From the Notebook

          This post is basically a follow up for my earlier post “The Purpose of Life”.  Many people had said that the purpose of life is to be happy.  I think this is a fair statement.  But what is happiness is often debated.

            In Chinese culture, happiness is closely related to worldly events.  For example, there is a popular phrase “double happiness arriving at the door” (which is considered the great happiness), obviously here happiness is referred to as something happened in real life.  But happiness after all is an emotion, or a state of mind.  Granted that emotion usually are evoked by experience, or that it is something that responding to what one just experienced, but what has to happen that will make one feel happy is not very clear cut. 

            Some say it has something to do with expectations.  If you expect too much, then most of the time you will be disappointed.  But, many have said that the secret of success is to set high expectations.  If you cannot dream big, you cannot win big.  So, it seems that the most successful people would likely to unhappy people. 

            This seems to be the irony of life.  In order to have many of the things that will make most people happy to come to you, you ought to not to be happy about them.  This is probably what makes people feel hopeless.  In fact, religion often lead people to go beyond this world, for example Buddhism sees attachment to the world as the ultimate obstacle. 

            Perhaps this is what they called you can’t have it all (because in order to have it all, you ought to feel you have nothing).  But I believe here simplification leads misunderstanding, so I like to talk go into detail here. 

            Perhaps the key is at execution.  It is what is often called “happiness is from within”.  Here, my interpretation is that the reason or reasons for keeping you happy ought to be within yourself, which is the ability to keep your self happy.  For example, some are able to “make lemonade if life gave you lemon”, and some emphasis the importance of being content. 

            It is because for most people, the world is not our oyster, and it does not rotation around us (even though from time to time, a few people are offered the delusion of it).  And ultimately no matter who you are, what you have, you cannot have everything happen as you like it.  So, being happy for what you have, and make the best use of it is essential for sustaining happiness.

            But it is not in contradiction with aiming high, and desire for more (the development of civilization is build on this desire), although it does depend on what it is that you are desiring about.  Many seemingly highly successful people had been depressed or deep despair because they are desiring for something just impossible (which usually is the ultimate control).  The desires of kings or emperors to have absolute control often result in spinning out of control which leads to defeat.  People of great talents and accomplishments often desire for absolute command of the domain, which will always elude them. 

            What we should all remember is the rewards of aiming high is not just at the finish line, but in every step of the way, the enjoyment from the actions, the realization of self worth by being useful, and the dream of a better future.  But the work never ends.  A common mistake people made is that they will assume that success will change them, that it will make them better, more capable and happier persons.  But the actually results of success is simply higher expectations from themselves, especially from other people.  And most of the problems arise from unable to deal with this reality.   

            Much has been said about possession, access and control is that they do not necessarily guarantee happiness.  But lack of them will mostly guarantee some unhappiness.    However, the sense of lacking is not as devastating as the sense of lost, deprived of something that one relied on often lead to grief and anger.   It may be a human survival mechanism that things that will have negative effects on us will certainly provoke negative emotions (perhaps to lead us to instinct responses).  But as we can consciously appreciate these negative occurrences, the emotion impacts on us seems to be something redundant, and most likely they will lead us to do things that will harm us or others for no good reasons, rather than help us. 

            I believe the best way for dealing with this is distraction.   This means not to love less, but to love more, the key is to diversify.  No, I am not suggesting to love more than one person at once, but to love more than one type of things at once.  Success requires dedication, but it does not mean that you can only love one type of thing only.  The point is different things make our happy for different reasons.  The common misunderstanding is that in order to be goal oriented, one cannot stop and smell the rose. 

            I believe this is a big mistake.  The reason is that it over look the power of fusion. One of the unfortunate side effects of success is the limit of potentials.  The rich inheritance of civilization also makes one wonder what more we can do.  In seems that in whatever fields, what you think you can do, there are someone else that can do it better, if not that it has been done before.  So, the key is often not about the intensity or degree of dedication, but the new ingredience, or better, new ways in doing things. 

            In this day and age, humans are not only feeling pressure from the peers, we are also feeling pressure from the machines, as for what the machines can do, they can often do it better and cheaper.  But what machine cannot do is dealing the unexpected or to be creative, that is where human can excel.  In human society, traditional cultures often inferred a stigma on diversity, but modern society is built on diversity.  It is often more useful (and easier) to be different than to be better.

            Maybe life is a mystery, or maybe like anything else we should not assume we have the nature abilities to appreciate it.  Perhaps happiness is from within, but as most of what we are is acquired during our lives, the ability to appreciate life and be happy is also something we can learn how to do. 

