I see dead people

Yay, its ghost month again!!! Chinese Halloween, except there's no trick or treat in this one. No this is deadly serious business if you believe in the woo-woo part of Taoism (not to be confused with Buddhism). Its that time of year when the gates of hell supposedly fling open and the dead visit the living unlike Qingming when the living visit the dead. Its when the living organize pantomimes, concerts and even karaokes to bring a bit of cheer to the dead. Yeah, ghosts love to party too. ^_^

There's one part of the belief that, to me, sounds kinda mixed up with Buddhism. Specifically how hungry ghosts - a Buddhist idea - have gotten dragged into the picture.

If you are a Buddhist, you'll know that hungry ghosts are said to be pitiful creatures living in limboland. They have very big bellies and a very tiny mouths, the size of a pin prick. They roam the earth looking for food, trying desperately to satisfy their hunger but are unable to because of their mouths. They are locked in a perpetual state of suffering.

I haven't seen one yet of these creatures yet but I seen better. I seen tons of 'em who are living.

Say what?? You may ask.

Well, I know someone who collects a mountain of porn. More than he can ever view in a lifetime but he keeps on collecting them. Why, I have no idea and as it turns out, neither does he. But he can't stop. He can't go through a day without doing that.

I also know many people who mindlessly chase after money, and I mean more money than they can ever use in their lifetime. I mean, what would anyone do with $30 billion dollars? That's a billion a year for 30 years, or $83 million a month, or $2.8 million a day, or $233,000 an hour of spending money 12 hours a day. But that's not enough - they continue to plough on, trying to get every deal they can get their hands on and drive everyone else out of business.

I can go on and on. These types of people aren't satisfied with what they have. They can never be. No matter how much porn or money or whatever they amass, as long as there's more out there, they'll go after it. Life is as constant stream of dissatisfaction. Forever hungry and thirsty and forever longing, they are condemned to a life of constant moving, swimming forever in search of something like a shark until they die.

So yeah. I see "dead" people. They're everywhere. And I don't need a ghost month to be able to see them.

Why be good when you can just be forgiven?

Its been a while since I updated this blog. Too many things going on all at once. One of the things that's chewing me up big time is the plan for my possible relocation to Europe in the next 6-10 months, for business reasons that's getting harder and harder to turn down.

Anyway, back to boring spiritual topics. There is a question that hit me a few years ago when was I reading up on Abrahamic religions. Why be good when you can just be forgiven?

I'm sure you've read about famous deathbed confessions, penance and so on by rapists, murderers and the like. After a lifelong pursuit of sin, they decide to turn over a new leaf just before they check out. Which isn't hard to do I suppose, upon realizing that you're about to leave behind all your ill-gotten gains and when it finally hits that you will burn down there for a long time. Not unlike the kid who cries after looking at the rod he's about to be spanked with.

Non Abrahamic practices have similar histories. The Buddhist story of Angulimala for instance. Being a notorious gangster he murders scores of travelers who pass through his section of the woods in ancient India until he chances upon one traveler who turned out to be the Buddha himself. After some deft "kung fu" Angulimala realized he had found his match, his mind suddenly just went in reverse and he repented, becoming a monk himself.

Both Abrahamic and non Abrahamic recognize that people can change and that's cool. I believe in that. But there is one thing that bothers me. If I am a bad person who knows that I can be "forgiven" in the last 20 seconds of my life, provided I think and say the right things at the time, why should I bother being good?

I know what you're going to say. You don't know when you'll check out so isn't it better to just be good now so that you got yourself covered, just in case?

The problem I have with that is the human penchant for contrivance. The feeling that goodness is something you barter like insurance just to save your ass, something you can hold back until you've reaped maximum benefit, rather than something that grows out of genuine compassion for self and others. In our society, man seems more interested in self-benefit than well, being good.

"I'm still young. Its not like I'm gonna die tomorrow," they'll think, "and I know I will be forgiven if I repent in the last few seconds of my life, so why shouldn't I spend the next 40 years of my life having fun raping and plundering everything in sight?"

It wouldn't so tragic if I haven't personally met people like this. Just talk to a worshipper who also happens to be a foul-mouthed conniving schemer and you've found your man. Or woman.

So, why be good when you can just be forgiven?

I am so going to get this book

Finally, someone who speaks my language!

Someone who attempts to bridge the very big (relativity) to the very small (quantum physics).

Well actually, a few people already described the same a few thousand years ago. Lao Tze, Siddharta, a few Greeks. I just couldn't understand the gobbledigook.

But its gonna be fun seeing the woo woo stuff through the eyes of physics and neurology so I'm going to be busy reading this weekend. ^_^

This is the abridged summary by the author.

On faith as belief without evidence

I had the biggest scare of my life a few days ago when I spotted what I thought was a dead body lying under a tree near my condo. No joke. It was 7am in the morning. The body lay motionless and looked pale, as if all the blood had drained from it. And it was partially covered with dried leaves.

I went over, heart thumping. I prodded the body, hoping its not dead. After about a minute, the eyes slowly opened. It was a young male caucasian (no wonder the pale skin) and he was pissed drunk. I wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or tell him off for giving me a fright. By that time, other joggers had come over to see what was going on and I left it to them to sort it out.

For a brief moment, the incident did make me pause and think about the ultimate question. No, not where to have breakfast but if he were actually dead, where would he be? The Catholic heaven, the Mormon heaven or whatever heaven he believed in?

The same thoughts ran thru my mind years ago when I saw some people gunned down (gang fight) in L.A.

Some of my friends don't believe in heaven or anything God related. Too many inconsistencies and contradictions, they say. No evidence, no belief.

It's a loaded statement that invites a whole nebula of arguments that I won't get into here. One of the things that I'm glad about though is to have studied astronomy as a subject in college. You know what was the greatest lesson I learnt from it?

That I should take my eyesight, my mind and other biological senses with a pinch of salt.


Look at the night sky with your naked eye. What do you see? Probably nothing but black and a few stars. So you tell yourself its mostly empty space up there. You don't see nuthin', you assume there's nuthin'.

And then you look at the output of an x-ray telescope and suddenly your whole perspective changes. Damn, those things weren't there before. You saw nuthin' but there's a whole bunch of somethings there now!

A scientific journal estimates that 9 billion neutrinos from outer space pass through your thumbail every second. That's a lot of particles. Yet we can't see or feel a thing.

Your eyes, it turns out, are woefully incapable of seeing everything out there, which kinda makes the phrase, "I'll believe it when I see it" sound rather narrow and self-serving.

But this sets up an interesting proposition for everyone.

No one can disprove there isn't a flying invisible teapot orbiting between the earth and the sun. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there. Just like the neutrinos and the nebula in the picture, maybe you haven't got the right instrument to see it. You can replace the teapot with anything you like. A giant chicken, a green alien, or a God of your choice.

It does throw a spanner in the works for me as far as beliefs go. Why do you believe what you believe? Because it feels so "right?" just like how others believe their beliefs feel so "right"?

Did you see something they didn't? Or did they see something you didn't?

What instrument did you use to see what you saw? Are you sure that's all there is to see? What if I could come up with a more sophisticated instrument to see beyond what you saw, like the x-ray telescope?

Still, as sophisticated as x-ray telescopes are, there's only so much they can reveal so I'm not going to say it gives me the final definitive picture of reality. 'Coz I'll be the moron if some guy comes up with a subspace gravitronic telescope tomorrow and sees everything x-rays can see plus a whole lot more. Yes, maybe even an invisible orbiting teapot speeding around the sun.

The point is, we don't know a lot of things and its silly to act as if we do. And worse, to believe that what we're told as "truth" is the ultimate truth. Obviously I have my principles for survival reasons but I keep an open mind, knowing that if I don't see the evidence, it may simply be because I haven't found a technology sophisticated enough to see it yet.

As astrophysicists say, the universe and by extension, existence, is a lot weirder than we think.

Current affairs

I dislike politics because after following the last US elections closely, I've come to generalize politics (maybe unfairly) into one sentence.

May the best liar win.

What I read from Iran and Italy recently merely strengthened this.

But to those who want change and didn't get it through the voting process, let me ask you one question. Who do you think is the problem - the politician or the people who voted him in?

Of course its the politician you might say. Stupid question. However everyone ignores the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the 60% of the people who voted the scoundrel in.

Okay, lets say 20% of the vote was rigged as is the usual complaint. Still, that means 4 out of 10 people are honestly convinced that this openly corrupt, lying, even murderous scumbag is the right leader for them.

Don't you get the shivers if you knew that every other person standing around you support an openly sick psychopath?

