Saturday, March 26th 2005, 19:26
Class starts again on Monday. Rather than wondering why it's over so soon, however, I'm glad that the gloominess is over. Champaign has been cold, windy and rainy everyday, it's anything but Spring. And I have yet to see one single deciduous tree with one leaf on. The only thing I miss is the peace and quiet. Before you know it, the whole campus will be filled with chaos again.
If everything goes as planned, I should be done with summer school by mid-June. Since I can't find any summer jobs back home, I'll be spending my time reading books in the library and studying for course 4. Who cares - not a lot of people are going back anyway. Besides, if I do find a job when I graduate, this will be the last summer that I'll ever have. I'll do what I want to do, not what I should be doing.
So much for the stereotypical "happy childhood memories" of playing basketball with your neighbors, lying on the grass with your first love on a fine summer day, representing your school in the swimming team. I never had these things as a child, and neither do I care. Besides, there's always two sides to the story, right? Hell, I didn't even bother recovering my graduation photos when I reformatted my laptop.
Memories of the past, conceptualizations of the mind that is no longer a part of reality. Does it make any sense to miss something that doesn't exist? Or are they just there?
Like my photos?
Sunday, March 19th 2005, 20:17
Spring break, finally. Time for some internal reflections and catching up. Ah, peace and quiet... good stuff. No more 24/7 slumber parties in dorms, or the need to stay alert all the time. Finally I get some rest. So many wounds that I need to heal.
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The difference between believing in gods and spirits, believing that there is only one God, or believing in the Christian God, is not so much a matter of what you are brought up with, but more to do with how much you understand about morality and righteousness. When you ask someone whether they are a good guy or not, they say they are. However, when you ask them questions such as why one should give money to the poor, or why rape is wrong, you get all sorts of answers. Some say they are implicit social contracts so that everyone can spend less time worrying about their safety. Others say it's against the law, which could be the law of the country or the law of God/gods. And some would even give purely biological explanations, that everything is done for producing favourable offspring.
Sometimes I really agree with Kohlberg's stages of moral development, even though I don't agree that just because one must move past some stages to reach others, that one is superior to the other. I think the word "state" is more politically correct. What I've also noticed is that while people in different "states" of moral thinking can get along fine, they rarely become close friends. I think the problem is that we haven't really spent much time exploring this issue at all. On the surface, this is totally meaningless, because for most of us, most of the time, we end up doing or not doing the same things anyway. On the other hand, this could be a possible explanation as to why cultural and religious values, even after so many years of mingling, remain distinct, contradictory to each other or even outright mutually exclusive. In good times, we get along fine with a set of social codes that are vaguely compatible with each other, but in tough times, these cracks beneath the cover sheets start to show up.
Something that I've learnt this semester is that a lot of arguments between friends, group members or family members are not really based on disagreements on the actual event, but the chasm of differences between these "states" of moral thinking. In religion especially. I remember having read websites written by atheists and agnostics saying that Christians remain faithful to their religion because of the ignorance of any other type of thinking, or a combination of hope and fear. What I realised after talking to a lot of Christians is that most people are not that religious. Now please correct me if I am wrong, but what I've noticed is that a lot of them seem to think that it is wrong because it's illegal, and it's illegal because it's wrong. But do not mistake this with circular thinking. Rather, it is their conception of morality, defined largely by boundaries set by authority, whether it be a country, or the word of God.
All this suffering, conflicts and wars in this world in the name of religion and patriotism... if we don't find some common ground between these "states", we'll get nowhere.
Sunday, March 13th 2005, 21:36
I'm really busy. I'll give more detailed updates when Spring break starts.
Tried to find a job this summer, but failed. So instead, I've decided to stretch myself to the limit in another way. Funny how I always get myself into one mess after the other. It's even more funny how much more you learn in college than in any other stage of your life. And still we continue to get ourselves in trouble.
Yes, my updates might sound strange, but if you ask me about it, it'll all make sense.
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Dedicated to Kenneth Ho: http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/~jenf/writing/rant04.html
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Dedicated to my roommate: