What is Salvation?

Many times in life, we often attribute certain events to destiny, to fate. We say that such things could not have been prevented; that certain things were bound to happen. If we were to take a purely logical standpoint, one could say that all occurrences are the result of causes, known or unknown. If such is the case, are our struggles pre-determined, such that whatever action we are currently taking was already decided? In such a way, why do we struggle to attain our desires if so much of our lives is attributed to destiny? Is it pointless to wish for things, to strive for things?

All things are born, live, and eventually die. That's all there is to it. That's simply the truth of this world and all who live within it. No matter how hard you try or how long you strive, that fact will not change. Everyone else forgets this; I shall never forget. Yet, all that means is that I'ev never forgotten the true meaning of a life such as mine.

But everyone strives for something. By continuing living, we are actively choosing to continue to pursue something, even if that something is as simple as continuing to live. Yet, what are we to do when we find out that our wishes will not be fulfilled? What do we do when we find that it was destined that our wishes would not be fulfilled?

Life is like walking through a maze: There are always many paths to choose from; we simply choose one and follow it. Everyone believes that what they desire lies ahead along their path. Yet, I do so only to confirm that what we desire is not there.

Who decided that life would be like that? What did they truly decide? What if that which we desire was along a path that we did not choose?

Time will continue and eventually run out as you ponder your question. A path not chosen is the same as a path that did not exist. "If only at that time..." No matter how many times we look back with regret, we cannot go back. We cannot return to how we once were. We cannot change anything. All we can do is continue moving forward towards our uncertain future. "Some time other than now... Some place other than here..." Will you struggle along that path for all eternity, in search of what you desire? How unfortunate.

Are you saying there's no salvation?

What is salvation? Is it for all your hopes and dreams to come true? "Things should not have become like this..." you say. Is salvation the ability to turn back time and grant all the wishes that you lost? Given that, can you be certain that you will not make a mistake the second time? Who decided this? What did they decide?

If we cannot go back, then we must start on the correct path from the beginning. What one can do and what one should do, shall become one and the same. That's because we know ourselves best.

...

For those of you who don't know me, I'm marginally insane. The preceding was a Platonic dialogue (an idiot asking questions, being answered by an enlightened person) between Gilbert Durandal (and myself to an extent) and Rau Le Creuset from the anime Gundam Seed Destiny. The dialogue (with a few edits on Gilbert's part from me) comes almost entirely from GSD episode 29, which I posted the last 1/3 of in my second post on this blog. You may recognize a lot of the lines, as I have a tendency to use them in other posts regarding my philosophies about life, as well as in my Facebook profile and sometimes just when I'm talking with my friends. As I've said before, anime has had a profound affect on me in many respects, with this dialogue being one of the most salient. But I believe if you truly read the words, think about them, and analyze their meanings, you will see their truth. That there is no inherent "goal" nor "purpose" in life; we choose those for ourselves. And even if we make a difficult choice and hurt someone, that was still an active choice. Even if you don't watch the entire series, go to Youtube and watch GSD episode 29, "Fates." (It may be a little confusing, but it's worth it). Part 1 Part2 Part 3

Meaningfulness

Let me first introduce myself. I'm Matt. I know JK because we went to high school together. Currently I am attending college at Bloomsburg University. I'm a philosophy major who spends most of his time playing a trading card game called Magic: the Gathering. I might just give that topic a whirl some time, but today I’m going to talk about some philosophy. For some of you, you may know exactly what philosophy is. For others, philosophy is a word that you’ve most likely have heard, but don’t really know what that word means. That’s okay, don’t be scared away by that fact. Historically philosophers have fought over the definition so hard it’s really hard to give it one anymore. That’s not to say I can’t give you a general idea. The easiest way to explain philosophy is to explain the kinds of things philosophers do. These things typically fall into a three categories: metaphysics, epistemology, and logic. The first two might scare you. They are pretty big words. So to keep that from happening let me spell them out. Metaphysics is the study of the nature of all matter in the universe. More specifically it is a bunch of hypothesis about the nature of things within the universe. Epistemology is the study of what can be known, a bunch of hypothesis about the nature of our capacity for knowing things. Logic as you probably have guessed is the study of arguments, how they work and such. I tell you all of this not because I’m about to jump into an entire history of it, but because; I want to talk about a specific philosophical problem. You see I am one of those people who loves their major and spends a lot of their spare time doing things that concern it. Well with philosophy that means a lot of introspection. (Also reading a whole lot of really old texts.) The problem I want to discuss is one in metaphysics.

