Who Would Say "God Is Just"?

Is it true that it's always those who live in comfort would assert "God is just"? I don't mean that all people living in comfort would believe this notion but I can hardly imagine those who live in misery would think this way.
Just wondering.

Ignorance And Wisdom

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The older we are, the harder we could admit our ignorance or stupidity, because we want to protect our "wisdom". Ironically, the true wisdom can befall us only when we admit and accept our ignorance.

What Is NOT True?

No Idea (band) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I suppose, that any concepts or ideas created to serve our subjective purposes, such as "justifying" our actions, validate our living conditions, even promote happiness or humanity, are NOT true. Based on this view, even humanism is NOT a truthful idea, but an idealism. The truth, pure objective truth, is neutral, even inhuman.

"Do You Still Love Me?" - Weakness And Selfishness

My Weakness Is None of Your Business (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I found there is a type of persons, who would always let others make choices for them. Or, if they know what to choose, they would "design" a complicated scenario to force others to choose for them. The "benefit" of acting like this is that when things don't go as they expected, they don't have to be responsible.

i.e., when they no longer love or like someone, instead of saying: "sorry I don't love you." or "I am sorry to say that I've been feeling very difficult to be your friend." they would say:" Do you still love me or not?" "Do you still want to be me friend or not?"

Weakness

It's a weakness not to be able to face others suffering, an even weaker weakness to deny the existence of such suffering just because one is not able to face it.

Does Kindness Require Intelligence? - A Few More Words On My "Wicked" "Wicked" Old Friendships

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If we agree that helping others when they are in need is one of most important ways to show kindness, can I propose, that it is impossible for those who are not able to "notice" the situations where others are in need of helps to offer helps, thus it is impossible for them to be kind?

In a couple of my previous posts I mentioned how I lost a few life time friends of mine during my middle age hazard. I also said I moved on, and I did. However, the recent unexpected visiting from one of these friends inevitably brought the issue back to table, and I just have a few more words to say, before I move on once again.

Why Regarding Unknown Illnesses As "Mental Disease" Is Offensive

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Since most people take modern medicine as "absolute" (by saying that I mean, people believe modern medicine can take care of all physical illnesses, except fatal diseases like cancer), they easily consider the cause of unknown illnesses as "mental". This is why we often see people try to "encourage" those who suffer invisible diseases to work "harder", to push through, as if they are mentally weak individuals. I still remember once a kind lady's first words to me after hearing my brief story: " be tough." I have to say, not only this is a wrong approach, but also offensive attitude toward those patients. Why, because one of primary reasons these people got so sick is precisely because they are mentally tough - so tough that they overdrew their energy, and their illnesses are nothing but the consequence of their mental toughness (physical energy overdrawn).

Wisdom

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I think one kind of wisdom is to see extraordinary within ordinary, ordinary within extraordinary.

Intellectual Progress

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Ironically, every intellectual progress one makes, is marked by the acknowledgement of how ignorant/stupid one was prior to that point. Nothing more than that.

The Difference Between Optimism And Pessimism

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One way to look at the difference between optimism and pessimism: the former takes misery, the latter happiness for granted.

Gladiatorial Game

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One kind of "glory" of human civilization:
"(At zenith of Roman civilization) Gladiatorial games were held from dawn to dusk. Contexts to the death between trained fighters (gladiators) formed the central focus of these games.... Gladiatorial games included other forms of ENTERTAINMENT as well. Criminals of all ages and bother sexes were sent into the arena without weapons to face certain death from wild animals. Numerous kinds of animal contests were also held. ..."
-Glencoe World History, p166.

Sign Of Narrow Mindedness

Sign of narrow mindedness: disbelieve something just because you don't understand it.

Difference Between Children And Adults

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Children are comfortable with their ignorance, adults are not.

Do We Really See What We See?

Long time ago, a young man paid a visit to a Zen master, asking for truth. The master welcomed young man by some tea: he poured tea from tea pot into tea cup. When the cup was full, he continued pouring, so tea overflowed. The young man asked: "The cup is full, why are you still pouring?" Answered the master: "You are right. If the cup is full, I would not be able to pour fresh tea in. Same as our heads, if they are full, now new ideas could be put in. So, do you have an empty head?"

