"Two wrongs do not make a right" - a quote from move "Flawless"

"What's that old phrase about two wrongs a right do not make? That's nonsense! Sometime to make something right you have to do something just as wrong. ...oh yes, my cost it's worth 100 life times in jail."

--- Mr. Hobbs (from movie "Flawless")

Childhood and self-esteem

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Agatha Christie said: "One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood."

If we take "love" - love in any form: romantic, family and friendship - as a proof of our life existence, love is certainly the most important aspect of life, because only if we appreciate our existence in the first place, are we able to fulfilled it. The more love we receive, the more meaningful and joyful we feel our life is. That’s’ why we all desperately search for love.

Unfortunately, all love we received from others is not completely secure. We could lose our lovers, friends and family members. Or, even worse, we could try very hard but still could not get others’ love. However, one kind of love we could never lose - if we ever get it – is the love from ourselves: self-esteem. A person with a true self-esteem would feel the most confident, capable and emotional secure in his/her entire life, because self-esteem is unconditional, which means we do not have to worry about losing it.

However, self-esteem doesn't come to us with life itself. Many people do not have it, or many people have to work very hard to get it. This difference, by psychological studies also my own observation, is mostly caused by our different childhood.

If all love we received from others are insecure, one type of love from others is different - the love from parents. The love from parents has the same nature as self-love – unconditional. Because of this nature of "unconditional", it is secure, so we don’t have to worry about losing it. Whoever have happy childhood, receive this unconditional love from their parents (or whoever raise them), would gain self-esteem easily from the beginning of their life. And because (it seems) that things we learned earlier in our life would usually stay firmer with us in our later life, these people (who received unconditional love from parents) would naturally hold their self-esteem during their entire life. And on other hand, those who do not receive such kind love during their childhood would have issues with self-esteem during their entire life. Some might eventually learned, some might not.

This is how I feel about Agatha Christie’s a few words which tells a universal truth of life.

Of course there are still exceptions, because life is complicated. Even those who have happy childhood might have to face challenge of their confidence under some specially circumstances, or, those who have unhappy childhood or even no childhood at all could end up knowing the best about how to love themselves. However, generally speaking, a happy childhood is a solid foundation of our self-esteem - the most important ingredient of our personal life happiness.

Fantasy vs. Imagination

After I post the Chinese version of "Fantasy vs. true stories" in my Chinese blog, one of comments mentioned about a quote by Miro (abstract painter):

Imagination is about something possible but didn't happen, fantasy is about something impossible. (It might not be the original quote)

And the guy who left comment went further saying that "too much fantasy may do more harm than good for people because it encourages people to be phony, but imagination is always valuable and important for our creativities, such as in art, mathematics or other science".

I thought he pointed out something very important. And I totally agree with him. It also explained why I could not really enjoy fantasy and why I like mystery fiction so much: I don't care about things that are impossible; those seemingly realistic scenarios in mystery books really show true brilliant imaginations.

Fantasies vs. True Stories

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I can never really enjoy any fantasy stories (maybe I will try harder in future). The reason is simple, the true life stories are far more fascinating than any stories made by human's imaginations.

When we write stories, we are often concern about their "genuineness", because we don't want our stories look "fake", but reality doesn't work like this way - it only follows whatever happens. And the result is often beyond our understanding and our imagination.
That's why reality often looks fake; that's why when many people disbelieve some very simple clear truth, it only shows how limited our imagination is, how poor our understanding is.

That's why for me, life itself is the best fantasy work ever created.

Personal Life Experience vs. Reason

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During my years' of CFS, I had an experience: whenever I had to mention my health condition, many people simply didn't believe it; whenever I mentioned to children, they accepted it without hesitation. Later I realized, the reason those people didn't believe me was simply because what I said did not apply to their own life experience, and for those children, simply because inside their blank mind they could not find any existent experience to against my assertion.

So I realized, that personal life experience can be "friend" of our reasoning, also can be "enemy", depend how we use it. If we use it as one of sources for our understanding of human nature, a rich life experience can certainly make our thoughts richer, makes us more open-minded; but if we use it as a the ONLY source for our "reasoning", it will certainly limit our vision, make us narrow minded.

