You are only borrowing what I sold to you

I think a story could illustrate my point much more easily than a drawn-out and dry didactic.

Imagine: I am a carpenter who repairs all kinds of woodwork. You are a homeowner with a really rickety house. So you call on me, the great and mighty carpenter, to repair your roof, because it is rain season and you are sick and tired of sleeping in the pool otherwise known as your upstairs bedroom. I come promptly after the call, like a good carpenter, and I fix your roof up pronto. You can finally enjoy sleep on a dry bed, and you are happy that I did not charge you a exorbitant price for the whole job. I, however, took your broken roof with me, as per the agreement we had when you called me up for the job.
In two weeks, a gust left quite a few holes in your walls. Remembering my excellent service and fair price, you summoned me to your house. At my own request I performed a (free) thorough inspection through the house, and concluded that all the exterior walls of the mold and termite ridden structure would have to be torn down and replaced. I once again offered the same terms: cheap services, except I take the old parts of the house. You happily acquiesce to my terms a second time, and once again you are satisfied by the result.
Soon after, your house, like a sick old man, decided to show more symptoms of age, for it has not had doctor checkups for a long time. Its intestines and blood vessels showed increased signs of age, and you had to call me once again when icy water doused you in the shower during midwinter, when you lost your heating. I came promptly and replaced your barely functioning furnace and pipes. I once again gave you a good deal on the same terms.
By now we are on relatively cordial terms. You are very grateful towards the kind carpenter who virtually built you a new house--at a very low price. Then one day, without an appointment, I drove up your driveway with your old roof, walls, furnace and pipes, and dumped them on your lawn. Then I posted an eviction notice on your front door, and just as I was about to leave you came home from work.
"What the heck do you think you are doing?!" You shouted into my face, after seeing the huge pile of junk on your lawn.
"Here you go." I calmly handed you another copy of the eviction notice. You could not help but read it out loud.
"Per Article 4, section 6 of the law of the Democratic People's Socialist Republic of Smirnoff, you have been evicted from your house, since your house technically belonged to the carpenter whose parts you borrowed to construct the house you currently live in. However, since the Democratic People's Socialist Republic of Smirnoff always treats every one of her citizens with perfect equality, you can only be evicted if the carpenter can replace your current house with your old house."
"By the way, your house is over there." I told you warmly, pointing at the pile of junk that is strewn across your lawn.

Now, if the story did not make any sense, why then should the Volvo that Vern had driven for twenty years NOT be his?

Know Thyself

When asked the question what is the most difficult thing in the world, Thales of Miletus replied, “gnothi seauton,” or “know thyself.” Naturally, to know oneself is not simply to know what shirt one is wearing for a certain day. To know one self is to take one’s soul and dissect it through introspection and neutral observation, and come to terms with whatever that confronts one in the process. To know one self requires honesty, insight, and above all courage, for it is difficult to discover our own faults and foolishness, and even more difficult for one to bear them. Yet, the reward for introspection is great. In Buddhism and Taoism, to discover oneself is to take the first step towards enlightenment. To know oneself frees one from a pure selfish world view and, in Bertrand Russell’s words, “becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good”—self-knowledge is like a full moon that shines light onto one’s soul, but when one stands under it, one bathes not only in the veiled warmth of the moonlight, but also the ethereal majesty of platonic truth.

I think I know myself pretty well, though I certainly do not claim that I am enlightened in any way. If I was enlightened, I would not even bother with the petty idiocies that seemed to always take hold of my attention (and by extension my life). If I was enlightened, I would find ways to correct my innumerable mistakes—and here is where I am the most frustrated. I know my faults, I always confront my faults, and yet, my faults always seem to get the upper hand over me in the end, leaving me humiliated and not a little despondent. My battles with my shortcomings have been battles against the many-headed hydra, for whenever I sever one head of evil another sprouts. Yet, despite my repeated failures, I still fight on, and I wishfully think that I could at least mitigate the problem with my efforts, if I could not eliminate it outright.

I do not think I have any qualities that could be counted as a “strength.” I think that strength is subjective. I may think that I am good at something, but others may think that I am really bad at it. I am good at something if it “works out” for me, that is, if something good arises from my actions. For example, I may think that I am good at, say, sports, but very few people will agree with my opinion. I could also think that I am bad at something like history, but many people think I am rather good at history. So what am I really good at, sports or history? Should I subscribe to what others think, or should I believe in myself? This question becomes more acute when it is juxtaposed with the question of knowing oneself. Could someone else know me better than myself?

