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while i could probably write forever on running, i won't.

but here are five random thoughts.

marathons are inspiring. seeing the blind and the volunteers from HKBSA running. seeing the one-armed runner. seeing the runners who are more than twice my age.

marathons are humbling. i take many things in life for granted. marathons have a way of reminding me not to.

marathons are in the mind. yes, overquoted, but it doesn't make it any less true: pain is inevitable. suffering is optional.

marathons are simply results of practice, not much more to it. we all have our respective "start-levels" of running. one of the few things in life that are relatively linear. train harder, run better. the first hard part is starting somewhere. the second hard part is persistence. the third hard part is resuming after stopping. other than that, it's pretty easy.

marathons feel really good. especially at the finish.

how to be happy?

what a deceptively simple question.

first of all, short term happy or long term happy?

short term happy is easy - any form of self-indulgence should do the trick.

long term happy is much trickier. there are a plethora of books out there, within each a thousand little strategies to feel good.

does it come down to - living a fulfilling life? finding true love? having enough material comforts? being the king of the world?

as a start, and going back to the original premise of all this, to feel good, being good seems to be a historically well-proven formula. counterintuitive in this day and age, but seemingly it does work.

the next question is, who do you know who is deeply content with life? especially those that can do it regardless of the crap life throws at them? (or because of?) how do they do it? or are they really just chronically lucky? can we ask them?

perhaps to pretend to be them? that could be a start.

man-eating tigers

the number of things that compete for attention is simply ridiculous.

facebook, digg, google reader. newspapers, magazines, TV. advertisements for everything, particularly things we never knew we needed.

the problem either lies in i) all these evil attention-grabbing things that bother me, or ii) my inability to resist being distracted and sucked in all these attention-grabbing things.

the hunter-gatherer instinct may have evolved so we pay attention to anything out of the ordinary that might interest us, e.g. that movement in the bushes might be a man-eating tiger. with man-eating tigers now almost extinct, and with the soul-eating consumer culture all around us, we might be better off stilling our minds.

pretty dumb things

well, these things go in the pretty dumb category since... i'm still doing some of them. hypocrisy is for another day...

killing animals for food, particularly factory farming.

fine wine. you know how many people you could feed with a bottle of fine wine?

plastic bags for everything.

disposable everything.

air-con in the middle of winter. or for that matter, so strong that people wear sweaters indoor in the summer.

we're generally pretty good at supporting things that destroy us in future, because we're living in the present, and we can't think that far ahead.

really dumb things

there are some really dumb things in the world, imho.

sharkfin soup.

diamonds.

working at jobs we hate and buying shit we don't need.

isn't the point of life to make *me* happy?

it is.

the question is how to maximize it, and make it sustainable.

on a day-to-day basis there seems to be two discrete things that do so:

i) something nice happens unexpectedly. if i throw out all my expectations, expect the worst all the time, then arguably i can be happy quite a lot of times.

ii) i set a goal and i actually attain it.

i'm sure there are more, like being grateful for life, meditating on our existence, etc etc but in terms of discrete matters most seem to fall in one of the two categories.

the difficult intellectual leap is that by making others happy, it makes me happy (or even happier).

and the argument that needs to be made is that this kind of "giving" is more sustainable then let's say, trying to make more and more money every day.

if we were to do a nice deed that someone appreciated every day, i can see why it gives us a little "happiness hit" every time. but doesn't that get boring and eventually it means not much, and i need to do crazier and crazier nice deeds to get the same high? if we were to get a daily paycheck, would that be a decent equivalent?

there probably isn't enough time

quoting a story i read on stephen batchelor's site:

"Suppose Malunkyaputta, a man were wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and companions brought a surgeon to treat him. The man would say, 'I will not let the surgeon pull out the arrow until I know the name and clan of the man who wounded me; whether the bow that wounded me was a long bow or a cross bow; whether the arrow that wounded me was hoof-tipped or curved or barbed.' All this would still not be known to that man, and meanwhile he would die. So too, Malunkyaputta, if anyone should say, 'I will not lead the noble life under the Buddha until the Buddha declares to me whether the world is eternal or not eternal; finite or infinite; whether the soul is the same as or different from the body; whether or not an awakened one continues or ceases to exist after death,' that would still remain undeclared by the Buddha, and meanwhile that person would die."

in other words, we could wait until we had full information before we making a decision on how to lead our lives - but that would mean we probably have died long before obtaining full information.

realistically there's simply no way for me to figure "all this out" with whatever time left i have (in this lifetime, at least). suppose even if i had some good conjectures, i still probably would not have enough time to go through all the counter-arguments and be fully convinced of them.

