1. I am.
2. I think therefore I am.

For centuries until now, we are actually moving more more toward number 2. Rene Descartes helped to promote and propagate number 2 with his “Cogito ergo sum”.

Genuine living happens by number 1.

Two can be easily mistaken. The difference between the two could be a very fine line yet it represents a world’s difference.

It’s easier by an example.

It’s the difference between talking about the ocean and swimming in the ocean. One can be so eloquent and seemingly so knowledgeable about the ocean yet never had really swim in it while someone who had and is swimming in the ocean, may just have nothing to say, nor will there be enough words for him to describe to others who had never swum in the ocean.

Fools are people who mistaken the eloquent non-swimmer as a swimmer.

“I think I am” is easy…
“I am” is loaded.

It’s ok to talk and have fun talking about it… it’s still silly though.

Silliness of Emphasis on Weight Loss

As much as we always talk about positive thinking and affirmations and as much as we emphasize aggression in our society, losing weight on the contrary is such a defensive maneuver while positivity in this context implies becoming healthy. Losing weight does not mean becoming healthy.

While losing weight is usually a natural side effect in the process of becoming healthier, the way people lose weight often neglects the restoration of the body to a healthy state and worse yet, they sometimes do things that further undermines health, JUST to lose weight. As such, speaking, we are missing the point logically and pragmatically.

Silliness of Emphasis on New Year Resolution

What I really mean is not that new year resolution is completely and utterly silly. It is symptomatic for the fact that people cannot act or achieve without setting a goal.

I mean that the way we are emphasizing new year resolution is silly because in doing so, we completely neglect to look at our entire life as a complete process. We are treating our lives as a repeated process of going from point A to point B. It is easier to think like that but it is also far from reality. When we get so narrow-minded by goal, it is equivocate to mistaking a tree for the whole forest.

I mean that because, we had so focused on these small steps, milestones, we never get down to thinking about the character that we want to be as a person and what we really want to in life. The importance of character to a person is like what a wine connoisseur called “body” in wine.

So maybe instead of new year resolution, we should have life resolution and that is to an on-going effort to work on our characters.

The difference in questions is “What am I going to do this year?” vs. “What am I going to do with myself in life?” or “What kind of person shall I become?”. Which one is more aspiring?

A more concrete example is the questions “How do I become president?” vs. “How can I serve my fellow citizens?” Note the difference.

Who you are and aspire to be drives your behaviors and habits. You cannot change who you are without first facing who you are, in its entirety, without self-deceit. And then go from there.

Silliness of Rugged Individualism

It is too easy to say it’s all genetics and that we are born and grown up in certain way and that is that. But genetics and conditions only afflict on us a tendency which does not have to be, and to say otherwise, you are surrendering to the belief that there is no free will.

If you had not sit down and take the time and effort to re-examine yourself, you are not going to create any real and permanent change. You’ll forever be a random juxtaposition of concepts and ideas that happened upon or drilled into you. You can enforce short-term change that may work for a little while but never lasts. Change by repression without understanding does not liberate. That’s why there’s what is call the “rebound.”

You cannot change who you are until you see who you are. It sounds simple but what is simple is always most difficult. It boils down to…

(And if you continue living your life without ever done a self-examining process, you will forever be either what others want you to be and/or a pretension of who you THINK you are.)

Rugged individualism – to shout “I am who I am” – without ever first discover who it is that you are, is silly and leads to insecurity in ourselves, and insecurity turns us into sheeps and conformists because we will feel that need to band together (and eliminate those who are different) to feel a bit more secure. And that is the state of affair we are in. And that is what we are teaching the next generation by being great “role models”.

Silliness is that rugged individualism leads to conformity.

Self-Examining

People who rebound had never internalize their change… they didn’t really change in the first place because they had not discover the inner character that drives their behaviors.

Who you are shows. As Emerson once said, “Who you are screams so loudly into my ears that I cannot hear what you say.” That is indeed true that your character will be obvious to someone who pays attention and is aware.

