A Monologue pt. 1

A painting was hung on a wall. A man walks by and stop momentarily to appreciate the art's beauty. The element, composed by different colours, precisely complement each other in ever so harmony. The man couldn't help but to wonder, what makes the painting wonderful? Is it the paint or the painter?

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I once told a friend that if Philosopher A wrote 3 books encapsulating his wisdom and I read all of it plus another book from Philosopher B, then literally I'll be more brilliant than the former. Obviously, it was such a stupid remark and my friend refuted the theory by implying the deuteragonist core of reading: understanding the message. Even if I'm well defined of each word vocabulary and grammar, the real essence of the meaning in between the lines stay within the author experience and thought.

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"I don't know. Well of course leading a predetermined life cycle seems lack in meaning but after all, isn't it the memories we make along the way that matters? The meaning of life is still there though. Look at all these encyclopedias. It is intended as a safe repository of human knowledge, in case a catastrophe swept our civilization and render all technology to dust. Like the ancient cultures of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, at least over time, we leave behind some random surviving fragments of our writing for the future to remember us. Why does it matter for them to remember? So that they won't repeat our mistake. History is to civilization what memory is to individuals. If we forgot what we had done in the past, we lost our meaningful identity as a person. Nobody pays an attention to encyclopedia nowadays, it's mundane and will keep updated over and over again. But it has meaning, like our lives, just that we need time to understand why."

"Well, in the end, we are all a merchant of culture, isn't it?"

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On The Upside of Social Networks

Some people rant about the ugly truth about the society of social networking service. "There are too much lies. I can't stand it." "Why posted about what you do yesterday? Why should I care?" and etc.

For one, I think we should understand and accept the reality that the world had long changed they way we connect and obtain information in daily basis. Baby Boomers and Generation X faced difficulties to get better education as they had to struggle in pursuit of independence and towards rebuilding a better nation while Generation Y had better luck with more things to learn, in fact there is an abundance of information that the challenge nowadays is not how to obtain knowledge, but to compare between them and determine which one is the truth and false. So, it's something that we should face and find a solution, not to run away from it. If not, then, how Generation Y differs from the former?

As society gets more complicated, so does our problem. And in the world of Web 2.0 (google the term), networking is crucial than ever. An argument came to say that posting meaningless status updates over time become an "awareness". These statuses will be like dots connecting each other to form a portrait, by looking through a person timeline and see what the person shared, we somehow can pick his/her personality, mood/thought, preferences etc. No longer do we need to call each person to know about what they are up to so the next time we met them even though rarely get together, it shouldn't be hard to strike a conversation. Who knows, having a preserved old friendship might come in handy later.

Furthermore, we are now embracing "public thinking", the ability to broadcast our ideas and thoughts. When we see issues on a news site, there are people giving brilliant and thought-provoking comments for us to ponder upon and question-answering sites like quora.com had people discusses about particular questions in multiple perspectives. In fact, some companies went to harness this opportunity to ask people about their products to deliver more satisfying benefits to consumers.

All in all, I'm still acknowledging the downside of social media, but as a rule of thumb, we should always be mindful and keep aware when our dallying in digital environment is taking us away from doing things we should do. It is a tool, and like when you go to a stream of river, you don't inhale the entire river but take a few sips and walk away some time until you're thirsty again.

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