I know that's how some people felt when America voted in G W Bush not once but twice as president, after proving himself not once but many times to be one of the most incompetent leaders in its history. I am seeing a resurgence of that in ex-Gov Sarah Palin, a clueless but pretty airhead who've created a fan base of horny Republican males who might just succeed in pushing her to be US President in 2012.

Now statistically, to have 5% of a country's population be fanboys of a famously incompetent leader is normal. The same no. of people are inclined to scrawl "Mickey Mouse" on the ballot paper and put a tick there anyway. But to get 50-60% support for an openly sick or retarded bastard?

Something's not right here. Either the people who support him are also sick bastards or the bastard is not as sick as the press makes him out to be.

And that's the thing I dislike most about politics. You can be served many versions of the truth but you can never get the real truth.

Or maybe, there's no such thing as truth and that politics is a battle of perception, not the truth.

I like what my friends say. Forget politics, its more fun to download porn.

Hmmm. Maybe they have a point.

Being normal. Is there such a thing?

Would you consider yourself to be a normal (= average) person?

Normal as in you'd melt into the crowd because you dress like everyone, talk like everyone, harbor the same hopes and dreams as everyone?

Boys want the 6 C's. Girls... I dunno what they want. Nice clothes? Everyone's so predictable you could take any random person, write a description about him or her and find that most of what you wrote is true. That's how similar we all are despite our valiant efforts to be different.

Ok, so we've grown up getting whacked if we don't conform. It starts from home where you're told how to behave and follows you to school and work where you're told how to behave. Yeah, from parental pressure to peer pressure. That's why I laugh at books that tell you to dare to be different when society whacks you the moment you actually try to be different. In my age group for instance, one of the things you do not want is to be called "gay." If you wear a pink shirt, you're gay. If you're born with super smooth skin, you're gay. And if you drive at slower than daredevil speeds on the streets, boy you're definitely gay.

So we insecure dudes avoid wearing pink anything, we culture trophy scars on our faces and we endanger other people's lives on the road in bursts of machismo driving in our bid to be "not gay" (=normal).

I can't tell you how silly that is, having grown up in the San Francisco area and used to seeing people who do all these macho things and they are gay as a fly.

Anyway, sexual orientation is not what this post is about. Its about this whole business of conformity, about how we expect - no, demand conformity from others. Its about how we are quick to take down anyone who doesn't talk, dress and think like us even if they come to us in good faith. Its about how in our rejection of such types, we are helping to reinforce the creed of "be normal or else," the very thing we dislike about our peer-pressurists.

Back at school I'm not ashamed to say I was the odd guy out, a weirdo. When kids were busy thronging around their favorite alpha male, I'd sit alone. No amount of bullying would make me grovel at some jock's feet. Even the girls shied away because they couldn't deal with someone who wasn't an alpha or wasn't a slave to one.

So I learnt very early on that there is a steep price to pay for not being Mr. Popular or Mr. Groupie. But I survived. The result: my tolerance to "deviants" is a lot higher than your average jock who cries "gay" to everything he doesn't like. Some see that tolerance as a weakness. I see it as a strength, because I can live in strange cultures in different countries and not mess up my mind as much as the guy who believes that only he defines what's normal or cool.

On the question whether its good to be normal (I've been asked that question before), the question actually makes no sense to me because "normal" in Hachioji, Japan is not the same as "normal" in Hammond, Indiana. When you travel that much, normal ceases to carry a meaning. That's why I've come to conclude that people who make fun of "abnormal" people tend to mentally insular and small-townish. But that's okay. If they haven't been out of their hometowns, who can blame them for not having any idea that from a big picture perspective, there is no such thing as normal.

Avoid or engage?

So... people say we shouldn't dwell on the negative. Life is too short. Live it up. Don't worry be happy. Lets treat life as one big happy hour.

It looks to me like if you have an opinion about something that isn't amusing or mindless or if you go near anything thought-provoking, then there's something wrong with you. At least that's what I gather from comments in other people's blogs.

I think that's a fair representation of not just blogosphere but society as a whole. Hip-and-happening lifestyle blogs outnumber thought provoking ones by something like 500 to 1. That's normal. I remember in school, if you enrolled in philosophy or theology class or anything that requires you to think about the human condition, you're pretty much a freak. Outside of school as grown ups, saying anything thought provoking still makes you a freak. The only exception is when you're guessing who's gonna win the season's American Idol.

But no sweat... I understand people need a defence mechanism to protect their fragile minds from life's harmful ugliness. We only want to see the pretty flowers and keep quiet about the rotting ones. If not we'll lose all hope in life, at least according to one blogger.

Hmmm... if I didn't know any better the dude just admitted that life is indeed hopeless (since no one lives forever) so the only good way to deal with it is to stick our heads in the sand. Oh, and to say happy things all the time.

If that hits close to home, then there are more delusional people than I thought. No wonder they call mental institutions "happy" places, where everything is always happy 24x7. XD

I'm kidding. But I can see that a vast majority of us prefer avoidance rather than enlightened engagement. Along the way we developed a new ideal - that we can "buy off" our problems with money. It leaves us free to pick and choose "happy" things only.

Wait... let me get this right. We prefer to drag ourselves through 30 years of torturous employment - wrestling with the pigs in the office mud pool just so we could have enough $$ to qualify for a bank loan to buy off our problems - than learn to neutralize them with enlightened engagement at no cost. Yeap, got it.

Yes I am weird. I depart from the majority when it comes to engaging life. Perhaps my exposure in social work and martial arts taught me something. It certainly has made me a happier person (I think) than the guy whose life is dedicated to getting a hotter chick than his friends.

Just to share, these are a few simple lessons I learnt.

Lesson 1: No matter how much money I have or how good I am at avoiding, I can never outrun problems.
Lesson 2: A problem is not always a problem. Sometimes it is a teacher that teaches me patience and humility.
Lesson 3: The satisfaction from engaging a problem can be more enriching than avoiding one.
Lesson 4: Its far cheaper to understand life, predict its difficulties and not do stupid things to cause them to happen than to barge headlong like a bull and then look for money to buy off the problems I create.

This is why in spite of life's little knocks and bumps, I can smile.

And if you ask me if it feels good being able to "walk" anywhere I want to and be the 20-something guy I am without needing to hide my head anywhere, the answer is YES!! ^_^

Don't avoid. Neutralize.

I don't read newspapers because I feel that papers focus too much on bad news. Murders, snatch thefts, politics, that kind of thing. Like most people, I prefer to keep my mind positive and happy. I believe your state of mind determines who you are.

So like most people, I've adopted the strategy of avoiding bad news. Yeah, avoiding. Pretending not to see. Looking the other way while whistling innocently. Its works most times. In the movies, I clench my eyes shut when someone is about to get gored. I shun newspapers so those horrible stories won't reach my young impressionable mind.

Except that these things pop up everywhere I go. Even on the internet. Especially on the internet. Against my better judgement, I recently read about a young woman in the US who, so incensed at a kitten that was stratching her door, shoved it into an oven and baked it to a crisp, alive. This morning I read about how 3 young men in England took a fawn (a newly born deer) and happily stomped in to death.

I'm not even going to get into the horrors of mothers killing their own babies (at least half a dozen cases in the last 3 weeks alone), children killing their own parents, and an assortment of other things that men to to each other. And these are all in "civilized" countries mind you. Notably America and Europe.

In America, the standard defense for such things is always the same. Ladies and gentlemen, this man is not a criminal. He is a victim. A victim of a materialistic, gun-loving society that has gone out of control. Society drove him to it. Society made him feel angry, guilty, whatever. It is society's fault.

Hehe. I dunno man. If people buy that shit, then they will also hold god responsible for any crime. Man is egged by society to commit a crime. Society is nature's way of group survival via a collective. God created nature. Therefore, god is the root source, the real culprit behind every screwup on earth. They had better prepare a big cell. A very, very big cell.

Anyway, coming back to this thing about keeping my mind free, happy and delightful by avoiding bad news which is everyone's favorite technique. I am realizing that it doesn't work. Avoiding my way to happiness I mean.

When I'm with happy people, I think of 3 possibilities.

• They's really happy. They have no problems at all.
• They're letting their happy feelings override their no-so-happy feelings.
• They're totally miserable but pretend to be happy lest their friends run away from them.

I think for the most part, people hang out in the second category. There is an element of ignoring cum accepting cum avoiding there. Ignoring is actually a form of avoiding. And I think you'll agree that there's only so much we can avoid. And when we can't avoid life's truths any longer, we take the hit and we pretend we didn't get hit. We learn to become fakes. At the extreme, we become delusional.

Welcome to planet earth. ^_^

No, I'm not suggesting that we go around under a cloud of doom and gloom whenever we chance upon bad news. Even I would avoid such people, hehe. ^_^ I happen to think there's a much better way to handle life's truths, and that is to learn to accept bad news as something normal and nothing to be too upset about. For me, the phrase "this too shall pass" is a useful weapon to neutralize any news, no matter how bad.

