Hi again. It's been almost a month since my last blog post (3 hours and 22 minutes to be exact) and I felt like I needed somewhere to release my emotions again since I'm re-entering the state of on and off self-pity I usually do when I can't express myself. It's not that I ran out of thoughts or anything, actually I even tried one or two times a week to write something whenever an idea comes to my head before I lose them (which I did, sadly). It's just that there is something in me aside from being lazy that prevents me from writing down my spur of the moment ideas at that time. Maybe they'll just become some idealistic useless ideas that nobody cares about in the first place, or maybe just the ever hypocritical side of me who talks about how to live a good life without being good?
These train of thoughts come all of a sudden wherever I may go or whatever I might be doing. Other people might see me quietly eating or laughing whenever a joke is cracked but a portion of me inside is always thinking about things people would consider useless nowadays. I guess that's a disadvantage of an introverted person who never tells anyone anything real for fear of not being understood or being humiliated or hurting someone. The problem, however, about these thoughts is just that; they are spur of the moment thoughts that are never thought of properly. I tend to become rash in many things, doing things when instinct drives me, like crossing the street when a rushing car is about to pass and nearly getting me killed because I jumped like a ballet dancer to reach the other side. I really don't care about doing things properly or doing weird things and all that since I'm more of a counter-culture person who thinks that society is already demanding too much from its masters.
So what has changed since the last hard headed post I wrote? Probably nothing. Probably tomorrow I'll be busy with school again and forget I wrote anything like this. I'll be my usual self, which I hate so much. My usual self is a confused person who cannot get his goals done because he doesn't know what he will do to get there and doesn't like to ask around for help. But you know, these thoughts are my thoughts. They are not necessarily thoughts that others would agree with, nor would they even find these thoughts ordinary. It's not new to me whenever I hear someone telling me that I have an eccentric way of thinking and an unorthodox perspective on life. Sometimes I think if I like that fact.
I hate people who tolerate my wrongdoings. If I have an attitude problem, I would prefer it to be told in front of me straight face and then be helped in fixing the problem. While I understand why no one would want to tell me straight to my nose that I am a proud insensitive radical impossible dream-chaser, especially among my friends, I tend to see the passiveness as a road block to my finding of my identity as a person. Maybe hate would be too strong of a word. Maybe non-preference should do it.
So what else has not changed? I'm still frustrated over the only things that make me smile that I cannot do, like music, math or making friends. I only have a simple desire in life: to do what I want to do the way I want to do it. Since I am neither expert in music nor in math and probably never in being a socialite, there is only hope in one thing and that is to teach. But I want to remain in this forsaken third-world country and teach here. Yes, I want to be materially and environmentally deprived if I have to. I want to teach the future of this forsaken land so that the future may save it because from my point of view the youth of the next generation to ours is destroying it even more with their preferences for expensive overpriced gadgets and foreign materials. I want to inculcate a value of principle over price. We are not who we economically are; we are who we believe ourselves to be and who we are willing to work hard to become. But sadly, out of familial love this remaining dream might become another frustration.
I'm tired of complaining about the pain. I want to cry tears of joy. I want to find meaning in my life. But the way I see it, given the internal and external factors surrounding me presently, I am still yet to find that meaning; a very difficult task as it is. But you know what's so funny about this? I might be thinking like this now but when I wake up tomorrow I would have forgotten about what I am saying right now. That's why it's so nice that I have a blog to which I can post random things. I really don't care if I have an audience who reads my blogs; I just post to post. That's why I don't even use tags. To do so would be to put my thoughts into tiny stereotypes and destroy their uniqueness.
Oh, and one last thing. Faith. I believe in a God who will lead me to a right path if I give myself to Him. For my thoughts will not lead me to a brighter future. These thoughts that continuously complicate my life will not help me live it simply. These goals of reaching expert level on my hobbies will not make me happy with small things. Sometimes I just want to be someone else's puppet with no thought of my own. Maybe I can be more useful that way.
Pagpasensyahan niyo na at hindi ko na paiiralin ang tuwid na Filipino sa post na ito dahil ika nga, ang Filipino ay hindi Filipino kung hindi ito ginagamit ng nakararaming Pilipino. At dahil ang ginagamit ng nakararami ay hindi pormal, nararapat lang na gumamit ng hindi pormal na pagsasalita sa mga ganitong pagkakataon.
Ganyang mga kataga ang maririnig mo sa isang taong epal, panira ng trip, pampagulo ng buhay, o kung ano man ang gusto mong itawag. Kaso dapat lang muna natin intindihin na ang ibig sabihin ko sa salitang "epal" sa post na ito ay yung mga taong pakialamero, usisero, tsismoso at tsismosa at kahit sinumang taong mahilig makialam sa mga desisyon natin sa buhay.
Mahalaga ang mga taong epal. Bakit? Hindi naman kasi lahat tayo perpekto. Minsan kailangan natin lahat ng isang taong epal para ituwid tayo sa mga baluktot nating desisyong hindi natin itutuwid dahil pinaniniwalaan natin itong tama. Kailangan natin ng mga KJ na taong kaiinisan dahil kung wala sila, tayo ang magiging pinakabatayan natin ng tama o mali. Tayo lang ang magiging boses ng konsensya natin kaya sa pangyayaring bumaluktot ito ay wala na tayong magagawa.
Kung tutuusin, nagiging epal lang naman ang epal kung iniisip nating hindi na kailangan ng ibang taong sumabat sa mga isipan at usapan natin. Kung magiging bukas tayo sa mga opinyon ng iba at hindi maiinis sa mga nais ipahayag ng ibang tao, gaano man ito kapanira ng kasiyahan (KJ) sa atin.
Isipin mo na lang: Gusto natin ng pagbabago pero ang gusto lang nating pagbabago ay pagbabagong nagmumula sa atin. Tama naman, kaso ang pagkakaintindi ng iba rito ay dahil sa kanila ang pagbabago, ang mga gawain lang nila ang makakapagpabago sa kanila at anumang sabihin ng iba ay makakasira lang ng gusto nilang mangyari. Dito rin lalabas ang likas na ugali nating pagpili sa sarili natin bago ang iba. Ngunit tulad rin ng sinabi ni Hesus sa Bibliya: "Ang sinumang magnanais iligtas ang kaniyang buhay ay mawawalan nito, at ang sinumang mawalan ng kaniyang buhay dahil sa akin ay makakasumpong niyon." Ang Diyos ay hindi nasa iisang tao lamang. Kung susundin natin ang prinsipyong ito na para siyang totoo, eh di hindi ba dapat makinig tayo sa mga sinasabi o ginagawa ng iba, gaano man ka epal pakinggan?
Kaya nga bilang isa ring epal, napakahalaga ng mga epal sa mundo. Sino pa ba ang kakatok sa mga saradong isipan kung lahat ng tao sarado ang isipan.
Ipagpalagay muna natin na isang kuwarto ang buhay, at sa kuwartong iyon ay naroon ang lahat ng iyong mga pinakamahalagang pangangailangan sa buhay tulad ng pagkain, tubig at pananamit. Sabihin rin nating wala tayong kamuwang-muwang sa kung ano man ang nasa labas ng kuwarto na iyon. Ano sa tingin niyo ang magiging pagtanaw ng kung sino man ang nasa loob ng kuwarto na iyon sa kaniyang buhay?