so, it seems to me there is a good bit of research and reflection that needs to be done, and at some point, a bit of faith still needs to be involved? or extreme logic can nonetheless lead to a noble life?

being skeptical of being skeptical

at some point in my life, probably my teenage years, i was taught to be skeptical, and to not take things at face value. be curious, question things, as today's truths are tomorrow's historical jokes.

i even recall some who considered skepticism to be a lifelong principle that they had to live by - there was so much falsehood in the world it was our duty to discover the truth.

it's a great learning process. there is so much to be learned when we keep asking questions, until we are sufficiently satisfied with the particular answers.

then, at some point, we get to questions that simply do not and will not have answers.

does being skeptical stop being useful at some point? should skepticism be considered a means of learning, or is it an end itself, to learn about the "ultimate truth" about whatever that needs an ultimate truth? is our search destined to be asymptotic? 

you can't handle the truth

especially if the truth concerns our actual psyche, the man in the mirror, what kind of person we are on a morality scale, this is not truth we can handle with ease. the natural tendency is to think we are right - a manifestation of self-preservation - if the truth is different from what we thought it is, the immediate thought, at best is to mull it over, at worst is to reject it out right.

there's no way to know whether such judgement by another person, is 100% correct, 100% all of the time.

the obligation is on neither the sayer or the listener to accept or deny such ideas. if you'd like to improve as a listener, then you listen and don't reject out right, regardless of the method these are delivered to you. if you'd like to get your idea across better as a sayer, you craft your words to circumstances so it's easier to digest for the listener.

but, there's no obligation either way.

fight club

fight club has been my favorite movie ever since i first watched it, and by far. rewatching it again, i just reconfirmed it once again.

maybe i see a lot of the narrator in myself. enraged at the world but strangely unable to do anything about it. enraged at all the consumerist culture around us. enraged that i am my job, i am how much money i have in my bank, and i am the contents of my wallet.

at this point in my life, no, i don't think violence or mayhem is the answer. coincidentally i was reading martin luther king's nobel peace prize speech on non-violence, just a few hours before. they do agree on one thing - our great war of this generation is the spiritual war.

but there is a curious logic to tyler durden's insane destruction - losing everything to liberate our minds.

i know, fight club is probably one of the furthest things from the title of this blog. it strangely does appeal to something deep in me - i am hoping it's the liberation part, and not the mayhem part. or perhaps getting in touch with the dark side is part of the progress?

why it matters at all

because true peace of mind only comes when i really understand?

because if this truth and understanding existed (one that did not change according to my life experiences and worldview), once i had figured it out, i could simply live my life according to it and not be in a perpetual state of "what am i doing this for"?

because existential crises bother me, and would want to know once and for all, why i exist and for what purpose? (a definitive answer even such as "for no purpose whatsoever" might suit me too, but i'd like to know for sure)

because constant contentment sounds rather nice, seems much preferable to the mood swings due to the big and small disappointments in life (or due to things like general human nature)?

because if there really is a afterlife/nirvana/something good after death, i want to understand which exactly is the right thing to do and which "god" or "way" to follow? (even in the absence of such, being confident of the right way to follow during my earthly existence might be helpful)

because the promise of non-suffering sounds like a pretty good deal? (is that equivalent to the overall maximization of pleasure in fact?)

the point of it all - multiple choice version

i should put this in power point, but since this blog is pretty low tech, words will have to do.

there appears to me five possible scenarios:

A) there is no point, and we exist purely because of chance. the universe is so large there are enough chances to go around and eventually some sentient being appears to observe it. this is a version of the anthropic principle - it doesn't answer why the universe bothers to exist in the first place, but then again it is the same question as "who created god". we might posit that this is a circle and nothing ever began and nothing ever ends. but who drew the circle? hm...

B) there is some point, some higher force, but this is beyond human cognitive abilities, and we will simply never understand it, much like you can't really expect an ant to understand general relativity. we might be a tad closer, and a chimpanzee might be able to observe and learn to expect how newton's law works (maybe?), but the chimp is not going to be deriving equations any time too soon.

C) there is some point, some higher force, it is within human cognitive abilities to understand, but it is going to take a long time (maybe our brains need to evolve, we need to fuse with computers, etc). or perhaps some people already understand it but are unable to convey this to "normal" human beings.

D) the point is to simply exist. i.e., we have already figured it out, unsatisfactory such an answer as it maybe. whether we were "designed" or we existed based on pure luck does not matter.

D1) like a videogame designer designs its characters. they move and react accordingly in the game, there might not be any innate purpose other than the designer wanted to see what the characters would do.