And that's my point. Instead of finding ways to avoid, learn to neutralize. Don't be angry. Neutralize. Don't be hateful. Neutralize. Don't be sad. Neutralize.

How to neutralize? By looking at something bravely in the eye and telling yourself any one of these things. Nothing is forever. This too shall pass. What goes around comes around. This is night but there will be day eventually. Let go.

I do take one extra step though. I try to understand why bad things happen. The answer depends on what you believe I guess, whether its the devil, karma, or the great juju under the sea. If I had to take a stand, I would say karma makes the most sense to me at this point, because of its close proximity to the law of physics. If you've heard of F = ma, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, you'll understand what I mean.

So what does accepting and neutralizing do for you? It makes you a happier person I think. Genuinely happy, not delusionally happy. (BIG diff there. One liberates you. The other grows you into a cranky old man or woman.) You spend less energy pretending. You come across to everyone as more honest and genuine. You accept that no matter how bad things are, the sun will always come up the next day.

So, be cool, be well and be happy.

Fool's gold

What does this guy mean to you?

Let me guess. An idol worshipped by godless and probably misguided people, right?

Let me tell you what it means to me.

What I see is the image of a person who is humble (modest clothing), generous (the sack filled with goodies to be given away), sturdy and patient (swallows the problems the world throws at him, hence the big tummy), and does it all with a big smile. Oh, and the gourd in his hand is medicine. To help heal other people.

It is the paragon of virtue, cast into an image for the benefit of peasants who cannot read thousands of years ago.

The statue is not meant to be worshipped. It is an instruction manual in 3D on how to be a good person. That's what I see.

If you know what this statue means, tell me. ^_^

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Lets assume you're a guy and you're dating this girl who's giving you all the signals that she's interested in you and is serious about it. You walk on water all day. A pal of yours gets concerned. Rumor has it that your new girlfriend is getting engaged next week and obviously not to you. Should he tell you?

How about another scenario. You just got a surprise bonus in your paycheck. You've been planning to upgrade your car for a while now so you spend the whole weekend shopping for something that you feel will finally do you justice. You find it and put a $10k downpayment. This is so exciting, you feel. But your colleague doesn't seeem so excited. He knows something you don't - that it would be your last paycheck. You're about to get laid off, along with a few others who also received these "bonuses." Should he tell you?

Lets push the stakes higher. Your little sister has cancer. The doctor pulls you aside and quietly tells you that there is no hope. She's weeks away from "checking out." But she's so bubbly and cheerful, you tell yourself. She even told you what she wants for her birthday next month and all the things she plans to do when she leaves the hospital. How do you tell her?

What do these scenarios have in common? False hope. Something you see in everything from dodgy product promises to bad investments.

I know what you're gonna say. Just tell them the truth! The truth shall set them free! Or something like that.

If so, hear me out.

Humans can live without a lot of things but if there's one thing they cannot live without, apart from food and water, its hope. I think you'll agree with me on that.

Hope is why a man, flat broke and down to his last penny, would borrow from a loan shark to gamble, because a slim chance of winning some money to buy food is better than confirmed starvation.

Hope keeps people from giving up. You remove hope from someone and you might as well send him to his death.

So if that's the case, would you? Remove hope from someone I mean. Would you tell a poor man, "Don't gamble!" Or tell your sister, "Forget your birthday. You won't live long enough to see it." Or tell someone, "You'll never get out of this hellhole no matter what you do."

Would you tell the truth if it removes the last reason for someone to live?

Where would you draw the line?

(Oh, the connection between this topic and the laughing Buddha? I am trying to keep my humor while being mindful about life. Hey I'm still learning.)

Bordered

I was at a tech seminar downtown this afternoon and it bored the hell out of me so I decided to leave early. Not wanting to be stuck in the traffic that was building up, I decided to wait it out at Borders the bookstore.

Usually the first place I would head for is the business section which was what I did. I wanted to see what the famous Wall Street gurus are saying now that they'd all been taken to the cleaners by the recession. I mean its just amazing to see how back in 2005, these guys were spinning bestseller after bestseller on how to make a million bucks. Now very same guys are on their way to bankruptcy, brought down by the tricks they taught their readers to follow. Man what a joke.

And as I suspected, the "how to make a million bucks" shelves have no new titles. Some old and familiar ones were going at 20% off. Wonder which idiot is going to buy them even at 80% off, now that they've been conclusively proven to be bad ideas.

Then I wandered around and found myself at the World History section. I think I was driven there by an old question that I never found an answer to, and the question is, why does man kill each other.

So I came across a book by Niall ferguson entitled "The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred". He mostly wrote about the turn-of-the-century wars in Europe, Russia, the US, a little about the middle east, and a smattering about the Japanese in world war 2. He basically lays out why he thinks the 20th century is man's most brutal century.

Err.. say what? The 20th century was man's most brutal century? Haha, what were you smoking Mr Ferguson? World war 1 & 2 was a picnic compared to the time of ancient imperial China where it was reported that the emperors massacred up to half a billion of their own people. In those medieval times, that's what, 30% of the world population killed in a couple of thousand years?

These were not foreign enemy combatants unlike the casualties in those European wars. These were their fellow countrymen, civilians mostly, and many were put to death for really, really stupid reasons. How about burying thousands of them alive in one afternoon together with their dead emperor just so that they can all serve the big boss in the hereafter. Or dying in the process of building some giant silly monument? Stuff like that.

Its not just the Chinese emperors. You got people like Alexander, Tamerlane, Genghiz, and all the other "great" conquerors who took millions of lives as they swept across entire continents, sticking their swords into anyone who crossed their paths.

No, world wars 1 & 2 are just tiny chapters in man's history of violence and if I may predict, they sure as hell won't be his last.

What's proven beyond any doubt is man's love of killing his brother. What's harder to ascertain is why. What is that common thing that connects all these violent chapters of man throughout the ages? And why is it, despite the age of enlightenment, reasoning and science, that things have not changed.

That was the explanation I was looking for.

Well, it seems none of the books at Borders answered that question so I had to leave the store empty handed.

Spiritual people are weird

A friend of mine once said she finds it hard to reconcile between Damien the guy who has an opinion on spiritual matters (*woooooo... makes the sound of a ghost*) and the 20-something year old entreprenuer wannabe who loves a prank or two.

Damn, she must still remember that last trick I pulled on her back in college which I won't get into to save someone some embarrassment. :)

Actually I think my dad has been trying to figure out the same thing too. Is Damien the serious spiritual seeker, the semi-serious business hack, or the completely unserious and insensitive brat he's had a few man-to-man talks with.

And I have brought this up a few times: dude, why can't I be all three?

Everyone assumes that someone who enjoys a good time is incapable of being spiritual and vice versa. We'll, I'm not too sure about that. Then again, I've always been somewhat of a non-conformist, to put it mildly. Not only do I not conform to elder people's expectations. I also don't conform to younger people's expectations. ^_^

This what I'm talking about, in case you're wondering.

Age 1 - 11: Everything's a game. People who don't want to play are lame.
Age 12 - 18: We rebel against everything grownups root for. And everything's a joke. We run our dad's car into a tree and then say geez dad, can't you take a joke?
Age 19 - 25: We crave to be part of the "in" crowd. We scream lifestyle and attention. We feel suicidal if we're told we don't fit in.
Age 26 - 35: Shit, life is tough. Better get serious. But those bright lights... they're still calling us.
Age 36 - 50: Bills, bills, bills. Don't come to me for an allowance. And turn down that damn noise will ya.
Age 51 - beyond: Gimmme some peace and quiet, dammit! I'm trying to pray / meditate here.

So... which camp are you in?

I'm "supposed" to sit squarely in the Age 19-25 camp so I can understand why the raised eyebrows when I slide up and down their preprogrammed scale. The 20-somethings think I'm weird for being able to slide way up to the Age 51 and beyond scale.

You see, 20-somethings are NOT supposed to have a spiritual opinion because that makes you a shit-eating tree-hugging weirdo. Definitely not one of us, they say.

And older people? They think I'm weird too. You talk like a grown up, they say, but why do you look like a teenager?

Not that I care.

Its fun to confuse everyone. And because I'm just a little better at keeping my cool, I'd like to think I'm more objective when it comes to making a tough choice. You need plenty of that in the 19-30 range as you know.

But here's a well-hated fact. People grow up at different rates. I've seen enough older people who dress up like teenagers and young kids who dress like grown ups. And in trying to conform to some imaginary scale, spiritual people try to put on the mask of a hip and happening person and vice versa. Creepy.

