Literature: Books on Utopia

Utopia?

This Perfect Day
https://www.amazon.com/This-Perfect-Day-Ira-Levin/dp/160598129X

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/139390.This_Perfect_Day

Considered one of the great dystopian novels―alongside Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World―Ira Levin's frightening glimpse into the future continues to fascinate readers even forty years after publication.

The story is set in a seemingly perfect global society. Uniformity is the defining feature; there is only one language and all ethnic groups have been eugenically merged into one race called “The Family.“ The world is ruled by a central computer called UniComp that has been programmed to keep every single human on the surface of the earth in check. People are continually drugged by means of regular injections so that they can never realize their potential as human beings, but will remain satisfied and cooperative. They are told where to live, when to eat, whom to marry, when to reproduce. even the basic facts of nature are subject to the UniComp's will―men do not grow facial hair, women do not develop breasts, and it only rains at night.

With a vision as frightening as any in the history of the science fiction genre, This Perfect Day is one of Ira Levin`s most haunting novels.

Sociology: Un-chimplike Humans

Note:
This is a post on July 20, 2014 from my friend Justin Clay's facebook page Good Morning Creatures. For more such posts, read Justin Clay's entries on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Goodmorningcreatures

Good morning creatures,

I often find that suddenly, after a week or two of just filling my head with nonsense, I suddenly have the compulsion to say things again. 

About half if the week, usually, I don't really want to speak. I just want to observe, or inundate myself with ideas/stories/circumstances and I don't want to comment on it, I just want to take it all in... I don't want to talk yet, but then, like the ding of a microwave I suddenly have this strange urge to open my face hole and try and make noise, noise that I hope will articulate the frothy goolash of chemicals I have produced by force feeding my mind.

It's quite remarkable that we can speak, I mean, it's quite a miracle. Instead of gestures and eye contact, which our chimpanzee cousins still use, we can avoid potentially hostile social interactions by making a series of noises. Amazing really.

And on another level, THIS...this little series of symbols, little lines and squiggles, that are all very similar, can be used to essentially take a snapshot of the noise we make and preserve it, and then deliver it to eachother in a portable format. Astounding!

So... On that note,

It's amazing how little we talk to eachother. Could we be afraid? I mean, this morning I encountered a brand new human being who was working the counter behind the gas station, a buckys... Eeesh... Of all places... And this was a middle aged lady with tired eyes, she avoided eye contact with me and when I walked up and said hello, she did not respond to my greeting. If i was a chimpanzee this would have already set off some red flags. The first thing a chimp does when meeting a new chimp is thrust it's face close to the other chimp and make direct eye contact... That's assuming they are already not shrieking at eachother simply because they are strangers, but lets just say there was no overt hostility when they approached eachother, so naturally, the first thing they do to kind of establish a sense of ease is make direct and unmistakeable eye contact. If this is not done, there will be trouble. They might part ways making slightly uneasy gestures and noise. But lets just say, even minus the eye contact, the chimp makes a gesture of friendly greeting, a little pant hoot, and reaches out limply and touches the other chimp. If the chimp does not respond and still makes no eye contact, there is a chance the chimp that initiated the greeting will be set off. It might now perceive this unresponsive stranger as a threat, and will flee or might even try and run off the unresponsive chimp aggressively.

But this is not what happend with me and the gas station lady this morning, I did not start shrieking and run out of the store in fear, looking back every few steps and howling, trying to make sure she wasn't following me, no

All I said was , " can I get 20 on number 6"

Then, still with not even the slightest eye contact, we proceeded with a little ritual with my plastic card ( which is just to strange to get into now) and without a word from her, and prompted by the little robot card reader, I left, I managed to say, " thanks, have a good one" without even checking if she responded, which she probably didn't. She was actually preoccupied with her little robot phone.

This could have gone so many different ways, had I uttered different noises. I find this pretty interesting. I could have said, " excuse me, can you tell me how far it is to heaven, oh and I need 20 on number 6" and man! What a different response I would have likely gotten.

