain, is there still any relevance held in this phrase? (pfft! societal hypocrites!! violence is 'not the answer' but violent shows have such high ratings? Be truthful and say 'I love violence' already!!!). This makes me think that it's due time the phrase is in for a modern re-definition (where subsequently we'll use induction to prove it //i hate studying math//).
What I think is that, a lover refers to one who works for the passion. Think of the lover and besides images of parisians, native-french speakers and lovey-dovey sickeningly-sweet couples, what else comes to mind? The artist, the poet, the musician, bohemian chic; these are the personifications of the word 'lover', at least to me. To me, a lover is one who works for passion, who holds no love and tolerance for being handed drudgery from 'the institution' and goes where feelings dictate. Da Vinci comes to mind, all the great thoughts churned up through his passions for life and understanding, not through government grants and a career in research. Fun to be him/her no?
And the fighter brings to mind, besides images of chuck norris, bruce lee, batman, blackbeard, dragonball etc. Politicians, lawyers, CEOs, the fighting that happened in 'the social network' (awesome movie <3<3<3). Fighting is about, self-discipline, duty, ambition, the human ability to perform under duress, and the 'fight' is where great things are achieved in history. Inspiring no?
Taking these definitions, are you more inclined to say you're a lover or fighter? I think there's a fair chance that more people will choose the latter now, however, when it comes down to it, there is no 100% lover or fighter in most people. If you're the ultimate personification of the bohemian I believe your current occupation should be 'beggar' and for the dutiful but passion-less 'fighter' I think you're mostly an assassin and should have killed me for posting this by now. My sibling for example, a lover in that she chased her passion for the arts, and yet follows the curriculum with such a dogged determination that you wouldn't deny she had the fight in her.
For me though, I'm really a 'lover' in that I lack the fight; too lazy. Blog-ry, if only I could equip you with a taser so you could shock me off my bed when I'm lazing. I should have been studying 11 hrs ago /hang/.
So anyone who's purveying this binary-crystal ball into my thoughts, do you have any comments on whatever I've typed? Please don't hesitate to give me your feedback; your definition of what it is to 'love' and 'fight' e.g.
And this is where I stop blogging. Don't miss me too much blog-ry, I'll see you soon xoXO.
Inscribed 1/11/10
Today is my first time getting to know you and fill you with my innermost thoughts and discourses, so before we get on with the sexy-sexy, I shall start off with being formal and less of a creep -- how are you? I have to compliment you on being one fine looking piece of code today, so let's get on with the blogging.
A blog holds many reasons to us, dear or otherwise. It's a place we can vent our frustrations in the relatively (false) anonymity of the interwebs, where we can expound on our obviously superior knowledge (to like, ya know, people who care), or we can type in upper-lower case just cause it's so cool. HaHaZzzz, iM So FaRNeE SioLLL!!! Or we can just use this online code to kill some time... And that's what I'm doing dear blog-ry, I'm gonna need some time with you to kill off precious productive time.
Definitely I've had a blog before. What? Stop glaring at me like that blog-ry, no reason to get jealous now. But as I was just looking through things written in the past, it's funny. Hypothetically, people looking back on the past should see how much they've matured and how they may have been fools in the past, but there is just this bittersweet nostalgia that lingers, and furthermore 2 years away from education must have really lowered my bombastic-languageness by quite alot. I have changed, I have learnt definitely, but from 2 years back till now I'm still made of the same mettle, the same base and I don't know if that's good or bad. I look around me and so many people have changed and grown, but at least from what I can tell about those closest to me, they're made of the same base from back then as well, just that we've never noticed these things about each other. Back then I had such a shock when fly-boy signed on, when Kerpal chose to become a doctor, when Casanova went to NYU (I love the code-names), but now that I think about it, it was bound to happen. And that's what I love about my friends, through thick and thin through time and tide, we may change but never too much, and we can always tune to the same wavelength. BFFs 4eva!!! (gag*puke*)
Dear, blog-ry, it's an emotional time for me now that I'm going through, and I could so use a shoulder but online code has no shoulders. So oh well I'm just going to have to spam more of your delicious code! I was just thinking in the shower... somehow (don't ask me how my thoughts formed, I can't rmb them myself), we always hear 'I'm a lover not a fighter', but will anyone (who is not a pirate, bruce lee, chuck norris, or batman) openly declare 'I'm a fighter, not a lover'? In this day and age where we hold violence in disdain, is there still any relevance held in this phrase? (pfft! societal hypocrites!! violence is 'not the answer' but violent shows have such high ratings? Be truthful and say 'I love violence' already!!!). This makes me think that it's due time the phrase is in for a modern re-definition (where subsequently we'll use induction to prove it //i hate studying math//).
What I think is that, a lover refers to one who works for the passion. Think of the lover and besides images of parisians, native-french speakers and lovey-dovey sickeningly-sweet couples, what else comes to mind? The artist, the poet, the musician, bohemian chic; these are the personifications of the word 'lover', at least to me. To me, a lover is one who works for passion, who holds no love and tolerance for being handed drudgery from 'the institution' and goes where feelings dictate. Da Vinci comes to mind, all the great thoughts churned up through his passions for life and understanding, not through government grants and a career in research. Fun to be him/her no?
And the fighter brings to mind, besides images of chuck norris, bruce lee, batman, blackbeard, dragonball etc. Politicians, lawyers, CEOs, the fighting that happened in 'the social network' (awesome movie <3<3<3). Fighting is about, self-discipline, duty, ambition, the human ability to perform under duress, and the 'fight' is where great things are achieved in history. Inspiring no?
Taking these definitions, are you more inclined to say you're a lover or fighter? I think there's a fair chance that more people will choose the latter now, however, when it comes down to it, there is no 100% lover or fighter in most people. If you're the ultimate personification of the bohemian I believe your current occupation should be 'beggar' and for the dutiful but passion-less 'fighter' I think you're mostly an assassin and should have killed me for posting this by now. My sibling for example, a lover in that she chased her passion for the arts, and yet follows the curriculum with such a dogged determination that you wouldn't deny she had the fight in her.
For me though, I'm really a 'lover' in that I lack the fight; too lazy. Blog-ry, if only I could equip you with a taser so you could shock me off my bed when I'm lazing. I should have been studying 11 hrs ago /hang/.
So anyone who's purveying this binary-crystal ball into my thoughts, do you have any comments on whatever I've typed? Please don't hesitate to give me your feedback; your definition of what it is to 'love' and 'fight' e.g.
And this is where I stop blogging. Don't miss me too much blog-ry, I'll see you soon xoXO.
Inscribed 1/11/10
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