Technology: Salvation or Destruction

       The reason human are able to rule the world is that they know how to use tools and technology to help them. Technology is invented to help human. Although sometimes, it might has negative effect on economy and can kill many people in wars, the benefit it brings is immeasurable. It will be the salvation of human.

For example, in the history, civilizations were developed because of technology. All of the ancient civilizations, such as Roman empire, Egypt, Chinese empire, were powerful because they developed technology. It helped the food production, education, and improved people’s life. In 20^th century,America became the strongest country because they had the best technology. Technology is necessary for human to improve.

Secondly, without technology, there is no distinction between human and wild animals. Human are more civilized than beast because they have tools to help them. They know how to live by using their brains to think, instead of simply fighting. Without technology, all of the excellent characteristics or human disappear.

In the future, there are many things human need to improve. They can use technology to explore the outer space. They can improve the speed of traveling. They can make drug to improve human’s health. All of these improvements of the civilization are related to technology.

The improvement of human relied on technology before. And it needs technology to improve in the future as well. Technology will be the salvation of human.

Happiness, It is far From Reach

“Certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” 

This quote is by Thomas Jefferson in the Deceleration of Independence in 1776, have you wondered that why instead of just saying “liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” why can it be “liberty and happiness”? Because the term “happiness” must come from a certain pursuit by the people. Yes, we can have happiness, but is only for a short amount of time, not for long. And sometimes getting too happy about something might cause a serious damage on someone or something, this is in the Chinese old saying “Extreme joy Begets Sorrow”. Likewise, instead of having happiness, not matter how long it is, you will never get a full happiness, because by the time you achived something that make you happy and at the moment of happiness you raises your view point higher than before and eventually you want more and more, this is the pursuit of happiness, we want happiness, but is simply far from your reach. Because the main cause that raises you desire is the desire you have it before, and this kind of show goes on and on forever. Beside of saying that happiness only last less amount of time, you can also says that happiness, although is far from reach, it could be infinity since you just go on as soon as you finished your desire or goal of something. Yes, is like setting a goal for yourself, is a kind of encouragement, without it you will be thinking what’s the meaning of life if there’s no goal for me to gain.  So the existence of happiness actually direct us to be never give up, and keep on going and don’t stop. Happiness is like a tour guide for your life, it gives you direction and it gives goal to gain, but last short, because happiness don’t wait.

Anger, Not for Long

Have you ever get mad at someone? I mean really really mad at someone and sometime you want to kill him, or just simply punch him in the face to unleash your anger. We all know this is wrong, but for me, is natural. Men are born meant to have anger in it. But also, anger to me is just a temporarily frustration, it will be gone just for a matter of hours, sometimes for me is just a matter of minutes!  Yes, I certainly believe that ‘anger’ is only for short period of time. My grandmother once told me, anger won’t change one’s thinking but I will change how one’s looked at you. She is also a Christian, when I was young, I’m very mischievous, and my grandmother always tell me to come to her room while she’s reading her Bible. She told my that Jesus is the creator of the universe, I must be a good boy in-order to go to heaven. And the foods we eat, like the rice we eat every single day, shall not waste any grain of it, or else Jesus will collect it and by the time you died, Jesus will force you to eat it. First I think is reasonable but slow I grew up. Although Science have prove many wrongs toward my Grandmother, but I still believes in him, I believe that Jesus was the creator of everything. So even today, I read Bible and my grandmother will give me a hour or so lecture about the Words of Jesus. There is one thing that influence me the most is the line my grand mother once told me:

“Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. He who had been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his hand, that he may have something to share with those in need.” (Ephesians 4:9)

This one little line give me the whole new thought of anger that I should not be angry for over a day. Instead of being angry, do something productive, and helpful. I think all this reasonable just simply because the line from the Bible, this line have remind me to stay calm and do not be angry for too long, is not good for me and the people around me.