 

            I am not talking about the place that an accident happened not too long ago involving a killer whale.  I am talking about the actual sea world, the vast space beyond the land.

            I heard quite a few people commenting about how we know very little about the sea, even in the age when spacecrafts have been sent to other planets.  But my focus here is something more practical, mostly in the area of mariculture including algaculture.

            In my earlier post “It is a small world”, I talked about population growth contributed to many environmental related issues.  Essentially, energy (in the form of food for humans and fuel and electricity for machines) consumption is a major cause of many environmental problems.  As the populations grow and improvement of living standards, there are more demands for food and energy, which leads to reduction of wild lands. 

            I don’t think it is practical to drastically reduce consumption, so we need to find new ways to meet the demands.   For this, we need to look at the new frontier, the vast space in the ocean for our solution.

            Maybe because we are land animals, our relationship with sea is quite primitive.  Primarily, humans’ productive activities in the sea are mostly related to fishing, which is an activity tracing back to the hunting and gathering era.  On the broader base of energy source, people only are thinking about off-shore drilling. 

            But there should be more to it.  In my earlier post “It is a small world”, I talked about the benefits of capturing solar energy as the energy source.  Because it not only is a sustainable clean source, it does not add to the global heat balance equation.  Solar energy is directly related to surface receiving the solar energy.

            I am now looking at a little jeweled globe I bought as a souvenir in Las Vegas.  In this little globe, the lands are filled with various types of nature stones, but the ocean is filled with some type of purple colored man-made materials (probably it can be interpreted as about the opinion about the value of the land and sea).  My point is, I see a lot more purple than various colors of the nature stones.  So, if we are thinking about solar energy, we ought to look more into the ocean. 

            The question is how.  I think the starting point to go beyond solar panel, and think about biological process.  Here, algaculture can come into play.  The reason algaculture is related to solar energy is because algae growth absorbs solar energy from the sun lights.  So, no matter in the forms of food or biofuels, our energy source is solar. 

            The biological process when solar energy is absorbed will also absorb carbon dioxide at the same time.  This is why biofuel is a clean energy source, because it is carbon neutral.  In the case of algaculture, because algae will absorb carbon dioxide in the ocean, it will reduce the acid level of the ocean if in large scale, which will help to maintain health environment for marine lives.

            In one of the trips to Everglade National Park, there was a scene in the south side left a lasting impression in my mind.  In an observation point, I had tasted a little piece of heaven, where happiness was in the air.  All animals were so content, and lived peaceful lives.  On this spot, there were plenty of plants and algae, so the fish were huge.  Because there were plenty of fish around, the alligators were so full, they would not even blink as schools of large fish swimming around them.  Oh, did I mention that there are also various kinds of birds added to the picture?

            The reason I mention this experience is because it is related to the global environmental issue about endangered spices, including sea creatures.  The food chain starts with plants.  In land and sea, if there are more plants, there will be more small animals, going up to larger animals, including whales and lions. If we can preserve more wild lands, there will be more nature environment for various animals to survive.  And, if there are more algae in the sea, more fish will grow, and more large sea creatures will survive.

            Seaweeds are already part of the food source, they are high in protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals, and low in calories, and fat, so it is obviously a healthy food source.  Even processed food such as Jello can be considered as healthy food (if sugar and color additives are controlled).  Nutritional additive such as Omega-3 can also be obtained from algae.    

            What is more is that algae can not only be food source for humans, it can also be food source for animals.  Not only it can be feed to fish (more fish as food source will obviously be a good thing), it can also be feed to land animals as well. 

            The attempt to develop biofuel had some backslash when the focus was on corn as raw material.  But what if the source is something from the vast ocean?  Of course there are many challenges, especially if we want to look into the vast ocean, not just the area very close to the land (so far, these areas are where the focus is on). 

             But I believe if we can do deep sea oil drilling, we should be able to do open sea algaculture.  The potential is almost unlimited, the benefits are so many.  In large scale, algaculture will not only save the environment, it may also help us to reduce nature disasters.  There are several devastating hurricanes and tsunamis in recent memories.  They are related to activities of surface water in the ocean.  If we successfully developed algaculture in the open sea, then algae near the surface of the water will change the behaviors of the surface water (the mass of algae will damper up drastic movement of the surface of water), so that it could reduce the effect of hurricanes and even tsunamis. 