Thus, it is helpful to: Focus not on what you said you will do. Focus not on what you think you did. Focus on observing your own action in various contexts to understand who you really are. Likewise, if you care to observe and understand others.

We, national and global populace (even most of our so-called leaders), are so accustomed to focusing on very short-term and “me-me-me” while I sincerely believe, a complete human being (shall we say an evolved, wise, and intelligent human being?) requires also the ability to think far and wide.

The prediction is: Until we, as individual, as fellow earth dweller, as global citizen, go through a period of self-examination and only after follow with actions that is base on self-understanding and thus also our connection with our surrounding world, the world will continue to get worse, before it gets better. There will still be more and more man-made crisis – be it medical, environmental, financial, etc. – (and probably made even worse by natural phenomena) in the coming years, until we had confronted ourselves. That’s the prediction.

Happy new year and I wish everyone a wonderful, peaceful year ahead/
vs.

But I think the biggest, more important questions that we humans, as a race in whole, need to ask ourselves is the “what” and the “why”.

What exactly is it that we REALLY want? That can lead to the question, is economic growth THE MAIN thing that we want?

Why do we want what we want? That can lead to the question, why does economic growth seem to be THE MAIN concern we have, all things aside? Well well, this is a rabbit hole that no one wants to dive in.

Moreover, as a race, where (what direction) are we taking ourself?

Do we even remember why everything started?

Of course, no one really wants to ask these questions. It is MUCH easier to stay the course. To do opposite and ask is to face destruction of a world that exists in our minds, which is great horror and drastic but without any exaggeration.

I find myself isolated in crowds, alone in contemplation. My peers uninterested. Companies grossly negligent. Media talks about anything BUT. Individuals care for the how in the now, mostly quick and dirty ways to get rich. And maybe some decide to look for distraction through sensory stimulation, or simply cover the ears doing “lalala”.

It is not the noise and chaos that is scary.
It is even less the pain and suffering are scary.

Scary is the blatent ignoring, non-interest, non-curiosity that 99.999% of people do.
Scary is the things that are not discussed.
Scary is the lack of thoughts, perceptive, and wisdom that prevails.

Perhaps I have spoken too much. It would’ve been easier if I simply choose to write about the how’s to attract crowds huh.

The worst part of this comes from the returning flight from Hong Kong back to U.S. My niece was so lucky to be picked for the “special inspection” and therefore, EVERYONE’s bags are checked near the gate right before boarding. Comes the most ridiculous part, the TSA there threw away even the new water bottles that we purchased within the restricted area (I like to hydrate myself well and it sucks to keep requesting service on the plane), AND also empty the tiny water bottles that passed the security for my 5 year old niece and 1.5 year old nephew.

They claim that because the plane is going to U.S. yet even in the U.S., you’d be able to buy water within the restricted area and take on the plane, yeah?

Needless to say, it’s all frustrating and very unpleasant and there is absolutely nothing we can do.

It makes me think though. Now that [at least they claim] Osama Bin Laden is dead, they love to proclaim a victory on the war on terrorism. With all the TSA yet-on-going implementation of security and various added/new law/policy created in the name for national security, did we really win? anything at all?

In fact, perhaps in a more abstract way of looking at it, or even just literally, we have lost a great deal. We are living under the shadow of terrorism.

This is not to say I’m against all security measures. I understand that, as long as we are humans, we gotta do something about a problem but we hadn’t really thought out thoroughly what that should be.

If you really think about it, the ONLY perfectly safe state, that which seem to be what we think we want (demonstrated by our own action), is a complete police state.

However, not only does a police state mean we are living under constant terror, a police state also goes against the basis of this country. In the act of fighting a war on terrorism, we are enacting behavior analogous to trying to wash blood with blood — terrorizing ourselves and also trying to stop terrorism by terrorizing others.

This is the absurdity that we enact. I don’t propose to have a solution. But I think a good place to start is being genuinely honest, and thus with great clarity, in understanding the reality in and around ourselves.

But in this day and age… who can set aside religion, ideals, power, and all in all, ego to be able to do that?

