Category Archives: Philosophy

Musing on philosophy from a desk chair rather than an armchair.

Echo 14: Something

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Lets try something new.  I’ll comment on Marika’s blog posts with another blog post.  This will make it easier to respond, generate a larger audience and increase posts per day.  Yes, I’m pigbacking on somebody else’s work. 🙂  So without further ado, I present a new sporadic feature:  Echoes to Ramblings.

In response to Ramblings 14: Something.

Movement encourages thought in people. Certain children with disabilities need to move to be able to think. Most likely something to do with sensory-muscle feedback allowing for mental procedures to flow.

If by meditation, you mean clearing your head of thoughts and concentrating on your own body’s functional thoughts.  Yes.  I don’t subscribe to the Buddhist meditation of trying to join the void.  I don’t believe in a void or a collective soul.  Also unstructured meditation is actually dangerous.  A Buddhist friend told me how a close friend of his mediated without the supervision of a priest, and was quite violently attacked by something.  Most likely a malicious spirit (read as: demon) according to him.  I prefer prayer with intentions for that reason.  Prayer in solitude achieves a similar role to meditation, plus it gives a silent outlet for ideas, wishes and concerns.  Whether there is a God and whether He listens on the other side, is a question I leave for philosophers and theologians to ponder.  I believe He exists and He listens to the cries of His adopted children.

Stillness is indeed incredibly difficult.  Stillness being the absence of the chaotic motions and thoughts, is difficult in a universe whose physical attributes can be described in terms of the motion of matter and the transfer of energy.  Silence, lack of distractions is needed and concentrated effort to push away and ignore distractions.  The best time is when there are fewer people.  That is why I love mornings.  Few distractions, stillness and silence are assured.  I get to reflect in the mornings.  Plus you get to see the spectacular sights of light interacting with shadow as the sun comes up.

Sleepless in Toronto

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It is  too early to blog this morning.  I’m sitting in at work in an empty office space.  Alone, just a few lights and mostly in the dark.  Still dark outside with some street lights, the slow moving lights of communter’s car and random distant lights of various colours.  The sun still has an hour or so to make an appearance.  The ever present hum of the server room, and my own typing on my laptop’s keyboard fill the silence.  A quiet time.  A time for reflection.

I spent the last few days in reflection, wondering about the future.  Many things have happened to me in the past while.  Good things mostly this year.  Not always things that I recognized or expected, at least not in their current shape and form.  But that is life: organic, uncertain, growing and unpredictable.  In mechanistic mind, the complexity of interactions and the nature of things make life appear chaotic.  Cause and effect and free will and randomness appear.  Surprise should not arise in my mind.  The universe, built upon the chaotic foundations of the quantum world attains regularity from its design and the laws that govern it.  Chaos only appears, because God built a universe where free will can and truly exists.  Causality only paints part of the picture.  This should make me happy, but it also brings indecision.  Causality enforces the consequences of my actions.  But the underlying chaos gives me the freedom to decide and choose my own actions at any given moment.

I realize that today, I stand in a bright and hopeful future.  A future I could not predict or imagine.  No one expected that I should live on the other side of the ocean, far from my family and far my ancestor’s homeland.  Or maybe homelands, since the fate of many nations and peoples form the history of humanity.  No one expected me meeting the friends that I have.  Not ideal people, but good people who help and guide me on my journey through life.  No one expected my working where I do.  I neither planned nor expected such a company existed.  Nor did I plan on working with such a group of friendly, ambitious and professional coworkers.  I definitely never planned nor wanted to work with people so closely, as I do as a consultant.  But over the course of my life, I grew into these situations and all these things shaped me as I do.

So why should the future to look different in nature?  How large of leap it should be not to expect love from an unexpected person from an unexpected land?  Will it be truly so?  Who knows, but God.  And even He lets us play with this toy, the universe  He fashioned  exclusively for us.  His judgement may be swift and fierce.  But His kindness toward such a clumbsy, silly and pathetic race of beings as humans are, is infinite.  And He comes to our aid when we need it.  But I am going on an aside.  I say this publicly, cause I intend not to offer up excuses or lay obstacles to this person.  And I’ll let fate, circumstances and nature run its course, whatever that course may be.  And whatever those effects may be.  I trust God will deliver the right person to me.