Or, should I say, personal life experience without the guide of reason can only limit our thought; only with the guide of reason, it can go beyond personal, becomes knowledge and leads us to open mind, to wisdom.

A quote from "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen"

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"Liberty consists in being able to do anything that does not harm others"

Homosexuality and tolerance

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The people's attitude toward homosexuality is NOT about "tolerance", but opening mind and stepping out from our ignorance about mankind himself.

A quote by Newton

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"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

Extraordinary vs. Mediocre

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Extraordinary people know why they are extraordinary yet they are humble; mediocre people do not recognize their mediocrity yet they are arrogant.

A "red joke" I could never forget

There are many funny "red jokes" went around in China after the country was opened during 1980s. If I have to pick one for the best I have to go for this one, even though I am not crazy about sex joke. Below is my rewriting in English:

1984, Mrs. Thatcher visited China. People all understood about the importance of her meeting with the Chairman of China Deng Xiao Ping as a milestone in the history of relationship between 2 countries, but what people didn’t know about, was that the personal chemistry between 2 leaders - it also went wild.

In the same night of that meeting, Deng went straight to Hotel Wang Fu Jing where Mrs. Thatcher stayed. He asked the lady at the front desk about Thatcher room numbers and immediately rushed to the room.

Half hour later, the front desk lady saw Deng came out with some sort of excitement she never saw before. As Deng walked by, she held breath and overheard some words she could not understand for a moment:

(In Chinese with Deng's heavy Sichuan accent!) " Hallelujah! This time, Communism finally pressed Capitalism underneath!"

Soon after Deng disappeared, Mrs. Thatcher came out. With a pale face and upset expression, she whispered. Her words were also captured by the same lady who understood English just as well:

“What a f**k! Capitalism had not yet reached her climax but Communism already died!”

Life & game

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Life is like a game, if we focus on winning, we cannot play our best. Only if we focus on game itself, focus on live life itself, we can be the final winners.

Religion - as metaphor or as "truth"

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When religion is taken as metaphor, it represents inspiration – imagination and hope. By this way, religion creates love and courage; when religion is taken as “truth”, it represents ignorance - closed minds and biased reasoning. As consequence, it creates hatred and eventually, disasters.

A sign of open mind

This statement just jumped into my mind:
Believe in yourself until you are proven wrong.
I understand this statement in aspects:
1, honesty: you are truthful to yourself;
2, capability of reasoning. You need a functioning rational mind to reach the reasonable assumptions based on observations;
3, objective: this is the natural outcome of the rational mind --- a rational mind would guarantee the recognition and admission of your own mistakes.

Tolerence - the measurement of physical and mental health

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If we take the tolerance on different types of foods as ONE OF measurements of our physical health, the tolerance on different cultures and ideas could also be one of measurements of mental health.

By my own observation, most Chinese people oversea who accept western foods are those with great physical health. On the contrary, those who do not or cannot accept western foods are either physically unhealthy or, at older age (not those Chinese Americans who grew up here, but those who immigrated here at relatively older age). So if my observation is valid, the same rule can be applied to our mentality: the healthy minds are always open to different ideas or cultures with objective understanding, not rejection.

Differences within human being

It is not hard to figure out the common factors in our human nature, but it IS difficult to discover what made us differently.

Lu Xun

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Lu Xun, a writer who lived in early of last century, criticized Chinese traditional culture in a way like nobody else. He was almost the only one I consider as a true individual thinker during modern Chinese history. He was called "Nietzsche in China".
In one of his articles he mocked about someone who tried to write a book about chinese history:
(These are not the original words but what i remembered)
Why do we need to write a BOOK about Chinese history? that's a waste. 2 sentences will do it: the eras that everybody were enslaved happily, and the eras that everybody desperately wanted to be slave but couldn't.

I think this explained how difficult for the democracy to be prevailed China.

The link of Lu Xun in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Xun

Love relationship

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Any kind of love relationships (family, romantic and friendships) are a kind of life form, as soon as being made, they need care to stay healthy and alive.

Materialism, is communism the one to blame?