A few days ago I attended a speech by a not so famous professor from Ohio, Dr Nathaniel Goldberg. His topic was dubbed “Meaningfulness as a Secondary Quality.” Now to understand this topic you have to understand two things, which I will explain. First meaningfulness here is just the meaning that words in any language have. And second a secondary quality is a type of condition that certain types of properties have. Properties such as color, taste, texture and smell all have been famously argued to be secondary qualities. This is because the philosophers who were arguing wanted to distinguish them from Primary qualities. The best way to define both secondary and primary qualities is to contrast the two. Primary qualities are purely objective. We believe that even if we weren’t around to sense the objects with these properties they would still have those qualities. A secondary quality in some way is both subjective and objective. With secondary qualities there is something objective out in space that acts on the subjective senses of some observer. In the case of color light waves bounce off some object and we observing them experience color. A good example of primary color is shape, shape can be deduced from two different senses, we can both feel and see shape. Shape doesn’t rely in any way on us like color does. This secondary quality distinction was very famously argued by John Locke.

To say that meaningfulness is a secondary quality is to say that meaningfulness does not exist solely as an objective property. This, to me at least seems pretty obvious. If you believe that there is a secondary quality distinction it’s very hard to say that meaningfulness is a primary quality. Yet, the part that complicates this debate and in my opinion makes it very exciting is that there is a third viable option: Meaningfulness as a purely subjective property. This objection is not as easily dodged as meaningfulness and a primary quality was. This objection can be highlighted by the difference between meaningfulness and color as properties. Color’s objective component as a secondary quality is most obviously the object and the light waves it reflects. Meaningfulness’s objective component is much harder to define. The words on the page, the sounds that we make when we talk and the gestures we make with our body all seem to be things that convey meaning. Also our natural languages in some respect were developed by ourselves. We may not have initially went about designing our language, but as it developed there are many cases in which we purposefully designed certain words. These lead some to speculate that the objective part of meaningfulness is arbitrary at best. The actual meaningfulness is just a subjective construct of our minds, the words or symbols are just a vehicle we’ve devised to share these meanings. The only objection I can think to raise to this is that even our own minds have an objective element, brain states. So if we could in principle do a brain scan to figure out what kinds of brain states cause different meanings to be interrupted, then we could use that as the objective component of the secondary quality of meaningfulness.

I hoped you understood and enjoyed what I was talking about. More than that I hope it got you thinking.
- Thanks for reading, Matt

New People?

Well if you took the time to read Judd's comment on my "State of the Blog" post, you'll notice that he said I should invite other people to write with me. Well I did so, and the response has been favorable, although not overwhelming. A few of my friends have come forward saying they wish to write, now it's all about seeing whether they actually follow through and do it. So, you may start seeing posts by *gasp*, people other than me.

In other news, my life seems to be calming down for the most part. I have a job, I'm currently looking for houses and have a couple appointments set up, I just took an exam, so I don't have any more for at least a couple weeks. Yay, it's gonna be great having a social life again. Although for me, social life pertains much more to simply hanging out with friends and going to dinner, as opposed to getting totally wasted. It's funny because people always have one of two reactions, depending on how old they are: if they're around my age, they say "omg, what do you do for fun?!" and if they're older, they say, "That's a lie." The truth is that I don't find parties with loud blaring music and girls vomiting everywhere to be all that fun. Yes, I drink alcohol (preferably some kind of whiskey or bourbon), but I do so only in moderation, and I do listen to music, but usually unless I'm playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero, it's only loud enough to be background noise. Why? Because when I meet someone, I want to get to know them. I don't want to know a name and a face (mostly because that leads to way too many awkward "wait, do i know you?" moments, but...), I want to know the important things, like what things they enjoy, what they dislike, what their motivations are, what they want to do in life. Even crazy tidbits like how much they love bugs (Eric), how waaaaay too damned Chinese they are (Eugene), or their amazing talent to turn any situation into some post-WWII 3rd world metaphor (Bailey).