But alas, I acted like a robot, an extension of my car, an extension of my job, an extension of my society... An uninterested, soulless machine, a brainless transaction, a function. And we go our separate ways.

But it's ok, because I will certainly have the chance to greet hundreds of other noisy apes today. Plenty of strangers to test my flight or fight responses on.

Could this voluntary lack of connection be some residual primeval fear left over from the brutal days of our ancestors when death was a possibility when meeting a stranger, or is it a conditioned, learned behavior,

I can tell you this, my little son has no problem staring at people and telling them what's on his mind, nor do many old folks I've met.

So, my sacred primate companions, who are capable of making fascinating noise, where are you? And how come we aren't communicating with eachother?

Is it fear, is is laziness? Is it simply that we feel we don't have the time, are we distracted?

I think that we should all assume, it's not that dangerous to communicate, I mean, we manage to runn around most days without getting killed, but at what price? And do we really need to be robots to accomplish this? Cause really, we still do fight, so there's no reason to try and cower behind the distractions of this culture,

I think we should all try and tell eachother a story.

My son just learned how to say " I love you" with confidence recently, and he says it a lot now

So consider this a stare in the face

I'm looking at you

For more such posts, read Justin Clay's entries on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Goodmorningcreatures

Sociology: Fools in the Old Days

Note:
This is a post on July 19, 2014 from my friend Justin Clay's facebook page Good Morning Creatures. For more such posts, read Justin Clay's entries on facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/Goodmorningcreatures

Good morning creatures,

I recall a very great little tome I snatched from the Galveston library, I owed late fees on it, and a book about owls and some really cheesy travel DVDs I had checked out in June of 2008, but alas, I would not return these items, or pay the late fees because a hurricane rolled through town and demolished the library and my little garage apartment. So I wound up unintentionally saving a book of Yiddish folk tales. A reoccurring story in the book was the tale of Ashem, Ashem the fool. The story always went the same,

Ashem used to utter autistic things and hurt himself accidentally, and often times it was some sort of play on words, like, " they told Ashem to fetch a pail of water and put it on the stove. So Ashem grabbed the pail and poured it on the stove and filled the house with steam."

Every time he did something foolish he was, and I would like to directly quote this because it was the most memorable part of the book... Yes, every time he did one of his foolish things he was, " beaten soundly"

I don't remember if it even explained who beat him. It just wanted you to know he was corporealy punished for his foolishness. And I have to say, it was pretty entertaining, in a wry and grim sort of way.

But to be a fool. I mean, a fool, so foolish you have made it into legend, wow, what an accomplishment.

There isn't much space for fools nowadays is there? They would likely be given aderol or taken to counseling, or just plain ignored.

But in the Middle Ages, was not the fool an integral part of the power structure? Every king had a court fool. A professional fool. A fool that used to frolick around like a pied ninny with bells and make fart jokes and juggle and skirt on the edges of offense and entertainment.

I can see there are some who are trying to revive the concept of making a living being a fool, but it is a fine line, you see, the fool of the Middle Ages played for two audiences at once, and a true craftsmen he was, because if he failed, if he offended the king I guess they would decapitate him or at the very least throw him in the dungeon. I think the guys in Jackass would have all been sentenced to death by now, cause, they're not fools, they're jackasses.

But I think the fools of yor, even Ashem, were quite cunning, they told riddles with their skits, they made examples of everyone equally, they were the pioneers of that archetypal fool hearty quality of the human spirit that rushes headlong off the ravine of society and pretends as they fall that they are a bird, and then...

They actually fly. Or they fall with such a grace and good humor that the overall effect is like they flew.

Note:
This is a post on July 19, 2014 from my friend Justin Clay's facebook page Good Morning Creatures. For more such posts, read Justin Clay's entries on facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/Goodmorningcreatures

Politics: American Immigration and Mars

On the talk show Here and Now right now, there's a well-educated fellow who says that we should reduce immigration of foreigners to the United States. Dan Stein is his name and he is the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). He seeks to control illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration to "levels consistent with the national interest of the United States". I agree that reform is needed but what needs to be addressed is not on reducing all immigration but reducing low-skilled immigration.