            In my earlier post “Stop global warming – Change the world”, I suggested we should channel sea water to the desert areas, in order to reduce global warming.  If this is done, then algaculture can be developed in this in land sea environment, so that there will be more usable surface on earth (my little global does not indicate where are the cultivatable land, but from my memory, there are significant portion of the lands are desert now.  If we don’t do something, it will be worse.  Looking at the human history, we did many things that was not possible before it becomes reality.  We can save the planet if we want to.  

           The question about the purpose of life is a recurring question for the society.  Many people tried to provide answers, yet the question still is asked again and again.  Here, I like to provide an analysis for this question.

            There are many layers to this question.  As a biological phenomenon, the purpose of life is to stay alive, this apply to individuals and species as well.  For this purpose, it has the demand that in order to stay alive, we must have certain things (food, tolerable living conditions, prevention of dangers, prevention of diseases, etc.) 

            But life for humans gives us consciousness, and judgment.  So being alive is not just to stay alive, but to live as we like it.  This often leads to how we live our lives.  Life does provide us with the platform of many possibilities, for doing what we want to do.  However, there are also limitations that could eliminate many possibilities, such as abilities, access and control. 

            The development of the civilization is mostly about improving the abilities of the human race.  And, more and more people realized that determination is more important than individuals’ natural abilities.  However, social limitations such as access and control are more difficult to overcome. 

              Access and control relate to people’s abilities to interact with others.  Here is where money and power come into play.   Money provides access, while power relates to control.   Money and power are closely related to the ability to survive, and the ability to interact with the society, to conduct various activities, so most people can’t ignore them, and many would be focusing on them. 

            Admitted or not, most people have thought about how to get money and power (in modern society, money often lead to power, and most people would be more concern about money than power, as power is more remote for most people.)  The conclusion many reached could be troubling. 

            For example, “An Education” is not just about the purpose of education, it is also about the purpose of life.  We can understand that a young girls’ search for life relates to good food, culture activities, but it also raise the question about at what cost.  Be dazzled by the lifestyle she can only dreamed of, she knowing accepted the skipping operation of the man that provides her this lifestyle, so that she is morally compromised in many different ways. 

            Needless to say it is not just happened to a young girl, it could happen to anybody.  The desire to have a comfortable life is not in itself the problem, the problem is in the society in how to reward people.  If we allow more and more people benefit from activities that harm the society, then it is inevitable that more and more people would knowingly conduct and participate such activities.  You can call it social engineering or whatever else, but in order for more people to get a better life, we ought to reward those that are working hard on this goal, but not those that harm the society.   

            Human existence is not just an experience of physical existence, it is a mental experience as well.  Humans are social animals, culture and social interactions are also important parts of life.  In this sense, the purpose of life is defined by social experience and culture influences. 

            In social interaction, access and control are also related to approval, admiration, and love.  When money and power operates between strangers, dealing with the exchange of materials, approval, admiration, and love are the exchange of emotions, and are operating between friends, and loved ones, and extending in the society that people often call communities. 

            The key for obtaining approval, admiration, and love is to give, and to participate in the communities is to contribute.  In short, people ought to do what would benefit others or societies in order to obtaining approval, admiration, and love. 

            If you think money and power is all about taking, then obviously there is a conflict.  However, it should not be so.  Fist of all, money relates to access, and access is about the ability to give.  Although power and control is more dynamic, they are also related to results.  We should not forget that commercial activities are based on the foundation of mutual benefits.  Those that take without giving are violating the fundamental principle of the modern society, and should not be tolerated.

            On the other hand, the activities that eventually benefit individuals are also those that benefit the society.  This really goes back to the point that humans are social animals.  To feel the existence of self is not just through the feelings of oneself, it is mostly through the impacts on the world.  Achievements will generate the sense of control.  So, it seems that the purpose of life is a life with a purpose.

 

            There are science fictions that are based on science and there are science fictions that are not supported by science.  Originally there were people who write stories that filled with imaginations based on new and established theories.  Many turned out predicted what happened later.  But fictions need to have story lines, so many science heavy books may not be fascinating for the readers, and more so for the science fiction films. 

            In fact, most of the science fiction films are not so much different from general story telling, only that the back drops have some science fiction elements.  But there are many fictions that are based on misunderstanding of the science development, and created new fantasies that can never be realized.  As a results, it often spread ignorance, not knowledge, even love for knowledge.   

            Science fictions may lead people to be interested in science, after experience the magical world of science, and often science fictions are used as a tool to expose and provoke us to think about the problems within our society.  But very often science fiction films become a form of entertainment by toying with the tendency of the fear about the unknown, and turned out reinforcing many misunderstanding. 