Marahil ang iisipin ng ibang mga nakakabasa nito ay maghahangad ng kalayaan ang taong iyon o bubuksan ang pinto palabas at tutuklasin ang nasa kabilang dako ng pintuang iyon. Tama sila. Pero sabihin nating tatanggalin ang pinto na iyon at hindi malalaman ng tao sa loob na mayroon pang mundo sa labas ng kwartong ginagalawan niya. Maghahangad pa kaya siya ng kalayaan? Marahil hindi.
Hindi, kasi una, hindi niya nalalaman na mayroon pa palang mundo sa likod ng apat na sulok ng kuwartong kaniyang ginagalawan at wala namang lumalabas na sitwasyon na nangangailangan ng bagay na wala sa loob ng kuwartong iyon. Ikalawa, maski alam niya na may mundo sa labas ng ginagalawan niya, ang paraan para makarating sa mundong iyon ay hindi kaagad magagawa at nangangailangan ng matinding pagsisikap. Ngunit dahil na rin sa hindi niya nakikita bilang isang matinding pangangailangan ang paglabas sa mundong kaniyang ginagalawan, hindi na rin siya magaaksaya ng pagod at panahon para lumabas.
Dahil isa lamang maliit na bahagi ng mas malaking mundo sa labas ang mundong kaniyang ginagalawan, madaling isipin na nakikita ng mga tao sa labas ang apat na sulok ng kaniyang kuwartong walang pinto, ngunit hindi nakikita ng tao sa loob ang mga tao sa labas. Ano kaya kung may kakatok ngayon na tao mula sa labas sa kuwarto ng taong nasa loob? Sasagutin kaya ng tao sa loob ang katok na ito sa pamamagitan ng paglabas? Kung gusto niya, pwede. Pero maaari rin namang hindi niya sagutin at iparamdam sa mga tao sa labas na ang kuwarto sa malaking mundo na iyon ay isa lamang palamuti na wala talagang tao sa loob, at sa kadahilanang hindi sigurado ang mga tao sa pagkakaroon ng tao sa loob ng kuwarto, iiwan na lamang ito ng mga tao at hahayaang manahimik, kung hindi man nila sirain.
Ano ngayon ang saysay ng paglalarawan ng sitwasyong ito sa mga nagaganap sa araw-araw nating buhay? Minsan kasi, kung hindi man madalas, ay nakukuntento na tayo sa kung ano ang mayroon tayo at hindi natin nakikita ang paglabas sa paulit-ulit na daloy ng buhay bilang isang pangangailangan. Wala namang masama rito, at kung tutuusin ay mas mainam pa nga ito upang tayo ay hindi maging masyadong mapaghangad sa mga bagay na pwede namang wala sa atin. Ngunit ang nagiging problema rito ay ang katotohanang hindi lang tayo ang tao sa mundo at kahit hindi tayo magbago ay magbabago ang mga tao at bagay sa paligid natin. Minsan may mga tao o sitwasyon na kakatok sa kuwartong nakasanayan natin na naghahatid ng mga tanong na ang kasagutan ay malabo sa atin sa kadalihanang ang nasabing sitwasyon ay bago sa ating pandinig at malayo sa ating nakasanayan na hindi natin nakitang kailangang pagtuunan ng pansin noong una. Ang nagiging resulta ay pagkalito, pagkalito kung pagbubuksan ba natin ng puso't isipan ang kumakatok na sitwasyon.
Oportunidad ba ito o kapahamakan? Hindi tayo sigurado. Minsan wala na lang tayong ginagawa at nananahimik na lang tayo sa loob ng apat na sulok ng mundong ating nakasanayan, sarado sa mga kumakatok sa buhay natin. Pero dahil kinatok na tayo ng pagkakataong ito, hindi natin matatamasa ang mga bunga ng pagsagot sa katok na ito, mabuti man o hindi. Mananatili tayo sa kadiliman na nag-iisip kung may liwanag ba talaga o kung paano mamuhay sa labas ng nakasanayan. Para bang tayo ay naduduwag harapin ang hamon ng buhay, o 'di naman kaya'y tinatamad lang na magbigay ng hinihinging pagod at panahon para makalabas sa kuwartong walang pintuan.
Siguro mas mainam mamatay ng kuntento at hindi naghahangad. Ngunit baka hindi lang natin napapansin na may nakakalimutan tayong isa pang pangangailangan maliban sa pagkain, inumin at pananamit: pakikipagkapwa at pagmamahal. Dahil hindi tayo nag-iisa sa mundo, at patuloy na nagbabago ang mundo, hindi posible na manatili tayo sa kung ano tayo ngayon habambuhay. Mahirap magbukas ng pinto pero alang-alang sa pangangailang magmahal at mahalin. Sa totoo lang, kaunting lakas lang naman ang kailangan: ang lakas para makita ang kagandahan sa sarili natin, at maipamahagi sa mundo ang kagandahang ito.
Finally, I found time to write another blog post and get over with my laziness and stress.
There was this poem I found on the internet while looking for one that I will recite for our speech class. It's entitled "Hypocrisy" by Mark Spencer. You can read ithere. Simply put, it's a poem telling someone who doesn't like to believe in God the hypocrisies of the actions of the said person in line with his beliefs.
What makes this idea stand out for me was that the situation it describes is very much prevalent in our modern society where life becomes complicated and ultimately we're losing our faith. As a matter of fact some people have already lost their faith and consider this loss of faith as freedom. With the belief that they are free, they begin to call themselves as freethinkers.
What is so free about freethinkers? From my humble perspective, to be a freethinker is to be open to all ideas the world has to offer and accept their existence and understanding why such ideas move and exist. Given our disunited situation today, I really don't think that freethinkers really exist. These people who call themselves freethinkers are the hypocrites described by Mark Spencer who tell others not to speak when they share their beliefs or treat others as freaks when they get offended in the ears.
If this prison of closed-mindedness to the possibility of the existence of a Divine Being is what they would call freedom, then I would rather remain a prisoner of my own thoughts. Even if the information I put on that box to the top right states that I consider myself a free thinker, I am only as free as to ideas that I can accept. But probably I am more free than people who call themselves free, for to declare freedom under a state of blindness is futile.
In the case where freedom is truth, which is also claimed by these freethinkers, the only way to attain freedom is ultimate death. For as the poems says, "Not one of us can offer proof for the things we believe; and anyone who says they can is trying to deceive."
So why claim that you are free when you have just put yourself in another cell of this hell of a prison we call life? Why consider yourselves as people who think out of the box, when you simply moved into a narrower box deprived of hope on things that are not concrete? In the first place, the fact that you do not respect the freedom of another is not, and will never be, true freedom.
What is happiness? Some would say it is the absence of sadness. What is goodness? Some would say it is the absence of evil. What is darkness? Some would say it is the absence of light.
Some would say that we define the things in our lives by their opposites. You cannot have a concept of happiness if everybody in the world is happy. If everyone would be happy, then the need to define a term that is the opposite of sadness would no longer be existent, as well as the need to define sadness itself. We cannot become something without becoming nothing. In order for us to know goodness, we must first know evilness.
This is the paradoxical nature of life. We can't be happy if we were not sad, and we can't be sad if we were not happy. Life would not be life without its flaws. Without these flaws, nobody would say that 'life is good' and we would be living in a literally monotonous world where the opposite forces that make it turn do not exist. Simply put, life would not have meaning if we there is no light. But the same can be said when there is no darkness.