D2) we exist as a random occurrence in the universe - thus we are supposed to live out our lives then become cosmic dust. so we are supposed to exist according to the laws of physics, and afterwards, convert to dust according to the laws of physics. sentience does not imply we should have a larger purpose than say, a rock.

this might not exactly satisfy our desire to be more important than a rock, but it is supposed to be the model answer. any other answers are simply extraneous constructs of our overactive mind.

E) religious texts provide the answer - to get in heaven/nirvana/equivalent final destination, where we find eternal peace and happiness.

yes, i do worry whether this is a waste of time and an exercise in futility (even this thought process itself), and most people have already covered this in philosophy 101.

but i suppose since i never took philosophy 101 (or at least i don't remember doing so), i will need to figure this out myself. when i come to dead-ends, then i'll either accept it and move on, or try to see if these really are dead-ends.

quest for truth?

at some point, this will need to be addressed - whether there is a truth (or truths) in the world, especially, a moral truth, one that applies to human behavior rather than physical laws.

a quick search on google for "moral truth" (not to mention truth) can be a bit depressing, with entire websites devoted to the study for and against absolute moral truths. i am sure people have thought deeply about this subject and arguments either way are going to make a lot of sense.

i'm tempted to dismiss moral truth as a concoction of the authorities and religious entities for the purpose of social control, and that truth is too much in the eye of the beholder, thus absolute truth should hence be impossible. i find fault with even simple proclamations that "all beings should be happy and free" - the world is massive trolley problem and trade-offs are inevitable, and not acknowledging this fact of life might even exacerbate the problem.

(to me, fact of life is different from moral truth. moral truth is some underlying theory that is a bit more encompassing, and might be able to handle a great number of facts of life. is "pursuit of self-interest" a moral truth then? not quite either... well. while we're at it, is there a difference between morality and moral truth? imho, i consider morality something that arises from moral truth, in essence the manifestation of moral truth)

first of all, why the search for truth at all? it's possibly innately appealing as an absolute truth means it's immovable - hence, something can be relied on, and not subject to the fickleness of our day-to-day existence.

physical truths, aka laws of physics, for the most part, do provide us with a fairly large degree of confidence (not withstanding things that happen at a quantum level), we don't expect gravity to suddenly disappear one day.

moral truths, might offer a base to support us, intangible as it may be. taken to the next level, it might even serve as a guide, a compass as to how we should live our lives.

but then, plenty of people get along in life very well without ever having to ponder the truthfulness of truths, or if there are truths in the first place at all. i really don't know if this is an exercise in futility. but the problem is, once i start wondering, i can't help but to try to get to the bottom of it, at least to the best of my cognitive abilities.

so, what might a moral truth look like?

things slip, before you know it

perhaps, this might be a variation of "cherish what we have", "live in the present", or "be grateful for all the little things in life".

or not...

things always slip. there will certainly be that really good friend i was supposed to get in touch with, that thing i promised to do. but then, it's too late. it's already too late, or i know it'll be too late by the time i know i really have to do it.

try as i might, i either can't do all of it, or i can't muster the willpower to take care of all these little things.

excuses...?

or, just a fact of life. perhaps when we're prioritizing, we should label certain some to-do's as "might never get to and i can live with it".

the ability to create worries

the human mind is really good at worrying. or perhaps, more specifically, my mind is really good at worrying. my life is not in danger. i don't have any immediate life-threatening sickness i know of, and neither do my loved ones. food, shelter, i'm also fine for the foreseeable future.

but yeah, i'm worried. what the future holds and whether i'll be able to handle it. whether i'm good enough, compared to a certain level of expectations that have been created (probably mostly by me, again).

yes, stay in the present and cherish every moment, but then we also gotta plan. otherwise there's not much left to cherish.

or, just remember that our time is so finite and short, and you might as well enjoy it?

agnostic something

ever since i discovered the word "agnostic", which i was told back then was the view that god could not be proved nor disproved, i decided it best described my religious view. like bertrand russell's teapot, where the existence of a teapot in space simply could not verified, absurd as it may sound. (though that seems to lean towards a non-belief in god).

in my recollection my biggest issue was how does god listen to all of us if we are all praying to him at the same time? because god works in mysterious ways. so he is some bearded guy sitting on the clouds looking down on us, passing judgement on all the good and bad things we did? of course, i now know even christians believe god is not exactly in human form.

and now? i might say i'm an agnostic with a slightly buddhist bent - the danger with people assuming buddhism as a religion of some sort. buddhist thought at the end of the day seems to be a philosophical way of life - rather than a theology. well, there is a belief in afterlife, reincarnation, and nirvana. i'm inherently very skeptical of other worldly concepts, but... it would be a really easy method to attribute a lot of unexplainable issues in the world. (with all due respect, it is a bit like the hunter-gatherers who attributed everything to animalistic gods)

but there's also enough intellectual gymnastics to play with already...

