on happiness part deux

some say that the best kind of excitement, the best type of enjoyment, is the kind that comes from getting completely lost in the environment--willfully letting go and letting the environment take over. but it seems to me that this way of living happy is usually the surest and fastest way for one to feel empty soon after the ambience dies down. when the lights come back on and the mr dj puts the record off, the same some people can almost always report of the sudden feeling of loss and afterward either the urge to chase a louder music in the future or the slightly unshakeable suspicion that all of it is just a drug that they dont want to take any longer. sometimes, weirdly both.

we are all suckers for security. yet strangely enough we enjoy losing control, and like a pendulum we yearn for stability as soon as we lose it. we are definitely a contradictory bunch. so it seems to be the best move that we choose the right thing or things to let control us. one caveat: that those things be more reliable than ourselves--that those things be worth more to us than ourselves. from off the top of my head i cannot really find more than one thing to which i am willing to submit control. and to everything else, when i enjoy it, i also enjoy without losing much of myself.

im quite prepared to accept that this means i will never experience the best kind of excitement, the best kind of enjoyment. after all, everything has a price. my satisfaction is in complete awareness.

mooncake overload

"aiyoh! look at the moon, what happened to it? today is 8-15 the moon should be big and round...why is it so small?!"

cos you ate all of it already.

on happiness

The ways of this world are but paths of and toward hunger; the pursuits of earthly origins do not satiate but instead grow emptiness and the unstoppable drive to fill it. But the pursuit of contentment is within reach for us all--the reach itself is its result--happiness inherent.

This truth is a reminder: happiness is not something to be chased and captured; it is something to be observed in quiescence amidst the tympanic chaos of this distracting world.

Let the implication be that we are by nature and ourselves alone bound from happiness as long as we remain as beings enchanted by the offerings of this earth.

Happiness is not of this world; that which will show us happiness is of the same characteristic.

world record

today, after a kit-kat, a sip of water and whilst sitting down, with a heart rate of about 60, i held my breath for 3 min flat. i think i could have gone another 5 or 6 sec but i was already starting to spasm and didnt want to die yet. i still have tutorials to do.

and theres still a place i need to visit before i die =^.^=

meaning of life p huit, unhypocrites p trois, morality p deux

let us not be quick to devalue those who perform actions we consider to be distasteful. the judgment itself is not wrong, but the advice to steer clear from it is usually in the rationale that people discriminate according to flawed criteria--in this case men and women are devalued according to their actions, regarding which not everyone considers to be distasteful in the first place...

we are often brought up with societal imprints of normalcy and mores; the very criteria with which we assess our surroundings are the same criteria our fathers and grandfathers used. if history has taught us anything, let it be that it has repeatedly shown us the error of our ways in terms of racial, sexual, political and social inequalities--the kind of atrocities that only the descendants of the very perpetrators can acknowledge and repent for. why dont we take a minute, or even a second to ascertain for ourselves the adequacy of following patterns of our forefathers and their criteria for judging people. this way of blind reception of instruction is inhibitive in all its connotations--it is a parasitic regressor of the long-term social fabric (as ironic as it this be). after all, time-honored practices are supposedly keepers of the peace.

rw emerson said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. the message is harsh, and for some who cling fiercely to their views this very quotation can incite a counterproductive defensive psychological barricade against subsequent attempts to enlighten; yes emerson claims that all who disagree with him are diminutive in many ways. however let us be reminded that it takes a huge mind, an exceptionally magnanimous and mature individual to overcome the defense mechanism erected by his own primal self, and with no further help attain an awareness lucid enough to penetrate his latent denial. it is a true feat of strength for a warrior hardened by battle to drop his sword and cast aside his shield and trust that not every one he meets on the bloody fields is his enemy. an acceptance of emerson's words as truth is the first step in proving that he is wrong (again ironic but no less true).

now once we have established for ourselves the criteria that we can safely and fairly use to assess the people around us, we quickly find that most if not all of these men and women who we would have been appalled by in the past, we now find no quarrel with. in effect, in trying to make our criteria more useful, we have made it useless. irony for the third time..however, note that in simply stepping back and taking a look at the things we have been thinking, saying and doing all these years without question, in looking at the big picture, our perception of all that exists changes...our priorities change.