Just earlier today, I was re-reading the final chapters of the book Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. Zubrin was saying that without a frontier to colonize such as Mars, America will be heading down towards stagnation. He revealed several specifics, among which dealt with immigration. In the past (from its inception until early 20th century), America welcomed immigrants since there was a limited work force. The western frontier presented a constant labor shortage. Today, however, "far from prizing each additional citizen, anti-immigrant attitudes are on the rise...thus in the late twentieth century, and increasingly in the twenty-first, each additional citizen is and will be regarded as a burden".

High-Skilled Immigration
More recently in 2012, Robert Zubrin wrote an interesting article called "Towards an Intelligent Immigration Policy" in the National Review where he dispels the pervasive but mistaken notion that increased foreign immigration destroys the prospect of Americans attaining jobs. Currently, many young foreigners who graduate from American universities or have demonstrable capabilities independent of American universities have to jump through many barriers to attain residency or citizenship despite their skills and desire to work in America. The rationality for denying these individuals the right to quickly attain citizenship is labor protectionism. Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, was archetypal of this view when she wrote,

"As for stapling the green card to the STEM diploma, this is little more than a marketing tool for U.S. universities to attract more foreign students into paying for degrees in fields that are already saturated. There is no shortage of STEM professionals in the United States; on the contrary, the census shows that there are 1.8 million American engineers who are unemployed or working in other professions."

This woman believes that the number of jobs is a fixed resource and that the American unemployment rates are caused by overpopulation. She fails to realize that jobs are created by people. Statistics show immigrants are highly entrepreneurial. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, they are 13% of the American population but yet own 18% of small businesses. and were responsible for 30% of the growth of U.S. small businesses over the last 20 years.

As Robert Zubrin also points out, foreign students typically pay much more than their American counterparts for the same education. If the incentive of a green card upon graduation is assured for foreign students, many more foreigners will apply which means the education system can be subsidized to be made much more affordable for Americans.

Low-Skilled Immigration
On the matter of lower-skilled workers, I have to strongly disagree with Robert Zubrin. He believes that low-skilled immigrants should also be allowed in. He uses the example of U.S farm workers. Currently, over half of U.S. farm workers are illegal immigrants from Mexico. These people are willing to work long hours in the hot sun so that you don't have to. If they are all deported back to Mexico, America will starve.

Yet, he fails to note that most low-skilled immigrants provides not only no benefit but cost for society. Though there are many hardworking low-skilled immigrants, there are an equal number if not more of criminals or lazy immigrants who would love to live on welfare. The National Research Council (NRC) conducted a detailed study in 1997 which shows that since most Latin Americans immigrating to America are uneducated, they are creating a negative net annual fiscal impact more than offsetting the positive impact from Asians, Canadians, and Europeans. Using Zubrin's specific case for Mexicans, for the year 2000, 67% are dropouts, 21% are high school graduates, and only 12% have some college. The NRC study of 1997 found that the fiscal effect are -$99,919 for dropouts, -$14,122 for high school education, and +$163,452 for those with some college.

Take a look at the United Kingdom which has opened its doors to mass immigration where no skills are required. Their economy is increasingly a welfare state. California is also suffering due to their immigration policy.Consider the alternative of Canada and Australia where prospective citizens must prove they have skills or are financially self-sufficient. Many of my parents's friends have chosen to go to Canada instead of America since they know acquiring a citizenship in Canada is much easier than acquiring one in America with their skilled professions.

Conclusion

Americans constitute only 4% of the world's population but are responsible for half its inventions in the last century. I will argue that this is significantly due to attracting highly qualified immigrants and giving them the opportunity to flourish. The brain drain encountered in many other countries have been a significant boon for this country. Let us continue with this.