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We might have an impression that Chinese people somehow seem to be more materialist than people from other countries. I myself is (still) a Chinese, but I don't deny this fact. It does match my own observation.

However, if people think this materialism has something to do with communism (as I often heard from media, especially conservatives’ propaganda), I would disagree. I believe lots of Chinese people's "passion" for money has nothing (or little) to do with communism, but EVERYTHING (or mostly) to do with Chinese cultural tradition.

Here is what I think. Two of most influential Chinese classical philosophies - Confucianism and Taoism, which dominated Chinese ideology for over 2 thousands years (maybe 3 thousands. Taoism's origin could be much earlier than Lao Zhi's life - the author of Tao De Jing) - both focused on practical issues: Taoism is about individual happiness and Confucianism is about social stability. There is no concept of "God", "divinity" (Monotheism) and "pursuing truth" (science) in Chinese culture. Even later on China had Buddhism come from India, it still focused on personal happiness and quickly made it merged with Taoism and developed some Chinese style Buddist sects, such as Zen.

Certainly both Taoism and Confucianism did not teach people to be greedy, but one important thing that both of these ideas contain is: there is no need to question or looking for anything other than the issues about practical life.

Taoism can be taken in a very positive way, such as obeying our nature, making harmony with our life, but I believe only minority people through Chinese history took it this way (mostly artists and poets), most Chinese people understand Taoism simply as a somatic regimen - they over care about their physical life form, even in a selfish way.

That's why when China opened the door to the world during 80s of last century (I believe that was the second time. The first time was 1980, opium war, China's door was "kicked" open. ), these ancient ideas just could not wait to embrace capitalism, made many people's materialism which had been half covered by traditional morality finally "unleashed".

This is why even though China is under communist government, it could still make such a seemingly "anti-communist" economic system – capitalist markets. And making money to be rich is almost the only life goal to many Chinese people.

About Communism, not only it did not encourage materialism, but also it encouraged a "puritanical" life style. During 50s, China experienced a very anti-materialism social movement - almost everyone lived in very poor material condition but zealous mental enthusiasm (similar middle age Europe) . Of course, needless to mention, it did more harm than good. Chinese people lived in very poor condition until 1980s.

So again, by my opinion, it (materialism) is not communism's fault. It is some seemingly charming cultural heritage's fault. Or, even deeper than that: the nature of greed, which exists in all human being.

"fit in", bully, and culture revolution

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I come to this country for individualism. It’s been almost 15 years. Now, I have to say, yes, there is much more room for individualists than in China, but, still not as much as I expected, especially now in teenagers' groups.

Parents in this country worry so much more about kids' "fit in" than kids' interest or curiosity about knowledge and skills. And the tragedies of young kids' being hurt are getting serious (even bully to death). It’s terrible! I have to say, those bullies remind me Red Guards during Cultural Revolution in China.

It seems to me, that both capitalism and communism do not guarantee the good nature of human, and both of them do not bring evil spirit to human either. What really produces man-made disasters from time to time, I believe is the fear of being alone. That's what Eric Fromm pointed out in his book "escape from freedom" longtime ago. He thought that most people didn't know how to enjoy freedom, didn't know how to be responsible to their freedom, instead, they escaped from it, because freedom brought them loneliness. And to avoid loneliness, people could do anything, even killing, because as long as they did in group actions, they would feel “happiness” of feeling “belong”.
I am more and more convinced that Eric Fromm told some universal truth here. And collectivism is always dangerous, no matter it is from communism, or capitalism.

Bullied to death --- a social problem?

Just learned that a 15 year-old Phoebe Prince was bullied to death. Sad!

I have been thinking why there are so many teen crimes and bullies happen in this country and started to believe that there must be serious problems in the way how parents raise their kids.

I come from China, where I believe raising kids has been a historical and cultural problem. It is by living in this country (America) that I learned what is exactly wrong with the way Chinese raise their kids. However, the recent generations of Americans seems to be more selfish and self centered than I expected and I started to doubt the way American parents raise their kids - which I used to adore - has some problem: too much attention been put onto kids so kids don't even know they should respect others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Phoebe_Prince