So you may ask, "So what do you do for fun if you're not out getting drunk as hell?" Trust me, if I had a concrete answer for that, I would do so. But I don't. Why? Because I just can't classify everything that's fun to me. Fun has so much to do with who you're with, your state of mind, and your surrounding environment. Sometimes that's going to eat with Hyunjin (and sometimes Eunice when she's not too busy sleeping/eating). Sometimes that's watching Hitler videos with Bailey, or contemplating our plans to create "Asian Noodle Bus." Sometimes that's rocking out with Nate and Judd, MTG with Matt, or just general fuk-a-roundery with Nick (yeah I just noticed that could be construed as either totally awesome or totally gay...Same thing, right?). The point is that anything can be fun if you want it to be. Most of the time it's all about how socially acceptable your "fun" is.

I was thinking about what video would properly fit this topic, so why not a nice mellow song that I would play at one of my parties, just to give you a feel as to how we hang out (and no, I'm not a stoner, although the song may make you think I am). Everyone should know this song.

Yatta!

Talk about ironic. Within 24 hours of writing my tirade on lack of job success, I land one. I haven't formally accepted the offer, but it's with a team at Legg Mason, an asset management firm. I still do have to hear back from my old boss, Peter Laurelli at Hedgefund.net, and then decide from there. But I have a feeling he's going to tell me to go work with Legg Mason, considering I've spent the past two summers with him and have basically done everything I could in terms of intern work at HFN. He's an excellent boss, the best I've ever had out of all the jobs I've worked in my entire lifetime: a great guy to work with, and a ton of fun to be around. If I do decide to work with Legg, it will be a tough decision, simply because Peter was such a good boss to me. Very few people outside of my family have really cared about what happens to me or how much I enjoy myself on a day to day basis, but Peter always asked me how my weekend's were, how I was doing, or if I was enjoying my work. He truly cared about me much more than as simply an intern. That sort of thing I will never forget, and I will always be in his debt for his giving me my first "professional" level job.

Honestly, how many people can you name (outside of your family) who actually care about your day-to-day well-being? How many people do you know that genuinely care about your own interests, not just about how much you can benefit them? These sort of bonds are extremely tough to let go, and that's why my possibly leaving Peter and HFN is especially difficult. I have maybe a handful of friends at college, and a handful of friends from HS that genuinely care about me, and not just when I'm salient in their lives. But each and every one of those friendships is special to me, simply because it is so much easier to not care about someone than it is to care about them.

It's funny, because a lot of times the people we appreciate most, we often seem to appreciate the least. Those who know me personally know that I can be a big jerk sometimes, usually in jest, but I doubt that any of my friends would say that I'm the nicest friend they have. I remember one time my ex-girlfriend Sam asked me, "Why are you so mean to people?" Of course this was after we had broken up, and I was being mean to her at the time, so naturally I made up a bullshit answer to make her head spin and quickly moved on. I told her I was mean to people because everyone I had ever been nice to had taken advantage of me (not true at all). I then said that since nobody remembers nice people, nobody desires nice people, that I chose to be mean (again, completely false). Wanna know the truth? I act mean because that's how I've always acted around them. That's how I've always acted, that's how I've always wanted to act, and when we hang out, that's what I naturally become. It's not as if I'm unusually cruel to my friends, I simply say things that a lot people would construe as being mean. I think of it as friends being friends. Like calling Judd, "fat" or Matt, "bald." Or Nick, "black/Mexican/brown/(any other derogatory racial term associated with dark-skinned people except Italian)." And naturally they come back at me with some derivative of Chinese or small penis. Usually one or the other. Or both. Whatev. But, the point has always been that we act that way simply because that's how we act. There's never been an underlying cause, we've simply chosen to be like that over time. In short, I choose to be mean because frankly, that's what feels most natural. When I don't do so, my friends think something is wrong with me. And honestly, as long as it doesn't hurt them (meaning they don't tell me it hurts them), I'm gonna act however I want.

These friends, even though I may treat them like shit sometimes, they're still my good friends. I really wanted to post a video in tribute to my friends, but to be honest, it's proven to be quite a task to find the proper video. At first i wanted to put up another Coheed vid, but I've done a few too many of them. Then I was thinking perhaps Linkin Park, but their songs are too down. Then I thought maybe the Ataris, but too many Ataris songs are about love and girls, so yea, I love my friends, but not that much. Then I thought I'd do Backstreet Boys, just to see how many of them actually read this to see how many "WTF IS THAT?!" 's I would get. But, now I've decided to go with a song that we all used to rock out to back in the careless days of high school. Presenting, "Spread Your Fire," by Angra!

