Understanding and Relationship

In order to building a HEALTHY relationship - love relationship or friendship, a complete understanding to each other is not necessary, nor possible (generally speaking), but an understanding (or recognition) of one of the most important human nature - individual differences, is required.  

History Quotes

"Europe, on the other hand was a collection of small and competing states with multiple cultures and languages and this unsuspectingly served as an advantage to its inventors and explorers; if one party failed to sponsor them, they could always turn to another. Either way, it was in a country's best interests to keep up with the latest technologies in order to keep the balance of power. As a result inventors were encouraged rather than discouraged.

'In the end it was precisely the instability which Europeans had been trying unsuccessfully to evade for so long which had turned out to be their greatest strength. Their wars, their incessant internal struggles, their religious quarrels, all these had been the unfortunate, but necessary condition, of the intellectual growth which had led them, unlike their Asiatic neighbours, to develop the metaphysical and inquiring attitudes towards nature which, in turn, had given them the power to transform and control the worlds in which they lived'" (Worlds at War, by Anthony Pagden)

---A short history of the world, by christopher Lascelles

Modern Myth - Mental Unwellness as the Cause of Physical Unwellness

Chronic Disease (Photo credit: tamahaji)

It seems to be many people's belief that mental wellness plays big role in our physical health, even functions as a cause of many physical illnesses. I doubt it. I do believe that our mental wellness play big role in the overall quality of our lives, but not necessarily (a big role) the physical part of it.

Studies show that many people who have mental problems such as depression or anxiety also have physical problems. This result seems to be very convincing about how mental wellness affect physical condition, but for me, it doesn't. I agree it does show the connection - our mental and physical parts of lives closely connect to each others, but, I do not see it shows mental condition IS THE CAUSE and physical illness IS THE CONSEQUENCE. For me, a reversed procedure is much more convincing - that very often mental unwellness is the consequence of our bad physical condition.

By my limited knowledge, the reasons that many people believe mental unwellenss is a cause of our physical health are: 1, modern psychology brought the importance of mental condition to our concern (which is good); 2, many studies show the connections between mental and physical health; 3, the "faith" to modern medicine (in other words, when doctors cannot diagnose a self-claimed physical illness, they blame to patients' mental conditions). But for me, none of these reasons show precisely that mental illness is the CAUSE of our physical illness - modern psychology just stressed the importance of our mental health, it does not necessarily make it as the cause of everything; the connection between mental and physical condition does not prove mental condition is the cause of latter (as I pointed out above), and doctors' failure on diagnosing physical diseases also cannot be a proof of patients' mental problems (rather, it is a proof of the ignorance of many so call "experts:). But why people still easily believe on our mental power? I am not entirely sure, and that's why I call it "modern myth".

One of examples of how people hold such belief is how doctors treat patients with unknown chronic illnesses. Whenever they failed diagnose some diseases by their knowledge and expensive equipment - which they (doctors and many people) believe as "omnipotent" on humans' physical function, they would confidently ask patients: "are you in depression?" And in most case, these patients are unfortunately in depression, at lease when they are very ill. But important fact is, their depression usually is caused by their physical condition, not the another way around:
"we should not confuse the fact that the vast majority of fatigue patients are depressed BECAUSE OF CHRONIC ILLNESS, not chronic ill because of they are depressed. this is a very important distinction and one that most doctors fail to draw... to treat depression as causing the whole illness is wrong" (i would add "is not only wrong but dangerous". ---Edward Conley, author of "america exhausted"

Of course, Conley was addressing those patients with physical chronic illness only. He did not say that all depressions are caused by chronic physical illness. I agree that there are also plenty of depressions are caused by mental issues, not physical ones. All I am trying to express here is, while our mental condition does affect our physical condition to some degree, it is not "scientific" nor "reasonable" to stretch this "some degree" to an exaggerated extent, like many people believe. I personally believe, that compare with our physical condition, mental condition is "secondary" in our overall life quality. This "belief" is based on a simple fact: our physical condition IS THE FOUNDATION of our whole life being. For those who believe our spiritual condition is more important, I would suggest that it is because sometime, or some of us, our physical condition allow us to be "spiritual", and we probably just take it for granted.

