Where To, Generation Y?

And the final exams is here!!!

Was too bored studying Chemistry, so I decided to write something.


Anyway, lately I was listening to Gorillaz's latest environmental themed album, Plastic Beach :O... It is a cool album, tons of techno and electronic element though. Kinda gave me a brain stimulation thinking about what the future holds

Here are the album arts, in case you're trying to find it in a CD store :D

Speaking of the future, it's just so exciting and gloomy at the same time isn't it? With all the budding technologies that is coming up, coupled with the rise of environmental issues and ongoing global conflicts, one would think that at this point, it could go either way.

So, what am i doing today? Well, I'm going give you a glimpse of what Plastic Beach gave me, I'm going to do a little prediction on what to expect in the upcoming years, whether we're gonna live that long or not (we possibly could, read on :D ).


Now let's start with a recap on the major "revolutions" that shaped the course of human history shall we?


First, it was the "Hunting and Gathering" revolution. No a big deal, almost every animal hunt or forage for food. But they don't store/hoard foods for future consumption, and it was this little advantage that gave birth to a human tribal lifestyle, making the first humans "humans".

Then came Horticulture and Pastorialism. Horticulture simply means the raising of crops using hand tools, while pastorialism means the domestication of animal. Instead of finding food when they needed it, our ancestors found a way to create a sustainable food source, bringing the food to them instead of the other way round. This of course, saved tons of energy and allowed our ancestors more time to work on other stuffs, which subsequently developed culture.

Third was one of the most defining moments in human history, the Agricultural Revolution. It started off around six to seven thousand years B.C.. Agriculture allowed humans to produce a large surplus of food supply, allowing a burst of human population growth. The need for water to water the crops prompted our ancestors to settle around river banks, which gave birth to the first ancient civilizations. It was not until the 18th century that the Agricultural Revolution peaked. Then came the invention of steam engine, which sparked off the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution changed the nature of jobs in a society. Steam engines were introduced into almost every sector of the economy, especially agriculture, replacing lots of human labor in the process. The focus of the economy shifted from extracting raw materials, to processing raw materials industrially. Not only were we mass-producing finished products, technologies were also improving rapidly, and the average human lifespan increased significantly!

Since the invention of computers, human growth had increased multiple-fold. Computers brought about the Information Revolution. Ladies and gentlemen, this is where we're in the middle of, the rise of information processing, and many refer the people born when computer technology started flourishing as the "Generation X", implying a new chapter in human history. The nature of jobs too was changed, as in the Industrial Revolution, instead of working with real objects, we're now working with abstract information. Service and creativity jobs replaced a lot of labor jobs. This is where almost aspect of human life improved in leaps due to the rapid growth of new technologies.



So where are we heading to at this point of time?


Green Revolution
The rise of Industrial Revolution slowly resulted in human "Oil Addiction". Simply put, we get most of our energy sources from fossil fuel, and as much as we like to use it, it is finally taking its toll on us. Environmental issues are not news, and it's caused by our addiction to fossil fuel as a source of energy. And today, we're at the tipping point where if the problems are left unsolved, we could go down as the generation that failed the human race.

Now I wouldn't be surprised if that happened, given that we're entangled in this messy web of connections between fossil fuel and the current human lifestyle. It would take bold steps for us to change our lifestyles to allow "oil rehabilitation".

But if we do take the first steps, it could pave way for the "Green Revolution", where we seek to reform our methods of obtaining energy to a more sustainable one. I'm predicting this to happen in a few decades, in fact, it could just happen in the next few years.

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New World Order
The world has 194 nations, each with distinct government style. This is a brave prediction LOL, but I'm predicting that within 200 years, the world's nations will finally be united under a single government to form a New World Order.

Now it might seem impossible for it to happen for now, given the differences in view between the different peoples in the world. But think about it, the development of transportation technology had caused globalization, which kind of spawned a global culture.

There are nations which are poor and where the people there do not get enough exposure to the global culture, but given enough time, its growth would catch up and peak. At that moment, the global culture would be diffused into almost every society, and uniting all nations under one government is a more feasible feat, if not a more efficient, way to manage the world's resources.

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The Singularity
Given the rate at which the computational powers are growing, it wouldn't be long before computer gets as intelligent as human. The term for which this event is "The Singularity". Science visionaries predicted that this would happen in around 2030.

As exciting as it might sound, it might yet bring a new problem to humankind. Think for example, what if the computers decided that humans are an inferior race and tries to terminate us? Go watch Terminator : /

Androids, human-like robots, would raise yet many issues. How would you distinguish between an android and a human, given that they have the same intelligence, same outer appearance? Would it be okay to marry an android? What about killing one? Do we need android right laws, just because they are as intelligent as we are?