It is difficult to compare how I know myself and how others know me because, in my opinion, the perspectives of the two are entirely different. No matter how I choose to conduct my introspection, I am still looking at myself in the first person, and I know my own feelings and my thought process. Yet, I could be biased when I look at things completely through my own lens. However, even though the only way a bystander could analyze me is through his interpretation of my actions, he could give a completely neutral assessment, depending on his involvement (or lack thereof) in my actions and his philosophical endowment. It is particularly difficult for one to assess himself honestly, because he is always limited to his own perspective. “Men willingly see what he wishes,” and he often chooses to ignore what he does not want to see, due to either vanity or embarrassment. This trait makes the advice and opinions of bystanders important to him, because they can see what he chooses not to see. Nevertheless, he is the only one that could truly discover himself because he knows himself more than anyone else, and he must find the courage to stand face to face with himself, without timidity. That is the only way for him to find the truth to himself, the only way for him to break his barrier of self that prevents him from attaining enlightenment.

You Should Really Question Stuff

I hated that kid in middle school. He was the one kid that I wanted to just smack in a hit and run. It was as if he was on the lookout for ways to annoy me. If I were eating, he would say, “Xinlin sucks at using forks!” If I were speaking in a classroom, he would say, “Xinlin has a weird accent!” Admittingly, I did have a funny accent at the time—and much to my chagrin I still have a funny accent, after all these years—But that does not give him (or indeed anyone) the right to be fastidious about it. I wanted to show him who’s boss a couple of times when I got really pissed off, but he was a good-sized middle-schooler, and I wasn’t exactly bulky. So the taunting continued throughout middle school. I eventually got used to most of it, the notable exception being “nerdy pointdexter,” which I never managed to get used to.

Well, it was sort of true that I was a pointdexter, or in the words of Severus Snape, “an insufferable know-it-all.” I read rather copiously for the average teenager, and I was not exactly shy when it came to flaunting knowledge (really, now that I think about, it was more like trivia). Instead of being consternated at my insufferableness, I took every opportunity to explain to my classmates the origin of the Thirty-Years War, much to their annoyance. I also had a catchphrase whenever I began showing off: “Did you know—I read it in (Insert long, forbidding book title)—that…” As if to add credibility to whatever I was about to say. Honestly though, I could just have made up random facts, because no one was ever going to check their validity, but I still felt obliged to provide the most accurate and truthful answer (as if anyone cared for that). Back then, I really took pride in my little discourses, and I really didn’t like that kid interrupting my seminars all the time.

One day, I was repeating the stunt for the umpteenth time to a group of my friends: “Did you know—I read it in (Insert long, forbidding book title)—that…” When suddenly, HE burst into my speech, and bleated in an obnoxious voice, “Xinlin, why are you so gullible? You always believe what every book tells you?”

Naturally I was annoyed at this outburst, so I took swipe at his supposed inferior intellect, adding, “the people who write books are much smarter than you. You must be stupid to think that what they write could be wrong.”

Apparently he was flabbergasted for a second, but then he rallied and said, “Xinlin, do you never question stuff? You should really question stuff.” Then he ran off.

At the moment I didn’t think much of his advice (Indeed, looking back at it from now, he probably picked up the lines from some random hippie-leaning liberal TV channel or his probably hippie parents without knowing what he was talking about). After school, I went home picked up a book as usual. Then I saw a minor mistake in its content. I could not remember what it exactly was, but it was definitely an error. I was rather surprised. It never occurred to me that books actually could be, well, wrong. I concluded that I might be gullible, since I have always believed what the book said—on the basis that they sounded smart. Huh, I probably did not even understand the books, I thought, g-damnit, the kid hit the mark. Then a rather painful feeling followed, and I felt a ringing hollowness for the rest of the day.

I think that uncanny comment “You should really question stuff” wracked my persona as much as the Impact had on the Earth and the Moon. For one thing, I wasn’t really the quiz kid anymore. Instead of showing off, I started reading philosophy, and most importantly, I actually questioned stuff. You know, that wasn’t half bad, I thought. So I kept on reading philosophy, kept on questioning, and funny enough, there’s more to life than what other people say; what I say counted too! I still hated the kid, mind you, but funny how a random comment could unintentionally change one’s nemesis for the better?

Unfortunately sometimes the questioning takes to perverse forms, and now I am more of a cynic than your average human being. But hey, I think even a cynic is better than what I started out with, so it is all good.

My Life As I Wished I Lived It

There are two criteria that measure the value of life; one of the definitions is supplied by society’s values, the other is one’s own definition. The value of life from a social perspective is ultimately subordinate to one’s own interpretation. We interpret the values of society through the experiences we’ve had in our lives, and no one can have the exact same experience with another. In short, the definition of a valuable life is a life that is personally satisfactory to one specific individual (or me, for the sake of the prompt). However, I am against defining the value of my own life; the very idea convokes the image of a very old and senile patriarch who is confined to a rickety wicker chair on a sunny porch and tries vainly to recall his old glory days for self comfort. It is my philosophy to live for daily satisfactions, provided if these daily satisfactions do not harm the prospect of future satisfactions. In the meanwhile I’ll just shut the window against the bigger questions like the value of life, because such a question is not only quite time consuming for me to answer, but more often than not a concrete answer cannot be obtained since it is not easy to summarize every nitbit detail of our lives and making sense of it at the same time. Indeed, more often than not our own lives don't even make sense to ourselves.