That being said, why then is this paradox flawed? We answer it by answering the following questions. Is cold the absence of heat? or is black the absence of white? Some would argue that the answers to those questions would be yes, and would use physics to explain such. But that is not the case when we look at human life. Not all men are physicists.
To a lot of people, cold is simply something that describes what they feel when they do not feel hot. But even in the ordinary sense, this is also not true. Why? Let's define another term, and let that term be 'warm'. Warm is neither hot nor cold. It is a feeling that's comfortable while neither of the extremes are. The existence of warm defeats now the definition of hot as 'not being cold' and vice versa. The existence of an inbetween factor shows how the definitions by opposite is flawed.
So the not not true paradox is really not not not true. What does this imply? Recall in the above post that without one of the opposites, life would be meaningless. When we began to show the flaw to that reasoning, its outcomes are also consequently flawed. This means that when life loses sadness, or happiness, or both, it does not become meaningless. When we see ourselves as directionless beings living lives simply waiting for dying deaths, when we think that we are dull beings who are too numb to make drastic differences to this world, we never really become meaningless. For as long as there is life itself, not the good or the bad life, there will always be meaning in it, and it is our task to find that meaning and not give on searching for it.
This argument is wrong is not being a fan doesn't necessarily mean being a hater. You can simply not care. It is like saying that if a fruit is not an orange, then it is a pear, which we all know is wrong. This kind of logic is what some people would call as thinking in black and white, which is defined in art as the extreme ends of color values. Let us take a look at one important word in the said definition: extreme. Using this, we now define thinking in black and white as thinking in predetermined extremes, something like declaring the evilness of an act which is not good without thinking over.
Somewhere between black and white is another color with probably more white than black, or more black than white, or even an equal amount of black and white, but nevertheless is a mix of both. If we see the colors black and white as values or points of view, this statement takes on a new definition: it tells us that there are points which agree in varying magnitude to both values. Take, for example, the fan and hater situation. What situation can we give such that the case will agree in some way to both situations. Well, we can say that both agree that the artist being talked about is an artist, or that the media could be writing complete lies about the artist in question. Such a situation is definitely found between the black and the white, but it isn't found on the first look.
The first look is not true in a lot of cases, such as those where people judge people with bias. It can be true, though, like when we judge a paint to be wet simply by believing in its sign. To make sure that it is true, we must look at it from a different way than how we looked at it before; because by looking at it from the same way we looked at it from the first look, the second look simply loses importance. And once we have a first, second, or even third look, then we decide based on our standing principles. By then our judgment would be what we would usually call a well-thought judgment that is worth respecting, even if it is not respected.
People who argue over unimportant things are those who think in black and white. Those who think in color know when to argue and when to find peace. Peace is neither black nor white. It is a beautiful art full of hues and values. It is something attained by painting over the darkness and blankness with a blanket of colors, colors which are between black and white, colors which take a second, or even a third, look before being found.
The inbetween or neutral value is something not everyone will agree upon. For example, people would rather see gray as a dull color compared to black and white, or 0 as an insignificant number compared to 1 or -1. It is for this reason that those who choose to be in the middle are labeled wimps or losers. However, the middle value should not be looked at as something meaningless, but rather, it is something that can represent the set of good and bad scores (in Math, this is known as the arithmetic mean, a single number that can represent the value of several scores taken together). It should be the standing point where peace can begin and wounds are fixed. Maybe, in some way, it could mean nothingness; since it is only through nothingness that we can begin again.
To conclude, I would like to ask a question:
If a number is not positive what is it? Think about your answer before looking at the next paragraph.
☻☺☻ ☺☻☺ ☻☺☻
Some might say that it is negative, but this is in fact false. While it can be negative, it is not always negative. It can be neutral, or the number zero. If you still thought that it would be negative, then I think it's time to give our perspectives on life a second look.
Come on. We've had enough of it and made so big of a fuss so it's nearly impossible if you don't know what the RH Bill is. In case you were born just this morning and for some reason you already know how to read, write and access the internet then let me explain in brief: basically it's a bill in Philippine congress that aims to provide better care for the reproductive health of the Filipino people, but due to its highly unreasonable focus on artificial contraception, it has been the subject of many issues and debates within both political and social worlds. Since, as mentioned, it is affecting even the social world, and some people are hating me for reiterating a stance that will satisfy neither pro or anti proponents of the bill, I'll make a statement on this post.
Before we make a statement on anything we would like to give a fuck about, we should take note of a few things.
1. Are we aware of what we are talking about? Usually the educated win over the uneducated in this sense because they actually do their research before giving a damn. However, in a country where anyone can freely claim that the world is locally flat, or that the exact value of pi is 4, it's really hard to determine who are the educated and who are those who simply claim to be educated. We may also note the fact that our country if full of people with the bandwagon mentally as well as people with the mentality of always having to create bandwagons. If you read my post on the minor majority, we can actually see that the people who are in the bandwagons are not aware that they are the ones in the bandwagon. They should be, however, more or less aware of their ignorance regarding the fact at hand, and it should be through this that they base their opinions from. Sad to say that the majority of the people who give opinions regarding this bill are no different that two monkeys bickering at each other for a piece of banana.
2. Are we ready to stand for what we believe in? There are people who are only good with giving a yes or a no out of randomness, like Manny Pacquiao's vote on Twitter regarding the impeachment of the Ombudsman. Such an uninformed and not well thought opinion is very much subject to change the moment scrutiny arrives, such as antis becoming pros because they cannot defend what they want to defend, or pros becoming antis because they realize that there is something wrong in the propositions they are giving. Such cases also follow from the above mentioned ignorance on the topic, which causes us to stand for things that we have no idea about and then stand on other things when what we initially stand on begin to crumble. Why? We did not build a solid foundation. And without a solid foundation, we are bound to fall.
3. Are the steps we are taking logical and in support of the already existing principles we have already established? This is where my stand in the bill comes. There goes a saying, "Methods are many, principles are few. Methods change, but principles never do." Under what principles do we ground our methods on? Are these methods consistent with our principles? For example, if we are for physical, spiritual and mental health why are we making big arguments that only hurt the spiritual and mental health of the Filipino people? Note that a body without a soul is lifeless; a physically and reproductively healthy body would be nothing with a dead spirit and mind. Or if we are for life and peace, why are we fighting and punishing those who are against what we believe in? Is this what our principles call for?
Through these questions we can now discuss the following question: If the bill does get passed, will the pros reap the product of their labor? Or will the Church be prepared for it? Knowing the history of the Philippines, we can tell that Filipinos have fought for things they condemned in the end, beginning with freedom from the Spaniards. While I believe that the Filipinos really did deserve freedom, they did not deserve freedom with complete ignorance. Only a man like Jose Rizal back then could think of this. Now the people like Rizal would most likely be regretting attaining such an early freedom since it has left us in intellectual poverty, the worst poverty next to spiritual poverty. In modern times we have elected presidents, despite opposition, that we later hated, like the ranks of Marcos, Estrada, Arroyo and Aquino.