Sociology: Difference between Art and Pornography

I recently visited the Prado, the world's largest art gallery, in Madrid, Spain. Among the thousands of paintings and sculptures there, a good portion of them with women appeared to show them in naked poses, sometimes quite revealingly with full breasts showing. Yet, they are admired as works of art and not taken down as pornography. Most of these revealing ones were depictions of Greek and Roman goddesses, most notably Aphrodite (Venus in Roman mythology). However, even the Christian ones had a fair portion of naked women. For instance, there was one where a saint was tempted by the lovely bodies of demons disguised as fair women.

In A Pilgrim’s Regress, C.S. Lewis wrote about a man who ordered milk and eggs from a waiter in a restaurant. After tasting the milk he commented to the waiter that it was delicious. The waiter replied, “Milk is only the secretion of a cow, just like urine and feces.” After eating the eggs he commented on the tastiness of the eggs. Again the waiter responded that eggs are only a by-product of a chicken. After thinking about the waiter’s comment for a moment the man responded, “You lie. You don’t know the difference between what nature has meant for nourishment, and what it meant for garbage.”

The only difference between art and pornography is not in its actual form but in its intention. Pornography uses naked figures to stimulate the baser instincts of individuals while art uses naked figures to stimulate the admiration and aspiration. Sometimes the line may not be clear. For instance, in modern days, women look at modeling magazines of women almost as art, i.e. figures that they admire and wish to look like. However,to some men, the same pictures create an different feelings of lust. The maker may have the intention but the viewer is the one who ultimately decides whether a piece of work is pornography or art for themselves.

Some of the following are works from the Prado. Are they art or pornography?

Sociology: Trust

How can you tell whether someone is a rapist or a murderer? You really can't unless you develop an intuitive sense which comes from careful observation of people. Even knowing their full past won't help if you're their first victim. Many crimes are done by people you've always thought would never do such evil. So how can you trust anyone?

There is no answer for 100% accuracy but developing your perception can help tremendously. Let's consider the case of a girl trusting a guy. How can you tell whether your friend or boyfriend is what he appears to be? If he seems too nice, something may be wrong. If he doesn't tell you much about his background, be alert. If no one trustworthy you know backs up his character, watch out. If the people hanging around him seem to be decrepit, nasty, or ___ (insert negative word), stay away. Though a lotus can come out of mud, there's a good chance he's just a mud pile pretending to be a lotus.

There's many books out there on this topic. It's best to read a few and examine from other peoples' mistakes. Learning from experience is a hard road here.

Sociology: Popularity of a Person or a Country

Which is more popular? A country or a person? Consider the country called Sierra Leone located in west Africa.Sierra Leone is known for its diamonds, the devastating civil war which lasted for 11 years, and its role in the slave trade centuries past. Most people have heard about the country but do they know anything more than that?

Now compare with a person's name. Obviously, there's very few people with the full name Sierra Leone*. However, there are people with the last name of Leone. There's two methods here to see who's or what is more popular and both uses Google. The first is a simple Google Image search for 'Leone' which can be seen as follows:

From the first screen, the statistics for each image linked to the country or a person as are as follows for the first 23 images shown:

Sierra Leone: 7
Sunny Leone: 5
Ashley Leone: 1
Pino Leone: 1
Matthew Leone: 3
Rudy Leone: 1
Jim Leone: 1
Jennifer Leone: 1
Donna Leone: 1
Paola Leone: 1
Carlo Leone: 1

Clearly, Sierra Leone does lead but not by much. Combined, from the image relation percentage, the popularity of people with the last name Leone is much greater than that of the country of Sierra Leone. Taking a look with method two of examining number of Google searches for each of the 10 people and the country Sierra Leone reveals the following number of results in order:

1. Sierra Leone: 380,000,000
2. Sunny Leone: 57,400,000
3. Jennifer Leone: 16,500,000
4. Jim Leone: 15,000,000
5. Mathew Leone: 12,200,000
6. Donna Leone: 12,100,000
7. Ashley Leone: 11,000,000
8. Carlo Leone: 9,400,000
9. Paola Leone: 4,740,000
10. Pino Leone: 3,820,000
11. Rudy Leone: 2,800,000