Why all these masks? If everyone spends all that energy to be who they can be, instead of trying to be who they're not, wouldn't we have a happier and more genuine bunch of people around us?

Ok. Back to the real world and my choco-top ice cream cone...

The God complex

I've written about this some time ago so this will be an updated take on the topic.

It hit my mind again during my recent trip to Seoul as I looked at the amazing reach of large Korean conglomerates. On the surface, a company may seem like its producing LCD TVs but if you take a closer look, you begin to notice how they've got their fingers into everything. The same company that made your LCD TV also builds massive ocean-faring vessels, buildings 100 stories high, cars and trucks, cameras, microwave ovens, cellphones and microchips that go into your electronic devices. They're in it from the very big to the very small.

There's one word describes this. Omnipresence. It means being present in everything you touch. Well... ok, they're not actually into everything. At least, I dont think they cooked my breakfast today ^_^ but are they present in the appliances that my breakfast was cooked with? Chances are... yes.

Anyway, I digress. What do I mean by the God Complex? It is the desire to create a world in our image. When we desire to control our environment, that's the God complex in action. You've seen artificial snow I'm sure. Artificial rain, artificial mountains, even artificial beings (through genetics and stem cell procedures).

When we wish to control other people - how they think and behave - that's the God complex in action too.

At least, that's going by how people describe God to me. I'm told that God is an entity that is everywhere. He created this world in his image and has the power to raise people up or bring them down. He has the power to give life and take it away.

So you'll understand why something clicks in my mind when I see what some of these gigantic corporations do. A couple of years ago I spent a week in Guangdong at the invitation of a large corporation there. They had a huge sprawling complex where a thousand people worked and lived. The corporation provided everything - income, food, shelter, entertainment, even birth and funeral expenses. The corporation also had the power to kick out anyone who didn't follow the rules and in a place like China, joblessness can mean a very, very harsh life.

They kept tabs on everyone through a people-locator system. There were video cameras all over. You are given a set of rules to live by. Your conduct (good deeds and sins, especially sins) is recorded. You are judged by the boss-God who has the power to keep or terminate you anytime. As long as people toe the line, life goes like clockwork.

If that sounds familiar, that's probably because your workplace operates along the same lines. If your workplace is your "world," then your big boss literally plays God over you. He tells you what you shall do, he judges you and he dictates your fate in the "world" he lords over. And if you were in a drug cartel in South America, he can dictate if you shall live or die today.

And its not just your boss that has the God complex. Everyone does, including you. Your parents, for example, created you in their image. You look like them, and they try to fashion you into someone they want you to be. You'll do the same when its your turn to become parent. In fact, sometimes I think its the strongest of natural drives in humans - the desire to create something in our image. How strong? Without a child to bring up, a woman gets restless as she struggles to suppress her maternal instincts. Man too becomes restless without something to create, even if its just hammering wood into something that looks halfway useful. We are always creating, creating... never stopping.

Who are the big-time 'Creators' in our society? Artists, programmers, cooks, designers, architects, music writers, bio-engineers, movie producers, inventors.

It puts up a whole new meaning into the word "Godliness" doesn't it.

Obviously, having a God complex is not the same as being God. A man cannot bring a dead man to life. At least not yet. We are still trying to do that via cryogenics and cloning (which I'm confident we'll succeed). What I mean is that if we characterize God as a creator, we must also recognize the same creationist streak in all of us too.

But if the things we create today don't impress you, come back in about 100 years 'cause from what I hear, we are already creating antimatter (dubbed the "God particle") and singularities (black holes) in a lab. These are main ingredients that can help us create the Big Bang itself, just like what God did billions of years ago.

4 hours to Seoul

I’m leaving for Seoul South Korea today for some work and a quick vacation that will keep me out and about till Sunday.

There won’t be any updates on this blog until I come back Monday.

Meanwhile, dig this vacation tune and have a good one folks.

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How to be happy

"If only I had a million dollars. I'd be the happiest person on earth!"

"If only everyone would adore me, I would be the happiest person on earth!"

"If only this problem would go away, I'd be the happiest person on earth!"

You know, you pick up a lot of definitions of happiness just by scouting the blogs.

People write about things that excite them (=happiness?) So that means gadgets and what they had for breakfast in London, especially if it was their first time there. Exciting experiences. And it gets boring after a while and they move on to the next thing.

Just like flowers, incense, and the old cellphones you've tossed away, these objects / experiences and the nice feelings you have about them stay only for a short while. When they get old, you'll be up and about searching for the next thing to excite you. You know what you want but after you get it, you somehow realize its not quite what you want.

Sometimes, instead of possessions, we think of happiness as the absence of problems. I've blogged about how this breaks apart too. Here's an experiment you can do. Find an adrenaline junkie, people who like doing dangerous stunts like base jumping or racing on a track. Ask these people why do what they do. Invariably they'll tell you its because it makes them feel "alive."

And with that motivation we create competitive sports, beauty pageants and American Idol. Activities that look like pure energy-wasters from an evolutionary standpoint. What else can we call creating unnecessary competition and spending an inordinate amount of resources trying to beat an imaginary enemy. No other species does that.

So for those who say happiness is having no problems, you know what? I'm not so sure. Remove problems and you also remove self-affirmation, the feeling of "I'm still alive" or "I'm better than you." It seems that we constantly need to pinch ourselves. That's how insecure we are as a species.

That's why we're weird creatures. Special, but weird. Possessing things don't make us happy for long, and neither would going without problems. We get restless, drinking in everything we can get our hands on - gadgets, experiences, knowledge, eating, and sleeping - but that thirst, it never quite goes away does it.

So where is happiness if its not in having or not having?

In fact, how do we even define happiness?

These are the questions I always find deep in the rabbit hole.

Those colors, what do they mean

I can see a lot of these flags sprouting up on my drive to work. I've always wondered if there was any meaning behind the flag, other than to make the surroundings look colorful and cheery.

Thanks to Wiki, now I know.


Of course, a flag is just a picture and a picture is just that - colored ink on material. Not much different than the shirt I wear.

So its not the flag. Its the meaning we associate with the flag and how much of our actions resonate with such ideals.

Its also a clever reminder that ultimately, flags don't change anything and neither do statues, pictures, and words.

Wesak Day is coming

There is something about this year's Wesak that's different than the past ones I've observed. Not that I've seen many. In the US, Buddhism is not mainstream. Well, everyone seems to know the Dalai Lama but mention Siddhartha Gautama and you'll probably get a blank stare. "Sid who?" Haha.

Why is this year's Wesak Day different? Because in no other year has Siddhartha's musings struck a chord in me so many times.

Even way before I stumbled on his musings that were written down in so many places, I've always been drawn to look beyond the "Ooh its beautiful!" or "Ooh its ugly!" level that most people care to waste their time on. I can't help but look behind the first layer, the second layer, and so on.

I have this penchant to ask why and if I ask why enough times, I find myself waking up in the rabbit hole, facing things that ordinary people would rather not see.

There's a saying. If you know how hot dogs are made, you would never want to eat them. And its not just hot dogs in my opinion. Its more. A whole lot more.

But that's the beauty of living in this eat-first-think-later dimension. Here, ignorance is bliss. Knowing why spoils the fun, and wanting to know why makes you weird. "Don't think too much!," friends and family urge me. I just smile, knowing that awareness and mindfulness can happen when my brain is asleep.

But if there's a single biggest clue that I've gotten from Sid's musings this past year, its this: Nothing you have is ever truly yours, and your future is not carved in stone no matter how good or bad you have it today.

Okay that's 2 things, not one. ^_^

And these are not something that came out of faith. They are from repeatable observation, that incovenience required by empirical science, helped along by some mathematical modeling.

This is not to say that I disregard faith. I just find the language of mathematics more precise in describing "reality" so if something mystifies me, the first thing I do is try to reconstruct it in mathematical language. Then I use the rules of logic (as opposed to blind faith) to help me rationalize the picture.

As they say, whatever floats your boat.... and this happens to be mine.

Anyway, Sid's musings just affirm my own findings of what's behind the matrix, based on my limited ability to perceive. But like a giant video game, there are many levels to go, many planes of awareness that I'm not capable of jumping on yet. I am learning.

So for Sid's birthday, all I can say is thanks dude. You've left enough breadcrumbs in the long rabbit hole to give me a good start. And I have a feeling what I'll find at the end of it will blow me away.

The round square

Okay so the title's corny but I don't know how else to describe me - a square person trying to fit into a round hole. A spiritual person trying to fit into a place that's anything but.

Everyone's content with living on the surface. Everyone goes ooh! I saw this great racer at the showroom! I had the best chicken kiev ever! She's the most gorgeous girl I ever laid me eyes on!

And what do I do? I have to go and ask myself why. Why should I care about the racer? Or if it was the best chicken kiev in town? Or about that beautiful face that will grow a thousand wrinkles 30 years from now?