Understanding

Understanding a thing is never complete. You cannot ever tell someone your thought completely unless the one you  are talking to thinks the exact same thing as you. However, you never know how well a person understand you or how well you understand them, is only the matter of perspective of how you define whether or not you understand a particular things. Understanding a thing is like passing a story to one’s mind, and then you pass it to someone else. During the action of passing it, you might rephrase it to your own word just for your own comfort. By doing this action it have already corrupted one’s thoughts, therefore you cannot pass your thoughts to someone else completely. Likewise the word “Understand” is just a word with no definite meaning and sometimes it don’t even really exist. So never expect someone to understand you fully, even though you tell them you understand them. Also, even you mother and dad may or may not fully understand you, this can easily cause family conflicts. In order to prevent this type of conflict you must therefore tell them what you think, but don’t expect them to understand you. Or on the parent’s side, they might think that you are just making things up or you are really telling the truth, but you never know how well you understand your children. The nature of understanding is not understand it FULLY, but instead understand it briefly, or to know it. To knowing something is not just understand, therefore understanding is only the part of knowing something. Another example is a Math teacher who taught his student to understand how to work a formula out, instead of just listing to the teacher ‘completely’ students offend finds the best way to solve the formula. Therefore a man can’t never understand things completely

Borrowing from the Future

Imagine that your income is unable to support your current means, and every day only brings you further into economic downfall. Imagine having credit card after credit card within your wallet, all fully maxed out to pay the negative balances of the others. The words “VISA” and “Mastercard” float around in their blinding holograms whenever you reach for some funds, amassing together and mocking your desperate situation. Your bill statements would come back each month yelling, in bright scarlet capitalized letters, their need to be paid. Their shrieks pound and penetrate your mind daily, forcing you to pay vivid attention with blood-red eyes a problem that you cannot reasonably fix. Imagine having to walk into yet another bank, falsely invigorated to promote your status to the world, to plead them for a loan. Your lies about how you have a fantastic opportunity for huge profits, and how only the need for capital restricts your path, manage to convince them for yet another loan. What would you do? What could you do?
Most would believe that the prior example would lead one to conclude that the imagined person would be someone especially within the lower middle class or even perhaps below the poverty line. Of course, that would be a reasonable assumption; no reasonable adults would keep up such a charade, or live above their reasonable capability to provide. The only exceptions would be those who have an income that cannot provide for their most basic of necessities, hence the need to borrow. That reveals a troubling issue within our current economic systems as it were, but the model is not restricted only to singular individuals. No matter our age or economic status, we are all afflicted by the effects of this plague. The backbones of our civilizations are infected; our governments are being crushed underneath its weight.
For clarification, a simplified illustration to our debt crisis can be drawn. A man earns
$900 every month, and needs $1000 for his expenses, ignoring the question of exactly how necessary they are. In order to meet his expenses, he has to borrow $100 from a lender. By the time the month ends, he has his needs met but has a total income of -$100. For the the next month, since he would still be stuck underneath the same circumstances, he would have to owe at least $200, assuming an impossible zero percent interest rate. Being continuously unable to pay the loans back, he would have to keep increasing his overall deficit by taking up more new loans to pay for the expiring old ones and the current deficit between his revenue and his expenditure. Expand this by changing a few numbers, and increasing the number of cycles by a large number, and you would basically have the current US debt situation.
Loans, by all means, are fine. They provide both a way for individuals to increase their current savings as well as for the borrower to have the resources to work on some profitable project. This sort of investment is actually vital to the growth of our society – there are many prospective ideas and innovations ready to be had, and people willing to spend the time to research into them, but money is almost always a limiting factor. Loans, however, can be separated into two different portions: one being for productive uses (that will result in an overall gain) and one being used for consumption. One can provide, and another is just a way to ignore the true problem at hand, to off load our own waste for the future to handle. Meanwhile, we’ll just live in our bliss and elevated standards of living, uncaring about how each second we wait plummets our future generations even further into the abyss.
