thirteenth year to the date

ive been meaning several times to come back to talk about things. i sit here unable to come up with anything that isn't an excuse to why that hasn't happened for what i can see now is a two year gap since the last time i was here, and a thirteen year period since this all began.

but i have right here a collection of drafts that at the time i thought were going to be something, but i hadnt had the time to flesh out into their own rightful posts. but they still might find use one day:

1 Sep 2010 on benefits of gossip

if people found out about the things others were thinking about them or saying about them to third parties behind their back, then people would get very angry with others indeed.

but when people know that others dont know that people knew of others' betrayal, then people wouldnt have much use to be angry, but instead become surprisingly quite motivated to either:

1. re-earn respect of others
2. discard others completely


in the first option is the acknowledgment of personal failure, but with it comes the push for self growth and maturity.

in the second option is the denial of fault and the resistance to progress. though it might reflect characteristics of steadfastness, such a choice has deep-rooted issues with unreasonable stubbornness and the fear of change.

7 Sep 2010 freedom

personal freedom is not only important to me, but also that it is available for everyone around me. which is why i always support the underdog, join the losing team, fight for the weak, go against the flow, say things that others are afraid to say, and do things that they tell me not to do.

not because i want to be different, but because i know i am free. and i want everyone to know it, including that they can have freedom from limits set by others...if they wanted to be free.

 13 Dec 2010 parallel lines part deux

do you believe that triangles exist?

did man invent the triangle, or did triangles already exist and that man merely found a way to describe it? sure enough, any normal man can draw a triangle on a piece of paper...yet is that proof that a triangle exists? it is a startingly simple question that seems to have a shockingly straightforward answer. perhaps i might drive the same idea from a different angle: does a 1000^3-sided regular polygon exist? a fair guess would say "yes" yet an equally fair probability exists that the questionee has never seen one. yet we expect that a polygon of any integer number of sides must exist, based solely on the fact that we believe a regular three-sided one does.

ask a man to draw the hypothetical billion-sided regular polygon and he would at best come up with a circle. even a computer can be designed to do the task, only other computers can prove that the job was done. an accurate guess would say that the even the most skeptical man would believe the computer, yet is not the computer merely another product of human reasoning?

nothing can truly be proven, based on the fact that the tool we use to prove or disprove postulates must itself be trusted to be correct in the first place. enter the axiom: by definition it is the fundamental unit of the unequivocal proof. upon the anvil of the axiom we forge ideas that are themselves, proven to be true. how we know that a billion-sided regular polygon has a billion lines of symmetry is marvel based purely upon the axiom that an n-sided regular polygon has n such lines. similarly two pairs of parallel lines which intersect at right angles must create at least one quadrangle. no one questions these statements because they are so closely related to the axiom of the straight line.

now the question of the existence of God, i have come to realise, is akin to the feat of trying to use one axiom to prove another. i suspect that we cannot find a suitable answer (philosophically rigorous) because God, as an idea, is not less fundamental than the other axioms of reason such as causality or the theory of numbers

7 Aug 2011 untitled

when life-threatening disease afflicts, its easy to ignore a doctor's advice, hoping he or she is wrong on his recommendation, choosing instead only to pray over the matter. how far is it true that in such a case, our decision is truly motivated by faith in God vis a vis an honest fear of making the final decision ourselves?

undated untitled

the sad truth about being neutral is that both sides hate you for being a fencer. at least enemies can respect each other for the strong beliefs in their respective causes. but the totally unbiased are instead scorned for lack of passion, and the corresponding misapprehension of lack of credibility. they cry out, "how can an unbiased man have an opinion!"

lo, the truth stripped of bias is no longer opinion in the first place. a truly objective view is an unbiased view, and because of its nature it is far removed from the reach of criticism. who criticises the truth? now, the purpose of the neutral is not to be the devil's advocate--that would imply a constant force against the party. no, the neutral plays the spring that dynamically forces the party towards impartiality--push or pull. the force must always be flexible, as the characteristic of human emotion is oscillatory. by extension, its bias and therefore the delusions accompanied fluctuate too. because of adrenaline, the instinctive human response goes into either aggression, submission or retreat: "i am always correct," "i am always wrong," "i dont know and i dont want to talk about it," respectively.