Combined, the 10 people searches amount to 144,960,000 or over 1/3 of the amount of information for Sierra Leone. Clearly, the information for Sierra Leone still dominates but there is much interest in the people as well. As a sidenote, an interesting lineup of the popularity level of these people and what they do highlights what much of society has their minds wrapped around. In the order of the number of results by Google and removing the names Jennifer Leone and Jim Leone which are due to people with a really popular first name, people's minds are focused on:

1. Hot girls (Sunny Leone or Pino Leone)
2. Music (Matthew Leone or Ashley Leone)
3. Crime novels or fictional Venice (Donna Leone)
4. Science or justs Canavian disease (Paola Leone)
5. Politics (Carlo Leone)
6. Horses (Rudy Leone)

This is not very surprising at all given that to most people, politics and equestrian (art of horse riding) are hardly interesting, while almost no one will object to music and no guys will object to hot girls. Still,  the good sign remains that the country information still ranks first. Perhaps this shows that global politics is still interesting to many people but politicians are not since they come and go. *By the way, did you know that there's a town in Sierra Leone named Shen Ge? I plan to go there one day.

Sociology: Encounters with Homeless People

A few days ago, while I was walking around in Little Five Points in Atlanta, I came across a homeless guy who was begging for money. This incident on its own is not surprising nor is it surprising that he stopped me and asked me for money. I have been approached a number of times before. What is surprising this time is what went through my mind. I realized that homeless people have an attribute that many of us should have but lack: a barrier to talking with strangers! Isn't a lack of understanding between people best curable by open communication?

Now, I know that genuine communication is different from begging for money which is why I didn't give him any money but instead smiled and said that I'll buy him some coffee and chat for a bit if he doesn't mind. He said he was fine with that. So I went inside the coffee shop five steps away and bought two cups of coffee, one for myself and one for him. (I wasn't sure what flavor he wanted so I chose something that wouldn't be too strange.)

In our little conversation, I was able to find out that he was originally from South Carolina but came to Atlanta since a relative of his said there's work here. Since he got here a few months ago, he has been out on the streets in the area of Little Five Points. I noticed that he had a limp in his right leg. I asked him what happened. He told me that he got shot several years ago but he didn't seem to want to go into more details.

Our conversation ended rather quickly since he constantly felt like reminding me that I should give him money so he can go buy a baloney sandwich. I don't like to give money since I don't know what they'll do with it and I had no guarantee that I would get better stories from him by buying him a baloney sandwich even after satiating his hunger. I decided to just leave him alone.

Later, I was thinking that if I was with a friend who would be willing to do this though, I would definitely have talked to him a while longer. I was reminded of an incidence several years ago when my friend and I were walking on the streets of Little Rock and a guy we didn't think was homeless asked us for some money. Since he didn't look threatening or crazy, we decided to take him to a nice little restaurant and hear his story. We learned that he suffered learning disabilities and had a terrible family upbringing. I wanted to keep in touch with him with email which he said he had one. Unfortunately, we never got in touch again so I hope he's alright.

It may seem like I have these conversations all the time but it's actually quite rare. Since my conversations with homeless people don't usually happen on a regular basis, when they do, they leave a mark in my mind. While I was talking with this guy, I had another flashback of a really interesting conversation I had with a homeless guy a few years back at a hotel in Arizona.

I was in Arizona for a space conference and on one of those nights there was a party in a crowded hotel room. I did not feel that shouting over the music and chatter was worth it so I went downstairs to cool off. There, while standing outside, a homeless guy came up to me and instead of begging for money as I presumed, asked if he can borrow my phone to make a phone call. Apparently, someone was supposed to meet with him and etc. I told him to come into the lobby since it's cold outside and make his phone call. He did and said that he needed to wait.

We sat in the lobby and talked for a little while before he mentioned Bruce Li. Coincidentally, I had a Bruce Li movie on my laptop and so we started watching it. One of the guards came by a few times and was slightly suspicious but I told the guard that he was cool so the guard left us alone for a while. Ultimately though, it was quite obvious and the guard told him he had to leave. The guy made one last phone call and thanked me before leaving. I hope he found who he was looking for.