Time To Grow Up And Be That Man

Went to an internet seminar today, mostly about marketing in the internet and using your website to sell-products, one of those work-at-home promotions where you function as a middle man between wholesalers and consumers. Run by StoresOnline.com, the session was pretty informative, talking about keywords to get to the top of Google and other search engines, as well as what methods are the best ways to make money and what pitfalls to avoid. The software was pretty cool too, with a lot of their resources being dedicated to the creation of your website using a variety of exceedingly user-friendly templates and click-button options. Yet, something like that is not what I or my mom were looking for, so we went mostly for the free food and perhaps some tips to improve this blog (yeah not really). But, what one of the speakers talked a lot about was the difference between broke-minded thinkers and rich-minded thinkers. He made a good point that the majority of Americans view recession as a bad thing, whereas a select few of the population actually view it as a good thing, as a part of the financial cycle and something they can take advantage of. Given the current state of the US economy, I think it was pretty interesting that he would find such a unique perspective regarding what most of us believe to be the worst case scenario: economic depression.

Now those of you who know me know that I've been searching for a summer internship for the past two months, and those whom I've confided in know that I haven't had much success. I sent out over 30+ resumes to many different companies, from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, to Legg Mason and Wachovia, to Capital One and Bank of America. I've had a handful of interviews, a couple second rounds, but so far, nada. It's a truly humbling experience: to be told several times a week that you're not good enough for a particular company or particular team. It's especially hard when I thought I had done well during the interviews, when I thought the companies really wanted me, and then I receive an email saying something like "we're sorry, but we could not find a position that would properly allocate your skills at this time, but feel free to apply next year!" Or something along those lines.

I'm not the cockiest guy in the world, but I also am fairly self-confident, and I believe myself to be more than worthy of all the positions that I applied for. Yet, it's extremely tough to maintain a positive attitude when you're repeatedly told that the best you have to offer is not good enough. Given that I have been completely honest with all these corporations, and given my best effort in each endeavor, it's particularly hard to swallow being told that my true self, the person who I really am underneath it all, without facade nor affront, is simply not good enough. It's tough to take that one time. It's even tougher to take it 20+ times.

How does this relate to StoresOnline's presentation? Well a lot of my peers and relatives told me something along these lines: "Times are tough; the market is so far down that companies are naturally cautious when hiring interns, so it's normal that some qualified candidates will get turned down." Sometimes I have a tough time believing this is the case. Maybe it's just my friends and relatives attempting to comfort me, to allow me to save a little face in front of them, and not attribute my lack of success to failure on my part. But is this truly what companies are thinking? If such is the case, I wonder, how can they be so short-sighted? Do they truly believe that the returns on an internship shall be measured within the next 6 months? Within the next year? The next 2 years? I contend that a company won't see the full returns on their internship until long after the intern is gone and perhaps left the company. If we think about internships this way, that their returns are long term as opposed to immediate, how can a company judge the amount of interns to higher based on the state of the economy? Shouldn't it be based on the quality of the candidate pool? Yes, they have bottom lines, they want to minimize their overhead, and they want to maximize their profit over the short term to please investors. But do those outweigh their necessity to educate the next generation?

If we think of this in purely selfish terms, the companies really have little incentive to hire interns. Most of them take at least a month to learn their job, then work a month, then leave, a lot of times to other companies. In this way, the companies in turn lose all the money and time they invested in the intern to another company, in addition to the fact that they paid an under-qualified worker full-salary for a two month period. But don't the companies have an obligation to us, the next generation, to train us such that we may carry on and do good work in their stead after all those currently in power are gone? Shouldn't this be more significant to them than any short-term cost savings or surplus profit? Yet, it seemingly isn't. These questions have weighed on me throughout this semester, and it seems as if they're starting to take their toll. With each job I've applied for, another failure has come. Another reminder that I am not good enough. Another indication that my best, my true self, is not desirable. That I myself, simply am not up to their standards.