On the second question, which I have retold my answers over and over again, as my Facebook friends should know, the Church should be channeling its efforts into something that is more lasting and productive: teaching its faithful strong and solid moral foundations so that if the earthquake of temptation does come, they would be prepared and remain solid despite the storms and weapons of the enemies. But what are they doing right now? They're blinding the faithful into blindly following against rather than enlightening them to why they should be against an immoral law. Join this, pray that, etc etc. While I am a devout Catholic and have nothing against prayers, these formulated prayers we keep on doing do not necessarily tell us why we have to pray. I also posted something like this in my post on mechanicality, or doing things for the sake of doing them. This is what I'm pointing at when I said that the methods should be consistent with the principles. For an establishment that seeks to spreading light, it is giving darkness to the people so that they may find a light that could never be found in darkness.
I am, by all means, against the bill. However, I find the methods the Church is doing right now very questionable and unconvincing. It's like putting a stopper on a leaking pipe instead of fixing the pipe altogether. A waste of resources and ineffective over long periods of stress. Very Filipino, in a negative way.
If you read (present and past tenses) between the lines, you might have noticed a certain emphasis I gave on this post. Education. Education is something we lack, while ignorance is something we have in abundance. In a country where powerful people feed on ignorance, it's really hard to find the need for good education, and add in the negative perspective of present day society on teachers because of their economic value. We are not Marxists, and neither are we communists. We are living in a democracy, a people for a people. And if we would just be making informed choices and stopped being media hogging assholes, then probably the passage of this bill would be settled and everyone would be happy. A discussion on media hogging would probably lengthen this post a lot more so I would not just give it, however I do assume that everyone who's reading is aware of the negative effects of media on society. If not, ask for the intercession of holy mother Google to find some readings.
On a lighter side of this, I would like to share a story that happened not too far in the past, just around a month ago and which some of you would probably be familiar with. On March 14, 2011 a UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) student by the name of Alexandra Wallace made a YouTube video ranting about how the Asians in their library go all annoying with their "Ching Chong Ling Long Ting Tong" on the phone, effectively making her racist. It doesn't take much thinking to figure out that she gained a lot of negative video responses by Asians who make equally offensive rants against her (some even becoming more racist, but against Whites.) Of special importance is a very light hearted video response by a 24 year old actor and musician Jimmy Wong, the younger brother of Freddie Wong in case the latter is more familiar:
It took a lot of creativity and probably painful restraint to make such a hit selling video response, which made some critics claim the response as one that "saved the internet" due to its positive and intelligent outlook on cyber-bullying. I may not be one like Jimmy in oh so many ways but I'm presenting this video to show that in a world where so much information is available, we shouldn't be resorting to primitive and ineffective means of arguments especially on those cases that matter to our lives as Filipinos, Catholics or humans for that matter since life is a universal treasure.
And yeah, I know, title unrelated. I just tried to make it sound lighter to the eyes. I really suck at being creative with arguments. :(
Common sense is not so common. But you know what else is not so common?
In a world where common sense is always defined to be one that is common to the person speaking, or expecting. In other words, it is something that is known to be beneficial to the person declaring the commonness of something: it is good for that person. Ironically, common sense, in this sense, did not promote what everyone would expect to be "common": the common good.
Common good, defined, is good that is beneficial for everyone, such as social stability, freedom from disease and other health hazards and financial stability. Unfortunately, the common good is also not so common. We, especially those who "live the good life" can only see the good for them, and not necessarily good for others. So again, ironically, those who serve to promote common good do not realize the value of common good.
Deep in the story of this "apparent goodness" is a vice: selfishness. We know that something that is bad cannot promote good, and thus apparently good. Contrasting now this vice with the virtue of common good, we can therefore say that common good is promoted through something different, something like unselfishness. The ability to give what is good to others in need of it is indeed something good.
To do good, and not to lose something, is probably not doing good. Take for example the act of giving only spare change to those who truly (I repeat, truly) need it is not losing something that is good to the person giving, and thus it is not that good. It may good, in one way or another, but the feeling of doing something wholly good and the act of sacrifice is not present. Thus, it becomes nothing but a meaningless act. If it is good for the receiver and not good for the giver, then it is certainly not common good.
In a world that has only excess to give away, very rarely can we find true common good, and thus it is uncommon. The reasoning presented here may leave you thinking and somehow not convinced, but the point of this is not to convince, but to make room for thought.
We are in an age so modern that, whether we care about it or not, the speed of modernization is already faster than the rate of our progress. Rate is defined as the ratio of the distance traveled per unit of time. It then follows from this definition that the world is getting further away from us as time progresses, unless we move faster to catch up with it. However, with the need to move faster not found as a necessity, we move into a pace which we can travel comfortably. But what causes this deceleration?
The process of analysis involves taking something and breaking it down into smaller and smaller pieces, often to just as small as we need in order to find some sort of crucial detail. This can also happen to our lives in this changing world. When we find ourselves too empty even with what we already have in life, we analyze, we look at our lives at the minuscule scale and look for that crucial detail. Eventually when we find that detail we strive to fill it up in order to give us a sense of satisfaction.
Our inability to cope up with the global change is probably unknown to us, and it is only through this introspective analysis that we can find the reason why. And through this analysis, we are led to a sometimes counterintuitive detail: the basics. Just like how a sphere can be broken down into circles, and a circle broken down into arcs, and arcs into points, our lives can also be broken down into the simplest possible unit from which we can live it, that is, the basics, like how to ask for directions or what makes a person sad, etc.
Sometimes these small details are overlooked, probably because of our desires to move on and catch up with the fast paced development the world is experiencing. But what we don't know is that in order for us to make a step forward, we must first pass through the step before it. Take a staircase for example, you can climb it by skipping 2 or even 3 steps at a time, but if the staircase is long, you get tired easily as compared to taking it one step at a time. This is also the cycle that is called life, it's a long staircase that we can move by skipping steps in the beginning, but in the end this very act of skipping slows us down because when we are already at the higher steps, we have already consumed much energy and we are tired and then we will stop. However, the staircase is just like garter with a snail crawling in it. The snail travels at a constant speed and the garter extends at the same constant rate as the snail's speed. The snail has, mind bogglingly, a chance to reach the end of the garter after some very large time. However, if the snail stops to rest even for just a second, the time required for it to catch would become larger.
So what does this post emphasize? Well, the small things often overlooked in life are sometimes the most important. We often look at goals that are not immediately attainable, and attain them, calling this action a feat worthy of praise. But in the end, it is this feat that hinders us from attaining much higher goals than what we used to think is the ultimate goal.
This is the exact text of an essay I wrote a few days ago, towards the first day of my exams week, for something that would have given me national recognition if I ever had the guts to actually submit it. On the last spur of the moment, I suddenly realized that only the privileged could have their works read, and there are millions of people who are great writers who do not need national recognition in order to be recognized. I may be a great writer to some, but one thing is certain: I write because I simply want to write, without asking for anything in return. (Well, except comments, since I am rather paranoid about how others think of me. :P)
So here it goes...
COPY PASTE
After completing the endless requirements and hassles of school work, I arrived home, dropping my bag sluggishly unto the unkempt floor and began to climb the ladder towards the upper bed of the double deck from which I and my dorm mate sleep every night. I opened my notebook, not the one made of paper, but the one made of copper wires and semiconductors. I then began to double click the icon of my Internet browser and in the span of a second I was already looking at my search engine homepage. I was going to look for facts to support a reflection paper on being human that I was tasked to submit the morning of the following day, so I clicked the search bar and was barely finished typing “fac-” when the search engine suggested “Facebook.”