            It is obvious that science fiction ought to push the limit of science, but can we call it science fiction if the fiction is clearly against known scientific principle and common logic, while serving no particular social purpose?  For example, time machine has often been a recurring theme in science fiction.  But it is a fantasy that is not supported by science and against common logic.  It probably all started with Einstein’s relativity theory.  But what this theory actually said is that difference in time could occur for different observers, not for participants.

            Time is an internal concept that does not exist as matters in the world (Emmanuel Kant’s had explained it in “Critiques of Pure Reason”, I will write more about time, space and matter in my later post).  As one see the world, one is setting the time for the world.   So, in this sense, a person in the world as one knew is not an observer but the creator of time, so, reserving time is not possible.

            Time is related to space, and space is also an internal concept similar to time.  As everyone internalized the space, there is a space with each of the individuals.   However, they are not parallel, as they are all bound by the existence in the outer world.  So, the theory of parallel universe is also not creditable. 

            There are also misunderstandings about matters as well.  In the movie “Star Trek”, the space ship was drawn to the black hole, but magically escaped.  But how a space ship can escape and all the humans and machines were intact?  It is simply impossible.  If not even light can escape the black hole (that is why it is called black hole, then nothing can escape black hole, and the intense gravity of the black hole will crash anything that was drawn to it).

            These are only a small portion of the problems.  Many so called science fiction films are not only against scientific principles and common logic, the underlining message is often against science and social development.   Although the imaginations may be going even outside of the world of actual science, the imaginations about social structure is actually very lacking.  Many of the science fictions movies drawn heavily from the social reality of the past, many went back far in history, provided us the strange combination of advanced technology under ancient social structure, this inevitable provide a gleam prediction for the future.   We can find many examples, such as star war movies, or “Star Trek”.

            It is quite a contradiction.  The year’s phenomenon “Avatar” heavily relies on technology while seems to deliver a message that is rather against technology.  In the movie “Land of lost”, the harsh reality of historical societies was revealed to certain degree.  But it is not so in “Avatar”.  In the effort against colonialism and Imperialism, many had idealized many “indigent cultures”.   Modern sentiments longing for simpler life also contributed the tendency to romanticize the past. 

            Technology first and foremost makes things possible.  But what to do with technology and how society will develop is ultimately determined by human beings.   Although history has not progressed in a straight line, the overall impact of technology development is not only improvement on living condition, but also social advances.  But improvement does not happen automatically, it requires constant, conscious, collective efforts of the individuals. The first step is the awareness and correct identification of the problems.

            On this note, I found the movie “District 9” seems to strike the right note.  “District 9” is a good example of a social drama in the back drop of science fictional themes.  By introducing the fictional scenario into the mix, it accurately revealed the complicity of the global reality.  Unlike “Avatar”, it did not romanticized the reality of “indigent culture”.  The conflicts between the individuals, and the profit focusing corporation, the indifference modern society, and gangsters with ancient mystical believes not only provide action sequences, twists and turns of the storyline, it also makes us reflect on the reality of our global society. 

            The task of artistic creation is not actually find solution for our social problems, but it often leads us to ask the right questions.  In this sense, “District 9” not only did well, but it could as well over performed, while “Avatar” seems to be misleading.  We certainly cannot go back in time in order to fix all our problems (not even environmental problems), and no gods ancient or modern can save us unless we save ourselves.  As illustrated by “District 9”, the fundamental problem in the modern society is individual indifference.  We might think the problem is not ours until it is too late.  In the conflicts between society and individuals, we ought to realize that society is collection of individuals, and the solution is everyone should treat the problems of each and every individual as if it is our own, because it could turn out to be. 

         It seems that pop culture is a new type of phenomenon.  Through out history, in various cultures, there are high cultures, and there are folk cultures, where high cultures emphasis on ideals, some are called arts, while folk cultures focus more on entertain, to make folks feel good.

            But pop culture is something different.  It is for entertainment, yet it is treated as high culture in reach and prestige.  On one hand, you can call it the culture democracy, what is good for the mass is viewed as what is good for the society, on the other hand, it seems to reject the a fundamental culture tradition.  In form and substances, pop culture often rejects the idea of ideals, and attunes to individual reality.

            In the tradition of western civilization, arts and high cultures are often closely related to religion, ideals are close to the assertion of the God.   This is not directly reflected in the pop culture.  Yet the pop culture is also different from the folk cultures, as it is not simply the reflections of life, but the indications of something larger than life. 