If you think I'm thinking too much, relax. No thinking is involved. These things just strike my consciousness in the same way you notice that the sky is blue. You don't think about it. You just notice that it is. I just happen to notice more than the average dude. A whole lot more. Without any thinking.

So beyond shapes, colors and sounds, my senses are accustomed to picking up things behind the scenes. What you see as some desperate guy hitting on a hot chick, I see hormones, greed, lust, insatiable thirst. Its like seeing a house as its parts - bricks, wood, metal, plumbing, termites and all.

I have been told many times - take life as it comes. Don't read too much into things. Keep life simple and take things at face value. You like that polar bear? Go pet it. If it bites your arm off, well... we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Why do you overthink everything. Just do it.

Well, its great that people care enough about me to give me such advice. Life would be a joy if we all took everything at face value. There will be no suspicion, no fights, no distrust, and everyone will be walking around with huge smiles on their faces.

And after the lovefest, everyone goes back to a home secured with 3 padlocks and an electronic alarm.

And that's the whole problem. You see, my mind picks up these little things and connects the dots, often without me telling it to. But I cannot say, "Dude, don't play with that candle. You'll burn your finger." I can only observe, watch the house burn down, and then tell myself, "Would it have been any different if I told him what I knew?"

Maybe you have a little bit of this too, perhaps being just as spiritual or having learnt out of experience. Trouble is, I didn't have much of a learning curve. Not unless I include my martial arts training and brief stint in social work. For as long as I can remember, my mind had instinctively looked through the packaging and linked cause and effect like it was on autopilot. As you can imagine, peer pressure at school didn't get my goat as much as it did my friends.

But the heightened sensitivity does put me on constant alert. Imagine riding into a battlezone everyday and being conscious of every single arrow pointing at you. Again, no thinking. Your mind just notes it and files it away. It effects how you conduct yourself. You go racing down the highway at 100 miles an hour with a friend but you put your selt belt on. You splurge on treats but you keep your credit cards at home. You join your friends for happy hour but you order a coke.

Like I said, I'm a round square. Does that make me an untameable freak? Sure, I guess. ^_^

How long would you like to live until?

I've been noticing something for a while now. People who don't believe in rebirth seem to be terrified of death (= want to live forever?) whereas those who believe in rebirth seem to have a more casual attitude towards it. If they check out tomorrow, no big deal. They will come back in some shape or form, or so they believe.

I admit I belong to the latter category. Yes it could be a completely false belief because I've never personally known anyone who remembers who they were in a previous life. I don't remember what or who I was myself. Now, being science trained, I know that simply believing in something doesn't make it true so I've accepted that such things are wagers we make based on personal faith. I base my acceptance on what I perceive to be logical which may be completely illogical to another person, hehe.

So back to the question. How long would I like to live until if I had a choice? My mathematical answer would be t1 + t2.

Let me explain.

t1 would be the amount of time I need to fulfill my material obligations to my dependents. If I am taking care of a sick sibling because I have the resources, the day that my sibling is cured and able to carry out a normal life on his own would be my t1.

t2 is a random number, also denoting time. It can be 10 seconds or a 100 years. It doesn't really matter.

In plain english, what it means is that after I have fulfilled my material responsibilities to my loved ones, it doesn't really bother me when I check out. What's important is that after I'm gone, I don't leave them homeless or starving.

I specified material obligations because non-material needs (= emotional + spiritual) can be impossible to satisfy even if people live forever. Material obligations are a more practical goal. You can only eat so much before you are full, or occupy so much space before a home becomes frighteningly large and unmanageable.

And there's another thing I notice about those who believe in rebirth and those who don't. People who understand the rebirth process don't find death a macabre subject. They can talk about it like they're talking about making tea or coffee, which is my state of mind as I write this. But people who believe this life as the one and only one they have will find this subject taboo.

What about people who think that talking about death is "bad luck?" Kinda hilarious actually, but I do understand how superstition can be a comforting force and have got nothing against it.

How did this topic come up? Well, I just paid my annual insurance premium. Lets just say I had a fun time chatting with my agent. ^_^

How to make a magic spell

Some time ago I had a chance to hang out with some guys and we somehow got down to talking about magic spells.

Now just because I grew up in the west, it doesn't mean I can't sit down and have a listen to this fascinating world of voodoo. I mean, how many times have we heard Harry Potter say Expecto Patronum.

But over here, unlike Harry Potter, for the right amount of money you can have all kinds of spells made out for you. There are spells that will protect you from bodily harm, from ghosts and spirits, from theives, and from bad people. There are spells to enhance your financial luck, make the rain fall and make you irresistable to the opposite sex. And then there are spells to break spells.

The wonderful thing about spells is in how they are a lot like feng shui. If it works, you are awed by the maker of the spell. If it doesn't, its not the spell. Its you. And I don't think they give refunds.

I asked one of them named Thom if its possible to cast a spell on someone in New York or have its protective effects follow a Muggle like me there. It'll be so cool to be able to walk around the Bronx and not worry about being mugged, I thought.

He wasn't sure if it could be done but quickly qualified that if the shaman was powerful enough, why not.

It was a fun conversation, very educational. If I was a local with lots of moolah, I tell ya I might just be tempted to order the Saturday night special myself: a cocktail spell to protect me from everything, win me the lottery and turn me into a chick magnet. Oh, life would be perfect.

That night, a thought struck my Muggle mind. Why can't I just make my own spells? So after some more thought, here's what I have in mind.

Protection from ghosts and spirits
The spell: A torchlight
How it works: Everyone knows ghosts are afraid of anything brighter than a birthday candle. If you don't have a torch, the remote control for the ceiling lights will do. But torches, being heavier, are preferred because you can throw it at the ghost if it comes too near.

Protection from financial problems
The spell: Contentment.
How it works: If I could knock some sense into myself and say so what if I don't have the latest iPhone, I will not be suckered into 3-year cellphone operator contract or run a credit card debt and skimp on my meals for the next one year just to pay off the debt.

Protection from legal problems
The spell: Truth.
How it works: If I don't tell lies, not evade taxes, and pay my obligations on time, I will cause no reason for anyone to come after me.

Protection from diseases and bodily harm
The spell: Moderation.
How it works: If I stop eating unhealthy food, smoking weed, and chugging down half a bottle a day, I will not create causes for diseases to set in. And if I don't show off my wealth, thieves will find me extremely uninteresting.

Chick magnet spell
The spell: Money.
How it works: Even if I look like something the cat dragged in, with enough money in the bank, I can be surrounded by hoes of my choice 24-7.

Now here's the best part. These protections are absolutely free (except for the chick magnet bit and maybe the torchlight) and I'm pretty sure their effects will follow me wherever I go, even to New York.

And you need not depend on faith for it to work either. You can actually see it working for yourself. Keep credit card in pocket when you shop and tadaa.... see no bill coming at end of month. How's that for protection against financial problems. ^_^

So who says only Harry Potter can do magic.

HMS Titanic again?

Recently, I had a chat with my brother who's now settled in Boston. He's planning to get married end of this year. Not exactly a springtime wedding but there were just too many logistics complications, his fiancee's job and my dad's activity schedule being a couple.

Anyway, we got to talking about his plan for a family and that's when I learnt that he and his fiancee aren't sure if they want to have one. It caught me by surprise so I asked why.

His answer was quite blunt. With all the things going on in the world, he's not sure if the kids will have a future.

At the root of his pessimism are a few things. He thinks the world will be in a state of war for another 2-3 generations and it will have a very unpleasant ending. What if his kids get drafted to war, he worries. (We have one friend drafted to Iraq and another to Israel plus a few still serving in the US National Guard.)

He also thinks that in 50 years time, the climate will arrive at a life-threatening point. And because of climate change, in as short as a couple of hundred years, instead of fighting wars over territory and ideology, people will fight over food and water. And it will be nastier because its driven by desperation and not ideals, aided by new age weapons.

All in all, he doesn't believe humans can last another 4-5 generations and feels that bringing more bodies will only create needless suffering.

I told him his doomsday predictions aren't new. Even during the time of the Pharaohs and Chinese emperors, amidst the intense brutality, many people didn't expect that we (humans) would last another millenia. Yet here we are.

But what he said next did strike home a point. Those eras didn't have to grapple with the greatest game changer of all - the cataclysm caused by an overheated planet.

I can sympathize. When I look at the IPCC data on climate change and the planet's climate history, I too have a bad feeling at the pit of my stomach. Naturally the league of nations will be all positive about it. You can't say there isn't much we can do without creating massive global chaos.

But I had the last say of course - my good old Butterfly effect theory. What if one of his kids becomes the savior that man had been waiting for? Not a savior of the religious variety but maybe as an inventor of a technology that can save the world?