A funny experience, I thought at first, that a search engine suggests the name of a social networking site when a student searches for facts to support reflection on human-ness. All of a sudden, however, the experience suddenly came to me with a new face and a new message: the familiar social networking site which became part of my daily routine does indeed provide facts to support my reflection on my humanity. It has my name, address, contact information, the names of my friends, my likes and dislikes, where I was two hours ago, and all those things that tell others what I am. But then there were those posts on my wall which reflected my opinions on nearly everything from what the latest newspaper headline is to ideas on how life should be lived. It became my avenue for expressing who I am, on how good I think of the acts of myself and of others, and how bad I can be by simply expressing myself. It showed me that this networking site revealed a side of me I never showed outside the virtual world. Looking from a third person perspective at how good or how bad I can be paves the way for much eye opening. How a simple experience could create so much realization of truths previously unknown to oneself is simply amazing. It’s as if a whole new world was made right in front of my eyes, and I felt like discovering my bareness and deciding to put on clothes to show my modesty...
Wait. Isn’t this story familiar?
There was once a garden in the backyards of heaven, where there was a man, a woman and a serpent. In the middle of the garden was a tree whose fruits God strictly forbade anyone from eating. Then the serpent went to the woman, and all the rest is history. Eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil really was an eye opener to the woman. To God, it was an eyesore. This fateful event began the death of man’s ultimate favor and the beginning of pains for both man and woman. The serpent, meanwhile, was cursed to crawl on its belly and eat dust forever. Then we return to reality, facing our favorite social networking sites and thinking of what to post next that will not make us look like a socially deprived wimp. Again there is a man and a woman, but there is no serpent. Instead, there’s the Internet. In the middle of the Internet is a website whose contents’ truth value can never be verified. Reading the content of this website was an eye opener to the man and the woman. To everyone else, it’s just an anonymous person being anonymous and not caring about their lives. This event happens nearly every day.
Man only needed one fruit of knowledge of good and evil to fall from God twice. The other thing he needed was the Internet. Yes, this series of tubes brought once more upon us knowledge of good and evil through its interconnected networks, so wittingly designed that it is seemingly able to satisfy our hunger for information and social importance. The truth, however, is it does not.
Like a plagiarized essay off of the Internet for the sake of being used in a motivational speech, are we, too, simply copying and pasting the mistakes of our first parents? Are the edits we do to our copy pasted works simply the removal of hyperlinks and footnotes? Are we contented with knowing that what we did is wrong, and no longer caring about rectifying this mistake we have committed? The answer, sadly, is yes. Consequently, this means that we are also bringing pains to ourselves. But does the answer have to be always yes? You see, the realizations we learn from this information superhighway known as the Internet is not a copied and pasted form of the realizations Adam and Eve found upon biting of that magical fruit. We are in a different context that, while not exactly very different from the context we all know from the Bible, provides enough difference to make drastic changes possible. This context is our knowledge of good and evil prior to the discovery of the Internet. While it does provide us as much goods and evils as Pandora’s Box can hold, our very advantage to overcoming these mistakes is our knowledge itself of their goodness and badness. The first men were innocent, and were vulnerable to the temptations the serpent holds. The digital age men are not.
The Internet, while it holds so much more temptations than the serpent was able to offer, is not the result when we select the serpent and perform the keystroke Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. What makes it different is not its physical or spiritual structure, but the way we look at it in our changing times. God made the serpent, and God punished the serpent for its mistakes. Man made the Internet, and man can even kill the Internet if it offends him in any way. The only way the Internet can beat man is if man let it. Since man is real and the Internet is not real, this should not be the case, unless for some reason man is doomed to fall to stupidity, another harsh realization which if explained would occupy paragraphs the length of this whole essay. In the virtual world of cyberspace, where everyone is anonymous and a woman can be a man and vice versa, there exists a true freedom of thought that the physical world would never be able to accommodate. Everyone can be a troll, a faggot, a flamer, or a forum moderator with an awesome ban hammer. Everyone can be as powerful as he wants himself to be. But recall again how our knowledge of good and evil allows us to bypass these temptations that we can fall into without being seen by anyone else except God. This goes to show that reality is still more powerful than the Internet, no matter how many terabytes of data your Internet connection can transfer per second.
So I went back to my notebook, opened my browser once again to the search engine homepage, and typed “fac.” The familiar suggestion appeared once more. Knowing what I really need to do, and that the social networking site would not help me accomplish my paper no matter how inspired it made me to reflect on my life, I ignored the suggestion and continued, “Facts for reflection on humanity.” I found a very inspiring quotation of an ancient occult truism on one of the website results:
"God thought, God visualized, God spoke and the world was made and is sustained."
This simply means, according to my mere understanding of it, that no matter how many advancements man continues to create, we are still but creations of the one true Being. We may recreate all of His works through our copy and paste methods, but the output will never be exactly the same perfection God made in the beginning. Why? As I have already mentioned, our knowledge of good and evil, also known as our conscience if you haven’t figured that out yet, makes a small, but very drastic difference.
Be happy when you think different, when people disagree with you because you can't just join the bandwagon and be contented, when you question indefinitely until there is no more loophole. As the Apple motto implies, the people who are branded crazy for thinking that they can change the world are the ones who do. The real crazy ones are the ones who call others crazy, just like how the people who call other people dumb and stupid are the ones who are dumb and stupid.
If you see that the conventional way of doing things fail, then by all means find a way to resolve the failure. Do not fall into what you consider failure just for the conventionality of it. Otherwise it will remain a failure to your perspective. Who would want to remain in failure? Why accept failure if there is a clear cut way to resolve it? Just like honesty, the quest for truth entails doing things that others would not do and that others cannot do.
Maybe it has something to do with breeding a culture of failure that creates further failure. Just like how local artists have to first be recognized in other lands before their own brethren recognize their potentials, we have to prove ourselves right to the eyes of a group of people who don't care about who we are but what we can do before we prove ourselves to our real targets. In a society that never listens, the best resolve would be to make them see.
So how do we make people see if they have already built brick walls in front of their eyes that only show what they want to see? Well the mentally easiest way would be to break the said brick walls. Mentally easiest, because even if it is easy to plan, the task would be physically and emotionally painful.
It saddens me to see that we are giving our future to people who cannot think different, and those who can simply become slaves of the established tradition of failure. We are giving our future to people who fail. But we are the ones who are in charge of our future. Does this mean, then, that we are failures in ourselves because we cannot think out of the box? Probably.
If you listen to the music of today's generation, you'd generally find voices that arereally awesome. Kidding aside, we find these songs really great. Whether it has a classical feel, or one that makes your feet dance to the rhythm, we like it. One possible reaction we might have is, "Wow look at him/her/both, his/her/its voice is very high and it's something I can only dream of having." True, it is difficult to sing high notes. But it's just as hard to sing low notes, if not harder. And this is where the argument begins.
Aim high, they say. Always strive for the best. Bring home the bacon. Be the best that you can ever be. We often hear these things as motivations for one who is generally underachieving. But when we read or hear these, the usual conclusion would be that the best for any person would be what is high. And what is high is difficult. Guess what, being low is harder. It's hard for a low person to stay low, and even harder for a high person to become low. But who would want to be low?