why is peace good?

the simple answer seems to be there is not much suffering for everyone. is it the best utilitarian solution?

peace is in essence tolerance of people different from ourselves, tolerance of things we that do not agree with. historically, one of the key reasons tribes did not go to war as much as they might have is the fact that possible mutual destruction would have been much worse than tolerating each other. thus, the game theory outcome that might not give us the absolute best outcome, but it doesn't give us the worst outcome either.

doesn't war (the extreme form of competition) bring about change and improvement, at the expense of some pain and suffering?

isn't some force necessary to bring about peace?

whose peace? peace for the powerful?

done

sometimes, it just feels really nice to move on.

fleeting, but still nice.

it works most of the time

a lot of things work most of the time.

overpromising, and just assuming things will work themselves out. or people will just forgive you later anyway.

relying on your looks, status, personality, to get out of tight spots.

stealing (be it downloading music, movies, pirating software, overclaiming expenses)

avoiding responsibility, blaming somebody else for your mistake.

lying, because people won't find out, and if they did, they'd understand. and it was for the better for everyone anyway.

impose your will/take out your anger on the weaker. because they can't do anything about it.

but when it doesn't, it really blows up. as in, it really, really explodes in your face you're not sure if you're going to be around to pick the pieces up.

how should i spend my money?

should i buy myself that nice stereo i've been thinking about it for a long time?

should i try to buy an apartment?

should i use it to go on a volunteer trip to habitat for humanity or something similar?

should i simply donate it? (and to which organization?)

how much do i reserve for my own personal enjoyment?

how do i allocate?

i'm fucking useless

it's one of the worst feelings in the world.

maybe we are useless and worthless. for the million of reasons in the world. debt. sickness. loneliness. distrusted. dumped. unemployed. parasitic. depressed. fail.

just to get back on even keel, to the starting point, sometimes i don't even know if i can do that. let's not even begin to compare what i had achieved before. what my peers have achieved. what i thought i could achieve when i still had ideals, aspirations and goals.

how does one get out of this funk?

i think, the only tried and true way is to wait it out. lots of things to do in the interim, but in the end, i just gotta wait it out. and try not to do too many destructive things in the interim.

respected by what kind of people?

that might be the more ultimate questions i need to understand myself.

perhaps what i desire, at the end of the day, is to feel relatively superior. to other people, to my old self, to whoever it might be. in many ways, some way, or at least one way. it might be hardwired in my brain, it might not.

money is a huge recurring theme in my life. if i make it big, from my own efforts (or at least perceived to be my own efforts), then i get respected by a certain group of people. by other people who wish they could be rich as well. by other similarly rich and powerful people, and you can hang with them to feel similarly rich and powerful. that way, you can feel constantly superior. in hong kong, money does get you respect. you get on magazine covers, you get interviewed on TV, you get placed on a nice pedestal.

now if i devote to the "saving the world" stuff. i will probably get some respect from the people who i manage to help somehow (and perhaps not, as many social workers will tell us), but these are people who never get covered by the news, never go to cool parties, and frankly, are not the vaunted "movers and shakers" of the world. sure, some of them "make it", but most of them have no interest in this. they don't have some burning desire to be the "best altruist of 2009" and get a plaque for it.

i am somewhat lucky in that i could potentially access the rich and powerful and hence become one of them, and get the respect that i'm this really smart and successful person that i crave. but, what is the point of this, remind me again?

thinking vs feeling

by most modern scientific accounts (ignoring the possibilities of psychic experiences), both thinking and feeling are processes that occur in our brains.

in problem solving - thinking is possibly a bit more logical, going through things line by line, calculating whether the next step makes rational sense. feeling on the other hand bypasses all these formalities and goes right to the answer. much faster, and even possibly more accurate, accordingly to gladwell's "blink".

in relationships - well, thinking doesn't work most of the time. we think hard about how to maintain it, how to make our significant others happy. but, if we didn't feel in love in the first place we wouldn't be doing all this thinking.

is feeling simply a super fast way of thinking? heuristics we have acquired over our life experiences? what about cognitive bias traps that we are so well known to fall into?

or does the evident non-logical aspects of love already prove that the brain was never meant to operate under pure logic, and that intellectualizing things will only take us so far?

i you he she we they one

i don't know what kind of consistent voice to use in these writings. without pronouns, it just sounds weird. so i do need some pronouns.