I had taken some time away to let myself marinate in a lot of thoughts and feelings that I have for awhile, and also because a project in my job is sucking the life out of me. However, there is something about what is going on underneath the surface of the Japan nuclear problem that disturbs me so much that I feel like I have to write.

If you hadn’t been watching the news, basically the nuclear problem in Japan has been worsening since day 1 and how it will completely unfold remains unseen.

These seem to be where we stand right now globally regarding this:

• Some countries had sent some units to help with the rescue. (token humanitarian effort? — no insult to the people who actually went to help. I have utmost admiration and respect for them.)
• All countries with residents in Japan are telling them to flee.
• United States media is taking the opportunities to report as much as possible and hopefully get better ratings (euphemism)
• The nuclear panic had led to a hoarding of salt and some other every commodities in China
• The nuclear panic had led to a hoarding of potassium iodide pills in the United States

Here is where Japan stands:

• some 50180 plant workers heroically (and I do mean heroically) stayed behind to work on the different reactors… (but think about how many people are needed to deal with an exploded pipeline on the street? while there are 4 nuclear reactors malfunctioning…)
• They are now down to dropping water from helicopters to try to cool and prevent a nuclear meltdown.

Do you have any idea what that implies? That implies, if not for certain, that Japan is down to its last trick to try to stop things from getting worse. They may have the will but they are at the limit of their abilities. They are at their wits’ end. The question we may ask, “How’s that related to me?”

Maybe you’ll answer “crap, we’ll have a gigantic nuclear disaster”. It is a minor-partially correct answer because the true correct is that we will have another world economic problem in our hands. This deal is sealed the day people decided “globalization” is the next greatest thing.

With a nuclear disaster on who-know-what-scale, Japan economy is shot, companies with bases in Japan are hampered, all global resources(food, energy…) will need to be further divided, and who know what other consequences.

I am not saying it will or has to happen, but with this pending problem… instead of addressing this real problem, which also includes risking of thousands, if not millions of lives, the mighty nations of our globe and leaders of big nations decide this is what they will do…

finance ministers from the Group of Seven nations announced a coordinated intervention in the currency market to prevent the yen from rising further

Despair, anger, frustration, speechlessness, darkness… are a few adjectives that describe how that makes me feel. These global power instead of sending specialized units that deal with nuclear contamination (they have to have these units, especially countries with nuclear weapons…) to help prevent and mitigate the real nuclear problem, they decide… “oh, let’s just make sure to keep the money flowing. Money is what matters, and that is above the significance of humanity… we’ll get to the saving human life part later [and only perhaps... if there's something we can call we save...]“.

Is it me or this is f#@$-ing retarded? When it is time for global population to do right, this is what we have?

Solving the real problem not only will keep the money flowing down the road (because Japan will rebuild herself and probably into something better than before) but will also save lives… and lives that had yet been born…

The only hope is that, what is said here is ALL wrong and things do not actually worsen because otherwise, we will have some very horrible situations in our hands due to some very very terrible man-made errors that will make the earthquake and tsunami pale in comparison.

Speaking in a different context, the decisions that are being made by people world-wide throughout this situation had already demonstrate a very narrow narrow model of thinking prevalent in our human culture (because observe what most people are ONLY concern about…). How little we truly, genuinely care about each other… The path this current human culture is taking is not good, but this should be the subject for another day.

People who know what these last few words mean will already know what they mean.
People who don’t know what they mean, well, feel free to email me and with questions and I’ll be happy speak and respond and have a conversations.

We don’t believe in change where we change and grow ourselves in junction with the ever changing world deemed external to us.

If genuine change means first to look into ourselves and then outside for understanding before the action of change, what we truly believe is pretentious change.

Thus we are now seeing the consequences in various aspects of society around the globe that somehow, and in most cases incomprehensible to our logical minds, turn out to be hideous and disastrous — despite all the claim and acclamation of goodness, morals, and positivity.

It is as if we are promised gold, but when we finally come to realization, we have cow poo in our hands. Except, it is none other than ourselves that promise us gold.