In music for example, we always get amazed at the power of a soprano sing and breaking a crystal glass with just her voice. But I've never heard of a bass who was applauded because his voice served as the foundation of the whole choral music in which he is a part of. Or even in a band, we often applaud the lead guitarist with his master fingers, but without the bass (who also does some nifty finger work) the music of the band would sound dry. Wouldn't you want to be a bass or a bass guitar, being the foundation upon all of those high buildings were built, and your disappearance would mean the collapse of everything? It's the same way in life. Without the lowly, there would be no high people.
By the way, how do we count? Do we count beginning from infinity and downwards until there is nothing left? No. We begin with nothing and we end with everything. It just goes to prove what the Bible teaches, that the lowly will have the Kingdom of Heaven. But then again, in a society who glorifies altitude and scrutinizes depth, who would understand all these things? Time would just pass and everyone would want to be on top of one another, always wanting to escape that state of being low. How difficult it would be if we were to let go of our high aspirations for a lower aspiration. But that's exactly what the world needs.
If everyone aimed high and leaves what is low the moment they can leave it, then who would be in charge of guiding the future of the land? If every child from rural villages study medicine in some prestigious place and never returns to that rural village, what would happen to the children in that village? If every teacher leaves the country to work as a domestic helper with higher salary, then where's the dignity of the profession heading? Ironically, downward. And it is only when everything is down that we strive to move up some more, eventually causing us to fall down.
There will be some who might ask, "But isn't moving downward a cause of under achievement?" Not really. Underachieving is when you are given the opportunity to act, and do not act as you should. Underachieving is not gaining anything. Being low gives the opportunity to see the world from a perspective no one else has seen before. How do we fix a problem that seems impossible to fix? We go back to the beginning, and work our way up again right? We can now say that to reach the top, we must first go to the bottom. If we forget our foundations, everything would collapse.
When you're a very opinionated person who looks for arguments of others to support your own arguments, from time to time you'll find some sort of argument where a certain stand is being defended by those who support it individually (as in the person defends the stand as himself and not as a member of a group). The situation gets ironically funny from the view of a spectator when the individual calls "herd attack", or strength in numbers with no intellect, while his comment is actually in the middle of a long line of comments defending his point. To add to the irony is that the people who are against the fact are actually very few.
Let's face it, we all have some sort of need to prove ourselves, as well as possess a hidden desire for never losing. This is probably the reason why we are often defensive and rarely offensive. This is also the reason why, I think, the situation above happens. We don't want to lose so we claim that any opposing argument is invalid because it feeds on majority over intellect as a basis, but what really happens is that we become part of the majority who claim that we are being overshadowed by dumb majority. This is actually where it gets ironic.
Another thing we can point out in situations like this is that we only value our own opinions over the opinions of others, while ignoring opinions that support our opinions and looking only at some sort of invisible context that arises from those opinions which contradict ours. It's something like looking at only the negative aspects of our enemies, but more. More in the sense that we also create contexts that do not really exist in the hope of making our argument more convincing (i.e. calling herd attack when the ones actually herd attacking are the ones on your side).
In the same way, we can also describe the inverse proportionality of the number of people "attacking" and their mentality levels. We defined earlier the herd mentality as strength in numbers over intellectual reason, but the real case is that the ones who call herd mentality are the ones who are not using their mental capacities. In these situations, it's not hard to find one argument that is against the majority stand that completely devastates the majority stand. The reason why these arguments go on is that the majority does not listen, showing more of their lack of higher faculties.
To be put simply, the irony in this commentary is that the ones who think that they are being overpowered by dumb herds are actually the ones who comprise that same dumb herd. When this is done against a comment made by a fairly popular entity, (i.e. the Catholic Church) the people who are calling hypocrites are actually the hypocrites in themselves. They attack and attack with low class, unread and uninformed arguments.
A less controversial example than the RH Bill issue in the Philippines I can give, was the old "K-Pop" trend where fans flooded social networking sites with defensive posts about being mobbed by anti-K-Pop people who cannot simply respect their likes. What really happened though was that they were the one who were mobbing the people who were against their like and they were the ones who were not respecting the dislike of K-Pop non-fanatics. Want evidence? Get the ratio of anti-anti-K-Pop to anti-K-Pop articles. It should be self-evident.
And in the end, due to their lack of unity (most of these people act as separate individuals/groups) as well, every insult they throw eventually goes back to them. Do they care about it? I guess not.
There are things that happen in our lives that could probably be beyond what physics could explain. This gives rise to the term 'metaphysics' which refers to any philosophical or psychological perspectives about life. This concept also defines the criteria for existentially intelligent people according to Gardner. It includes things that are subjective and abstract, like joy and sorrow, life and death or existence and non-existence. They happen everyday, at every moment in our life. This poses the challenge of reflecting and appreciating.
What is it if a person is not able to appreciate any small emotion that passes by his day to day routine? Well, we can compare that person to a blind person who claims that he can see the physical world, or a deaf who says that he can hear everything you say, or a dumb person who claims to have solved the mysteries of the universe on a whim. This person claims on being able to do something that he is really unable to do. In this case, this task is nothing else but living. So why am I saying that a person who lives without appreciation is not really living?
Logically the above statement seems false, but if we look at it figuratively, we see that living can be defined beyond the biological definitions. We can define it to include things such as appreciation and criticism. When a person fails to fall into any of these two sides, he remains at the middle, mutually incapable of seeing good or bad. When this person is in such a state, we can compare him to the number zero on the number line: neither positive nor negative, and represents a state of non-existence. Therefore a person who is neither appreciative or critical of his life is living a life of non-existence.
It's sad to be in a case like that, and even sadder if the person is well aware of that fact, and is aware that he is doing nothing. It's like adding nothing to nothing, the result will still be nothing. In this sense, he is nothing. And he knows that he is nothing. An act of humility, some may suggest, but when taken this way we know that it only springs from a habit of laziness and the hypocritical act of condemning without doing anything.
The case remains dark unless the person finds some sort of enlightenment or a big push in the back towards moving on, staying out of the gray area, and starting to live. Unfortunately this sudden inspiration is unlikely to happen to the person concerned by himself. As a person, he cannot do anything about it. But there are things that could cause the person to change, such as great experiences that force the person to change. But the greatest source of light to a person being nothing in his gray area, in my opinion, is always a true and caring set of friends and family.
I do not really understand. I still seem to be looking for that true and caring set of friends and family; but I know that I already have them. Maybe I really just fail to appreciate. And that is where it becomes safe to say that I fail at life.
Uncertainty is something that isn't rocket science to us anymore. It's a crucial part of our daily activities, most especially in decision making. Before we become certain of our decisions, there is a phase in our thought that we are uncertain; say for example choosing between salami or pepperoni. We do not just grab one we are already sure we are going to buy, we become uncertain first; but through weighing the pros and cons of buying either one, we arrive at a point of certainty.
Now there is a situation when we are pressured to be certain at a phase when we are uncertain. Using the salami example above, imagine that the supermarket will close in two minutes and that the time it takes for you to grab one, get to the counter and pay for everything is a minute and a half. The most likely reaction just to grab a random one and justify the reason for getting that later, and then either regret getting that or be satisfied of your decision.