 undated untitled

the greatest failure of any man, especially the self-confident and logical man, will come from his decision and successful execution in positioning himself away from external criticism or excising from his life the people who provide it, or both, such that his own truth-seeking abilities silently become instead truth-creating abilities, betraying him into a bubble of falsities more robust than his skills against them, never to be saved from the illusion.

special beliefs

a religion comprises things such as rites, rituals, traditions and the like, all descending from a set of beliefs. these beliefs may not be sufficient (although too many times they are) for any associated religious action to be carried out by followers, but are indeed necessary for an integral and consistent framework that defines each and every religious community.

it is also apparent that every religion and also every denomination dividing them all have their own specific set of beliefs and within these beliefs a yet smaller, exclusive set which distinguish them from each other. that is to say, two communities with all overlapping beliefs, are in principle identical communities where religion is concerned.

insofar as there are a set of beliefs that define and distinguish a religious community, there is no reason for these beliefs to not be as open to scrutiny and criticism as any other nonreligious belief being promulgated in society. in fact in many societies there religious beliefs and practices receive special protection from reasonable open debate, as if religion itself was something born with and not chosen by will of an informed individual; gender or race or disability are topics that could conceivably be given special protection, as it would not be consistent with fairness to even discuss why a person should or should not be an aborigine female in a wheelchair for example. instead it is well and wholly within a person's faculty of decision making to choose all their beliefs where religious or non religious beliefs are concerned, and accordingly they would be open to scrutiny and criticism from their peers for any beliefs that do not conform to reality as it is.

if it were not the case that religious people are not free to choose their beliefs, then the situation is far more dire than i currently conceive it to be: have they somehow grown incapable (and thus need help) or have they been prevented from learning new things once they have subscribed to certain beliefs of a certain religious group (and thus need help)? to me, and i think to everyone else it should be clear that given just this scenario alone there is no reason to intervene with unwanted help, except for the fact that beliefs lead to behaviours and behaviours lead to action that affect the wider community outside their own. and where these things spill into the larger community that have opposing beliefs, where do we go for reasonable discourse regarding conflicting views if one party has been awarded special protection from the beginning? i havent even mentioned isolationist practices like in-group dating and marrying, pseudoscientific education, self victimisation propaganda and child indoctrination the latter on its own being sufficient to rouse serious concern about the current preference to nonintervention.

there is a very strong need in us as a species to feel belonging in a family or in a group. most of the time this entails every member participating in the same actions, some of the time also professing the same beliefs. but deep in every individual is the guarantee of total privacy in what we really hold in our own minds despite what we do and it is from this that i suspect even the most loyal performers of traditional actions hold in themselves the spark of doubt that asks if the specific belief follows reason or not. but that spark is easily drowned out in the too common practice of everyone out there doing the same thing you are doing. it is this comfort of belonging in community and family that prevents most people from any risk of disturbance from status quo. they have learnt over the centuries, to strike a balance of trade between their individual freedom to believe and the received commodity of comfort and security, and have no reason to do anything more about it.

where will change come except from the outside?

barbie doll and the problem of evil

coming soon.

on the adaptibility of religion

objective morality is dangerous in the sense that it causes people to not take responsibility for their actions by mechanism of transferring that responsibility to their preacher--who if so happened to have disagreed with another leader on a given theological issue, would not have come together to solve and finally agree but instead would have come apart leading two new sects of what was previously the same belief.

ironically the acceptance of moral relativism is the cure for the fractionation of religions which threatens to destroy institutions from internal rife, let alone the onslaught from without--that of rational thinking, evidence-based reasoning and the changing social environments advocating inclusion rather than exclusion.

dark night

goodnight sleep well