yes our fathers and grandfathers might look at our generation and say that we are doing things that they in their time would never have dared to, that "these are a lost people." no i am not going to say that they are wrong, and definitely not that "we the supposed lost people are in fact more focused than you could ever be", but rather i say there will come a day when our children and their children will think, say and do things we consider to be appalling and we will chide them for "losing" their way, and i can only hope then they will not deride us for being square little minds.

instead let us earn the respect of our forefathers by breaking free of their will and at the same time make our own way and so be able to deserve the same respect from our children. the day will come when they earn our respect by breaking free of our wills. but let us be mindful of our own stresses of today and not impose it on them in the first place.

fighting for freedom from false fixtures (alliteration zomg) marks only the first chapters of my freedom manifesto; the second and more important half underscores the importance of making it available to everyone else as well. it is imperative that all who are free fight to make free those who are not.

1. stop judging others against our deluded ideals
2. break denial and exit from delusion
3. assist others in abandoning their delusions

the unhypocrites part deux

the unhyprocrites, part deux, written 2-3months ago:

its so easy to point fingers isnt it? when  i was 7 my chinese teacher said something in class about how pointing your finger at someone also meant having three of your own pointed at yourself. it seemed like a pretty cool discovery at the time, and i think i got the message. and then i forgot about it because i kept receiving the same visualisation from so-called wise people that i met along the next decade or so.

we people like to point our fingers at things unknown to us, things that make us uncomfortable. and if theres one thing ive observed in humans, its our aggressive requirement for security and reliability in our perceived reality. anything or anyone who threatened our bubble world would be pointed at and struck down by words, if not sticks and stones.

discrimination is a powerful tool--it is powerful not because of its efficacy but for its accessibility and widespread use. when two different groups are put together, their first impressions of each other are formed from firstly the gathering of similarities in appearance, behaviour, ideology. if none is found, then the notion of imminent mutual threat is quickly reconciled. i note that this threat is merely perceived at this point--not that it is cannot exist, rather that it is believed to be at this moment; whether the threat is real or not is inconsequential because a perceived threat is no more unreal  than a truly existent one to a mind that is easily threatened. and people do all sorts of things when they are afraid. granted, in the civilised societies that earthlings have made for themselves, they no longer murder each other out of mass fear and hysteria. think kkk, nazi, salem, etc. how embarrassing it would be for all of them if i were an alien who came to this world and observed them and told them that they are just as barbaric as they were a century or two ago. if not in action, then in words, if not in words then in thought.

discrimination is a powerful tool, but its use is flooded by abuse. this tool is but a defense mechanism to increase the sense of security of life and limb of its user, who never knows the ugly side of it: this tool is a selfish tool. it increases our quality of life at the expense of another party. if my theory is right, then such use of this tool would lead to null progress for all mankind in general. i suspect if people were mature and selfcongnitive enough, they should realise this on their own eventually, that low-level defense mechanisms are animal in nature (kill or be killed). whosoever debases a person to increase his security does inadvertently makes himself into an animal which will always be lower than the lowest person.

people they think thoughts, say words, and do actions and they do all of it for self-preservation. they dont know this, so i cant really blame them anyway. but some really try and go out of their way to push people down and make them stay down. those i cannot forgive; those who take this terrible tool and use it, and claim divine instruction from religion--my religion, and so taint it with their human imperfections: who are they, with their own lacking human wisdom, to take from some 700 listed sins a few chosen ones and place them prominently against the rest, as if some sins are worse than others. who are they to then proceed to condemn their neighbours who are guilty of one of their chosen sins, when they themselves, the pointer of fingers, are guility of the other 699? is not the divine wage of any of those 700 the same? i know the punishment is the same, and that the penance for forgiveness is also the same for any and all of them.

like i said in part one, it takes one to know one, and until we find similarity with discomfort, we can never accept it as part of life, and by unfortunate virtue of our humanity, we will blindly try to eliminate that discomfort at the cost of our neighbours comfort, and because we are blind, also at the cost of our very humanity.


if by pointing a finger at someone makes all of us realise that we dont really like strange people, then i hope we also realise the second truth--that we are only doing it to regain lost security. and the third truth if possible, that both the danger and gained security are likely false, and that the discrimination was a result of personal hypocrisy. hopefully some will grasp the fourth, that as sentient beings we are capable of transcending animal instinct and so resist them just because we can--because there should be more meaning to life; to discover and exercise the reason for our sentience--raison d'etre.