This semester has been so stressful, without a doubt the most stressful of my entire life (which is saying something, since I've had some pretty stressful semesters. Mostly, it's been because I've been trying to get a job so desperately and repeatedly failing. I fail, and I fail, and I fail, and I fail, and I fail, and I fail again. I've picked myself up each and every time, but it's tough. Sometimes I think about why I try. Sometimes I think about why I fight. And yet I continually come back for more. I don't really know why. Maybe it's because I can't handle the thought of letting down my parents. Maybe it's because I'm trying to rid myself of my self-image that I've always had things laid out for me, and the moment I've been let out on my own, I've met only failure. Maybe it's because I'm so scared to be branded a quitter, a coward. Maybe it's all of them. All I know is that I have to keep trying. I have to. There's nothing else I can do. There are no other options. I used to think that I could handle anything in life, as long as I had a few things to hang my hat on: love, success, knowledge, and skill. And over the course of the past year, I've lost each and every last one of them. I've come to realize that I'm not the most successful, that I'm not the most skilled, that I'm not the most knowledgeable, and that I'm not even memorable as a lover.

I leave you with this: "Mother Superior," by Coheed and Cambria. I can't think of a better song that expresses all the emotions that I've felt over the past few months, both the utmost sadness and the droll march of perseverance.

There ain't no reason why friends are this way

God I love break. Over the past couple years, I've had spare little time to spend with my good friends from high school. I usually get a couple weekends in the fall, 4-5 weeks over winter break, a couple weekends in the spring, and maybe 2-3 weeks in the summer. Every time I come home it's non-stop fun with the tightest group of friends I have. After an entire weekend of playing Rock Band and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, my friends had to go back to school while I get to stay home during break (my school is so gay with having spring break a week after all my friends have their breaks). These are the people whom I know I connect with, having 6-7 years of foundation for our friendships. Not to say that I don't have people like that at college, it's just that they're a little more dispersed and not part of a core group like my friends from HS.

One of these friends, Judd, said something to me that made me think a lot. A lot of people probably don't respect Judd as much as he deserves, mostly because he acts like a fool most of the time, but a lot of people tend to think that's all he is: a fool. But all the people who really know him know that he's a deep thinker and a good friend. We were talking in my basement (while playing ping pong, cause that's when we do our best thinking), when we started talking about the friends we have at college. Judd said he didn't have a lot of good friends at college, mostly because he felt like they didn't make a concerted effort to involve him in activities. In his words, "Why should I always be the one calling them? Why can't they call me once in a while?" That got me thinking. Why is it that we feel offended when we are constantly extending the hand of friendship, and those around us are merely accepting and never taking the initiative themselves? In the past, I've felt very similar sentiments to Judd's, and in a way I sort of agree with him. I hated being taken advantage of, being used, being taken for granted, all those things. Yet, what is the solution?

Do we simply stop contacting these people? Who is the loser in that situation? If I never contact someone, and subsequently never hang out with them, I am the one who loses out. This is because they never thought about me in the first place; it's not as if they're going to miss hanging out with me. It's only me who's going to be missing the fun times I have with them when I do call them. Sure, maybe they're not true friends, but then again, not every friend I have is required to be a true friend. It's ok to have some friends whom I just hang out with, who aren't good friends. Yes I'm putting myself out there, leaving myself open to hurt and betrayal. And yes, they are the ones who are at fault for such a lack of courtesy. But I'm willing to leave myself open to that. If anything, I can simply think of it as me leeching some fun from them. If you look at it that way, it's actually me being selfish and not them.

I kind of agree with Judd; it sucks that some people are like this and are so careless with their thoughts and actions that they don't even take the time to consider those around them. There's really no reason why people should act this way. But, that's how it'll always be. And that makes a beautiful segway into "Ain't No Reason" by Brett Dennen.

Matt Kraft is Dead

Today is my first day back home for spring break. Yesterday, my good friend Judd called me, number one to ask me when I'm coming home (I don't know why, I swear Judd has like a sixth sense, such that he can magically tell that I am home by some divine inspiration. Whenever I go home, I usually get a call from Judd within one hour of getting in the door). Number two, he told me that an old acquaintance of ours, Matt Kraft, had died.

Now I never liked Matt Kraft. The first time we met him was in Rich's card shop back in 8th grade, and he was an asshole. A complete asshole. Not only was he a real jerk when you played Magic against him, but he also ripped you off in trades, and occasionally stole your cards. Needless to say, we all didn't like him. After a couple years, Matt stopped coming back to the card shop. Maybe he got bored of it, or maybe he matured a little. Either way, he sold all his cards and we never saw him ever again. Some years later, whenever we go back to the card shop, we usually reminisce about the old days, when life was simpler, grades were unimportant, and the real world wasn't coming at us at full speed. And usually, we would think back and eventually land at least one or two snide remarks about how much an asshole Matt Kraft was. "Yea, he was such an asshole." "Wow, I'm really glad he never came back." And now he's dead.