I feel like that the more privileged we are, the less open we are towards those who are less fortunate. I watched a documentary called Born Rich before on rich kids and it's apparent that most of these guys never interact at all with people who are not rich. In other words, 99% of the people in this world do not exist for these guys. They have their exclusive parties and getaway vacations. On the other hand, you have homeless people who are willing to talk to anyone to get some money or for those who are more genuine, have someone care about where they come from. Clearly, for society to operate well, the amount of wealth should not be an indication  of how much or how little you talk with your fellow human being. Communication between all parties should be welcome.

Sociology: Why Musicians are More Attractive

The female mind acts more out of emotion than reason. The reason that musicians have much greater sex appeal than most non-musical nerds* is due to music's direct access to the emotional part of the brain. Music, a favorite activity of musicians, is a drug that can create intensely good feelings in the brain. Intellectual conversation, a favorite activity of nerds, on the other hand, is a convoluted and complicated logical process that usually confuses the less intellectual-minded (which happens to make up most of the population).

"Falling in love at first sight" is not a logical response but an emotional one. Even a decent musician who can play some songs can trigger a series of chemicals creating a fuzzy good feeling in any girl's mind except those of the deaf or emotionally comatose variety. However, an intellectual discussion is far less likely to create the same emotions and can sometimes cause argument even if the girl understands the conversational topic. Thus, to reach a girl's heart, it's best to avoid the logical and appeal to the emotional.

The only times when the nerd is on equal footing as the musician for sex appeal is when the girl is a rational being herself or is impressed by intelligence. This will be a rare girl indeed and if a nerd finds such a girl, he has probably found another nerd. Even in such a situation though, too much logic is not good. For instance, consider the first kiss. A nerd analyzes the moment and decides whether it is the moment before doing anything. By the time the nerd does anything the moment has already passed.

In short, nerds rarely get into bed with a girl or have a romantic relationship since the nerd's favorite activity is usually too analytical to have much emotional appeal. On the other hand, music has a direct emotional appeal and enables the musician to be immediately more attractive to the female mind. This truth can be seen all around. While ugly musicians can hook up with attractive girls, even handsome nerds are often single.

I think I may have been too analytical here myself. This analysis is concluded.

Self-improvement: Life is a Banquet

While driving a friend home, he brought up the question that I asked him a while ago: "If your life is a movie, will people want to watch it?" He told me that if the last six years of his life is the same level of excitement as most people's entire lives, he can see why they all think that their life movie is too boring to watch.

He had told me a number of interesting stories in his life that I would definitely pay to watch if it was a movie. Yet, what's sad is that many people think that he's making things up. Those things coulnd't possibly have happened in his life! He couldn't possibly have had the grandest time in Hong Kong just because he knocked out a guy at a bar to save a girl's honor. He couldn't possibly have grabbed a gun away from an idiot rich guy in front of a club and later won a sham court case for his amazing restraint in not beating the guy up. He couldn't possibly have dressed up as a black guy and walked down some ghetto neighborhoods to see what would happen.

I have stories as well but many of the more interesting ones may give me a bad reputation so I'll refrain from telling them here. The bottom line is many people's lives are apparently so boring that they'll rather believe that such tales can only happen in movies. Yet, they watch adapted movies which show ordinary people encountering interesting situations and they believe those stories. I find it funny that many people will rather believe in a story that's probably edited and dramatized for TV production rather than someone who's telling them face-to-face a segment of his or her life.

There's a quote from a character called Aunte Mame in a movie:

"Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death."

My question to you is if you're at a banquet hall with a table full of action, new characters, and plot twists, why are you starving in a corner instead of taking your seat at the table?

Sociology: Double Standards of Virginity

Recently, I was reading an article on Lolo Jones, the track and field athlete who has won a number of awards including the Olympics, which quickly led to reading on her comments on her virginity when she's past 29. I shall quote her lines here from her HBO interview earlier this year:

"If there's virgins out there, I'm going to let them know, it's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life — harder than training for the Olympics, harder than graduating from college, has been to stay a virgin before marriage."