Even Einstein's parents never thought that far when they raised him up. Is he so sure that his kid - or any kid born in the next 100 years for that matter - won't be the one that might change the course of history?

Yeah, its a long shot I know. I guess the good news is, he and his fiancee are still unsure. I do understand where he's coming from but I also know that not having a family would also remove one big reason why people get married. Maybe they found a way around that. I really hope so.

I guess I now understand why visions of the HMS Titanic come to mind whenever I watch the news these days.

p.s. Smile and take it easy. I dunno about you but I got plenty to be happy about, Titanic or not.

Love and other disasters Part 2

If you'd like to read Part 1, go here. Part 1 is for those who prefer to keep life "positive." Part 2 deals with the darker side of the topic.

As I said in Part 1, if you are a talkative dude or dudette, you'll naturally gravitate towards a companion who's a listener, or someone who you think can be persuaded to become a listener. Similarly, if you can't speak to save your life, you'll find comfort in a friend who can speak his mind.

People seem to have this radar that seeks out people who complement their own behavior, people with the "chemistry." These are clues why I think people are wired to do a balancing act.

Maybe that's what the yin-yang theory is trying to tell us. We instinctively know that one dominant attribute without a counter-balancing one is bad for us so we are quick to pal up with someone who will make us feel whole. Nothing bad about that in my opinion.

But everything has a bright and dark side and in this instance, the dark side emerges for unfortunate people who grew up in abusive conditions. A spouse beater ala the Rihanna-Chris Brown affair for example. Brown apparently grew up to see his mother suffer in the hands of his abusive father and somehow felt it was okay to beat the crap out of his girlfriend.

I won't comment on Chris Brown but if you've ever been pissed at someone at work or wherever because of their sadistic tendencies, you could be staring at exactly that - a person who's trying to do a balancing act. As a sadist, he or she needs to find a willing victim to play his/her role in order to feel whole.

It takes two to tango so there's always the willing complementary player. When a person grows up being told, "I beat you because I love you," then as an adult he/she may find himself gravitating towards an oppressive employer or spouse to nip that empty feeling. They just can't help but seek that relationship - bizzarre as it sounds - to feel whole too.

This is what I call the Tom and Jerry relationship. It's grotesque but Tom can't be Tom without Jerry, and Jerry can't be Jerry without Tom. They came together for a reason.

So in the same manner, battered spouses will always go back to their tormentors. Bullied employees will keep finding oppressive bosses to work for despite all the complaining. They are like magnets attracted to each other.

Time to change

50 years - The passing of 1st generation supporters, assuming present ideals are enforced by core supporters aged 30 years or more. This represents the group upholding the status quo who, minds already set, will not give up their ideals under any circumstances, but may sell out their principles for enough money.

60 years - The passing of supporters of the previous generation's ideals. These are today's kids aged 10 years and less. They are conditioned to carry on present ideals albeit in diluted form. The biggest reason to continue the tradition - that's the way of the forefathers and that's how it should be.

8 years - Transition period where old ideals are demolished and new ones built. 4 for internal struggle and remorse, 4 for acceptance.

Total time to completely change beliefs by attrition: 50 + 60 + 8 = 118 years.

This is the time it will take, in earth years, to effect visible change in society.

This applies to lifestyle, culture, political ideology, and any social institution you can think of with the exception of religion.

My theory anyway.

One thing arising from this.

Every institution hails the words of its forefathers as holy, immutable and carved in stone.

People seem incapable of believing that the forefathers may have actually been mistaken, ill-advised or short-sighted when they created an ideal. The freedom to bear arms as guaranteed in the US constitution is an ideal which was necessary during the Civil War era but in the 21st century have brought more pain to grieving families than ease of mind.

By making the words of forefathers inviolable, man has elevated man to the status of gods. No, higher than gods. You can violate the 10 commandments but you cannot violate the constitution of a country.

My thoughts go to yesterday's victims of the shootings in Alabama and Winnenden, Germany.

The red pill

Last weekend when I was in Singapore, a friend of mine remarked,

"There's lots of political news going on in Malaysia. You spend a lot of time there. How come I don't see you talking politics on your blog?"

My friend was pulling my leg. He knew what my answer would be but I had to say it anyway. There are two things I don't write about. People's private lives and Asian politics. Okay, on private lives I make an exception for Octomom's case. She made her choice to lift the privacy of her life on national tv and I'm just adding to a pretty noisy public discussion.

Although I don't comment on politics, it doesn't mean I am unaware of it. On the contrary, I am painfully aware of it in all its gory detail. Awareness is a basic training of any good martial arts school. In my school, we were trained to notice things ordinary people wouldn't. The wind, the sun, the terrain, ambient sounds, the physical and mental states of people. We'd sit in stillness for hours learning to "be" with the surroundings. We could sit in a packed subway and tell you what we saw in detail. These observations tell us a story about the balance of forces surrounding us.

If it sounds like meditation, that's because it is. Many people think that when you meditate, you shut down your faculties and get lost in a dream world. Actually you don't. Your senses heighten and you notice every itch on your body, every smell, every sound. You just don't get attached to them. They come, you note, you let go.

Politics tell a story too - one about the state of your non-physical surroundings. If there is one thing politics is useful for, it is to remind me that nothing is forever. It doesn't matter which side of the divide you're on. The unstable nature of existence guarantees that no single side will endure. What you see today is a mere screenshot of a never ending movie which had zig-zagged through time and will continue to zig-zag to eternity.

In fact personally, the more I observe politics, the clearer the great truths of life seem to be. One of them is that no matter how wealthy or influential you are, you cannot escape dissatisfaction. Accumulating more wealth and power will not do anything to eradicate it. Neither will clinging to any ideology, tradition or dogma, no matter how right or fulfilling it might seem to you at that moment.

So I treat politics as the background noise of an unstable dimension, what I call The Matrix. I accept there are pathways that lead out and its not by more politicking and counter-politicking. Its by taking the proverbial red pill. The ancients have done it. With right understanding and right concentration, anyone can do it.

At this point, I admit this is purely faith based. It doesn't have to be, as I should discover when I've summoned enough courage to walk down the entire path rather than turning back halfway as I am doing now.

But as this dimensional upheavel picks up pace, with society and the ecosystem breaking down as they had done in countless existences, I have to say the prospect of not turning back is getting more and more attractive by the week. It is soul searching time.

"The red pill is an unknown quantity. We are told that it can help us to find the truth. We don't know what that truth is, or even that the pill will help us to find it. The red pill symbolises risk, doubt and questioning. In order to answer the question, you can gamble your whole life and world on a reality you have never experienced."

Maybe its time for me to take the red pill seriously.

How bad is bad?

Likely worse than the Great Depression according to this opinion piece from Salon.com.

In a nutshell, here's what it forecasts.

• Skyrocketing hydrocarbon prices
• Skyrocketing food prices
• Stillborn newly industrialized economies
• Massive unemployment
• Massive poverty and starvation
• Massive civil unrest
• Regime threatening instability

Add global climate gone haywire, something the Great Depression didn't suffer from, where we'll be enjoying all this under 50-degree heatwaves and super hurricanes, and we might just witness the beginnings of a great die-off that'll bring world population back to a manageable level of oooh... maybe a billion people, give or take.

Call me pessimistic but I think Salon might just be on to something here for a couple of reasons.

One, that most of us have been conditioned to place personal gratification and conformity over the consequences of our actions. I remember the food fights we used to have at school, the gas guzzlers we drove around in, the number of cellphones and gadgets we would have by the time we were 18, and how we're shunned if we didn't look or act like everyone else.

The story of the resulting environmental and economic collapse, while intriguing as a good scary novel, never really moved us to do much. There's always a reason not to do it. Something about hanging on to our thick wallets, frail egos and stubborn beliefs no matter the cost. We have a name for it. "Reality."

Two, most of us underestimate the power of greed and how it fans the flames of our own demise. Even as things are disintegrating today, the opportunist in us is still abuzz out how to make a killing from stocks and property. Yes, when markets are frightened, get greedy. This is the golden opportunity to be the next Warren Buffet. Never mind that all we've got left is the shirts on our backs.

Clearly we have no desire to change. The good life is too ... good to give up.

If you loved Alien vs. Predator, you're gonna love Humans vs. Mother Earth. One armed with its Wall-Street smarts, the other with her natural resources, ecosystem and time. Guess who will win.

What goes around comes around.

If only we humans actually believed in what we said.

The Butterfly Effect: Redux

"More than 90 percent of major armed conflicts — those resulting in more than 1,000 deaths — occurred in countries that contain one of the 34 biodiversity hotspots, while 81 percent took place within specific hotspots. A total of 23 hotspots experienced warfare over the half-century studied."