Again, I do agree that mental wellness is important to the overall quality of our lives (because it does affect our happiness tremendously), but not as crucial to our physical body function. Just imagining a person who is chronically tortured by physical pain, can he/she by so call "positive"? He/she might be tough enough to hold hope, certainly cannot be happy and cheerful all the time. On the contrary, I have seen plenty of people who have sever depression but still in decent (some are in excellent) physical health. For me, this is enough to show the dominance of our physical condition to our life existence.

And we all know, if our physical body died, we don't even have so call mental health exist, unless, of course, if you believe we have soul, which continues to act "positively" in heaven.

Two Different Types of Ignorance

I am one of those who claim that "I cannot stand ignorance" quite often (more often I said it silently though:-)), yet I am fully aware of that our humans are all ignorant. So to clarify the difference, or (maybe) to distinguish myself from the ones that drive me crazy, I tried to draw a line between one kind of ignorance and another:

1, the ignorance of our nature, which I think can be defined as the limitation of our intelligence; 2, the unawareness of the existence of such nature, which is reflected most in our obsession of absolution, "god", "doctrine", "tradition", "text books", "expert opinions", etc.  And this type of ignorance can be simplified as "pretending to know" - which is also one of our human nature.

It is the latter that challenge my sanity...

Believe in Myself

Believe in myself, but not my opinions.

Forgiveness?

abused statue (Photo credit: zoetnet)

In many cases, victims of abuses - especially family abuse - stay relationship with their offenders is not because they are capable of forgiving, but because they do not have courage (or not capable of?) to stand alone.

Complex vs. Profound

International draughts board (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once again I managed some energy trying to read Edgar Allen Poe's famous mystery "The Murders In The Rue Morgue", but (again) I failed to reach even the half of it. More and more, I found the books I tried to read were all boring (what's going on with a self-claimed book lover?). However, the unfinished short story stimulated my interest to checker game, and made me thinking a little about "complex and profound"(did I just decide to quit think?)

The stimuli was just a short paragraph of original story, where Allen Poe compared chess game with draughts game (checker in USA): "In this latter (chess), where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound." He believed that it was the games like draughts, who had only simplest rules, can exhibit the highest power of intelligence. (This is the exactly how I feel about Wei Qi).

I found this is indeed a genius thought. As matter of fact, all the modern life seems to become more and more "complex", yet mistaken as "profound" by modern people. A simple example of this is "technology". The computer technology produces more and more technicians, engineers and programmers, who spend most of life time to deal with "complex" of machine, or machine languages, yet end up being utterly puzzled by some basic ideas or language of life itself. Or, if they had ideas about life, they would simply have no time to enjoy it.

Nonetheless, I think this "complex" is unfortunately the direction led by modern life style -  we humans are going to that way. Maybe, in another several centuries (or millenniums), we humans would FEEL less, calculate more, and eventually nothing "profound" exist, only "complex", which handled perfectly by machines - a possible more powerful species by then. And whoever still know how to FEEL, would be the slaves of machines.

Genius, Inspiration and Perspiration

Animal Genius (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." Not sure who said this, but I disagree. I think genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent enjoyment.

Believing genius is 99% perspiration is just a "day dream" which make people believe that anyone can achieve the same as a genius does as long as she/he puts lots of effort . This is totally untrue. To me, such kind of achievement-driven philosophy is neither realistic nor necessary. I think, the only thing one could do to get close to a genius, is to enjoy life in maximum. In this case, one can be 99% same and only 1% difference from a genius (1% of different talent).

Needless to mention, I actually believe we all are genius if we can enjoy our life in maximum.

Two Different Kinds of Moral Standards:

I understand that there are two type of moral standards: social and humanistic.
The social moral standards are set up for establishing social stability. This includes laws, religion doctrines and common social customs (based on traditional ideology). The humanistic standard is based on our conscience, which belong to our nature. The former favors more on social needs, latter more on individual rights.
History of ethics seems to involve from strict collective (social) rules that prohibited most individual desires or needs, to be more tolerant on individual rights. Examples such as marriage, patriotism, homosexuality, religious, etc. all demonstrated this route.

