Knowing

There are actually many levels of knowing. Hearing, understanding, agreement, empathy, creativity, experience sharing.... They are kind of steps towards change. For to know another person is to be changed.

Our zombie culture started when men and women are used as domestic animals, cogs in a machine, pawns on a board, potatoes on a couch and most recently appendages to tiny touch screens. It's not technology that is to blame but it just makes it easier for temporarily powerful people to control the willing masses. Our innate desire for acceptance, stability, predictable futures and complete risk aversion makes us willing prisoners to half truths and social contracts that limit personal growth.

Unfortunately, this is now normal. We assume that no change is better than the risk of the unknown. People who want, yearn, dream and are haunted by possibilities (like me) are weird, creative types who don't fit in. Birds in cages think flying is a disease. But we can't fly so this analogy is shit right? Wrong because we do fly in planes, balloons, gliders and whatever we invent tomorrow. Caged birds...

If you want to know me, as I yearn to be known, my blog's biggest hint is how much art influences me. I believe all human expression is art. Even the mundane things like language, mathematics, conversation, posture, our stride, smiling, crying.... And there is beauty in all of it. To see this beauty in the best of human kind is my passion.

Because all of it is art, I include pictures and music and (soon) video. I write with the music blaring, with many images floating in my head. Even the formulae (which is correct spelling despite the insistence or our popularity based spell checker) that some memorize as law, inspire me to think about the limits of the assumptions that frame the logic. Passionate people and what they say inspire.

Many scholars though, have lost their passion because it is so easy to make propositions about a slither of knowledge and test it by algorithmic models on fast computers. Universities employ cog-like "researchers" with PhD's to churn out as many papers as possible to increase their international ranking. Is this really a search for knowledge or just safe-guarding a salary?

Religious leaders instead of inspiring the human spirit with the infinite possibilities that an all knowing intelligence created us to seek our potential, instead use gods to limit risk, to instill fear and prejudice. They avoid knowing oneself, let alone a Creator.

Passion for life is what drives me. To know is to embrace this life by sharing all of it with another. We start with the finite beings around us while the Universe points to the infinite. Somehow, the fact I'm writing and thinking about the infinite, makes unlimited potential feasible and worthwhile.

To know.

Power

My last blog post alluded that many do not believe in God are trying to convince themselves and others that they do by ever increasing over-compensation. This is a recipe for a stew of left overs and second hand truths at best. When faced with real problems like poverty, death, pain, loneliness ... these pretenders will be ill equipped to help those they love. This weakness cannot be covered up by big institutions, buildings, popularity or political support. While it is easy to be misled by the external grandeur, they are illusions if no real personal power exits.

Art mirrors our souls, our social aspirations, our angst, our nature... Music is perhaps the most powerful. Good music makes us feel, sing, dance, chant, cry, laugh, smile... the better the music and performance, the deeper the experience. Just like life, some of it sounds good at first but if it lacks soul, energy, excellence, they tire very easily. But when everything clicks, sometimes music is powerful and can change lives.

For me, the ladies who sing in "Be Grateful" and "You can call God" are singing with simple power and soul that are rare today. They just proclaim their message as a matter of fact. No need to persuade, convince, criticize, or contrive emotions. Even the sexy, raw, primal, over-processed singing of many women today cannot compare with the truth in big soulful skillful singing using the voice as the instrument.

The first one was from 1979, probably the 1st black gospel choir piece I ever heard. "You can call God" was from 1989. They coincided with smooth sailing, fast career moves, lots of travel, good prospects in love and work in my life. That continued as I explored many different industries, markets and countries. At the turn of the Century this song (posted earlier) mirrored my confidence in life and discovery as I learned mandarin while installing medical software and lasers in China, India, Korea, SE Asia and Middle East. The work was meaningful but exploring these places were the gems for me.

Then for the first time in my life, unfortunate events hammered and could have destroyed my confidence, my faith and my vision for life. After "He said" by Mary Mary in 2002, I found fewer and fewer songs that just shouted what they believed.

Like society perhaps, there were more "anti this that and the other" sentiment but also whiny complaints that life is unfair. Instead of faith, blame, fear, prejudices are embraced as reasons for action. This is upholding habits of weakness.

Ironically, during the apparent dark time in my life, I rediscovered that power that drove my relationships, my dreams and personal change. And it relates much better to the raw energy in the singing these ladies.

Forgive

No the song is not from Frozen. "Give it up let it go" is a sassy anthem to surrender the things that hold us back. Gandhi said "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong". The hardest person to forgive is often your own self.