With that said, there are some things I really want to experience in this life, but some of my aspirations are better kept private, so I will try to be as vague as possible while still maintain enough coherence so that what I write will be understood.

I want a solid education. I want to know three to five languages and I want degrees in economics and law. I would also like a solid background in military science. Education is the ultimate tool for survival in society. With an education and the linguistics skills I could find a job, and a job is the equvalent of a meal ticket in this society. In addition, If I could survive by taking a paying job, then I’d have to also contribute positively to humanity, since no one gets paid by doing nothing.

I want to be a critic of movies, video games, and anime in my spare time. As a critic, I take out three birds with one stone—I’ll have an excuse to watch all the movies and play all the games I want, I can champion the good and banish the bad, and I could even be paid for it. I could launch a moral crusade that will sweep Hollywood’s cultural corruptions into the waste bins that they rightfully belong--an ENOURMOUS contribution to the spiritual well-being of human beings worldwide.

When I get tired of my job, I want to take a hiatus and participate in an organization that is engaged in wildlife conservation patrol (especially the Wild Yaks Patrol, a conservation group active in Hoh Xil, Tibet). I don’t know if this urge is merely an extension of my teenage testosterone or if I am a particularly wild soul. I sometimes think it would be a great waste if my knowledge of the world just go to waste; other times I would see myself become a pedestrian salaryman in the future, and that repulses me. I hate the restricted environment that characterizes our society today. I want to move into the wild, experience the world in its primeval state untainted by the greedy fingers of men, and I want to preserve its pristine state for posterity.

Near the end of my life, I would like to have a chance to sit down and record my (hopefully) eventful life in nitbit detail. I would leave my ideas to posterity, and if even one person approves of my view and sets out to accomplish what I did, then my life shall not lack meaning. The follower himself will be kind enough to make a meaning out of my life for me, in order to justify his eccentric decision to follow my eccentric life.

If I would die, I would like death to come as suddenly and unexpectedly as possible. No Hollywood scene of tearful departure shall occur in my case. The entire idea is summed up in Ambrose Bierce’s view on his death:

“If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think this is a pretty good way to depart this life.”

Thinking About the Hero

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
–Lord Byron, “Ozymandias”

The concept of hero is well-steeped in tradition. Since the time of Gilgamesh almost five-thousand years ago, the ideal “hero,” materialized in the epic poetry of the old, remained nearly unchanged. These epic heroes all shared some traits; they were all in some way “special” (i.e. possessing superhuman abilities), they all were nearly impeccable morally, and they were all mired in some nearly-impossible lofty enterprise. This basic modus has produced the archetypical heroes such as Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Aeneas, and even Eastern heroes such as Rama. However, even though these heroes are hailed today as landmarks in cultural and artistic development and still widely read today, to many their significance is no more than a collection of quaint little relics from a distant (and exotic, thanks to the Hollywood effect of cultural corruption) past.

As one who was born and raised in a Communist country, and one who had to endure countless hours of media praise for numberless Comrade Ogilvies, to me the very idea of hero is distorted—one is a hero because one performed “amazing” feats, and after the feats were accomplished, morality, character, dignity also comes automatically, much like the epic heroes of age’s lore. Thus, the idea of “hero” is, in my opinion, by and large corrupted in the average mind. When the word “hero” comes to mind, words like “lofty,” “distant,” “feat” and “impossible” quickly pop up as well. The concept of hero is isolated in a sort of idealistic cryostasis, inaccessible and unrelated. Heroism becomes distant epics, and the little bits of kindness and good that is close to home is then relegated to a position of inferiority, becoming a supine sidelight unworthy of praise or notice.

Yet, few question the point of these so-called heroes. Aside from the fact that they performed amazing feats that normal human beings would scurry away from (for good reason!), what is their influence on the average Joes like me? I, for one, will probably not bother with making my own feats of heroism, and the feats of heroism of others will probably not be on my mind when I go about my daily life, or when I have to make decisions that might affect myself and others. In other words, though I may admire the feats of heroism by the heroes, I would not become a hero myself, and really I could not care less about what the hero did for the hero’s feats has no influence on my modus operandi. The existence of the heroes, in other words, makes no difference in society. "Unhappy the land that needs heroes." So said Brecht. Heroes, if they represent nothing, then why would “the land” need them? For nothing more than a empty spiritual satisfaction? If a land need empty heroic epics to satisfy its empty spiritual life, then how could happiness exist in a land? Thus, throw aside heroism, and focus on the little details that actually affects our lives. Then we can all be “heroes” this way, and this time, heroism will matter to us.