Insurmountable Beauty On Ice - My Completely "Biased" Account Of Sasha Cohen

Image via Wikipedia

A very casual capturing figure skating competition last night on TV reminded me again my favorite skater Sasha Cohen. She no longer participate any competitions, but for me, she has pressed an immortal shinning marks on figure skating sport.

I was a huge "Sasha fan", and I still am. I always wonder, how could it be possible for those who really "understand" the beauty of her skating really stand to watch other skaters'? I could not! That's why I quit watch figure skating after Sasha retired.

Of course, my remark is subjective, and I meant to be, because for me, Cohen surpassed all those before her, and is unparalleled by any one after her. For me, not only she had reached the highest techniques (except her jumps), but also displayed the most beautiful form (on ice) of humanity. Like most people who care figure skating already know, Sasha Cohen moved with music, slow or fast, spin or jump, amazing footwork or perfect spiral, her performances expressed all the cherished quality of mankind - grace, love, relaxation, passion, even courage and valor.

I had not caught Cohen's golden time (what a pity!) - approximately 2001-2005. I knew her because I incidentally watched 2006 winter Olympic game and saw her performances. She fell during her free skate program (as "promised"), but her short program was simply stunning. This Olympic participation was proved a very late stage of Cohen's ice skating life, as she retired soon after, but the brilliance of this "sunset" made me searching on internet for all her previous performances (big thanks to youtube). And what I found absolutely made me "falling in love".

Her best performances by my opinion, were those programs during 2002-2004 (under her Russian Coach Titiana Tarasova), such as "Swan Lake", "Malaguena", or "Rachmaninoff" (all of them choreographed by Tarosova - this lady is remarkable!).  My personal favorite is Rachmaninoff. She performed this program in 2002 - 2003 season, include 2003 World Championship, which I personally think was her best performance ever, regardless that fact that her fell several time, include one of most impossible fall on ice skating - she fell during flying camel!.

Yes, Sasha Cohen was not perfect - she fell quite often (likely due to her mental barriers), but that doesn't hurt her perfection in my eyes. No doubt she is one of most beautiful female skaters, but she certainly had much more than good looking. She seems to possess a natural talent on positioning, and easily move harmonically with music. Yes, she made figure skating looks easy. And she "visualized" music.

Cohen won a great deal of medals. But unfortunately figure skating is more a sport than art, so she did not won as many as she deserves (of course the judges' biased view was one of reasons too). But this doesn't matter. For me, she elevated this sport onto an artistic level like no one else. As Peggy Flaming said during Cohen's performing "Romeo and Julie": other skaters skate Julie, Sasha is Julie!*


Romeo And Julie
Rachmaninoff
Malaguena
Swan Lake
A tribute to Sasha Cohen

 *Sorry I could not find the original source of this comment.

"If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out"

Cover of Harold and Maude

As I was impressed so much by Ruth Gordan's character in "Try and Catch me" (one of "Collumbo" episodes), and two friends of mine (Nothingprofound & Tom) recommended the movie "Harold And Maude", I finally watched it, with a great pleasure!

The movie did surprised me by its story - a young man falling in love with an 79 year-old woman. But my surprise was almost immediately replaced by a feeling of great "satisfaction": a boy falling love with an old lady, and he proposed to her! That's the whole point - we are free to love whoever we love! Needless to mention that Maude is absolutely irresistible.

This unorthodox movie is all about "life". For this purpose, it breaks "rules", smashes "common sense". How did Maude got away from "stealing" cars, violating traffic laws I don't know; how could a young man be so creepily obsessed with death? Is it possible for a man in such a young age (Harold appears to be a boy to me) to love a 79 year-old romantically? All these are not important and the movie didn't even care to explain, because (by my understanding) it only focuses on one thing: free ourselves from "unnecessary" bounds, thus we could feel the true joy of life.

