Single

Single persons are easily misunderstood and misjudged because people assume the reason that they are single is because they cannot get along, and getting along equals virtue.

Physical Vs. Mental

It's so strange that it takes a person like me, who naturally doesn't enjoy much physical pleasure, to believe that the physical part of life is more essential, more decisive, thus more important than the mental part among our whole life existence. Most people don't realize this simply because they take their good physical health for granted.

From Ignorance To Stupidity

English: Bust of Socrates in the Vatican Museum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are all ignorant in some ways but not all stupid. So what's the "line" divides stupid and wise? Socrates put it quite brilliantly over 2 thousands ago, but let me add something to it so it can cover both ends: those who admit our ignorance are wise, those who don't stupid.

When Does Philosophy Begin?

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt - particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.
--- Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy)

My Journey With Elephant Man

English: Joseph Merrick (1862–1890), photographed c. 1889. The photograph was circulated to members of the public c. 1889 as a carte de visite. This photograph was first published in The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity by Ashley Montagu (first published in London and the United States in 1971; OCLC: 732266137) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I finally finished the longest essay I ever wrote (in Chinese) about Elephant Man. It would be impossible for me to translate it in English because of the energy it requres, so I like to just have a summary here. It was a brief bio of Joseph Merrick's (Elephant man) life, and my view of this tragedy. It consists of two parts - part 1: God's outcast, which is about his early life: his childhood, his life in workhouse and life as a "star" in "freak show"; the second part "Awaking Humanism", is about his being rescued by a young surgeon Fredrick Treves, his life in London hospital and all helps he received from the society.

I didn't find many books about this person, the only source materials I used were The True History of The Elephant Man, by Michael Howell and Peter Ford, and wikipedia. However they seemed to be enough to trigger my emotion and thoughts.

My essay starts with a short chapter regarding 19 century of Europe, an era that consisted of both the darkest and brightest aspects of human nature: stunning achievements, greed, misery and suffering, kindness and humanism. I quoted the beginning paragraph (just part of it) of The Tale of Two City, even though Dickens meant for a little earlier time period, I thought it appropriate in the context. To demonstrate this contrast, I started with the misery of Joseph Merrick, a tragedy for which (I believe) "fate" was more responsible than human society, and then went through his early life experience. In the second part, I wrote about the charity and the kindness Joseph received from society during his last 4 years life in London hospital, which shows bright side of this tragedy.

The True History of the Elephant Man (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Because of Joseph's hideous incorrigible deformity caused by incurable diseases, his fate was destined to be miserable, by my understanding. So at the ending chapter I had to question "God": what's the purpose of making such misery? By Christians' view, "One of the Creator’s objects in permitting men to be born to a life of hopeless and miserable disability was that the works of God should be manifested in evoking the sympathy and kindly aid of those on whom such a heavy cross is not laid." (from the open letter in Times, 1886, by Carr Gomm, Chairman of London hospital). I have no doubt of the goodwill of this interpretation, and the positive result of this thinking, but logically, this makes no sense to me. Here is my reason: if there is no adversity, there would be no need of compassion. i.e., if there is no pain, there is no need of using painkiller. "God"'s creating misery just for human's compassion, in my eye, is like an adult hurt a child deliberately just for the use of painkiller. Of course, I had no answer for this ultimate question, neither I refuted the existence of "God", but I did "conclude" that the "omnipotent all loving" God which we humans wish does NOT exist.

I also stated: If I were God, I would never ever put such suffering in any human beings, or any life beings, because millions of people's compassion, could not compensate one single life being's suffering. I also wrote, if "God" had some incomprehensible reasons to create "Elephant man", the only comfort I could think of is that he made him in the 19th century of Europe, where the idea of humanism was getting mature and turned out almost like a "fashion" among the middle and upper classes (I am also fully aware of that there have been many more human beings like Elephant man existed through history and did not have his luck).

