The Problem of Evil

In the past, I believed that the concept of evil is an absurd one. "There are no such things as good and evil", said I in my high school grad blurb. That was because I believed people judge acts of goodness and evilness according to their own up-bringing and personal beliefs. The flaw in that thinking was brought to light in Nietzche's idea that the opposite of good is not evil, but bad (or rather, he pointed out that in the ancient Greek, that's what they thought). Good is something that has greatness and fulfills their role (ie. a sharp and hard knife is a good knife), while bad is something that don't do that (ie. a dull and soft knife is a bad knife). Evil is something all on its own. After years of thought, I decided to define evil as the following:

purposely trying to make the universe a worse place than before, for its own sake.

Which means, the only ones capable of evil are sentient beings. Acts of evil would include burning piles of recyclable paper for the sole purpose of pumping out green house emissions onto the environment (which I've done before, after the stupid recycle truck took every piece of paper outside the blue box, but not the ones inside!). Torturing a random person for the sake of causing pain and suffering for the victim and people that loves the victim.

I'm so emo it's not even funny.

Bah. CURSE YOU PHILOSOPHY!!!!

Well, now I found an answer to the question of "what good is a philosophy minor?". The answer is, "allow you to form logical arguments for depressing concepts". YEA!

It's been soooo long since I started this post, I figure I should finish it. Well, I'm currently not that emo now, so the effect isn't as great, and I've probably already lost some of my original thoughts.

Anywho, these were my thoughts. Sure we seem alive, and we appear to stay exactly the same when one cell leaves us. Even if one brain cell dies, we don't even give a damn about it. So what happens when we add one more to the mix? And one more, and so on? To what point do we consider ourselves significantly injured? How do you define you?

What exactly am I? I change every single moment. I am not the same person as before. If my brain gets damaged by a pipe similar to Gage, I'd transform into a completely different person. Should I be considered alive? Having so much difficulties defining a person, I am suspect that a you-ness or me-ness is possible. In that sense, dying is really not that bad, 'cause there really isn't a "you" that dies. That is to say, since there is no beginning of "you", then obviously there is no end of "you".

That's wonderful. Made me feel slightly better about my fear of death, but now I've got a problem of self identity. There is no "me", so why do I bother living? What's the point? Sure, we act as though there's some meaning for life, but if the truth is that once we die, we die, what does it matter? You can say that sure, it matters to you personally at that moment in time, but there's problems with that idea. First, since I have a huge difficulty defining who and what I am, I'd have difficulty understanding to what and who life is important. You may say that it's important for the people around you, and for your decendents. Well, who the heck gives a damn in 100 years? 1000 years? A million years? How about a billion years? You'd think in a billion years, people will remember someone as terrible as Hitler? And your life really doesn't matter to the people around you. Other people's lives go on. You could also say that there's no proof that we don't have souls, and there's some sort of afterlife. Well, if we have souls, and afterlife exist, then I'd be very satisfied. In fact, I would give an arm and a leg and perhaps one of my eyeballs as payment for someone to come and haunt me, if that's what it takes. Oh heck, I may as well as throw in a kidney, a lung, and one testicle while I'm at it. But what I see what's in front of me, of a functional body that moves and does things one moment, and no longer doing so the next. It's exactly the same as a funtional machine, that broke down and no longer works. We see that when machines fail, it just fails. Never again funtioning. We can't imagine a machine having a soul and have some sort of afterlife, so why do we imagine our body to contain souls?

And now for something completely different.

As some of you know, my grandparents from my dad's side aren't exactly supportive of my immediate family. They give no love to their children, but demands love and money in return. They complain that their children do not honour them. I'm not sure how common their behaviour is, but I blame confuciousm philosophy in the orient. The whole idea of filial piety is bogus. Honour your parents yes, but only if they exhibited love, and thus deserve to be honoured. Respect should only be given to individuals worthy of respect.

And now for something completely different, part 2.

I wonder, is jealousy of children common? That is to say, if children are better than you in every shape and form, what proportion of parents would be jealous? Personally, I'd want my kids to be great. That is to say, be the best at what he/she do. Be it instigate a revolution to overthrow a government, or be the best serial murderer, or one who finds the cure for every diseases, or one who brings world peace at last, or the world's best con artist, or the next Hitler, or the next Mother Teresa. What ever the deed, I'd be proud. Better to be a terrible monster than to live a life of mediocrity. If my children become monsters, I'd be proud of the fact that they became an icon for society to know what not to do.