This is a legendary tale in Zen history. In life I realized, so often our existing beliefs or knowledge would not only prevent us from learning new knowledge, as this Zen story implies, they also distort our observation. Some time we think we saw "fact", but we barely saw what we wanted to see. How I took this photo of gas light lamp is a perfect example:

One day I drove past an apartment gate I saw two gas light lamps hanging on each side of the stone gate wall. I decided to go back to take some pictures of them. In my memory, the frames of lamps were all black, and I was glad because the contrast between black lamp frames and stone gray background would make a perfect image. So I went back the second day with camera. To my disappointment, the lamp frames were not black, but steel gray, and they didn't make good contrast against background as I anticipated. I wonder if the dust on lamp surface make lamps looked gray, but after I checked I found that's not true, because it was rained earlier, the surface of lamps were perfectly clean. But why I remembered they were black? Then in a flash of moment I realized why: because all gas light lamps in my memory were black! That's why! That's how my "knowledge" distorted my observation: I "knew" gas light lamps were dark colored so I "saw" dark colored gas light lamps.

So this experience reminded me the Zen story of tea cup. I think the inspiration of this story is invaluable to human intelligence, that is, only when we empty our mind, put what we think we already knew aside, can we have fresh minds and eyes for truth.

"God Is Just" - A Truth Or An Excuse Of Selfishness

I say "God is just" is another convenient excuse for practice of selfishness, because if God is just, why do we have to help the poor? That's God's will!

Another argument for religious people on this subject would be, letting some people to be poor so others can help them is one of God's lesson, or "design", in order to let people to learn kindness. Really? How about those helpless, those who died in pain, suffering without cure? And is the lesson of kindness really worth thousands, millions sacrifices of life? Would those who were burned alive agree that their excruciating pain (actually I doubt "excruciating" is enough to describe how they felt) was a means used by God to educate others? If so, I would say this God is either unspeakably cruel, or incredibly dumb. Or both.

Selfishness

For the practice of (conscious or unconscious) selfishness, what is more convenient than being indifferent to others' suffering, is to deny the existence of it.

What Divides People?

It's not the difference among people but the fear of it that divides them.

Revisiting "Whispers And Lies" - A Masterpiece Of Mystery By Joy Fielding

If there is one suspense book that strikes me the most PSYCHOLOGICALLY, it's Whispers And Lies (referred as W&L below), by Joy fielding, one of my favorite contemporary mystery writers. I wrote a review years ago, but that's not enough. I even wrote an email to the author a while after I read the book and was thrilled to receive her kind reply. I also purchased a copy for my friend in China. How my friend enjoyed it I do not know (her English might be obstacle of enjoying the story thoroughly), but all these years, this book remains as the best psychological thriller to me, and that's why I purchased another copy recently, and re-read some of my favorite parts of it.

W&L starts slowly and gently, with the main character Terry Painter, a middle aged single woman and hard working nurse, interviewing her potential tenant of her cottage, the 29 year-old good looking Alison Simms:

"She said her name was Alison Simms.
The name tumbled slowly, almost languorously, from her lips, the way honey slides from the blade of a knife. ..."

Falling In Love With Photography

Life is full of surprises. At this moment that I thought I put art behind, I fall in love with art in different form: photography. I bought a DSLR camera, started shooting around during this love spring, and totally enjoy it!

In my past life I always liked to carry a camera with me during seasons, especially autumn and spring, but never thought to buy a good camera, because I never thought camera would make much difference. As an artist, I seemed to believe that composition was the most important element among almost any visual art forms. However, after purchasing this Canon EOS Rebel T5 1200d, a new world revealed before me! Technology does make difference: images look sharper, colors are more correct (which means more beautiful!), and I am able to take images during many different lighting conditions.

This is a new hobby to me, and I am very happy to explore this new world!

Put Art Behind - My New Art Webstie

Despite that I always know that art is not the best for me as a life time endeavor, and feel that art profession for me is overall like a very unhappy marriage which hindered many other interest of mine, I am still proud of what I've done in this field, professional or none professional wise.

Having not being able to focus on reading or writing for a while (due to my physical condition), I decided to re-organize my art works and put some of them into multiple art sale places to try my luck. I don't hold much hope on this task as I know art sale never is easy, especially, for a "retired" artist like me, who would not likely create many more works. I do this mostly just to put a big period mark to my past. I may paint or draw again sometime, but I am more than happy to move along, spend my rest of my life for something I wanted to do so badly but couldn't because of "art".

Goodbye art! No matter how many unhappy - sometime even miserable - moments we had together, I am willing to keep only happy ones in my memory, like how I remember Savannah.

My updated art blog (not completely done yet):
Mei's Art Works