As matter of fact, the kindness that Joseph received was tremendous. Joseph was not only intelligent, but also had "romantic imagination" (as Treves put it). Since previously in his life all women flew away from sight of him with terror, it became to ladies' "responsibility" to pay him a visit. When the first time a young beautiful lady (Leila Maturin) "entered his room with an easy grace, smiling as she approached him, reaching out and taking his hand as Treves presented him to her. ... It was all too much. Joseph could not speak. Slowly he released her hand and slowly he bent his great head forward to his knees as he broke into heart-reading sobs and wept uncontrollable" (Elephant man, Fredrick Treves). Joseph mentioned later to Treves, that was the first time ever a woman looked at him in the eye and smiled to him. Later, Joseph's room was frequently visited by almost all well known people, especially ladies, from all England, even Princess Wales (Alexandra) came to meet him. Based on Fredrick Treves: "The Queen made many people happy, but I think no gracious act of hers ever caused such happiness as she brought into Merrick’s room when she sat by his chair and talked to him as to a person she was glad to see."(Elephant Man, Fredrick Treves).

With these actions of kindness, Joseph was able to achieve some of his wildest dreams, such as watching Christmas pantomine in Royal Theatre, spending a "glorious vacation" in the countryside when residing in a gamekeeper's house in a rich lady's property. Joseph was grateful for every single help he received, and satisfied by his restricted even "boring" (in many people's eyes) life in that small simple room of London hospital (he actually had two rooms, one bedroom and one bathroom, carefully built without mirror). He was happy "everyday and every hour", as he told Dr. Fredrick Treves. Joseph could not smile because of distortion of his face, but Treves knew he was happy because several times, he saw Joseph beat up pillows like child, when he thought no body was around.

Card church built by Merrick (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the last chapter of my essay I wrote:
"The human world is a place for both beauty and beast, "good" and "evil", dark and light, and I believe that the weight of "dark" is heavier, or more significant, than that of light. I believe, as long as misery exists, the happiness of life could never compensate the suffering. So the last 4 years of happiness of Joseph Merrick could not compensate his previous over 20 years suffering (he died at 29). If this sounds unbelievable to you, just imagine, who would choose to live if they knew before they were born that they would be given Joseph's fate, even if they would be treated as "celebrities" of whole society at the end? However, after finishing writing his life, I have to focus my memory on Joseph's last 4 years of happiness, the reason is simple: life continues regardless we choose it or not, and only if we keep hope, see the light, will it be easier for us to take.

Joseph Morrick quoted (very appropriately) hymnwriter Issac Watts in the pamphlet of "Freak Show" as the end of his brief autobiograph:

'Tis true my form is something odd,
But blaming me is blaming God;
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you.
 If I could reach from pole to pole
Or grasp the ocean with a span,
I would be measured by the soul;
The mind's the standard of the man.

Yes, Elephant Man had a form of beast, but a heart of gold. I don't believe in God, but after the journey with the him, I hold such a faith firmly: in another world, Joseph is normal, healthy, more importantly, handsome."

Should We Believe What We See? - How Thoughts Distort Observation

"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. " --- Socrates

Observation can be considered as the first step of our understanding reality. We may trust our observation without thinking twice because we believe that what we see cannot be false. However, I found otherwise: our observation often is subjective, even far from true. This is because that so often we look at things with biased eyes. In other words, our observation is often controlled by our THOUGHTS, we see only what we want to see, or we unconsciously ignored those evidences that would disprove our thoughts.