Gospel songs have another popular theme. Hold on in faith. The concept of faith has really been hammered because those who do not believe is lying to themselves and others that they do. Or their belief itself has become a slogan or law. If you have this "faith" in an absolute robotic way of conduct and belief, you're just holding on to disbelief.

The difference is intimacy. The discomfort and risk of getting close and personal with another human being. If you can't handle another human, how can you handle God? My belief is that in being aware that there is unlimited learning and creation in the Universe is how we must live (with or without belief in God).

Just like loving another, it is in discovering what that love will bring as the relationship grows is the point of love. Even in science, it is faith the world can be understood and worked out logically that makes discovery meaningful.

Faith and forgiveness go hand in hand. For even an atheist needs to believe in oneself to move on after falling down. Yet blame, regret, holding on to failure instead of believing we can move on is the opposite of forgiveness.

It's the like letting go of the past in order to hold on to the future. For those who believe in God, and those who do not, it begins with holding on to someone's hand in intimacy.

Guilt

Judgement, guilt, regret are all related. It's about feeling bad because of how we view ourselves. The feeling of guilt underlies so much of our behavior and the personal cause of guilt begins with a presumption of debt.

If I owe my life to someone even if they are my loving parents, the concept of debt is already present. Yet no matter your wealth, status, intelligence, the process of life is a mystery. Whether a couple is fertile or not, no human can claim to give another life.

For life is a gift. It is free. It is a culmination of a balance of natural forces in the Universe that produced our earth in spite of the violent destructive power that inhabit a mostly emptiness we call space. The fact we survive the violence that surround our tiny earth in the space whose expanse seems to approach infinity, is on the order of winning the lottery.

We can either believe we owe the mercy of Universal forces sparing our blue planet, or embrace the opportunity life affords us and celebrate the miracle. Guilt is that we don't deserve this life and drives us to prove our worthiness to live.

Those who believe in God are faced with the same choice.

1. To live because he exists and explore the relationship, thankful for the gift of life.
2. Or to appease him in order to live and avoid doing something against his will.

The starting point to make the choice is that he is there. But a far sadder and senseless choice of many is to live to prove God is there because we are not sure he exists. In this case, we are chasing someone/something who could well not be there. It seems better just to give up.

If life begins and ends with nothing, the living itself can be free of debt and guilt. Of course like life itself, this is a mystery and must be discovered. The journey itself is the point for both the theist and atheist.

Explorer

It begins and ends with being grateful for my life and the Universe where I feel safe to be me. 

"The first 50 years of childhood are the hardest". It took me that long to really see who I am: an explorer. Not just in traveling but also an explorer of knowledge, human nature, beauty, truth, creativity, solutions, music, art, celebration, food, addiction, society, evil...

Most prefer the "security" of what they "know" . When I gave up exploring by settling down to stability, coincidentally or consequentially (I don't know), I became sick. And it has taken me many years to recover and become stronger. In what seemed like the doldrums, I ended up exploring who I am and my place in the Universe. It took a few years because there was so much ground to cover,

I thought I was just an IT guy because all of my career was about software. But software means more than what we do with computers. We program our lives by our relationships, our habits, choices, laws, culture, language, education, religion (or not)... In the course of what felt like loneliness, silence and storms, I registered a patent, took control of my health and embraced the people who love me. I mourned those who reject me, bid adieu to some bad habits and saw I could reprogram my own life. The ability and option to rewrite the rules is the gift of being human.

I need to feel at home and a routine too. But it is to live in a few countries, speak the languages, be in contact with interesting caring people, share my life with those who care to live and move forward exploring how to enjoy and improve our lives. I want re-programming life to be my routine and my home.

The explorer is not motivated by the destination but the quest. Those who do not look for anything won't find anything. They fear the destination because it is unknown. But the unknown motivates me and the journey gives me security. I am baited by the awareness of the limits of knowledge while (what feels like) everyone else are happy with a theory and call it the truth. In so doing, they are excused from seeking a better answer.

Like the clipper ship that enabled the exploration of the earth a few hundred years ago, journeys take time. Because the destination is unknown, the trip is no first class seat with constant entertainment but a mixture of fear and excitement, loneliness and boredom. No wonder so few people want to come with me. Most are happy to support me when I have arrived or succeeded... by that time though, I'm already off on my next journey. If I focus on this dichotomy, I will become sad or angry. 

For me, security comes from a strange assurance that I'll be alright in the end because I'm already grateful for life itself. Sounds simple and foolish especially when you are afraid. 

If you are afraid of the future, or the unknown, you will never arrive at tomorrow or truth. And it all begins with being grateful and secure in life itself.

Spirit

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.

Belong

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 never get tired of this video.