Rediscovered this song which I love. It seems that spirit/soul is rare now. Maybe that's why vampires and zombies have been romanticized so much in pop culture to reflect our neglect of meaning and inspiration. Starting with school, we enter a society based mainly on mass management. For a normal orderly society, we conform, learn how to be normal until we discover no one is really normal.
For that which is most special is by definition not ordinary so therefore not normal. But our factory-like social design pulls us to reject the extra-ordinary to make room for predictable and safe society. Sounds reasonable except when societal direction is wrong.
When what is correct is defined by what the masses believe, we could end up jumping off a bridge just because everyone else is. If you look at the equations below, most are based on physical world experiment. They have led engineers to develop good and bad products that define our technological age.
The last one is about investment. Hedge funds, derivatives, more and more convoluted financial instruments are based on the probability theories which are useful for studying trends in nature, but are now used to predict the future. So what is normal now becomes the direction of investment and development. It is just hidden in "sophisticated" words and calculations.
The abnormal is needed for change. Human nature tends to resist change by embracing what worked yesterday to secure tomorrow. But this ignores the environment, learning and new information,
Most algorithmic studies tend to continue this trend of framing what we know today as standards. Even software for marketing and translation takes the most common to predict what is correct.
When our common belief is wrong as we were when we thought the Sun revolved around earth, or that our world is flat, or that our leader is a god... we really are just following the folly of crowds.
The spirit, the soul, the extra-ordinary that drives us to passion is the best of our humanity. Not normalcy.
There was a time when I didn't need to belong. My family provided shelter and home. We moved across an ocean when I was 7 to a strange place that spoke a different language but I still felt at home. Although I needed my family to feel safe, I felt free to be myself because I did not see any conditions for that safety. I did not need to perform or comply with oppressive obligations in exchange for shelter and home.
I felt like that man in the hat looking at a Hong Kong 100 years ago. Compare it to the jungle of buildings today and you can either be amazed or disgusted, depending on your criteria for success. These standards to measure success which seem like good motivation for progress, can also become the limits of growth. I'm sure that non assuming man could never imagine that Hong Kong can become an oasis and then a jungle in the future.
Along with the progress, obligations also multiplied. He had no credit cards, luxury villa (which probably replaces the humble bench of brick and stone now), no career path... And that's how I used to feel before I needed to belong.
Hong Kong culture is about "埋堆-being in the pile" (part of the group or go with the flow), In fact this is the easiest path in any culture. Unfortunately when the flow is in the opposite direction of where your heart leads, the need to belong becomes like a sentence to prison or even death.
As adolescence set in, the need to belong outside my family naturally took over. School, work, church, clubs, cliques, performance, looks... became obsessions. I began to need approval or proof I was valued or that I belonged. Being me, I tried everything. While I enjoyed all of it, there was always a need that drove me to the next thing.
Like everyone, there were falls, embarrassment, trophies, celebration and tears. I didn't keep count until now. The apparent lack of kindness but plenty of silence around me seemed to judge me. No, there was love in my life but it did not dispel my loneliness. And this solitude could not be solved by the social contact or achievement that managed to cheer me up most of my life.
After years of this silence, I finally see that the proof I sought is not about trophies, applause or even a thank you. Many have comforted me thinking I was feeling worthless. I accepted this view too and continued to try all known paths to restart a new mode of life.... But silence persisted.
Like coming out of a dark tunnel that took years to endure, I see I never belonged to crowds, clubs or even a family in an institutional sense. It's like the poor looking man in the had sitting on the Peak observing a young undeveloped world, all that is needed for feeling safe and at home always existed. It is possible to feel at home in a rural back waters or urban jungle, in poverty or riches.
It's great to see so many have gathered in this little area of Hong Kong. All the bling, technology and opportunity cannot change the requirements to be safe, to feel at home and to be strong enough to face tomorrow. It existed when I was young and foolish, but also as an older fool.
If you think I'll end with the glib cliche that I belong to me, then I'll correct you and say:
"I still haven't found what I'm looking for".