The American government has over $14.3 trillion USD in debt, and is continuously increasing. With a deficit of $1.56 trillion every fiscal year, we are forced to issue further more bonds – promises of future funds in exchange for a smaller amount of today’s currency. What kind of gift are we leaving our children and their ancestors? With each second, the weight upon their shoulders increases; the imminent collapse grows in scale. Every second that we waste, we are $50,000 further into debt. We have to stop the cycle now.
As another expansion of the current problems, our social welfare systems are crippling us as well. They rely on the current population’s taxes to pay for the previous generation’s welfare, and those that are paying today will have to rely on funds provided by the next few generations. For example, one would pay $10 out of his salary every month for his future welfare. This $10 would then be distributed among the current retired population, in exchange for the promise that a similar amount would be available in the future. Once retired, one would then get the funds assigned to him, paid by the new generation. Of course, there are benefits to implementing this system. Assuming that the elderly and retired stay low or negligent in proportion the younger working populous, the incoming taxes would leave more than enough for the sustainment of the welfare program. This is because though many pay continuously for the promise of welfare in the future, few will actually cash in, leading to an evident surplus that could then be used in numerous applications. These can range from severely economically starved areas such as education and medical systems to the building of new beneficial infrastructure – economic and societal growth can be accomplished. Especially if used in raising the average salary per annum with no change in purchasing power parity, and decreasing unemployment, the effects can compound to create an even larger surplus.
This design is outdated, however, as medical advancements extend lifespans further, and luxurious standards of life push down the age of retirement. In addition, the average birth rate has decreased by nearly 50 percent in the last 80 years. This results in a exponentially growing ratio between retirees and the young population, as fewer babies are born to supplement the steadily aging previous generations. The problem underlies within the system’s need for a steady ratio between the old population and the younger, which reveals a necessity for the birth rate to continue increasing. For example, a small country has 200 elderly and 1800 workers, an optimistic start when compared to the current situation within the US. There about 56 million beneficiaries of the Social Security System this year, and only 158 million inserting funds into the program. Assuming that there are required at least three payees (workers) for each recipient of the fund, it is required that the next ‘generation’ be at least 5400 people. The situation would then become 1800 recipients, and 5400 workers. Following on, the next generations would have to have a population about 16200. The number will grow exponentially, and though they may seem meager at first – 16200 persons is a relatively small number, especially when compared to the 316 million that are currently living on US soil – it will grow. 20 phases and one would need to have a 10 digit population. It is an unsustainable pyramid scheme, where the lower levels are forced to pay the benefits of the generation above them, in hopes that the level after them would provide. They have to fall at some point, leaving a shattered system, and the only method to prolong its existence is to further raise taxes, borrow funds from an already heavily indebted government, or reduce payouts to an already impoverished selection of people – the system keeps roughly 40% of elderly out of poverty.
We are living beyond our means. We are alcoholics who have for far too long drunk their accursed syrup, penniless in truth but still continuing on the illusion in fear of what may happen outside of it. In reality, there are only two possible methods to save our children and grand-children’s generations. We can either completely give up (default), or we can cut spending and increase taxes. Both are uncomfortable decisions, one will shatter our economy and another will devastate our standards of life. But as our forefathers had fought and died for us, for the freedom of the generations after, shall we not sacrifice our comfort for the sake of the prosperity of our own children?
Imagine what could happen if we did cut spending on less ‘crucial’ endeavors and raised taxes to protect the others. Imagine paying a few percent more for the goods that you buy, and receive slightly less than what you had previously earned every month. Prices will increase as government subsidiaries disappear; those on welfare will be forced to rely on fewer resources for their daily survival as the government eases from the pyramid scale design to an actual depositing and reserving of the taxpayer’s funds, or perhaps even leave welfare to private organizations. We will suffer, that is certain. We face this onslaught of pain, however, for a cause we know to be true and worthwhile; our children and the generations beyond them. We shall carry on underneath the new burden of having to pay for our actions, so that our children can live free and follow their dreams without being pulled back by the steel ropes of our ‘gift’. It is a burden that we must absolve, regardless of the pain that it causes us. We teach to make up for our wrong, to bring justice to a world of chaos; what are we if we do not follow the very moral principles that we yearn towards? We must, for to do otherwise would be contradictory to ourselves.