It really makes me think about the impassable limit on all life. And how all of our frivolous hatred and mistrust and disdain for one another is so completely meaningless in the big picture. When Matt Kraft was active in my life (meaning I saw him more than once every 3 years), I hated him. When he was out of my life, I still managed to retain memories of how much I disliked him. But now that he's dead, it all seems so empty, so purposeless. I guess it just goes to show that no matter how much you dislike someone, you should never wish death on anybody. You can wish they could change; you can wish you could change. You can wish they would leave you alone, or that you could get away from them. But never death. Because if someone dies, that ends the game. There's no reconciliation, there's no hatred, there's no perpetuating the game. Death brings it all to an end.

As a tribute to Matt Kraft, and the ideas that his death has brought out in me, I first say, "thank you." Thank you for giving me the most vivid example of how meaningless our hatreds and prejudices are. With that, I present "Runnin (Dying to Live)," by Notorious B.I.G and 2pac. "I would never wish death on nobody, you know what I'm saying? Cause there's no coming back from that."

Painful Irony

I read a very interesting and moving article today on ESPN. Bill Simmons, known as the Boston Sports Guy, and one of my personal favorite sports writers, wrote an article on the death of Jamiel Shaw. It's a truly moving article, and really brings to life the reality of losing a bright, young individual with his most of his life ahead of him. Not only that, but it also creates a vivid image of the painful irony that is inner-city life for underprivileged minorities. Honestly, I am anything but an authority on the subject. My parents were always there for me, they always provided for me, I never got into any serious trouble (other than the occasional after-school detention), and I never ever once thought that I could end up dead walking home from school. True, I know absolutely nothing about Jamiel Shaw the person. I only know the picture painted by Simmons and various other news outlets. But a good kid is a good kid. I know lots of kids back from my high school that could've easily fit the image of Jamiel Shaw: Star athlete, gets relatively good grades, trying his best to get the most out of life. Some of those kids were really good friends of mine; others were complete assholes. Yet, that doesn't mean they weren't good people. That doesn't mean they deserve to die.

It's truly sad and ironic that he died the way he did. He was simply minding his own business, when death came to him. He didn't go looking for it. He didn't get himself involved in any activity that would put him into that sort of situation. It came looking for him. This could've happened to any of us. And in the end, it was the exact life-style that he was trying to avoid that killed him. He, who had avoided gang involvement his entire life, was killed by it.

In instances like these, we all wish that something could be done. That someone would step up and take control of the matter to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. But, not all of us are made for such lofty tasks. Many of us, me included, would rather sit and wait for someone else to come along and fix such a massive problem. But I tell you now, someone like that will not come along unless we want them to. Someone who believes that such things require elimination, here and now, will not come along unless we make it known that we want someone like that. That's why it's so important for us to be involved politically. Not because we have to make sure to fill out our little ballot, punch our holes and fill in our dots. But we have to make sure that our opinions are known. That those who run our country know what we want. And this takes a commitment from each and every one of us. Not a huge commitment. Just a commitment to remember that each time you talk to someone about politics, each time you have a conversation with a friend, a mentor, a colleague, or an acquaintance, to make it known that things like this are intolerable. In this way, such small acts can accumulate to become large acts, and eventually, someday, someone will come along who will have the character and ability to do that which we cannot do ourselves. Perhaps that someone will be someone who was affected by Jamiel Shaw, or grew up in circumstances similar to his. Perhaps that someone will be someone like Jamiel Shaw's killer, who has a stunning change of heart. Perhaps that someone will be someone you know. Perhaps that someone will be you.

As a tribute to those who started out as normal people like you and I, and did extraordinary things, here is the video for "If Everyone Cared," by Nickelback. Even if you don't like the band, simply hear the message and watch the images. "Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." But don't take my word for it. I'm just Simply Casually Observing.

Exercising in Futility

As I hinted towards in my last post, too often we judge certain aspects of our life by how "useful" or how "beneficial" they are. As I said, just because something isn't useful, doesn't mean it's not worth doing. I guess this sort of builds on what I said earlier: That all humans are simply born, live, and then die. In the end, isn't everything useless? All the wealth we can accumulate and the accolades we can achieve, do they really mean anything in the grand scheme of this universe? Whatever our goal, be it success, wealth, happiness, knowledge, or truth, the finite limit set on our lives makes every action we take pointless. We're all going to die someday, humanity is going to die someday, the universe will end someday. So why should we gauge our actions based upon how useful or beneficial they can be?