She and others like her who believe in this idealism are following a flawed path without even realizing it. Religion or extreme conservative moral compass has blinded them to logic and truth. The logical reason that you make a vow in adolescence to not sleep with your partner is to prevent the long-term consequences which at that age you're very ill-equipped to deal with. At some point, moving forward by taking the jump into sexuality is a step to do to acquire greater social maturity. By not moving forward, the woman chooses to remain forever at the age of adolescence with her lack of experience. The growth of sexual maturity is one facet in the growth of emotional maturity for an individual.

Consider this scenario. When I encounter a man older than 35 who tells me that he's still a virgin, my first reaction is not of awe or admiration but rather of suspicion. I start wondering whether he's lying or whether he's socially retarded. If he is socially retarded but not overly creepy, I'll feel deeply sorry and offer to hook him up with someone I know. My reaction is not atypical; a man who has not followed his biological drive by that age is considered a deviant.

Clearly, a double standard exists. When a man is past a certain age and still a virgin, you either find him creepy or you feel sorry for him. Yet, when a woman in the same situation is somehow considered "good to have standards". This is especially prevalent among the conservative religious ladies who attempt to model themselves after perfection. They genuinely believe that they should wait out for a prince charming to explore their virgin territory.

Our lives are meant to be filled with experiences which enrich us and enable to to understand ourselves and others better. Choosing not to have certain experiences due to limits placed by an antiquidated social model is severely damaging to proper function in the modern society. Not all sexual experiences lead to stronger emotional bonds but many do. Instead of congratulating the woman for holding out, we should be instead feeling sorry for her level of sadly stunted romanticism.

Self-improvement: The Lunge or Leap of Faith

There are times when you realize that you're caught up in the doldrums of daily depressing repetition that you feel utterly chained to its worthless mediocrity. You can find yourself doing the same tedious work, talking to the same people entertaining the same thoughts, and doing the same things before you fall asleep every night. As these mostly irrelevant moments of your life pile upon each other like layers of snow, your embers of life is slowly buried in this frosty entombment.

At this moment, you may realize your sad life and in desperation you go for the lunge. The lunge is the last ditch effort to free yourself from the snow of repetitive nothingness that has buried your embers of life. (Heavens forbid if you find yourself so deeply buried in snow that you can't even move your feet.) A close relative of the leap of faith, the lunge is distinguished from its cousin since it is an act of desperation whereas the leap of faith is an act of free choice.

A few days ago before I flew back to the states, I encountered on the same day two occasions two girls who decided to travel spontaneously. One has taken a lunge whereas the other has taken an act of faith. The girl who chooses to quit her bartending job and travel for months in Europe since she wants to escape the daily mediocrity of her work and life is taking the desperate lunge. The girl who chooses to quit her teaching job and travel for months in Europe to gain experience in her life before she returns to a teaching lifestyle is taking a leap of faith.

If we can take a leap of faith to refresh our lives, that will be ideal. However, that is the ideal world and sometimes in this real world, the lunge, despite its nature of desperation, is the only way to radically rejuvenate ourselves and discover once more why we choose to live. The alternative is to let ourselves atrophy in a sad cocoon of reality where without outside intervention (unlikely), our accumulated apathy towards our own lives leads us to the end of our lives, either literally or figuratively. What do you choose to do?

Philosophy: Consumption, Destruction, and Creation

For every object in existence in this world, we can choose to act through one of three methods: consume, destroy, or create. Consumption is using the outputs of creation. Destruction is eliminating the creation itself. Creation is the act of creating something so that there can be consumption or destruction. An everyday example is TV. Consumption is watching TV programs. Destruction is physically destroying the TV or ensuring that no TV broadcasts are made. Creation is producing a new TV program or building a TV.