It is too early to write this morning.  I have spoken my mind, which my experience tells me most people don’t want to know or hear.  And I may not enjoy their critism or them turning from me.  But I’m not writing for them.  They do not care about me, and I’m less than enthaustic about them.  I write for the person who said yes, when so many others said no.  Even very interesting others, but as sad, as arbitray this decision may seem, they had their chance but chose not to act upon it.  Their loss.  And I turn my attention to this person, and say let us see what comes of this.

It is too early to write this morning.

A Time for Silence

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We live in a busy, bustling and noisy world.  Ever since the industrial revolution and the explosion of commerce and industry, we have learned to make more and more noise.  To the point, we get uncomfortable as my friend Marika pointed out.  We get so used to the background chatter and noise, that when it disappears we feel lost.  But should we?

Silence when not permanent, is as need as the darkness at night.  At night we need to relax.  We need the lack of visual stimuli (in the form of the lack of light) to properly function. Our eyes relax, recalibrate themselves.  Our brains go into organization mode and sort out the events of our day.  Silence lets us to look into ourselves and shut away the noise in our life.  Should one fear silence like one fears the absence of light, when all you need to do is speak or flick a switch to bring back sound or light?  Silence can be oppressive and harsh.  Sitting in a room with a stranger can be hard.  Your mind tries to figure the stranger’s thoughts and intentions.  Sitting in a room with a friend, who you deeply trust is different.  In this case, you share a delicate, intimate and vulnerable moment of introspection where you both trust each other enough to let your guard down.

Learning to accept and embrace silence is difficult.  I learned to start to accept silence two years ago I went on a Taize retreat in Montreal.  I remember sitting on the floor of an ancient-looking church.  All around me hundreds of other people sat around me.  Between each hymn we sung, we sat in silence.  People, strangers from different Christian denominations all sitting in silence in a church.  At first the moments of silence felt oppressive, alien, cold and unwelcoming.  But after each hymn belted out at the top of our lungs, the silence become welcome.  Silence became a  time of peace, relaxation and reflection upon the reason on why we had all gathered here.  We came together to be friends and neighbours.  And to come a step closer to be closer to God.  Ever since I tried to set aside a time for silence, for prayer and for reflection.  It is still something I struggle and wrestle with.

Today, I’ll be going to a Latin Tridentine mass held at the Newman Centre at Uof T.  From what I’ve been told the experience of attending such a mass is very uplifting.  One reasons why are the moments of total silence and solemnity in it.

Quotes

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Friedrich von Hayek:
“We mustn’t assume that all problems are solvable in the short period. There are problems that we cannot solve or which trying to solve them quickly may do more harm than good.”

Hayek was being interviewed by the press in 1975 on economic problems at the time.  This question answers directly to the question of what initiatives that a government to relief people in the time of inflation and crisis.  However this also is true to many other aspects of life.

Source: “Hayek Meets the Press in 1975”, Karen Y. Palasek, Mises Institute, URL: http://mises.org/story/3311.

Variations of the Void Ad Infinitum

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I sat today and wondered about the infinite variations of life, possibilities and their outcomes.  This time I didn’t think about the standard what-if things happened this way or that in the past.  Looking back into the past beyond analysing and preventing mistakes or repeating successes is pointless.  A variation in a single event can produce an uncountably infinite number of possible future outcomes.  The human brain can not process such amounts.  It also can not foresee or keep track of all the effects of how something might change.

The future is equally unknowable.  Here at least we have the ability to shape the future by actions in the present or near future.  And seem to have fallen into the trap of musing which path I should take.  Now I am not on the crossroads between choosing where life can go.  But there are certain possibilities that might arise in the near future.  The question arises which of these possibilities are likelyest.  And how much positive and negative change can different decisions take.  I’m trying to avoid the obvious problems that: a) the future is unknowable, b) many events and circumstances may arise that I will no or little control over, c) an uncountable infinite number of “future”s are possible by varying any event or circumstance, d) many possibilities relie on the decisions of people whose actions may be predictable but not entirely.