Why?

Don't fix what's not broken! That's my thought. Why must we transfer to the new blogger when the old one works totally fine with me? Same with the stupid MSN that changed to Window's Live Messneger and the stupid updates for Window's Media Player. Granted I never updated to the newer versions for the later stuff, but I've heard horror stories about them.

Blah blah blah, valentines this valentines that. I hate you all, you non-single people. May you choke on chocolate and get pricked by roses. (Yea yea, one of these days my rage will subside. But before that, I shall rage to my heart's content).

Random thoughts after reading Ching's blog. I started comparing my past and present fears. I've always feared death as long as I remember, so at least that stayed a constant. I didn't used to fear flying, but in the last couple of years, during my trip to the Canadian east cost, I somehow developed a nasty fear of it. I used to fear riding on roller coasters, to the point I was pretty much emotionally scarred when suckered into going on the Mindbuster in Canada's Wonderland. However, I am now completely fine with them. In the past, I was not afraid of the dark. In fact, I would close the blinds, draw down the curtains, make my room completely pitch black before I go to sleep. I find that now I'm developing a slight fear for the dark. Although I still had a nasty fear of heights, upon looking down from tall places, I imagine what it would feel if I was to plummet towards the earth.

Random fun dream I had the other day. I was flying again. This time it was a heck of a lot easier than in my lucid dream. The method of flying is similar to being in 0g environment, and all I had to do is push off from the ground towards a wall, and I'd float to that place. Now isn't this interesting that I can imagine myself in an environment in which I have never been in, and be quite certain that if I was in that environment, it would feel exactly the same way as in my dream?

Mom's back from Taiwan. Just found out recently that 4 out of 6 of my biological aunts from my mom's side is currently battling cancer, as well as several of my cousins, also from my mom's side. It sucks. I wish the best of health and quick and successful recovery for all of them. But all in all, I'm just glad my mom is one of the lucky ones without cancer. Hope it stays that way for many many years to come. Hope also that I won't develop cancer myself, and will live a very very long time.

Been reading lots of novels. In the past couple of weeks, read Ender's Game, Speaker of the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind (all 4 books are from 1 series), and The Looking Glass Wars. Onwards to read Children of Men next.

Been working on my novel as well. Hope to upload the next chapter in a couple of weeks. For those who were wondering where the violcence went for the last chapter, well, there's a healthy amount of that in the upcoming chapter.

I want to polish my archery skills.

Who am I?

Who am I? How do I know what I do is not just a series of complex responses to stimuli? Descartes claims cognito ergo sum, but how do I know I actually think? The way I see it, thought is just opening of channels and passing synapse between cells. Heraclitus claims that nothing is, and everything is becoming, and I see value in that statement. Every moment in time at any part of the universe is never exactly the same. Likewise, the me in the past is not the same me of today. No one ever think the exact same thought twice, and scrutinize it enough, you are not the same you from a second ago. So who am I?

You might think I'm being nick picky about this sort of thing, and perhaps you are right. But consider this, when a person survives a serious trauma to the brain, their personality might so drastically that they act as if they're someone completely different. Yet from appearance, we say that's the same person. To me, this suggests that we have no control of who we are and what kind of person we want to be. I am nothing but a complex robot responding to a series of stimuli. Coursing though the process of nature, flowing through time like water flows down a river. There might be certain things I find painful or fear and try to avoid at all cost. But that's just certain chemicals being directed to certain positions in the brain by other factors. So why am I here? Actually, more fundamentally, is there even such a thing as an "I"?

I am not religious, so I cannot accept the idea that we have souls, and they go on while our body decomposes, although I wish that was the case. If we have souls, why doesn't anyone try to contact us from beyond the grave? With that many souls in the land of the not living, there must be someone persistant enough to find a way to get through, but there isn't. So I am forced to conclude that I am but a pint of water in the river of time. I am bothered by the insignificance and meaninglessness that is my undefined existance.