Making example of art learning. During perspective practice, many people without previous training would draw the bottom of a cylinder as a straight line (or a curve that is not curved enough), even though what they see is actually a curve (the degree of the curve is depend on angles). Why? I found the answer is rather simply, because they THINK the bottom is flat. This fact demonstrates perfectly how we use our THOUGHTS control our observation: we think the bottom of cylinder is flat, so we should draw a straight line, regardless what we actually see is a curse. (see image on the right)

Another example is how we humans treat homosexuality. Until today, among most people in the world homosexuals are abnormal, which mean it is contradictory to our understanding of human nature, which is: we humans are all born heterosexual. Do we really understand human nature that well? Truth is, homosexuality has been existing along with human being. Scientists even found that homosexual behavior also exists in animal world. These facts are enough to prove that homosexuality is something natural. And what really is "unnatural" or "abnormal" is our thought, or understanding about human nature.

Not only "ordinary" people are often falling such observation - thoughts distortion, but also some geniuses would do the same. Einstein, the person who challenged Newton when he was only 25, refused to accept Quantum theory, a new field of study that Einstein himself helped to establish. The reason Einstein rejected this theory was because it was so obviously contradicts classical physics, also to "common sense". But both theoretical and experimental studies showed that Quantum theory was "neither wrong or incomplete" (Einstein Decoding Universe, Francoise Balibar, Discoveries, 2001). So despite Einstein's rejection, quantum theory had been developed quickly and contributed tremendously to modern technology.

My mentioning this part of Einstein does not mean to say that Einstein was not a genius, only to say that even a genius would have his/her "human limitation" (I know nothing about physics but I would still keep an open mind, that one day, maybe Einstein's doubt on quantum theory would be proven to be right). I also think, that this example also demonstrates that our human reasoning has its limitation: something doesn't fit our common sense, or logical reasoning, doesn't necessarily mean it is not true.

There are many more  examples in real life on this "subjective observation". We often hear people saying "I don't get this" or "I can't get that", this usually just means that what we see don't fit our existing understanding. Our "theorems" are highly limited, variation in real life is infinite, using limited "theorems" to measure infinite variation, of course we will often be in dead ends. Had we changed our bad "hobby", look at things not from "thoughts", but from reality itself, things would be much easier for us to understand.

Why we humans are so obsessed with out theories, or thoughts? This surely involves some complicated scientific study about how the "consciousness" evolved, and is certainly beyond my knowledge and capability (or we can simply blame "snake" of Eden, who brought us the "fruit of wisdom"). But what I am more and more convinced is, that we human since obtained consciousness, developed an obsession with it, feeling an extreme satisfaction when exaggerating its potential, and eventually became some sort of "bigotry". Our tradition, ideology, moral standards, all are just some "temporary logic" ("temporary" here can be "decades", "hundred", or more than "thousands" years), but they have been taken by many people, generation to generation, as "absolute", and used as standards to judge reality. In fact, I think it is exactly these "absolutes" that mostly need to be re-thought or re-examined.

If we look back history, it is not hard to realize that almost every step forward we made, was based on overthrowing some existing "absolute": heliocentric took over geocentric theory, evolution challenged divine creation, relative space-time refuted absolute space and time, democracy replace despotism, etc. So I think the most important "rule" we may follow is, whenever we hit the "dead end", instead of throwing judgments, we rethink our thoughts or beliefs. Only if we can doubt our belief, dare to overthrow the premise of our "logic", admit the limitation of human intelligence, we can be credited as "open minded". On the other hand, only if we take our thoughts as relative, as possible faults, we can have acute observation, be able to see some relative truth.

Of course, essentially speaking, our visions are all limited. That's why I believe that human wisdom is measured not by how much we know, but by how much we acknowledge the limitation of our intelligence.

Relativity vs. Absolute

Image via Wikipedia

In my previous post I quote Liu Xiaobo's view on "absolute". However, I just realized that based on Einstein's special relativity, all relativity of space and time is based on a single ABSOLUTE: the invariant speed of light. (experts please point out if I am wrong)
I always consider myself a skeptic so basically I doubt everything. And at the same time I would keep a possibility in my mind that there might be an "absolute" exists. It seems Einstein's theory proves I am right. Of course, if there is no ABSOLUTE, where does RELATIVITY  come from?