From a macroscopic perspective, the percentage of time allocated to each of these three actions in a society is a good indicator of the society's well-being. In the worst possible dictatorial society such as North Korea, the only acts permissible are consumption and destruction. Creation is carefully restricted to those in power and strongly discouraged by force otherwise. In such a society, progress will be slow if at all. Indeed, this can be extended to a generality: For any society, if creation is not greater than consumption or destruction, then the society cannot progress.

The macroscopic relevance of this rule is built on a fundamental level upon the microscopic acts of the individual. If an individual consumes or destroys more than he or she produces, this individual is creating a negative balance in society. For an individual to exist in this world, he or she is either selfish, misguided, or lazy to presume that the individual should feel entitled getting things by doing things of lesser value. A rich heir that squanders away his inherited wealth has demolished the culmination of the value of the creation of his forefathers. By logical extension of the counterpart, the most worthwhile individual will be one who strives to be at least one step above the ladder than his or her predecessors.

Some may object to this simple analysis by stating that not everything which is created has value. Aren't some creations dangerous and harmful? Is it not better to create nothing than something if more harm will arise due to its creation? Unfortunately, creation for the most part seems to be a double-edged sword. With few exceptions (such as gas chambers), any product or service created can both be served for good or bad. For instance, just consider

- Nuclear bomb versus nuclear energy

- GPS satellites for military surveillance and missile targeting versus ensuring that you do not get lost

- Rockets for military use versus rockets to travel to space

- Viruses concoted to kill people versus medicine developed to cure diseases

Since the good or bad usage of technology is impossible for us to predict, we cannot stop all progress just because of the possibility of something being used in the wrong way. This is not to say that we shouldn't be careful. To be noted is that in general for a technology, the greater the potential for good, also the greater the potential for bad.

Another valid counterargument is that not all individuals can create more than they consume. Consider a long-term hospital patient who is suffering from a debilitating illness. Is that person not entitled to be supported, i.e. consume more than create? The answer here seems to cross from the mechanistic into the moralistic. Actually, there is no such distinction. One merely has to observe the past history of the individual and his or her present state of action assuming that the individual still has faculty of mind and body. If even at this stage, the individual has the brimming energy to go do something or if the individual has demonstrated such tendency in the past, then the current state is but a temporary one.

More counterarguments can certainly be brought up and I'll be happy to address them.

Self-improvement: Communication Between Levels

Take a look at the following drawing depicting people walk around on different platforms of various heights. If you understand this diagram, you understand what I'm referring to here by people are on different levels of understanding of this world. A person on a certain level can always engage with those on his or her equal or lower level. For a person on a lower level to engage someone on a higher level, either someone on the higher level must jump down to the lower level or the person on the lower level must wisen up enough to permanently upgrade him or herself to the higher level.

Several examples may suffice to illustrate my point. Consider why a child is bored by "adult talk". Oftentimes, it's not that the child doesn't understand what the adults are talking about but rather that the child doesn't see its importance. I remember that when I was a kid I quickly zoned out whenever a grown-up conversation started between my parents on things such as buying school supplies, cleaning up the home, what clothes I need, etc. I mostly care about when I get to visit a good friend of mine, what books and games I can buy next, and if there's anything interesting to watch on TV. You can see how narrow and limited a typical child's perspective is.

Another example is when wise men of the world had to explain "how to live life" concepts to the average man. They almost never say whatever concept directly; instead, they depend on allegorical stories and parables to reach out to a wider audience. Clearly, most people aren't capable of understanding profound truths unless it's dumbed down to practicalities that they can understand.

The lesson here is that whenever you're communicating with someone, make sure that you can be on the same level as him or her. Note that it's much easier to go down than up, e.g. it's much easier for an adult to understand child talk than a child to understand what adults are talking about. So what does this mean? Three things:

1. Surround yourself with people that's on the same level as you if you wish to communicate easily.

2. Study and interact with those on higher levels than you to learn and "level up" eventually.

3. Interact with those on lower levels than you to bring their awareness to what's missing. This may not always work but at least it's worth some of your time. An enlightened individual should not hesitate to give understanding to the ignorant. The question is only how much time you have for such an unequivalent exchange.