I saw this image in black and white when I was 6 along with maybe 1 billion people on TV. No one on earth was able to see our beautiful planet from afar until the space race of the 1960's. It was then that we could appreciate with our eyes, the vastness of space because the moon is actually relative nearby by Universal standards.
Space, emptiness, zero occupies most of it. Our earth is small and a rarity to sustain life as we know it in the Universe. After 50 years, we have yet to discover another planet of intelligent beings. Although our lack of appreciation for the great value this chance at life actually is, calls our intelligence into question, the good fortune of our mere existence is on the order of winning the lottery. Out of how many stars galaxies, planets that are there, we are one in billions in this moment of Universal history.
Until we saw the emptiness, darkness, loneliness of space, it is hard to appreciate this natural good fortune that the sum total of circumstances allowed life to thrive on the blue ball we see from the moon. Compare it to the haunting barren landscape of the moon, the earth looks like home. And it is.
Many do not believe in God. But we do believe in theories that are based on logic, order... physics and not random occurrence in nature. Technology cannot work without well established natural predictable phenomenon which I will avoid call laws. Because the principles will change with our growth in understanding and knowledge.
All these theories allowed us to make the technology to go to the moon by traveling through the frightening emptiness. Once arrived, we can see our existence is a precious oasis in the absolute emptiness of zero space.
Personally, I traveled through the prospect of emptiness, the loneliness of feeling completely helplessness, to arrive at a view of my life. I see what I need to thrive and it is not much. Seeing what makes me happy is like this picture of gazing at myself from afar. Just like for the first time, when the pictures of the first moon landing arrived on our screens.
Holograms are not new. I visited Holographic museums in the '80s. Of course the faster processing today allowed Prime Minister Modi in India to use moving holograms of himself during his campaign to broadcast speeches in many places at once, "in person". They are still ethereal looking and have a ways to go before the emotions of the human presence can be felt in a moving holographic projection.
While the technology is intriguing, the content itself is the key. Mr. Modi's effectiveness springs from his personal presence, how he speaks, the emotions he inspires.... Technology alone cannot inspire.
Look at the earth as a hologram. Though the 3D effect of seeing the image in real life, where you can walk around the thing will be novel, it is nothing compared to seeing the real earth from space. And that technology is just around my age.
During the time I've been blogging, sharing my personal impressions reflected a time of reckoning. What some might call failure turned out to be strength. While some whom I saw to be my mentors remained the same as I gained in perspective and understanding. What surprises me the most are the methodology and norms that were useful during my youth, which I have left behind for more relevant ways, have become stone cold tradition for some.
It's a little like I have learned to see the world more like a hologram where you can view it from multiple vantage points as you walk around it, while some of my old friends still gaze at an old map plotted by sailors in a boat. No matter how hard I try to tell them, they will not understand until they take a "quantum" leap in their minds to see the hologram I see.
My amazement at the difference is that I am not very smart. If I can learn, I believe anyone can. What is more extraordinary is that the hologram (like knowledge) is about to be improved much further, and I plan to move forward to new vantage points that knowledge takes us.
"La place des invalides" or "Les invalides" marked the beginning of my francophil life. My sister caught her own strain of francophilia and lived there for just short of 20 years. My niece is half french but refuses to speak it.
This magnificent monument to Napoleon (his tomb is under the dome), to permanently wounded soldiers and the army museum was the destination of my first bus ride into Paris. I was in University and arrived alone to go to french classes over a summer. After a week or two of headaches from the speed and hypnotic sounds of the language, I was in love with the adventure, the beauty, imperfections and romanticism that this city aims to inspire.
I was studying 20 Century French literature. Paris was like the expression of what I read. Once arrived I made francophone friends wherever I could. It became like a home. Despite the occasional snobbishness, I completely immersed myself in the psyche of this culture that some assumed I was a citizen by the end of my 2 month sojourn there. The land-lady who hosted students in her home personally drove me to Belgium. It was a friendship.
The romance, good taste, joie de vivre, style, pride... are all good, but the general forthright in-your-face nature of the conversation was really intriguing. I felt I could show my true colors in Paris even though I was an outsider. Like looking at yourself in the mirror, I entertained my loneliness. Not endure but savoring it like for the first time.