And the joy of life is "love". At the end of movie we see more love continues, like Maude told Harold: "Then go and love some more." I think, all Maude  - an old lady that is about to die - brought to Harold's life - a young life that is so obsessed with death, is just this one simple gift: the joy of life.

"Life" is all Maude cares, as we heard from the conversation between them:
Harold: Maude, do you pray?
Maude: Pray? No, I communicate.
Harold: with God?
Maude: LIFE!

Another great thing of watching this movie is to listen again all those Cat Stevens' songs, with which I was obsessed during my college time. Gosh I did not know that all these songs were in such a wonderful movie! Interesting thing is back then, I hardly understand any lyrics but now, when I was watching movie, words came out almost crystal clearly. Also they are so simply written, just like the movie.

Yes, life is simple. If you want to sing out, sing out.

-------------
Well, if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
’cause there’s a million things to be
You know that there are

And if you want to live high, live high
And if you want to live low, live low
...

 

"A room without books"

Image via Wikipedia

Just saw a quote from a friend's facebook page: "A room without books is like a body without a soul", by G K Chesterton. I would agree with this quote years ago, but now I don't. Or I don't agree with it completely, not because there is kindle out there, but because I do believe a "soul", even a great soul does exist even in an illiterate mind. Knowledge is great, but not any greater than life itself.

Kindness

Image by -RejiK via Flickr

Maybe it is a tough lesson for many people to learn how to be kind to others, but for some people, it is even a tougher lesson - perhaps a life time lesson - to learn how to be kind to themselves.

Intuitive & Rational Mind

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"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."　---Einsten

Compassion

Image via Wikipedia

Compassion, is not necessarily measured by how much one can do to humans' misfortune, but how much one feels about it.

Equality

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I believe "equality" refers to attitude, not fact. The fact is that differences between people, esp. individuals will always exist regardless how much we dislike them, so, instead of trying to eliminating differences, we could/should embrace them, treat them with equal attitude.

Of course, "equal attitude" doesn't mean asking a pregnant woman to lift a giant stone like Schwarzenegger did, or demand a dishwasher to solve a problem of Einstein's relativity, but treating them with equal amount of respect.

Ignorance

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Ignorance is not measured by how little we knows, but how much we falsely think we know. In this case, a doctor (one with Ph.D) who think he/she knows everything is more ignorant than a peasant who admit he/she knows nothing.

Ignorance = Amount of knowledge we falsely thinks we have - Actually amount of knowledge we have.

Thoughts on God's Forgiveness

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Christians always talking about God's love by exhibiting God's compassion to those who committed serious crimes, such as violence, murder or even genocide, but not mentioning a word of what God could do for suffering (I am not talking about next life, or in heaven ,but in this life, on this place "God" created by his hands). So, why does God have this over abundant love or compassion to take care of murderers - by repeatedly showing his guarantee of their entering heaven (of course with one condition: becoming a christian at the end of life), but not have enough love and power to stop suffering of innocent people?

I am not talking about that we should not forgive, but it is my understanding that, compassion should always go to sufferers first, not criminals. So God must think differently. If not, how could he mess up this simply order by taking so much energy on forgiving criminals, not a little on suffering of innocents.

I do not suppose we could find an answer if we keep holding the premise of God's existence, keep trying to make sense from nonsensical Bible's words. However, if we look at this absurdity from "humans" angle, my answer is very simple: this "God"'s forgiveness to sinners (or murderers is a better word), is simply humans' excuse for their own weakness - irresponsibility.

Is God Omnipotently Forgiving?

Image via Wikipedia

Someone claims that God is omnipotently forgiving. One of the evidence of this forgiveness is that a murderer like David was chosen to be King of Israel. No, I do not believe that. I think "God" is just an excuse of humans' behaviors - when we need forgiveness, he "forgives" (otherwise how could we explain David was a King?); when we need to be judgmental, he judges (such as homosexuals, heretics, witches, scientists)!


No, I don't believe a murderer is forgivable, unless this murderer did something to compensate his/her crime. Otherwise, how dare are we have legal system to punish those who even God forgive?

Truth vs Disguise

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Because truths don't need to disguise themselves, so they often look faker than lies.