Now here's the question: say you did not like the outcome of making that haste decision, what would be you reaction towards performing that situation? Well it all depends on many things, like time constraint, failed excuses, sloth, gluttony, lust, anger... let me get straight to the point. PRIDE. If pride was measured in calories, a lot of people would be livelier and jollier than the energizer bunny. When faced with a situation where one must admit lacking something or failing at something (like being questioned on something which you should have done and didn't do), even a koala or the cat frequently caught sleeping on the sidewalk is more exciting.
There are only two reactions to these situations: one is the person will deny the responsibility, or deny knowledge of the responsibility. The latter is now what gives reactions like "I don't know" or "It's your fault" from the said kinds of people. And this is when the uncertain magically transforms into solid certainty. When I said "magical" I'm using the term to mean non-canon, or not legal. We discussed earlier that the process of reaching certainty from uncertainty requires weighting choices carefully before deciding. In the situation I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the uncertainty illogically becomes certainty because of a need to be justified (which, ironically, does not really happen; it just seems that way). In another view, this is what we can actually call being "certainly uncertain".
Some prime time soap operas usually have this feature of certain uncertainty in the personification of some high profile villain who does low profile crimes using goons and guns. So does that meant that when we are guilty of the traits stated above, we behave like the dirty criminals we see on afternoon and evening dramas? Yes! But of course if we were really guilty, then we would be denying being guilty. Haha.
Unfortunately, we have a large tendency to be like this especially if we are made to hold important responsibilities. While it is understandable that the responsibility may be to hard to bear, it is not justifiable that we deny our uncertainty for a fake certainty in our actions.
So how do we correct this error? Well the best method to make a crooked way turn straight again is to make the crooked way straighten itself. What's funny about this is that the crooked way will never find a motivation to straighten itself if it does not see the consequences of the uncertainty because it never passed through that stage before becoming certain.
Almost six years ago, I wrote a two page essay entitled "A Broken Home" for a contest a religious magazine organized. I forgot the exact words, or what the theme was that made me write it, or if it was something I made earlier and just submitted for the sake of the contest. Either way, all I could remember was that I wrote it in some sort of reference to the state of my family then, which it still is right now: broken.
I have very little memory of it, and if I wasn't able to appreciate a story about a father and son I would not have been able to remember that I made one. It was three years before my mother left the country to work abroad, eleven years after my father married another woman during my mother's gestation, for reasons I cannot explain clearly enough. I was aware of this at a very early age, so almost fourteen years after I knew about it I am almost expressionless at that event.
"Hindi ka ba galit?" Was a question that I commonly hear every time I tell someone this story. I tend to tell this story freely and without shyness or whatever, probably because I have already learned to accept the situation and my inability to change it into a more ideal one. My mom once told me, "Anak 'wag mo naman masyadong pinagkakalat sa 'skwelahan buhay natin."
Most of my early writings was regarding the same situation: some woman gets impregnated and then the father marries another person. I remember the journalism teacher during one of his workshops in features writing remark to the class, "Do more than the usual mother broken family thing," which I guessed was hinted at my works of similar nature during elementary that always seems to make it to the top works during contests.
It's always been the same for me, and it has not really bothered me much. But then again there are those curious moments, especially when people discuss typical father behaviors or when I read stories about father-son relationships, like Rick Barrett's "Running Shoes," minus the "the son is gay" part. When these happen, there's this curiosity of wanting to know how those situations would have felt from my perspective, and at some point realizing that I have never experienced any of these things, which ends with some sort of emotional outburst from me.
And of course, being the illegitimate eldest son, I'm also curious of things that are unusual to a typical family situation: half-siblings. Or half-brothers. It's safe to say that since I know that they are all male. Unfortunately they have as much idea of having an illegitimate elder brother as a cockroach that underwent the state we call "death by slipper." None, to be put simply. And when curiosity is not satisfied, it becomes frustrating. More so when it can never be satisfied unless the object permits curiosity to find its own answer. Obviously it's difficult for me.
Then again, there is that father and son thing that never existed in my life which is something that I would forever be curious about. In this sense, you might say that I have not really moved on. Rather, I just suppressed the usual dramatic emotions that this situations usually convey. The truth value of this statement is something even I cannot justify right now.
There I go again, telling the whole world part of our life's story.
Life is marked by spontaneity. You never know what will happen. The only thing to do to make something happen is to make it happen. In order for a person to be doing something, he or she must do it. But why do we do these things? Do we do them just for the sake of doing them? Supposedly, we do not. However, a part of reality is also that we do some things for the sake of doing them because of routine. This is when we become mechanical; like a machine where moving gears will always do the same type of motion and get the exact same result every time.
Man, however, is not a machine. This is true even if he acts like a machine. Unlike pressing the "copy" button on the photocopier will make the photocopier do the exact task expected for it to do, a person doing the same thing over and over again will not have the same output for every attempt to do the action. For example, waking up early in the morning and rote memorizing textbooks in preparation for an exam will not work for every exam. This kind of result yields from a thing we call context. Machines will act and bear fruit the same way regardless of context, but man will have varying results of the same actions depending on the context by which the action is done.
Context is unique for every person at every instance of his life. The context at which a person performs a task in the morning is not the same context under which he does the same task in the evening. And it is through this context that a person formulates his reasons for doing a certain action. That being said, a person cannot really do an action for the sake of doing it; because as we have said, context is never constant.
We do not wake up early on an examination day because we want to wake up early, rather we wake up early because we need to have additional time to study lessons before answering the examination. We do not wake up early on a day where we need to travel to a far location because we want to wake up early, rather we wake up early because by leaving early, we can arrive at our destination early.
It is this "mechanicality" that removes the thing called "purpose" in any act. By doing things for the sake of doing them, we kill the intended purpose of doing such things. Like going to church, for example. We should be going to church because we want a nourishment of faith, not because we are required to do so. The consequence is that, if we go to church to have a nourishment of faith, we are able to appreciate the things that go on inside the church, such as the mysteries and miracles of prayers and actions. But when we go to church in order to go to church, everything else is meaningless, because the act itself is the end.
Another example I think I will be able to justify is in mathematics. When we solve equations in order to solve equations, we become like those who are failing in this subject because they cannot find values to plot into formulas in finding solutions. The funny reality in mathematical problem solving is that the actual mathematics is less than 50% of the solving method. Of greater importance is the process of expressing the problem being asked mathematically, which varies as much as there are different types of problems. This is also why those who have difficulty in math are those who think that solving equations are done in order to solve equations. Again, this reason lacks a context, and is similar to how a machine works. It is these people who could never find an application of such an intellectual science; they are the people who say "Dear Math, grow up and solve your own problems" or "Math is useless in real life."
But there is a concept we call procedural knowledge. Procedural knowledge defined is "knowledge of being able to do something." It is learning how to do something. And the only way to obtain it is through practice. Therefore, this practice is what we can consider as doing for the sake of doing, which if taken as it is should be contrary to the point we're trying to prove. Or is it?
Recall again what makes a mechanical act different from a purposeful act: Context. In the light of learning procedural knowledge, context is very much present. Why do we need to do in order to do? Because being able to do this procedure will allow us to use it for purposes we intend to do it for. Thus, it becomes very contextual, purposive and non-mechanical. What have we just discussed here? In learning procedural knowledge, the act of doing for doing is not the end itself. It is a means to another end, in contrast to the previous example of going to church, where the act is the end itself.