Now I can hear many of you saying, "well wait, wouldn't we all be hippies then? Burnt-out 'I don't give a crap about the world' hippies. I mean, hippies stink. They really smell. I don't want to smell. I don't want to be a hippy and smell!" (At least that's my train of thought) No, because there are certain things that are worth doing, certain things that are not. It's not necessarily how useful something is, but more so whether it satisfies a certain desire specific to your own self. It's completely useless to draw a picture. Completely useless. A picture has absolutely no intrinsic value and is only given meaning by those who view it. However, if drawing that picture manages to satisfy the part of you that desires to draw a picture, then it's worth doing. This blog is completely useless (I mean completely). I have no idea if anyone reads it, I don't really put too much thought or research into each post (maybe 30 minutes of youtube searching for some cool clips and wikipedia'ing for pictures and random info), and I doubt that anyone gets any truly amazing revelations about their own lives by reading my ramblings. But simply having my thoughts written down satisfies a certain part of me that desires such.

A lot of people say that about my taking Japanese as well. "Why would you take Japanese, such a waste of time." (It's mostly my Chinese relatives that say this...) (Yea they're really racist...) And they're right. Japanese is about as useless as it gets, language-wise (probably the only more useless language would be Latin, because ALL the people who speak it in everyday conversation are DEAD). Japanese is spoken by the people of one tiny little island country, with a population just under 130 million (To put that in perspective, that's 1/10th the population of China). But to me, Japanese is fun. I enjoy taking it. Doesn't that make it far more worthwhile than taking some language that is useful but that I dislike/suck at/have extreme difficulty learning (ie Spanish/German/Chinese). Not to say those languages aren't worthwhile to other people, just that they're not worthwhile to me.

In the end, I guess all boils down to this: Don't do what other people tell you to do. Make up your own mind as to what is important, what is useful. Then do those things, and don't give a shit as to what other people think. Be true to yourself, no one else. And that makes a great segway into this video. Presenting "Be Good To Yourself," performed by Journey, with the immortal Steve Perry on vocals.

Whaaa Econ test today

Well today I had my Stats and Probability test. I don't think I did as well as I should have, but then again, times like this are bound to happen. I often wonder after taking a test, regardless of whether I felt I had done poorly or well, what the purpose is behind what I'm doing, why I'm learning. Is it that I wish to have the greatest amount of success possible by assimilating as much useful information and skills as I can in the limited amount I have until I am expected to produce on my own? Why is this my goal? Why do I struggle further with this aim in mind?

I've told my peers my perspective on life many times before: "We are born, live, and then die." Really that's all there is to it. And yet, so many of them tend to regard this as a bad thing. When most people hear that, they immediately think that I believe there is no purpose in life and therefore I do not strive for anything. I would contend that it means the exact opposite. It is precisely because our lives are finite, that there is a definite end (in math terminology, I guess one would say that for all lives, there exists a death that is unique to that life), that we should strive for our goals. But it also means that we have to realize and prioritize that which is truly important. Which is more important: Understanding that the expectation of a certain event is closed under multiplication and addition, or understanding how and why my friends reacts when she does poorly on an exam? I claim that the latter is not only far more important, but holds far more depth. Then why is it that we study academics, these bland facts that have no more depth than the paper they are written upon? This is because we have desires. In the case of academics, we wish for success in the "real" world, thus we rely upon doing well in these well-accepted academics in order to gain passage (ie a job) into the real world.

Now, I as much as anyone wish to do well in the real world. I wish to have success, at least in a marginal sense, I wish to lead a happy life, and I wish to be able to die knowing that I did everything I wished to do. In the end that's all we can really ask for. We are born, we live, and then we die. However, obsessing over success, obsessing over knowledge gained, obsessing over happiness, these things are meaningless. I hear many people say that they live in order to maximize their success, their knowledge, or their happiness. That's the purpose they have in life. But too often, when we focus on one thing as our entire goal, we lose focus of everything else in life, whether it be our family, our friends, those around us, the world around us, the sounds, the sights, the smells, and everything about our existence that we take for granted. We are born, we live, and then we die. To that end, I believe that we should simply exist and experience as much as we can. We don't have to give our all for success, knowledge, or happiness. We should simply be, and do.