Just Things

This is the time again to suffer the insufferable. Of course, I hate exams. I hate taking them, I hate making them. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think it is a pointless exercise and a waste of time, a boorish ceremonial practice of self-assurance. This is not to undermine the intellectual benefit of exams. Indeed, due to them people have found themselves able to transform a minute-long glance of their notes into an ineffable and vivid short term memory, awaiting its release. (And fade away thereafter). It is a challenging cognitive process perceived to reveal the solemn “contents” of the mind.  Yes, contents. For exams are seen as a time when what is inside the students’ head is checked and measured. Here, we see a fundamental assumption: teaching is putting something inside a mind and learning is consuming and containing what has been put in. It only reveals our materialism in education. We model the human brain according to objects, because only objects are liter...

We live our life unsystematically. Yes, we do have habits and patterns of actions that keep our day to day experience sheltered from the chaos of the too many unknown and unpredictable things that surround us. Nevertheless, we do not treat our life as a “system” in the strict sense of the term. For something to be a ‘system’, it must follow some discernible, process-like actions that are intended to bring forth a specific, nameable purpose. A system is any network of activities arranged as such in order to perform a certain function. A system cannot be understood outside the notion of functionality. So yes, our lives are – however predictable – unsystematic. It would depend on how you take it, but this fact about our lives presupposes that which you might find hard to believe, that life is meaningless. When I say that, I mean it in the existentialist sense. “Life as meaningless” means that there is no pre-given motive or purpose for our existence. We came into this world withou...

              (c) - www.careeranna.com    When I was younger and less wise, I always thought that a good life is a well-planned life. It’s when everything falls into place and all you have to do is live what is thought. And coupled with this visceral boring plan is the uncompromised idea of a good career. After all, having a good career is what gets you the money, the fame, and the glory. So basically, having a good career gets you much nearer to a good life, than not having one. For many years I have lived my life believing in this absolute uninspiring motive. I took a good (or rather, honorable) job, decided to take a further study and worry many times a week about what good ideas might be wonderful to write a paper about, and so on. There were times when the scenery of this bland pursuit was not awesome to watch, but mostly, especially when I get too serious, the beauty of the race had gotten so addict...

                  Anywhere, anytime there is always an established way of seeing, doing, thinking, or believing. Not only that it is unavoidable, it is actually necessary. We cannot organize our social lives unless we have something which we with all the rest around us respect and follow. Imagine for instance a road where vehicles from different places would go through to reach different directions each intersecting another with no traffic light, no traffic signs, no traffic officers, and each car honks like a mad cow. One does not surely want to pass by that road, unless he is a cow. However, not all systems of rules – either written or unwritten – are necessary. Sometimes, they contribute more to the destruction of our well being than in maintaining our lives intact and stable. The burdens they impose become problems that, upon critical scrutiny, are found to be mere pseudo-problems, problems created by...