So is there a need to avoid doing things for the sake of doing them? As ends, yes. As means to greater ends, no. Note that the product is not the same for men who do the same actions in different contexts. If there is no context, then the action is meaningless and mechanical. To conclude, we can restate a previously said statement: "Man is not a machine." He is much greater than a machine, and to act mechanically is an insult to himself.
When things go well, we have this primitive tendency to think that things will always go well. And when things do not go well, we get frustrated, and much worse is we behave contrary to what is socially acceptable. This is, I guess, a weakness of good thinking, of being too good that it is already bad. And with that is the strength of something bad, so bad that it becomes good.
One saying could probably summarize this whole discussion: "Expect the worst." Why? Well, first we can say that when the worst does come, we are prepared for it and we can find reasonable ways to get over it. Would anyone be able to prepare for a tsunami if he or she would simply dismiss the early warning signs of the disaster as a neighbor's roof under construction? Of course not.
The thing that is so bad about "all things shall be good" is that in reality they are not. Probably in the end they will be good; but as they are right now, they could be the worst, and this so-called goodness will only come if we are able to circumnavigate this bad entity.
Next thing we can say is that if you are expecting the worst, and the worst does not come, you do not become frustrated, more so that you are even given something to be thankful about. What person in his regular mind would say that "I was so pissed off that the flood didn't hit our town"? Shouldn't that person be thankful that even though the worst could have arrived, it did not arrive to ruin them?
Think about the opposite of the situation I mentioned above. A person is not expecting a fire to reach his house, even though signals of thick smoke are already coming from a nearby house. And then the fire reaches his house and burns everything he has. Wouldn't that person say "I wish I had prepared since there is a chance that I could lose a lot more"?
You see, it's not really about thinking bad of everything that is good. It is simply accepting reality as it is, full of risks. But then again, it could also be denying reality, a reality which states that life is fundamentally good. A negative number is simply the difference between zero and a positive number. Darkness is the absence of light, but light is not the absence of darkness. Running away from frustrations is denying the fact that failures are what make people strong, and the strength of a person is the magnitude of how much failures he can overcome.
In the end, thinking the worst is not really the best. But so is thinking the best. Both could be worst. What is important is what is accepting what is real. And what is real isn't necessarily the best, nor the worst. Probably the best thing to think about now is what would be best, while being aware that it could be worse.
Procedural knowledge, as we can infer from the term itself, refers to knowledge of procedures or steps in the performance of a task such as how to drive, or how to open a refrigerator or how to solve a system of linear equations using Gauss-Jordan elimination. Generally, this type of knowledge requires no effort in recalling once mastered. Why am I saying this? We'll find out later on.
Let's discuss another kind of knowledge, called declarative knowledge. This is basically the type of knowledge in the form of pure information, such as knowing what the green pigment in leaves is called or recalling who discovered the printing press and when was it discovered. This type of knowledge requires a lot of effort to recall especially if the knowledge being recalled is not well reinforced.
While some information are meant to remain declarative, there are some that must become procedural to become meaningful. What is knowing the contents of a troubleshooting manual if one cannot perform it? What is knowing that a live wire is dangerous if you will just touch it carelessly?
What is knowing what is right if you don't know how to do it?
Take this example. A teenager knows that there is a developmental task expected of him for his age, such as being able to do the laundry by himself. But how can he do the laundry by himself if he has no idea on what to do to begin with? He just knows that he has to do something but he has no way of knowing how to do it. Moreover, if there are any attempts and he makes wrong moves, he only gets rejection and punishment.
Now let's look at another example. A person finds that he has a need to make friends. But he has no idea how to. And he feels that if he just randomly approaches his "friends" they would just think that he's forcing himself to fit in and that he may be just taking advantage of them. The tendency is that this person will not do anything to achieve his goal and the end result is frustration.
Frustration is the ability to do something but not being able to do it. It's like saying, "You could have done it, but you didn't." And if frustration is left untreated, it leads to more frustration.
A decent conclusion would be formed if we look at the transitivity in this situation. Declarative knowledge is learned in school and in books but it cannot become procedural knowledge if it is not practiced, and it cannot be practiced if there is no way for it to be practiced or no way of knowing how to practice it. To not be able to turn it into procedural knowledge while having a strong declarative knowledge leads to frustration. So how can frustration be helped? Guidance.
I haven't done any personal posts lately and I thought that I would never again because I usually think long hours before making a post. This one, however, will be as spontaneous as it is. Haha.
Some might say I've felt it all, or I've felt none at all. But whatever is the real case, there's something I've always wanted to feel that I've probably just forgotten in these past years. I've never bothered to pose this question to others because I would probably get a different answer than what I expect. (It is now a sad reality that I expect answers for some of my questions. I'm not that specific though.) Because I've always believed that everyone defines things in different ways because everyone is not the same.
However, I'd still like to hope that there's someone similar to me. Not physically like a twin or something, otherwise I'd be very sorry for that person for having the same monster killing physical characteristics I have. Someone who simply has the same interests more or less, the same perspective in life, someone who I can completely trust. I guess this is how I define a best friend. But my question is: How would it feel like to have one?
I feel lonely. There I said it. Probably the reason I hate a lot of things and love none is because I cannot love it with someone. I'm afraid that showing appreciation for something that doesn't usually gain appreciation would give me rejection or failure. I have a low tolerance for emotional pain. But probably, (probably since I cannot say for certain) that fear of pain might turn into confidence if there is someone who I know can live through it.
But same pains also mean same fears. And that complicates things. But I'm not looking for someone who is a carbon copy of me, I would probably kill him if I see him. I just want someone similar, if that's not too demanding. Say someone who also has an interest in music, math and hating things. LOL.
It's not that I'm not contented with the friends who I live by. As a matter of fact I can't live without them. But recently I began feeling outcast. And not just because I can't relate with them. I don't mean to offend anyone, and I'm sure they don't mean to offend me either. But I feel like I'm being outcast on purpose. Probably because I'm with these people because of the fact that I'm forcing myself to be with these people. They say friendship is mutual. It's mutually understanding and mutually annoying. It can never be one-sided. And that's where I fail.
This is beginning to sound like a "Wanted: Best Friend. Apply Inside." rant from a demanding person, but I believe that I'm not asking for too much, and I'm not asking anyone in particular to be a best friend because we all know that that doesn't work. I'm just expressing a feeling close to loneliness, though not completely. Maybe that's why I'm happy with the choirs I belong to more than anything; because it's my interest and I get to practice it. Hopefully it would be the same for teaching in the future.
But personal goals aside, I wonder how would it feel like to have a goal with someone else. And no, I'm not talking about sexual attraction. I'm taking my time being single. And sadly it's very hard to believe someone who comes to you and says, "I can be your best friend." It's like that person is applying which, like what I have already said, doesn't work. The problem with this is that it seems like I'm just expecting someone to come into my life, knock some sense into me and give me satisfaction. I'm not even sure how that works.
It's hard to face your problems if your problem is your self. I feel so selfish and sorry in advance to the person who becomes my best friend because I'm looking for him while expecting so much of him.
I used to think back in high school that maybe I'm just being impatient and the time will come when I'll find that person. But now I'm feeling that I've wasted so many opportunities to find him. Or maybe I'm just being impatient again. Whether it's impatience or not, what I do know is that I'm relying my self-fulfillment on someone else right now. And since I'm relying on it, I basically am saddened about not having him yet. So much, actually. So much that I feel so stupid. But don't I always feel stupid?