Unlike the Chinese who cover it up with crowds and large family, or the Americans with entertainment, sports and humor, there is a side of French culture that celebrates being alone.
It's not for everyone. Like the monument to the tragedies of war that looks grand and beautiful, facing our darkness is the only way to overcome it. Alas, la Place des Invalides is easy to forget and avoid.
I learned that in celebrating my angst, I'm able to find new boldness and meaning especially when it appears there is no way out. That's what I learned from France.
To illustrate, Véronique Sanson still sang (in 2013) her classic song whose final line is:
"Quand j'aurai mis vingt ans à voir que tout était mirage
Alors j'entends au fond de moi une petite voix qui sourd et gronde
Que je suis seule au monde."
"When it took me 20 years to see that all is a mirage.
Then I hear deep inside of me, a small voice that sighs and groans,
that I am alone in the world."
My first blog entry on May 27 2012 (click to see it) was about some unfortunate events that threatened my self image but also forced me to be who I am. I mentioned the doldrums of my life when nothing seemed to be happening. What excitement did come, they often took me nowhere.
After 3 years, I see that I'm not alone feeling a little lost about how to move forward in a world that is on the cusp of change mainly due to the free distribution of media. The problem is that so much of growth and investment still assumes the process of getting things and information to someone is valuable. The internet and our screens have taken most of the cost out of distribution. Savings in physical distribution will continue so money to be made there will also become scarce.
It's ironic to use the doldrums as an analogy because sailing was what really started the technological revolution of our world. This neglected technology of harnessing the power of winds to travel was what sparked global exploration, colonization, mining, commerce etc. The equatorial doldrums were like death for sailing because of the unpredictability of the winds having no general direction. Often there was no wind at all. The experience can be so traumatic that they inspired the famous poem "The Ancient Mariner" whose albatross imagery is still used to describe an unbearable burden.
The picture was taken in the doldrums where the sea is smooth. Engines effectively conquered doldrums for the sailor. The industrial age that was perhaps sparked by the engine is coming to an end as the information age replaces it rapidly.
Similar to the way engines forced large vessels in a given direction and much money could be made in transport, the industrial economy changed the world the last century. It has not been smooth with multiple stock market crashes, world wars and many small wars today. The cost the environment, health and quality of life have been negative.
Yet investors do not know how to adjust to the new opportunities of the ascending influence of the information economy. It seems few know what to do with the floodgates that make human expression immediately available almost as soon as it is produced.
Where getting any information used to be valuable, the effectively free distribution of the new age will put more emphasis on quality. Yet, quantity is still the obsession because it was the norm in the passing industrial age. More products produced cheaply, widely distributed, seems to carry over to email, newsfeeds, websites... And we users also see them as products just like clothes or appliances.
But email, newsfeeds and websites etc. are only the infrastructure of the information age. They need to lead to knowledge, inspiration, new experiences, innovation etc in order to be truly valuable. The economy and society needs to progress to grow in technology.
We are approaching the limits of the current paradigm of creating faster, denser and dissemination of data for growth. Productivity and quality is being redefined as how to live replacing how much. Until the investors, managers and consumers realize this shift in value, the current reliance on speculation, fast money and over spending is only wasting the opportunities that the information age offers us.
No wonder many feel like life is going no where. For the quickly obsolete way to growth is still seen as the best way while ignoring the enormous opportunities of more enlightened ways of working. Obsolescence can be like a slap in the face of the powerful.
Like engines running on fossil fuel are being replaced by solar, wind, nuclear, hydrogen... we are emerging from the doldrums finding new services, quality improvement and knowledge.
What seems to be dark clouds, an impending storm that takes out the sun for a while, also brings rain, and cleansing.
Passion is what drives us to find answers in all situations, especially when there is instability. It is possible to find creative paths towards that which feeds our passion in new circumstances.
Despite feeling unprepared, weak or desperate, the power that overcomes us can be turned to solve our problems. Like Judo.