if only mr loh told me this instead of his selfpointing idea, i would have believed him. but i was 7. and that age, anyone is likely to stop pointing if someone said to them that they were also pointing at themselves--after all, nobody likes to point at themselves. they only stop doing it because they realise they are also hurting themselves. seven year olds cant achieve a level three clarity. hey, cant blame them. but most forty seven year olds still dont. what gives?

there is happiness outside of the bubble world too.

on comfort and contentment

that's my job.

the rational

je regrette part cinq

Count Coulomb, Emperor Economics, Grandfather Gravity, Kaiser Karma, Lady Libra, Lord Luck, Tycoon Thermodynamics i can spend forever and a day coming up with alliterations of things in life which ebb and flow in the now but level out in the end; this universe is one built upon the laws of conservation, and to obtain all of one thing, then all of another must be sacrificed.

there is no free everything.

garden of Hades

the frog lay between walls so high even ceilings would be unnecessary. every route split into two ways, each choice diverging into more forks than the previous. it imagined the way out, but each option only appeared to lead to yet another option with no conceivable mark of progress. every dilemma was passed with a decision to turn right, with the vain notion that consistency would result well. then it was as if the maze had become a labyrinth--but even a labyrinth has a way out.

this spiral was more of a black hole made of quicksand. every step out of the centre made the hole bigger and the more the frog thought the further it became from the edge. it was a swamp of black with currents rushing in, yet even the rising waterline could not seem to catch the head of the walls; they too were ascending as if in blatant response to the frog's so-called efforts.

the trap was like a prison cell made of dreams, that even desire could not touch, nor hope smell. even if the whole universe was plunged into darkness, the predicament could not grow worse. so the frog sat...and sat... and sat, until a worm crawled by and even the worm was happy. it went about its day, looking forward to the ground and all it had to offer. even the white-spotted black cat pierced the gloom with its fine green eyes. one purr it made and it was content for the day. the porcupine was busy pawing out the shrubbery eager for something interesting, something new. the black bear roared, the eels darted up and down the stream like ribbons in the wind. all the critters of the wilderness had something to live for.

but the frog only had the vision of a wide-eyed vagabond. and to it the topiary of the garden was only a temporary means to an unknown end.

principia fundamentalis

we are always in the running to define and characterise ourselves, regardless of our intention for or against; people perceive and evaluate one another according to their choice of words and actions. if we do not live by doctrine, we are undefined, erratic, oft confused beings tugged around by the vicissitudes of a chaotic world and its fancies. to gain true stability we become first enthralled by the tempting image of false security usually masked by what are known as Morals. it is a matter of time that a moral person is broken by shocking events of his life, yet if that person so chooses, as we have been given the Godsent power of conscious choice, to live by a certain set of principles instead, no event on earth can shake him, as his doctrine is as fundamental as the ground beneath him.

now, a man is defined by his doctrine, and to fail to live up to so is to be a lesser man. we are always in the running to define and characterise ourselves; in a world where it is impossible to escape earthly judgment, the last bastion of stability is our own personal doctrine. and we will be judged according to it regardless of our preference. yet not all is beyond control, for we can shape the very objects of such scrutiny--ourselves. if we do not define ourselves, then in effect we leave that inevitability into the hands of the eyes that observe us. unfortunately the public views an undefined person without much respect, and so the words of such a person is rarely accorded much weight; if we do not take ourselves seriously, then all the less would others do so and even lesser should we expect such a thing of them.

a foreman can tell his labourers where to lay the bricks and where to place the nails and where to drop the floorboards and say "this is how a house is made," when in fact if he simply taught his men the ideas of walls, of floors and of roofs, how amazed would he be if the men were to start building all kinds of houses no one foreman could ever conceive of on his own?

principles. we humans need them. in the early years each one of us may convince ourselves or become comfortable in the delusion that there is only one way to build a house. but when we learn of the fundamentals of morality--principles--we become individual builders of a myriad new abodes. it is important to become free of blind instruction, and to choose to learn principles over their respective constructs. there is nothing more fundamental than principles; anything simpler would be nothing--yet it is dangerous to flirt with the concept of becoming free of principles; we humans need to live by doctrine, if not by primal hunger, then by necessity of its utility.