Think too Much?

Thinking is a act of organizing information in your brain. Organizing is always good, but depend on what kind of situation you organize things. Thoughts takes time to think, during the process of thinking, be aware of the time. Time is money, nothing can get the time to fast forward nor back wards, it is impossible, therefore, time must not waste on things that is useless. If you think on something for very long then you must consider to be worth it, or else the next time you think logically will be painful. Actions are the product of a logical thoughts. Therefore, before doing something no matter is big or small, you must consider it well and fast. But how can we achieve that? The answer is by waiting. For example, love. Loving someone must that good care, and consider it well before you told he/she that you love them. Once the declaration of love is done, there’s no way that you can regret. You can, however, but only for your own, not other. Loving someone is hard, takes time to consider if you love them or not. This consideration takes time, therefore telling someone you love them, can wait. If you cannot promise you will love them for a lifetime, the you can simply stop thinking and give up. If you ignore this idea, then you will suffer. If one day you decide you don’t love them no more. First, your reputation will go down, second the ones you loved will be very depress. Another example is in the Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.  If 1000 of people read Hamlet then there will must be 1000 different  kind of Hamlet in them, since Hamlet in the play is a quite mysterious  man, therefore we don’t know a lot from him, but one thing we know is he loves to think long. Yes, thinking long is good for planing on something, but if taking too long time to think may cause a good chance that you might miss to start your plan. Chance is like time, only comes but never come back again.

Modern Romance Stories

In China, romance stories are incredibly popular. Some people favored to buy them in the book stores, some fancied to read them online. I am one of the second kinds. Most of them have the same point in common, they are about love and the female character had a conflict about who to chose. It could be in high school or at work. Recently I read one about the struggling in the business areas. The CEO had a strong objection towards his subordinates dating each other, it was a temporary rule that if they offend it, their career in this company would end.

Unluckily other colleagues who also had great detections, uncovered the two main characters’ relationship. The twenty-five years old woman was alerted after she met him, the other half. They got in touch with each other, a business scam was revealed too. Anyway, the final ending was just the two was together, and the man, the husband of the woman, became the CEO, and had a child together with his wife.

Like this, 85% of all novels in China had a simple main plot. But the authors just added some more meaningless branches to the book. To me, I think that the main reason they came up with all those torturing ideas was just because they wanted their stories to be memorable and unique. But all it took was just changing the main route and think outside of the box.

Recently, I just found a novel i just read in the store, I was excited but I did not feel like buying it and show off to my friends about how I got it. One of the main reasons I declined the thought was because that story wasn’t worth it to be bought. Plus, I barely could remember who was it in the book. After all, I read copious amount of these kinds. What was the point of owning it if I have it online, and couldn’t even recall the main characters? Nevertheless, even I read a lot in these areas, but I still had a view about these romance novels are just luxuries.

Reality

What is reality? I define it as a thought or vision by ourselves, not unnecessary real. Some said that “seeing is believing” and believing can relate to believing something that is true, which therefore, will be Reality. So if the things you saw is reality, then I think that is wrong. Note that only a certain thing that reflect off light and the light saw only may therefore become visible.  What if there is something that it don’t reflect off light? So seeing is believing dose not always give you the full vision of reality, because you never know that what the things you saw, whether or not is complete. Moreover, reality does not fully exist. Only the the one who make the things we saw may know the true reality namely the God. If, as a assumption, God is the one who made all the thing in the universe, then therefore he is the only one who knows the reality. What about there are no God? Then if it is in that point reality do not exactly exist. Reality can be someone’s though, or instinct, there are no definite meaning of it, it may just be logical though. Likewise, it can be a kind of encouragement. Only if  you ‘believe’ in something, then you can achieve that thing with much greater trust or confident. If there are reality that you believe in something, then therefore there must be reality base on your point of view, does not necessary means that anyone else must follow your thought. You cannot simply tell someone to believe in something without any logical reasoning. Therefore, this we call it ‘convincing’. It is a act of a individual telling others to believe in something, or force to. As conclusion, in order to have reality in someone’s mind, then, the act of convincing must not exist, Vise Versa.