After reading Dale Carnegie’s “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”, I stopped worrying too much about the future and things beyond my control.  The future looks grim at times, better at others.  I try to stay positive.  But I question how much effort of my own will influence my lot.  In past ages, before the chaos of magical economic thinking and social utopian governments, this calculation could be greatly simplified.  Today however, the amount of influence I have over my life and my actions seems to contract at every moment.  With the future looking grim, this realization makes me want to skirm.  But skirming inside your own skin never accomplished much.

Instead I sit and attempt to calculate what events I can initiate on my end.  The most frustrating part of these calculations is that result in events that arise in 3 categories.  The first being a change of circumstance arising from a lot of work, time and effort.  These while in my control, are problematic in that the future value of said work is unknowable and the present value is simply nothing more than that of a pasttime.  The second category stems from interesting propositions.  I have several of these in various aspects of my life.  But in the past when I pursued said propositions, nothing arose from them.  I must simply wait and see.  The last category are changes that are so wildly unpredictable, I barely can foresee the results.  Example if I were to move to say, another continent, there would be a huge number of possibilities.  Things would change.  The question remains for the better or worse.

So I sit and brood over this and that.  The events, environments and results fluctuate wildly in my mind.  But I wonder if any of this mental gymnastics will produce anything of substance.  I also wonder if someone has already not conceived of some mental framework to simplify such analysis…

Perfectionism Rant

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I’ll be the first to admit it. I am a perfectionist.

At first glance, this is a very positive trait. I pay attention to detail. I can “hyper-focus” on a task, and flesh out all the issues with it. I want to bring into existence the best solutions, the most efficient code and most beautiful art. It helps avoiding mistakes. It helps with paying attention to details, others skim over. It helps bring masterpieces into existence.

But there are downsides to perfectionism as well. Time does not always allow for the perfect technical solution. Historical reasons-I shiver at those words as a excuse for past sins-and other things outside of your control don’t always allow for a solution to getting even close to perfection. You need to maintain a healthy level of pragmatism and be realistic, or you will go crazy.

More importantly, perfectionism can lead to a pessimistic perspective of life. You may bring the bar up so high, that no human can achieve to your perfect ideal. The worst, you can’t either. If I tried to write the perfect piece or code the perfect application, I would never get anything out the door. So remember to give yourself a break occasionally. No one is perfect.

Some Thoughts About Life and Consulting

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Some thoughts to think about:

  • Set expectations early. It avoids confusion and hassle in the future.
  • Assertiveness instills confidence and helps achieve what you need.
  • Smiling helps keep everyone positive and repels negativity from you.
  • Show progress cause it encourages people.
  • Review your goals and schedule time lines. This will make them concrete.
  • Break up goals into manageable tasks. This will make your goals achieveable.
  • Be patient. Nothing will improve in your life overnight.

As a Tree Grows, So Does One

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In the headlong rush that my week or rather month turned out to be, I failed to notice it. From the parking lot that begins my morning commutes, I just noticed a beautiful tree growing at the side of the street. Thin, olive green leaves sprouting out of gnarled, weathered grey bark, and everything in contrast with the dark grey overcast sky. I’d take a picture, but it is hard to blindly aim a mobile webcam.

I wouldn’t of noticed this tree, if I hadn’t maken time to walk to my bus stop. Rather than engaging in a mad desperate morning dash, I walked. By walking, I could notice things. But only if I knew where to look or by nearly running into them. So it is with life.

The endless stream of tasks, deadlines, wants and desires often takes precedence over the great beautiful things in life. Like a tree, the good things grow on the side. Take a moment, notice them and observe them. You will feel peace.

Easter… and Life After School

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Happy Easter! I would say more, but it seems awkward. I’m try not to flow all over the place with emotions if I can (Yeah, whatever dude one glance at your blog is like listening to a emo-kid.), and so… If you are not the religious type, I hope you enjoy your time off and that one day you find the meaning for life. If you are religious, I hope you find the way for a peace-filled, prosperous and happy life. If you are Christian (just like me bro…) well we already know about God and Jesus, and how cool He is, and is love… in that case may He bless you and keep you this coming year. After all Easter is about His undying love for humanity. (And if you feel awkward, and are looking at me awkward, then go read G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. And stop looking at me that way.)