"i" seems like an overt outward manifestation of my ego.

"you" seems like a condescending preachy tone, even though this "you" i am often referring to is myself.

"we" seems presumptuously and needlessly inclusive when the reader may or may not agree with the point of view of the entry.

"he" or "she" seems too politically correct, and using he/she at every instance would simply be annoying.

"they" seems so distant that they are not me, they are not us.

"one" seems to be too intentionally removed and stilted.

i also wonder if i subconsciously use "i" when i am writing about good things and "you" or "they" when writing about not so good things.

i suppose i'll have to stick to what feels right at that moment, and see what happens.

the effects of criticism

sometimes, i simply do not take criticism well. despite my attempt to rationalize it, at times, it really, truly, rattles me.

it might be fair, it might be unreasonable. it might be well-intentioned, it might be hateful. it might be from a loved one, it might be from someone i barely know.

the feeling is one that my very core and dignity is being trampled on. yes, some personal space that is being infringed upon. all feelings of selflessness or higher consciousness evaporate at once.

and all i can think of is, please just give me a break. which i guess is a tad better than some kind of vengeful thought.

what about the times when i criticize others, purposely or by accident?

if it is well-intentioned and justified, at least from my perspective, overall and over time, it's supposed to do more good than any short term negative feelings? am i obligated to package it nicely so it's digestible? if they can't handle the truth, they are either just too thick or 太小器 and that is no fault of mine? and i'm the one taking the risk of jeopardizing the friendship, and it would have been easier for me just not to say anything than to speak out? thus they should be thankful, not spiteful?

and yes - so should i simply be thankful for criticism? but logic, as we know, doesn't necessarily always work.

good without god?

the title of this book fascinated me. without a belief system, would society totally crumble? the gods in mankind's early history were not necessarily "good" gods.

are there any great, selfless individuals who are atheists? maybe there are some in this other book? buddhists themselves don't really have a god, in the western sense of the word, as far as i can tell, and at its essence there is the law of karma and a larger force.

can people do good just to feel good? if so, why wouldn't more people be doing it?

before we even have the ability to serve people other than ourselves, of course we need to take care of ourselves.

once we've done that, maybe we crave respect, fame, fortune, and the feeling of superiority more than anything else. it does make us feel good, no question about that. it's the easy way to feel good. but it's also hard to replicate. each "hit" feels less than before, and it takes a lot more to get the additional hit.

so, getting out of the race seems to make sense if we can find an alternative source of well-being.

but then, doesn't one have to resort to greater and greater acts of altruism to continue feeling good?

how many roads - are there actually?

sometimes, it seems there's only one road ahead of us.

sometimes, it seems there's not even a road, only a dead end, a cliff ahead.

sometimes there's way too many and we have no idea what to pick. sometimes it's a luxurious choice of several nice smooth roads, sometimes, it's a choice of a bunch of decrepit dirt roads.

if there aren't any choices, that it's simpler, just hope for the best.

if there are choices, just, maybe, take the one that serves others the most. ironically, taking the self-serving persona for a moment - if we fail, maybe, then it actually hurts us less since we expected not too much for ourselves in the first place.

too many friends

so many people come and go in our lives. many more go, than stay. some of the most important advice i've gotten, i don't even remember who gave it to me.

bunch of my friends are even on facebook - but i don't even know how to say hello without sounding, well, like someone who's stuck in the past and trying too hard to reminisce about old times.

if i start being too grateful to my friends, past or current, it just looks weird, honestly.

but well. having people come and go in our lives are simply a fact of life. modern connections let us keep in touch, but they also remind us of the many that we haven't kept in touch with.

there's no real solution to this, we naturally acquaint ourselves with more and more people, but it is simply impossible to stay good friends forever - yes, we do grow apart.

the nature of criticism

is it possible not to be bothered by criticism at all? if someone criticizes, could i simply see it as either i) a chance for me to improve and thus be thankful or ii) they have no idea what they're talking about so no need to pay attention?

what if they are criticizing my ability, and lack thereof? if it's subjective, then i could consider whether it has any merit and adjust accordingly. if it's objective, then we either try to improve or accept it as a fact and deal with it accordingly.

perhaps the infinitely rational being never has a problem with criticism. what is the emotional benefit of feeling bad about criticism then? simply because encouragement is positive and criticism is negative?

"you're doing poorly, you should improve"

"you're doing fine, but you can do even better"

arguably these could be saying the exact same things.

do we feel bad only when we know the criticism is inherently true and we are unable to do what we thought we could do? do we feel wronged by unfair criticism because it takes away something from us? we like the feeling of superiority and being criticized makes us feel inferior to others?