Can One Be Completely Happy?

Just found out that a Chinese lawyer Zhicheng Gao, who was brave enough to defend vulnerable/ disadvantaged people, was arrested several years ago and possibly dead by now. He was not only put in jail, but was tortured in a unspeakable and inhumane cruelty.
Again, I asked myself, how can one be happy when hearing something like this? Again I asked, is this country, my motherland, worth any individual's sacrifice? My answers for both questions are "no".

Peace and War - My Brief Thought Over Gaddafi's Death

"You need two willing parties for a war, but only one for a genocide."
by ranfuchs

I think this is a spot on insight. I also like to add: You also need two willing parties for a peace.


I believe humans situation is very complicated that cannot be dealt with a single action, either kindness or meanness. Not all the violence is the same, not all the peace is the same. Some peace is not "peace" at all, like China's today's "prosperity"; and some violence is not that "violent" either, because it meant to be that way (as it happens).

I do not have sympathy to a monster like Gaddafi. I am sure he deserved much worse, such as a trial and die slowly in prison. But people had anger, the anger which takes a SAINT to get eased. And people are people, not saint, so they killed the bad guy. That's all. Justice is done!

Yes, Libya may not evolve in democracy very soon with violence like this (but please let them worry about that tomorrow), but I am sure it will be democracy sooner than those countries who had no guts to kill their monstrous leaders (such as Mao) but had plenty of "guts" to violence each others, such as during Cultural Revolution (a different kind mob violence from what happen in Libya now, by my understanding).

What's Wrong With China!!!!!?????

For long time I have not read much Chinese news. Today I went to a Chinese forum which I used to hang out a lot, and encountered a thread which shows video of a little girl being run over by a truck (twice). It is extremely emotional disturbing and doubtless ruined my day!
A beautiful girl (about 4 or 5 year-old) was run over by a small truck. The truck stopped for a few second, then started again, ran over the girl by the back tire again. For about 10 minutes, people walked by the girl, as if she did not existed, until later a middle aged lady came, saw what happened, and rush back in building. A moment later, a young lady looks like the girl's mother came out, took the girl and rushed away. Later of the video shows the interview of the father, and the mother's desperation. It's heart breaking!
The article in the thread tells more details: the girl is dying. She ran to street while her mother was doing laundry...
I am not giving out the link of the video, cause it caused me trouble already.
There is something wrong with China, something very very wrong! I am not worry about those corrupted government officials, hypocritic "intellectuals", complacent new riches, but only one type of life: CHILDREN, the only lives that are innocent, not responsible for all the darkness, poisonousness of society, yet suffer the most, from some extremely distortion of human nature.
What it is? I do not know (at least not with 100% certainty), yet I am still speechless!

Measurement of Wisdom and Ignorance

Image by dullhunk via FlickrThe measurement of wisdom and ignorance is not set by amount of knowledge, wealth, social status, even (not necessarily) our intelligence level, but by the acknowledge of our limitation: both the limitation of human as a whole, and as individual.

In What Aspect We Are Equal?

My answer is: in aspect of "value" - the value of life. I believe we are all different in aspect of intelligence, knowledge, wealth, or social status, but these differences should not alter our value of life. Thus we are all essentially equal (not include those life offenders and destroyers) and we all respect each others. If this is well understood, there would be no arrogance, bigotry, power abuse, self-pity, etc..  

Destructions vs Creativites

I captured part of "History of World in Two Hours" on history channel and found it very interesting, so I re-watched it online from beginning. It was a very educational documentary, with a big picture that covers the most crucial moments of the whole history of universe, not only the "world". It was just what I needed: brief and important!

The documentary not only tells the whole development of universe, the Earth and human, but also focuses on the progress of "energy", which is the most essential element of life. So I would call this video "History of Energy", or "History of Life". After watching the video, I did have a better understanding on how our human life connected with all universe. It is also quite "interesting" to know, that each new "happening" within the progress of universe was always started after some immense explosion, or destructions, such as Big Bang, such as how Stars were made, how the Earth and the Moon were made, how the new life forms emerged, etc. This leads some thoughts come to my mind about human history: a repetition of war and peace. Maybe that's the way it is?

Here is a more comprehensive review on NYT:
http://tv.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/arts/television/history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-review.html

Is Life a Choice? - My Speculation on Existence of Life

In my previous post Finding Ultimate Causes, two short paragraphs contain the most important thought I gathered through my life experience. It is not 100% "mature" yet and will be continuously examined by my further observation and reasoning. This thought is such: (human beings') life existences is a mixture of (no more than) two simple elements: our born nature and our life experience.

Image by Road Fun via FlickrWhat is human nature? in the post I wrote: our nature is a "package" that contains both our mental and physical capacity which comes together with our life. And because it comes together with our life, it is almost UNCHANGEABLE.

I used word "almost" to give a room for the plasticity of our nature, which makes changes possible, but only to some extent.

I believe we humans are ultimately limited by our nature. Not only human beings as a whole has an overall limitations, each race, each sex and each individual, all have their own limitations, both physically and mentally. Of course, this limitation is in terms of GENERALITY, and under this generality, SPECIFICITY also has its rooms (with certain space) to play. Thus taking generality as "absolute", or exaggerating specificity to universal sense are both mistaken.

In the post Finding Ultimate Causes I further I wrote: I do not suppose our nature has difference of being good and evil, but I do believe that it has the difference of being "strong" and "weak". And I believe all our postnatal efforts are to keep our nature from being harmed, so that we could achieve its strongest potential - as "perfect" as possible.

"Strong" and "weak" here refer to how well we resist threats and offences to our life (or the capability to adapt to environments, as evolution puts). A stronger person do better than a weaker one on resisting threats of life, also the greater threats or offences can weaken strong person. Thus how well one can survive is depend on not only how strong one is born, but also how good or bad the living condition is.

Based on such understanding, a born strong person could appear to be "weak" because of the "strong" (rough) life conditions, and a weak person could appear to be "strong" because of better life conditions. Also people with similar natures can end up very differently because of a totally different life experiences, and people with very different natures might hold similar attitudes toward life because of a similar life condition.

So, the combination of these two elements, nature and experience, decide what we are. The interaction of these two factors creates unlimited diversities which makes each of us unique. And in case of a born nature is so strong that it surpasses its life condition (still in certain limitation), "transcendence" takes place and a genius is born.

According to this logic, Life is not a choice, but a result of these predetermined factors. We may feel like we have choices, but when look deeper inside, or from a wider perspective, we don't. As matter of fact, we did not even choose to be here.    

Advantage of being a Bad "Listener"

For long time I consider myself a bad listener (it's also a "complaint" from a few close friends). Now I am doing much better on this, especially when interacting with people. I would conscious the moment that I interrupted others' talking and make apology to let people continuing. However, for lots of stuffs going on TVs, I found I am terrible on catching up what's going one with the world. So, I am still concerned very much about my poor English listening skill. But today perspective shifted: I found I am glad about my poor English listening skill because it is exactly because of this, I could have more room to listen my inner voice. How blessed I am!

Emerson Quote on Self-reliance

"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. "

Is Human Worse Than Animals?

Image by p_valdivieso via FlickrJust read a fellow blogger's blog (PSACHNO's) about animal right (and it was related to my country China!), I had to ask me this question again: is human worse than animals? ...
Not necessarily. I think the only difference is that human is fully conscious about his being good and evil, while animals are completely unconscious about it. In this case, both the "idea" and "actions" of "good" and "evil" are extraordinarily amplified in human world.
I do not know if this is a bless or curse, or both, but I am quite certain that there is no way to go back our unconscious "heavenly" origin.