Tag: Socrates

Twitter and Tolstoy

My new-year resolution is to get through Tolstoy‘s monumental “War and Peace.”

The characters and ethos were deliberate and elaborating (everyone wants a piece of the inheritance while the man was dying etc….).

Visitors were announced at the gate (no intercom), received at party etc….

Tolstoy’s imperialistic people have time on their hands. We don’t. We tweet, text and retweet.

But man’s nature remains the same: greed, exhibitionist, illusion of grandeur.

Trapped in their place and time, would we be doing any better?

How much is man a product of nurture vs nature?

With chip speed doubles every 18 months and Google Kansas City SuperFast Broadband, where do we go from here (or do we wish to go on to infinity?).

The I-pod cannot get smaller (Shuffle).

A tweet cannot be shorter.

If someone could think of something to debunk Facebook and YouTube, they probably would.

Faster, more efficient and more savings. All fine. But that doesn’t explain Newtown, 9/11 and gang rape in India. (as of this edit, it has just happened again, this time, to a Swiss couple).

Stuff that Taleb coined “black swan” in human nature.

It’s a vicious cycle. We think like this because we are taught to reason, to ask question (Socrates). But then we are inside the system, like cog in the wheel, unable to have the bird-eye’s view, to see the weakest link.

With new Congress sworn in this week,  I sincerely wish the freshman class have fresh eyes, and hopefully, committed hearts.

May they live out their terms and their years with honor and worthy of our votes. Just hope that while they tweet, they would remember Tolstoy. We still live reflexively as cavemen, with Black Swan and blind spot. Our blindness is built- in, and should not be viewed as a weakness. Just is. (no one has ever seen their eyes with their own eyes). But then, we need someone to point that out. We need a team. A partner. Someone who is both prophetic, yet pastoral. Condemn and console. Yes, we are imperfect products of our times. Just as Tolstoy’s people, of theirs.

Seasons and symmetry

Traffic in the past few weeks has come from the opposite direction: country side to city streets. Tet is over.

We had joy we had fun we had seasons in the sun. Now it’s time to ramp up, to deliver.

There are things that can only be understood in hindsight:  a failed marriage, a single parent who hangs on to his now-grown daughter etc…

Never second-guess yourself. If only I could do it over….

You got one shot at life but not blindly, since all the hints and signals were there.

As long as we don’t play “solitaire”, others would be glad to point them out to us.

For years, I have lived with the flow (time and space) i.e. could never come back to the time and place where I was from.

I have been wrong on that count.

Seasons do come around, in symmetry.

Fall aging, Summer fun, Winter loneliness and Spring hope.

There is not a thing that goes to waste under the Sun.

Years ago, I couldn’t understand why my American friend would major in horticulture. Growing up in the city all my life, I found his field of study utterly foreign; it might as well be nuclear physics.

Now we have organic foods, co-op, environmental conservation etc….

(there was a 6.4 earthquake in Peru a few days ago).

We will never be “cooler” than under current ecosystem.

One planet, one shot deal.

Love the ones you’ve got: a crescent moon, blooming flowers, a child’s smile.

Even when you decide to burn the candle from both ends, it still is the only candle you’ve got.

I can understand youthful ambition, false confidence and the illusion of grandeur.

After all, we all work with unchecked assumptions.

Yet, “an unexamined life is not worth living,” says Socrates.

The Aztecs used to run under a very different calendar than ours. So did the Mayans and most Asian countries (Lunar calendar). Circular and cyclical rather than linear or Alpha-Omega .

Because it will come around, people are more conscious of consequences (could be arriving in next life). So Tet is over, but its season of hope has just started.

Traffic is back and workers are turning on the assembly line switches.

Just as they did last year and the year before.

But next year, again with reverse traffic flow,  but the aging mother and father might not be around waiting for them at home. It’s not the unexpected. It is to be expected. We ‘ve only just begun…with seasons in the sun, its symmetry and surprises. Savour it!