A Night to Remember

June 8th was Sandy’s birthday-she was the first true friend when I came to SMIC-and we had a birthday party that day. It was friday, and we planned to eat at a restaurant, then go to the cinema. We had argued about what should we do, one of the reason was because some people didn’t want to or they didn’t have money. Sandy didn’t like the KTV, so we dropped that choice. We all know that it was suppose to be the birthday girl’s day, but it seemed like we took control of it. Fortunately, we had a great night of five hours.

At the restaurant, a slide of Sandy’s journey in China was played. We laughed at her when she blushed, but we giggled more when we went to the upstairs. We reenacted the scene over and over at 80 Home, soon, it was time to set off to the movies. The plan was to pay 70 RMB for each person to watch Mirror Mirror, and let the excitement drive us off. Sandy’s little sister, Daisy, who was just about four years old came along with us in the theatre. She had regretted to tell her mom that we were watching this movies, since it ended with her sister joining us. But the result wasn’t bad. We all enjoyed the film without Daisy interrupting.

The show was great, everybody in the room cracked up. We smiled for the rest of our time spent together. We all had to leave later, so we stopped by at the starbuck, and got us some coffee. In China’s economy, everything rose its price. We judged the movie, but inside, I appreciated the director and the writer. This film really brought us a fun time. Even though Sandy is going to leave us next year, I’m sure to cherish every second together with her.

Definition of Evil

It is said that, “Evil is a form of aggressive behavior where a person or group force their ideas, values and beliefs in a dishonest, threatening, or dangerous manner. It is when one’s personal freedom or property is put at risk in a way serves the self-interest of another person.” This definition is not true. Sometimes when an action has these characteristic, it still cannot be considered evil.

For example, the government tries to make people behave in a way that keeps a peace and a stable society. That is for people’s sake. It is not evil. Sometimes, in order to stop people from doing bad things, such as killing and robbing, the government punishes people by forcing them to live in a prison or even killing them for a death sentence. It is aggressive and dangerous. Still, it has nothing wrong since government is trying to make the most people safe. According to this theory, however, it is evil.

Secondly, parents’ teaching of values and rules of the human society is forcing opinions on kids. It is necessary for the adults to teach young people how the world works in order to let them become part of the society. However, those rules are sometimes not, what the kids want to follow. Their personal freedom is limited by the rules of the society. They are force to obey rules. This is very common. Almost everyone in the society needs to adapt different rules. Therefore, parents’ teachings of rules are good to the kids. Nevertheless, it is considered evil according to this definition.

Thirdly, being dishonest is not always evil. There is a story about how an old man had heart problem. When his son wins a fortune in a lottery, he does not want his father to know, in case he will be too happy and will have heart attack. Later, his father figures it out anyway, and really dies. In this case, forcing a wrong idea on a person, and being dishonest is good. If the son tells his father the truth and be honest, he is evil because he will kill his father. The definition of evil cannot be true in this case.

Finally, there is an exception of the definition of evil in the story, The Scarlet Letter, too. In this story, the puritan government punishes Hester Prynne, who betrays her husband and commits adultery. The government forces her to wear a letter “A” on her breast for the rest of her life as a punishment. It is clear that the government wants to use this to stop other citizens from doing the same thing and tells them the consequences. This act is good to the society. It makes all the couples know better about their rules. However, according to the definition, this act is evil since it is aggressive to Hester Prynne and forcing their ideas to others.

Again, forcing one’s idea on others in a dishonest, aggressive, threatening, and even dangerous way is not always evil. This definition has many exceptional cases. One cannot use this to determine whether an action is evil or not.