Quality not Quantity

Sparing the reader a long and illegible introduction, this writer will head straight to the crux of the issue at hand. In the daily newspapers, a general article with an eye catching header reads "GHOST SIGHTED AT MID VALLEY". In this piece of reportage, the writer describes the apparition from an eyewitness account, "It was grey and black, floated upwards and seemed very angry".  After two 'supporting' articles in the days that followed, the sighting in question is now accepted as fact. People now avoid the aforementioned shopping mall for fear of encountering this ghastly demon, and perhaps rightly so. Who in their right minds would want to encounter such a thing? The word is quickly spread to warn others who missed this.

What is the problem here, this writer asks? Surely this only happens in an unevolved society unable to discern fact from fiction. Surely readers within the circulation of that particular article will demand further analysis before making up their minds. Surely someone will say "hey, wait a minute, has this happened before?, if so where?, can we trust the author?, can we trust the eyewitness?, what could be possible agendas for the basis of printing this story?

The problem here is that our children in their formative years are exposed to articles such as "Ghost sighted at Mid Valley" and commanded to memorize and regurgitate it at a later time. Perhaps too simplistic an example but yes, on a grand scale reflective of subjects taught in schools and reflective of the end product: Biased opinion without due consideration of mitigating factors. The formative age of a child is defined as the period of physical and psychological development from the onset of puberty to maturity. 

This is the window where educationists can reach into the living neurons within the child and shape it to not only absorb information but to also, more importantly, dissect it and make better sense of it. This information, be it about nature, history, language, civilization or religion to name a few categories, when analysed thoroughly gives the individual a better perspective of not only about the world around them but also their sense of self.

Conversely, a child with no such ability simply does as he is told and lives only through the experiences of others, never truly forming an independent point of view. 

This herd mentality is one that is prevalent amongst developing nations holding true to the notion that individuality should be stifled for the betterment of the masses. This worked well for some societies. One would dread to think of a philosopher or an artist in hunter gatherer colonies. In such groups, the men hunted and the women gathered. The rest were simply passengers if they did not pull their weight in these two aspects.

However, one would like to believe that natural selection over thousands of years have shaped human cognition tremendously from a basic  thought process to the perception of efficacy in any given modern society. Merely listening to what is said and taking it at face value is not enough.

Faith in the unexplored is unacceptable today because the answers are there; you just have to look for it. Question things from all angles, not just the side that appears first.

Get children excited about knowledge for it is them who are going to pass it on to the next generation.

The writer grew up in Malaysia but was lucky to go to college and have teachers that encouraged critical thinking. It is a unique cognitive awakening when topics are discussed and debated without fear of putting anyone (especially the teacher) in negative light. When you critically discuss something based on facts a new picture emerges. It is no longer drab and dreary; it becomes a fun challenge where the victory is understanding.

After death we die? No way.

What happens to living creatures when they stop living? The earliest undisputed human burial dates back 130,000 years and gives us an insight into just how far back humans believed in the existence of life after death. A belief the road doesn’t end when the body gives up. That physical life is just a stepping stone with lessons and experiences to be accumulated before we move on to a different plain.

Theories to what’s in store for us when we die seem to branch out into three main ideas. The first and arguably most popular is that after we die, our soul finds its way to heaven, hell or purgatory. If we have lived our lives according to how a certain ancient holy doctrine dictates then we reap the rewards in heaven. If we fail to adhere to policy stated therein then we end up in the gutter of the universe aptly named hell. However if we fail to make the cut for neither paradise nor its extreme adversary, we end up in limbo. Purgatory is its name and wafting around in sub-existence is the game.

Another equally noteworthy and amazing hypothesis suggests we keep coming back in a different form in correspondence to how we lived in the former life. And that this cycle of life and death ends only when we have learned from our mistakes and have thus achieved enlightenment.

The third theory proposes that we are pure energy and when the physical body dies this energy changes form, escapes its once proud vessel and floats free to roam wherever it may.

A fourth possibility had to be mentioned apart from the three illustrated above because of its bizarrely hopeless finale. The heart stops, brain starves, body shuts down, the dearly departed gets buried, the body becomes worm food.

We’ve come so far in terms of technology; blurring the borders of science and science-fiction. We’ve colonised earth, cloned living things and are now building hotels in outer space. Fascinatingly, a shaman presiding over burials in the Neolithic era had an uncanny similarity with the modern day priest; theories of life after death. A vision that all is not lost upon cessation of the physical being and the unity with our loved ones again.

Turn on the light for a change

The other day, a friend of mine declared he was not homophobic; but finds the everyday antics of gay people disgusting. From a random guy couple holding hands gazing into each other’s eyes to their club scene, lingo and dressing. It all stresses him out. All of it! My friend, I told him, you are a homophobe; no doubt about it.

Homophobia is a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards same sex or transgender behavior. The word phobia means irrational fear. So basically homophobia is the irrational fear of everything gay. But what exactly makes it a phobia and not just regular fear? If you don’t know how to swim or float, your fear of drowning is real because upon entry into water as high as your total body length, you must either swim or float or else you WILL suffocate. And if because of this fear you start avoiding any body of water, even that puddle after the rain, this once well founded fear has morphed into a phobia.

With the fear of the dark comes an enlightening analagy; you switch on the lights and the negative emotion desists. It is gone!

Fundamentally; you shed light on something the illusion disappears and you see it for what it truly is.

However, a lot of the time we refuse to investigate as this involves getting up close and personal with a stress element. So in essence some prefer to live with a blocked peripheral view of their external world, unable or unwilling to process crucial information about their surroundings.

What is the result of an entire population living out their lives this way? Whole generations of cripples who point at, discriminate and disassociate anything not within their line of sight.