"...the hotspots are home to a majority of the world's 1.2 billion poorest people who rely on the resources and services provided by natural ecosystems for their daily survival."

- Livescience.

Sounds logical.

1. Biodiversity due to climate and geological conditions attract more living things
2. Living things attract predators
3. More predators mean less food
4. Less food means more potential conflict
5. More potential conflict means more real wars
6. War in dense population centers mean more casualties

Since predatory behavior plays a significant role in the scenario, I must distinguish between a human and wild predator. A lion, as ferocious as it is, stops eating when its full. Humans on the other hand have no circuit breakers. When they are full, they hoard. When they've hoarded too much, they trade. When they trade, the natural supply and demand system is forced to change and so on.

But doesn't the same cycle of life happen, say, in the ancient frozen Viking lands?

Sure it does, but freezing Scandinavia isn't exactly a mecca of biodiversity. The human population is sparse and a war that breaks out won't see millions dead, unlike in the heavily populated Indus Valley or coastal areas of China.

So it does seem logical that your chances of becoming a casualty of war would be much higher if you were born in a biologically lush place like China, Cambodia or India than a desert or an ice-locked nation, for the simple reason that when a place is teeming with life, a swing of the blade kills a lot more.

60 seconds to zero

In the 80's, the sudden death syndrome killed more than 200 people in Singapore. That's according to National Geographic.

The electronics that drove their hearts simply shut down, leaving healthy young people suddenly lifeless.

It happens every day. Checking out unplanned, I mean. Ironic that the greatest certainty of life is also its greatest mystery. In spite of all our technology, death remains a subject of superstition.

But happen it does. A plane crash, a mortal wound, terminal cancer. Of knowing that the time has come for you to move on.

How will that final minute feel?

Yeah I know, the fear of death is many times worse than death itself.

Its also been said by NDE survivors that the end of life is not horrifying. In fact it was a comforting, warm feeling.

Maybe it depends on what your beliefs are and to some extent, what horror movies you've seen.

Not that physics will bend itself to accomodate what you believe and set the stage accordingly.

But whether you are smiling or trembling fearfully at the departure gate... I think that's gonna be determined by what you believe.

So all the more reason why its very, very important to be careful of what we choose to believe in.

Because what we believe in will set us up for that most important moment in our lives. Not our first job, not our first love, and not our first child, but our final 60 seconds.

End of days?

No, I'm not talking about the appearance of the antiChrist or anything like that. I'm talking about a feeling that people must have felt just before Genghiz Khan's or Alexander's army rode into town on their horses and burned everything to the ground.

This time instead of swords and arrows, a lot of people are about to be put down by a weapon many times worse.

That weapon is called greed.

Why do I say its worse? Because with a sword or arrow, its all over in a few seconds but with greed, death lingers, sometimes for years. The torture caused by greed, such as losing everything you had through scams like Madoff's, I think, is a fate many times worse than death.

Its kinda depressing but I just felt the need to lay it out, just to remind myself of certain things.

If humans are set up for a target practice, then it looks to me that we are being shot at from at least 3 directions.

First, the greed of man that led us to this economic and environmental crisis. Its been said many times, our planet can support our needs but it can't support our greed. But like many cool slogans, that's as far as it gets. A slogan.

You see, greed is not only confined to people who read ads. Everyone's greedy. The poor grabs everything to climb out of their poverty. When they wreck the environment in the process, we say you have to understand, they're poor so its okay. Once out, they grab some more to climb up to middle class. Once there, they grab some more to become rich. Once rich, they grab some more to become super rich. And so on. Along that journey lies a million broken hearts and broken dreams, plus a climate that's wrecked beyond repair. But we just can't help ourselves, because we all want a piece of the pie.

Second, the greed of man that leads him to crave dominance over his fellow man, turning lands of intelligent people into banana republics and banana republics into dens of pirates and murderers. Instead of becoming more global, earth's communities are becoming more insular, each convinced of its own superiority. The world has gotten a lot less friendly in the last half century I'm told. Barriers are coming up everywhere and you are being tracked in cities and on networks. More and more of our decisions are based on social status, our ability to commit violence, our race and creed. We need to feel superior and the way to do it is to dominate those we perceive as inferior.

Third, the greed of man that leads him to a craving for conformity so intense he's willing to kill in its name, even die for it if required. This leads to the scourge of extremism marked by waves of genocide and killings of innocents, the lust to spill blood for no other reason than the fear of diversity and differences in opinion. As the world modernizes, intolerance spreads, exported to all corners of the globe by the tools of modernity.

So tell me, with guns trained at you from 3 different directions, even if you ran as fast as you could, what are the chances of you dodging all the bullets?

Oh the planet will survive all right. I'm just not sure about its inhabitants.

Tuth be told, there's been times when I wished I could be Superman so I could set things right. And then I woke up. I realized that even the greedy wished they could be Supermen too so they could set things right - their way. Perhaps I have to accept that no force in the universe can tame the hearts of men. Not even kryptonite.

Clock's ticking. Its only a matter of time.

Pangea Begalia and the Illusion of Ownership

Another TV program I watched last night, courtesy of a lousy social life, is one by National Geographic about the continental drift.

Geologists forecast that eventually, because of tectonic movements, all the land masses on the planet will converge into a single humongous land mass characterized by extreme weather. Super hot and dry in certain parts, very wet and stormy in others, and cold and icy at the fringes.

Central Europe will crash into Africa, Australia with Asia, the Americas with Western Europe and Russia. Computer simulations reveal there will likely be a hole in the middle, sort of an inland sea, surrounded by new land, new mountains, new deserts. It will look like a bagel run over by a truck. Meanwhile, all the oceans will surround this land mass as one huge combined mass of water.

It reminds me very much of the world of Avatar Aang, the Airbender, where the world is a single land mass divided into four nations - the Air Kingdom, Earth Kingdom, Water Kingdom and Fire Nation, minus the outlying islands you see on this map of Avatar World.


The big crunch is slated to happen hundreds of millions of years from now as the planet evolves. Its doubtful if any humans will be around, which makes me wonder.

People in our age love to go to war over land borders. This land is "ours", not "yours". We'll fight to the death to reclaim what is "ours." We insist on documents to step over an imaginary border. We build fences - physical and mental, and make a big deal about "this side" and "that side."

So why do we do all that knowing that in time to come, the concept of "your land" and "my land" is meaningless because it is either swallowed up by the sea, subducted by earthquakes or destroyed by raging volcanos?

Why do we build up so much greed, hatred and fear over something we know will cease to exist?

Sure it makes sense if all you're thinking about is what's for dinner tonight and what movie's on this weekend. But in the larger scheme of things, does what we feel so strongly about today really matter if it makes not the slightest difference as far as the physical world is concerned?

We live in a matrix.

And the matrix is rooted not in the physical but in a vapor world that is both imaginary and fleeting, hence labeled as unreal by some.

I learn new things about the matrix every day.

An out of body experience

I can't remember the article but recently, it was reported that a scientist found that its possible to separate the brain from the human body and keep it alive.

Not only that. He also suggested that the isolated brain could, for all intents and purposes, experience sight, sound, smell, taste and touch if suitably wired.

Logically I guess its doable, albeit it being frankensteinish. After all our eyes don't really "see" anything. They translate light into electrical impulses that are dispatched to the brain who does the work of recognizing an image. So strictly speaking, it is the brain that "sees," not the eye. The eye is just a light sensor, and not a very good one at that.

If you are able to mimic the kind of faint electrical signals the eye sends, you can swap it with something else, say a device that senses not just light but also gamma rays, x-rays and infra-red, giving the brain the ability to "see" far beyond what it could when it was attached to human eyes. It'll have night vision and see things you and I can never see. You could even give it telescopic and microscopic sight abilities. Cool.

You could do the same with the ears, nose and so on.

The applications are plenty. You could use it to find a way to give eyesight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, for example.

But it also highlights the thing I've always had to contend with - that popular refrain of skeptics: "I'll only believe it when I see it."

The thing is, even at our peak, we humans can't see, hear or smell very well. But being on top of the food chain does have its advantages. We can't resist taking an authoritative view on things and defining "reality" as something outlined by our narrow-field sense organs. This limited vision has led us to impose many chauvanistic and sometimes cruel practices against one another. The ghosts of Copernicus, Galileo and others would recall how they were persecuted for seeing things that ordinary folk couldn't.

Luckily we have another sense in addition to sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Its sense #6 - also known as the mind. The mind lets us "see" things that the other 5 can't, like a black hole in space. The most powerful telescope in the world can't see a black hole so how can the mind see it? Through mathematical deductions. The mind, via calculations in relativity theory or quantum theory, also "sees" other things like dark energy, dark matter and anti-matter.