            Pop culture is not just a folk culture because it is supported by high culture concepts.  It is where the high culture and folk culture merged.  Philosophical ideas had provided supports for the underlining ideas of the pop culture.  It is the freedom of the individuals.

            When people look at Dadaism piece the “Fountain”, it is clear that it is making a mockery of the high culture.  But when Andy Warhol exhibited the “Campbell soup “, he was making a statement.  No wonder many consider it as the beginning of the pop culture. 

            We can interpret the “Campbell soup” as the statement about consumerism, it certainly is, and it is not in conflict with the idea of instant gratification, but it may also represent some thing structural.  It is the mass production itself.  In essence, pop culture itself is closely related with mass production. 

            Consumerism and mass production make many modern comforts available to the masses.  No doubt it increased the quality of life for most people.  But the close relationship of the pop culture with consumerism and mass production has its drawbacks.  In order to have mass appeal, in search of commonality of the audience (consumerism is all about giving the mass what they want), pop culture often had to strip down to human biological existence, rather than social existence.  This leads to the effects of dummied down, and the focus on sex and violence.

            It seems that majority of the people accepted without question that human knowledge is innate existed, people talking about who they are as if that were who they were, and who they are going to be.  It seems that most people seem to be happy with accepting stimulate to entertain biological or semi-biological desires more than to grow as a person.

            But culture influence is a tool for building social consensus and is a form of education.  Unfortunately, many entertainment products are designed to please people, so that when people think they are learning from what they see, they are actually reinforced with the idea for self indulgence and self gratification. 

            In format, there are many religious organizations in operating.  But the function of them is hardly helpful.  We have to admit in the western society, religion had lost its gripping power.  More and more, they are like a commercial institution, for making people feel good about themselves.   This is to say that they are also part of the pop culture. 

            There were debates about whether God is dead, and there are also debates about whether art is dead.  The bottom line is in the culture development, what was used as foundation of cultures was no longer useful.  New foundation need to be established.

            Pop culture not only reduced the substance of the culture by emphasis on desires based on biological needs, it also limited the culture to focus mostly on the first level of conscious, i.e., the conscious of self and perceive the world based solely on the conscious of self.  Traditionally, the high culture requires people to elevate the conscious to a higher level, i.e., the perception is based on the paramount view of the world.  However, the traditional high culture did not actually based on the perception from a paramount view, but often from the view of privileged people. 

            In history, God is the foundation of the western society, and individuals were asked to obey the rules of God.  The new era with democracy bring demand for individual freedom.  Regardless of what is the attitude towards God, individual freedom was asserted as paramount.  But we ought to remember that humans are social animals.  And what we view as an individual is a social component.  We know nothing when we were born.  What is then becomes “I” is a collection of knowledge and rules that we accepted from the society. 

            Individual freedom first and foremost is the freedom of the mind, not the unrestricted freedom of the body.  The purpose for freedom of the mind is to question and challenge the existing social knowledge and social rules, in order to advance social development.  Granted in order to maintain social structure, the freedom of individuals in the society (especially as an average citizen) is limited.  We ought to aware the consequences of our actions, and be aware of the knowledge and rules of the society.

            But when the pop culture rejected the paramount view, it also segmented the society, basically resulted in the world separated into many different parallel universes (the universe of each individuals).  It is viewed as the rejection of established culture, but most often it results in the rejection of rationality.  There are many discussions about the political polarizations in the United States.  Fundamentally, the influence of pop culture is the key. 

            Society needs common consensus, and cultures reflect common consensus at any given time.  But the indication of the pop culture is that the common consensus is that there is no common consensus.  This is certainly troubling.  In a democratic society, there is no governing class (at least in theory), everyone is part of the governing body.  So, it makes sense that the pop culture is also the high culture. 

            If you read the novel “The Brave New World”, you might consider the theory of conspiracy.  But I believe that it just gives too much credit for them.  It is obvious that people will try to do what is good for them, and many will try to manipulate the situation to benefit themselves.  But the environment that provides them the ability to do so should be exam first.  This is the confusion of the culture development.  New ground for building consensus needs to be discovered and developed, and the foundation is what is commonly known as utilitarian view.  The existing utilitarian theory had taken much of the heat because it lacks full development.  In essence, there should only be one measurement, that is the measurement of reality, but it is not the isolated individual reality, rather it is the unified social reality in view of the individual reality.

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