Not only the quality of the content surprising insightful, but I felt that the pure quantity of it simply speaks volumes to where she is intellectually heading towards as opposed to the rest of us.
I have also spent this summer and these few months taking what I can in. I've been reading massively online. Business. Politics. Philosophy. Life. Mostly in rapid succession. I've been recording notes. However, when I saw what Lisa has been doing, I realized that a huge part of the picture was missing - I was swallowing knowledge wholesale without taking the time to digest it fully.
Hence, esoteric bullshit will resume on this blog. Not for your sake, sorry, but for mine. Narrating my thought, however rough, might put everything into a bit more context, provoke challenges -cough-, and allow some 'growth' to occur.
Well, on the topic of resuming the rough draft of my lifethoughts, I've been thinking about the act of narration itself lately. I've taken a fascination on this concept over the past few year and recently rekindled it when I saw this TED video about the danger of the single story. It's very heartwarming in your usual ways - say no against prejudice, discrimination, blah blah blah.
But narration - it's prevalent everywhere. We are the the masters of the universe as we have deluded ourselves into thinking. Nietzsche understood that - that's why, in my interpretation, he considers the final man one who conquers himself. The ultimate machine in reflexive conquer. The biological singularity.
But I digress. What we have right now is imperfection, formally called heuristics in neuroscience, sociolinguistics, etc. The computing power of our brains, no matter how much greater than that of silicon, is still finite. And because our very reality is defined by the our conceptual visualization of it in synpatic space, knowledge becomes an issue of resource (synaptic connections) allocation, rather than truth. The woman from Africa will have a very different worldview, thinking process, everything, from me. A certain percentage of her mind will simply be focused on perceiving the world through her eyes, processing it through her experiences. This is happening in real time. I can never encompass the processing capacity of both me and her.
So what often devolves into simple denunciation of 'racism' and 'stereotypes' is actually a fundamental impairment on us human beings, which irks me often times. If I judge most Indians to be 'smelly' I am being intellectually and morally 'indefensible', yet when I tell a little kid that he should avoid strangers offering candy (because they might be child molesters), I am being a 'reasonable parent', when I have 1) partaken in the very same act of encompassing judgement, and 2) encouraged our children to partake in the very same process of short-circuit judgements. It's no wonder society is so morally confused throughout history (there I go again, haha. Oh by the way, I apologize, Mayur, for using Indians as an example, it's just something racist I thought out of the top of my head).
The world is infinitely complex beyond us; our simple minds cannot handle neither the volume nor the variety of relationships that exists. I understand and accept this fact as part of my thinking. What I'm interested though, is the margins in which this occurs. This is true especially of the causal relationship that happens so ubiquitously in society. It seems to be the universal information condenser: in history, in journalism, in our daily dialogue with people.
"The Dow drops 124 points today on news of Hu Jintao's warning towards USD status as reserve currency."
"Superior naval power and the flourishing of arts allowed the Western powers to expand colonialism, expand Western culture, and firmly establish themselves as the dominant power entering the 20th century."
"I am where I am today because..."
Human nature dictates this process. From basic chaotic information our synapses construct causal relationships, 1 by 1. Heuristics allow us to construct these very quickly and intuitively at the cost of sometimes being wrong and often misleading. We use causal relationships, line them up one by one, and construct a narrative. It is like a string with beads on them. Rows and rows lined up.
Personal narratives then coagulate and turn into collective narratives. Stories, myths, tales of heroism, parables against corruption, greed; we've got it all. Journalism turns into history books. You can acknowledge the absurdity of it, but you can never deny it. I look at the myths of Greek lore, Chinese lore, Indian lore, and compared to the stories now. The story currently unfolding in the United States. Barack Obama. Climate change. Wall Street greed. And I can't help but wonder, in a thousand years, would humans look at our quaint stories with the same bemusement we look at the Greek tales? And on that note, do we really think Greek society can be characterized by the stories that were passed down? Can the people a millennium from now grasp the complexities of today's society when we ourselves are so naive when it comes to conceptually ourselves 1 millennium prior?
Why am I rambling all this bullshit? Obviously, there's a selfish motive: I am morbidly fascinated with my own narrative. No, I'm not so egotistical to think that I will somehow make a mark on the grand history of mankind (but a boy can dream, can't he?) But narratives collect in other meaningful ways. What will my family say/think about me after I die? What kind of person will I be? What things will I have done that would be significant? What kind of thoughts would they think I would be having? How would that be different from what I actually perceived and thought? And even something less long-term. What is my high school narrative? What is my university narrative? How will my classmates view me after these years?
It shocked me because I found out that my high school narrative, according to average-acquaintances (eg. Lina), is one of a snob. A person who thought he was better than everyone else, is unrepentant, and did everything to prove it (by going to Queen's). Amusing, because I myself thought that I was always the one with the least self-esteem.
But no matter, because what the collective narrative is, eventually, is going to be the collective truth (wikiality). Which is a bit frightening for me. Why? Because with all narratives, there is sometimes a hero, but there is always a villain.
I'm afraid I am eventually going to be the villain of the story.
It might be an irrational fear, or it might seem so because you haven't experienced my life as I've experienced it, but it's a fear nonetheless. It's funny how in media, the main protagonists sometimes break the 4th wall. But we never see the antagonist breaking the 4th wall. Maybe their existential terror will be too overbearing for the audience to conceptualize.
What does Bernie Madoff think of himself when he thinks about his role within history? What will Lex Luthor think after he realizes that he is the villain of the story? What does Darth Vader think when he watches his life through Star Wars? What does Hitler think after he realizes he is the villain of the story? What does Satan think when he reads the Bible story of his destiny? Granted, villains might be too deluded of self-grandeur to process that thought. But what if the villain of the story is merely a mortal? A rational, thoughtful little boy? What do people do after they realize that no matter what they do, their life will be deconstructed the role of the villain? Through choice, fate, unintended consequences, whatever. That moment of self-realization when it dawns upon you...
I don't know.
end of post
Note: I want to connect this TED video to your Office post, Lisa. It's relevant, but I haven't fully formulated my thoughts yet. Something about what defines value. In life, in society, etc.