This Easter was a time of contemplation, self-reflection (Hey, its dark and empty in here!) and a soul-washing. Needless to say, after some scowling from my folks for past wrongs, an awkward confession with a priest, and some quality sulking (And depression) I feel much more empowered and tranquil. I know exactly what I need to do and how about dealing with my issues. So I’m in a bit of zen-like state. Only its not Zen, Buddism or anything resembling an Eastern philosophy. Nope, it good ole’ bible thumping (As if he reads the Holy Scripture.) Christianity. Now if only I could stop feeding myself on cake, and bouncing of the walls long enough to actually, like concentrate on prayer and stuff…

Its been 6 days since the last day of classes, and 5 since my last assignments. I feel very, very relaxed by those thoughts. I mean I just have 3 exams to deal with and then I will be done by Computer Science major. I’m debating whether or not to do either a major in Biology or a specialist in Bioinformatics or just finish university already. I’m leaning toward bioinformatics though… cause micro/cellular is flipping cool.

I actually have done work since my last post. I’m so impressed. I am productive, things are getting done, and my boss (and good friend) Keith is no longer unimpressed. I just need to keep this up. I got a unique job at my previous employer. Its not a development position, rather an office-rat job but I can try my wings at living/working in an office. Fortunately I already am familiar with the people I will be working with/under, so I will feel like a pea-in-a-pod. Awesome. I am thinking of getting a future job as a part developer/specialist in biology. I think that a synergy of biology, informatics, cybernetics and engineering will happen real soon in the future. I want to be part of it. Either that or get a job at NASA as a mission specialist/drone consultant. 😉

OK, this being my last semester of computing, programming has reached the natural and normal peak of being enjoyable work. I’m no longer obsessed by coding, yet I am still willing to develop useful applications as a hobby. I final realized what I thought was unobtainable. I’m competent in a number of languages, both ordinary and exotic. I can develop complex applications in the fields of Web, Internet, database, graphics and entertainment programming. I can think methodically, in a mathematical manner. I’m organized enough handle various styles of development. However, I still think my talents in biology, and communication could definitely use some work. And my personal and business skills need some polishing.

Talking about personal skills, I’ve picked up some tips and hints about dating. Definitely want to try those out sometime. I may not be a Don Juan (yet), but I think I have enough charm to keep a girl distracted long enough that she might tag along with me. (My calmer and less clingy self has gotten more looks, even from Kat… which she will deny to no end.)

In other news… Rudy wrecked his old Saturn and recently bought a “newer” Saturn wagon. Now the questions are has he learned his lesson (turned over car and upset but mostly unhurt friends inside) about “racing”, will those 6 demerit points make him a cooler headed driver, and how long will his new set of wheels live? My friends are begging me to enroll in a summer course with them, cause I would be ever so cool to be with. My financial outlook is looking very good, meaning I’m seriously looking into getting a car and pay for the insurance myself. I’m going to triumphantly return back to developing one of my started open source projects. Also plans are underway to finally write one or two novels this summer. So things should get interesting very, VERY soon.

Finally a shout to shaka0070. Thanks for telling me about Content-Type.com I will definitely take a look at that site. And thanks for reading! Now I got to run, I need to prepare for tomorrows’ Operating Systems exams. [Dramatic music.]

To be continued…

Approaching Freedom

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Well its nighttime… and I am bored out of my mind. There is nothing to do except to think about tomorrow’s freedom, what the machine is doing and finally about other non-trivial but unimportant issues.

Such as this rant: My musings about the operation of the human mind on a “fundmental” level:

~ has a parallel threads (each discrete thoughts).
~ has a single unified event (sensory) handler.
~ has a repository of facts and processes.
~ every repository can be sub repository of a larger repository.
~ has a priority heap of tasks or conscious actions.
~ abstraction framework (go try to model this one CS boys).
~ logic/negation framework.
~ emotions reactions to state and conditions of priorities and goals.

No question about it I am bored.