Predictably, people react to these realities the same way common folk did during Copernicus's time. If you see it, then you've had one too many, they insist. Or for some, you're the instrument of the devil.

Times haven't really changed that much.

The point I'm trying to make is, while "seeing is believing" is a good rule of thumb for spotting a good bargain, its actually a poor guage of reality. Its worsened by the fact that sometimes you see or hear things that aren't there. You only have to stay home alone on a dark windy night to appreciate how deceptive our senses can be.

In my opinion, the best thing to have when handling info of doubtful truth value is an open mind. Evaluate all ideas with a critical yet logical mind. Don't discount something simply because you've never seen it or because it sounds too "preposterous" from your point of view. Don't accept an idea simply because everyone else does. And never forget the fact that all of human knowledge is a mere drop in a vast ocean.

An ordinary person thinks he knows everything. A wise person knows that he doesn't.

Feng Shui, Karma and the Butterfly Effect

Woo hoo, its Chinese New Year, a time when people can't seem to stop talking about fortune and luck. What's CNY without a personalized reading of the Chinese zodiac anyway.

But its fun. Feng shui is a fantastic business. Nobody will begrudge you if none of your predictions came true, thanks to the caveat of "heaven luck" or so I'm told. Yes I've learnt a few things these past few days. ^_^

You see, feng shui is divided into parts that include human luck, earth luck and the heaven luck. One part can feed or frustrate the other. You can shore up the human part like moving things around your house or office and activating chi at certain times but if your heaven luck says you're screwed, then no amount of interior decoration can save you.

Now the meaning of "heaven luck" might differ depending on who you talk to but the feng shui guy I spoke to, probably sensing where I was coming from, likened it to karma.

Interesting.

Since only a Buddha would know what his karma is, it does seem like a handy excuse to have if a year later, none of the predictions you're given actually came true. And seriously, how many readings have you gotten all these years that turned out to be 100% correct? Or 50% correct? 30%?

But that's not the eyebrow raiser. More interesting to me is the feng shui concept of predestination; the belief that if your heaven luck or karma is such, then there's nothing much you can really do to change it. Well, except for moving objects around a bit to "dampen" the effect I'm told.

At the core of it is the view of heaven luck / karma as something predetermined, fixed and unchanging. The only problem is, that's not how I understand karma to be. But then again, I am partial to the Buddhist view of these things which may not be where the feng shui master is coming from.

The Buddha likened karma to a lump of salt. Put it in a glass of water and the water will taste salty. Put it in a large flowing river and you won't notice its there.

The water represents one's conscious actions.

What does it mean? It means that even if you hit a spot of bad karma next month, if you've been living a wholesome life and practicing kindness, generosity and concentration, you'll hardly feel the pinch.

The other thing I understand about karma is that you can actually change the amount of salt with free will. Yeah dudes, you can change your own karma.

From what I'm told, conditions determine what karma will ripen at any given moment so obviously by making choices that change the conditions in your life, you also change the nature of your karma. Some people blame their poor school grades on bad karma. Others actually make an effort to study. By studying, one changes his life conditions, thus allowing different a type of karma to ripen. The effects of negative karma is diluted or delayed to some other moment when new conditions allow it to ripen.

Now I don't know if changing our bedrooms from one side of the house to another is the action that will change our destiny. The feng shui masters seem to think so and well, maybe there is something to it if you consider the Butterfly Effect. That's something out of chaos theory that says that the flap of a butterfly wing in a jungle can make the difference between a gentle wind and a coastal hurricane.

Let me illustrate. If you crossed the road and escaped being hit by a car by just one second, just imagine all the things that needed to happen to make that one second difference possible. You'll begin to appreciate that sometimes the only thing that stands between you and a life-changing event can be as insignificant as a sneeze, a quick dash to the restroom or a moment of hesitation to glance at your watch. Come to think of it, even a burp can change the entire trajectory of your life.

So its anybody's guess if placing a wind chime near your door will trigger a chain of events that precipitate your rise or downfall in 2009 - the simplest one being to get hit by a car on your way to buy the dang wind chime - and the fact is, we may never know. But that's the beauty of feng shui. If the prediction comes true, we praise the good master. If not, we just blame it on bad karma.

So I guess I'll just relax and try to do as many good things as I can. It might actually do me more good than messing with a bronze tortoise with a dragon head.

Xi Nien Kuai Le. Gong Hei Fatt Choy. Have a happy new year.

War

Ever since the Gaza skirmish broke out just before Christmas day, its been rather unsettling for me because I have a friend, a college-mate who joined the IDF (Israel Defense Force) right after graduation. His family's now in New York. They have dual citizenship. My friend Mark was a reservist and I'm told he is involved in the ongoing operations.

I hate war. What wars affirm to me is that technology or not, humans haven't changed. We exist in transience, flourishing in between periods of war. During the time of Alexander and the Romans, milions died in one day with hardly a whimper. Today, 30-40 would die in one day and its aggressors would receive instant worldwide condemnation. If we were to believe the talking heads, today's war dead would seem a million times more unjust and tragic than the ones that died by the Roman sword. Such is the power of perceptual management.

Not to make light of the situation but to me, a life in modern times is no more valuable than a life during Julius Caesar's or Emperor Chin's time. All deaths are equally tragic. Yet if they didn't happen, we wouldn't have China, India, Europe, etc and life would be different than what we know it to be. It could be worse. Or better. Who knows. But we can't run from the fact that we are the collective result of every single war that has been fought on earth.

Just imagine. Our early ancestors fled from famine or conflict in continent A, got married to someone in continent B, gave birth to someone who was then sent to fight a war in continent C, who then settled in continent D and so on and so forth. A hundred generations later, here we are. Change any incident in the timeline since the beginning, no matter how insignificant it may seem, and "we" may not even exist.

I hate war. At the same time, I believe man cannot help but go to war. A difference in opinion is all it takes. The fact that we're born to different cultures, language, value systems and social status dooms us to the prospect of perpetual conflict. When nations name their nuclear missiles "Peacekeeper," you know that world peace has just about enough chance as a snowflake in hell.

When you travel the world with open eyes, you can't but help notice its unstable nature, physically and metaphysically. Will man exercise his free will for restraint for the good of his fellow man? As long as people disagree on what "good" means, it'll never happen.

People would say this is being negative. On the contrary, the world gives me good insight. It forces me to seek an alternative view that has a positive ending. That is a long story in itself.

As for my friend Mark, my prayers go to him and I hope he makes it back in one piece.

An answer to an old question

A viral email has offered the most plausible answer yet to one of my old questions about why people seemed happier in younger countries (less than 400 years old) and miserable in countries where civilization and the idea of goodness and universal harmony first started - read China, India, etc.

The viral email was in Powerpoint form but here it is in text form:

"The difference between the poor countries and the rich ones is not the age of the country.

"This can be shown by countries like India & Egypt, that are more than 2000 years old and are poor.

"On the other hand, Canada, Australia & New Zealand, that 150 years ago were inexpressive, today are developed countries and are rich.

"The difference between poor & rich countries does not reside in the available natural resources.

"Japan has a limited territory, 80% mountainous, inadequate for agriculture & cattle raising, but it is the second world economy. The country is like an immense floating factory, importing raw material from the whole world and exporting manufactured products.

"Another example is Switzerland, which does not plant cocoa but has the best chocolate of the world. In its little territory they raise animals and plant the soil during 4 months per year. Not enough, they produce dairy products of the best quality. It is a small country that transmits an image of security, order & labor, which made it the world’s strong safe.

"Executives from rich countries who communicate with their counterparts in poor countries show that there is no significant intellectual difference.

"Race or skin color are also not important: immigrants labeled lazy in their countries of origin are the productive power in rich European countries.

"What is the difference then?

"The difference is the attitude of the people, framed along the years by the education & the culture.

"On analyzing the behavior of the people in rich & developed countries, we find that the great majority follow the following principles in their lives:

"1. Ethics, as a basic principle.
2. Integrity.
3. Responsibility.
4. Respect to the laws & rules.
5. Respect to the rights of other citizens.
6. Work loving.
7. Strive for saving & investment.
8. Will of super action.
9. Punctuality.

"In poor countries, only a minority follow these basic principles in their daily life.

"We are not poor because we lack natural resources or because nature was cruel to us.

"We are poor because we lack attitude.

"We lack the will to comply with and teach these functional principles of
rich & developed societies.

So, is that a reasonable answer?

I can think of two places where the 9 points apply but the people there are still miserable, even bitter. Singapore and Hong Kong. Oh, and the US states of Michigan and Ohio after the 3 automakers collapsed.

So while it does seem to explain why some countries are richer than others, it still does not explain why some countries are happier than others.