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Genetic Revolution
The human genome was finally cracked and published in 2003, opening new doors to the field of genetics.

As to today, humans are already quite adept at manipulating genetic materials. We cloned animals, we modified the genome of crops, we introduced genes to bacterias to mass produce stuffs. It would just be a matter of time before we start tinkering with human genome, isn't it?

The Genetic Revolution, I predict, would happen within 50 years, when our moral understanding catches up with the development of the technology.

Genetic Revolution would see human lifespan increasing dramatically, possibly extending it by 50-100 years or indefinitely. The prospects are promising, new medical technologies spawned from the understanding of genetics could greatly reduce diseases, inherited or contracted.

By breaking moral barriers, we might also see the birth of the first "superhumans", a generation of newborns genetically modified to optimize physical health, which could lead to a split in the evolutionary timeline of human race, where the rich who could afford the technology would be superior to the other humans who couldn't afford the technology.

Cloning too, might also become widespread, though absolutely immoral by today's standard. But moral judgments change with time, cloning might become morally accepted in the future.

The application of genetic engineering is almost limitless, although not all are practical sometimes. Imagine creating a whole new species of "chimaeras"?

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Space Colonization
Earth is limited, soon we could run out of resources, or if we can even get that far, run out of spaces to live. Space colonization is just a matter of time, be it on the moon, or mars. It could happen much earlier than we think it will.

But the process of building a livable place will take a long time. For moon, maybe decades from the start of colonization process before we can really live there. For mars, from at least a few centuries to a millenium, due to the need to terraform the whole planet into a sustainable habitat.

In any case, it would be very uneconomical to colonize other planets at least until we start mastering ways to harness earth's resources efficiently.

My prediction? Within 100 years for the moon, 300 years for Mars.

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Death of Abrahamic Religions
Now of all the predictions this one is really the boldest one. I'm predicting that the Abrahamic Religions - Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, will drop from the "Religion" status to "Cult" status, or at least a "Minority" status, within 3 generation's time from now.

Given that these religions already have a deep root within the current world societies, they would be hard to fade a way , at least not without a fight. But the increasing understanding of the universe has prompt lots of us to question the validity of many of the religious teachings. Such as the question "Is blind faith alone suffice for our life?"

On the contrary, secular movements are picking up momentum. Ever since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, many people started questioning if the traditional religious teachings are still relevant in the current world anymore.

Of course, some sects of the religions adapt, but it is still stigmatized by secular advocates. Some adaptations are more inclined to the current world situation, some straying away. But in any cases, it results many different world views within ONE religion alone, and this will cause the religion to split into smaller ones.

As for the "Death of Religion"? Probably not gonna happen given that it is part of human nature.

While religion will still play a big part in human society, the definition of religion might change in the near future. Instead of being "a sacred institution that provides spiritual relief", it might change into "a socializing institution that provides moral guidance", or something like that.

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Phew. That's all for my post today. Hopefully you understood it LOL!


Till next time, I'll be studying, cheers~

Why Do You Believe?

Hey guys, it’s the first day of Chinese New Year!

Hope you are having a good time so far. Well, as for me, the morning was as usual, a visit to my grandma’s place and take Angpau la, nothing too fancy :)

But I’m having tons of free time in the afternoon so I reckon I should spend some time writing a blog article.



So, what’s up for this post? As you can see from the title, today I’m going to attempt to tackle one of the most philosophical questions of all time – “Does God exists?”

Now before proceeding to the main text, I should warn you that if you are a religious person and you have total belief in everything your religion teaches you, and you do not like your faith to be challenged or questioned, you ought to turn back and leave now, do this and thus your faith towards your religion shall be kept intact. Otherwise, proceed, read with an unbiased view, think, and you shall see the world differently, maybe not wholly, but you’ll be asking questions that you had not thought of after this.



Ready?
Here we go~



Does God exist?

A simple question with three words, and none of us were able to answer it correctly with the support of provable evidence.

Before trying to answer that question, let us try to define what is “God” in meaningful words.


So what is God to you? What do you know about God?

Well, I’m not going to go too far, again, the usual practice, I’m only going to take examples from the mainstream religions.

To the members of the Abrahamic faith, God is the “One”, the “Perfect”, the “Almighty”, the “(Put a title here)”, etc…

They describe God as an all-loving, kind, omnipresent, omniscient, infinite and perfect being.

And according to Christianity, God looks like human too (well, He looks like man to be precise because He was always depicted as a human with bushy white beards in paintings), that because God created humans based on his own image.

While according to Islam, God takes no form, He is too great to be put in paintings (and peoples say that a picture is worth more than a thousand words, how ironic is the fact that we are describing His being with our lowly languages.)

And the Gods they described is a God that had created the whole known universe, made the Earth, made every living organisms on this planet, and even interacted and interfered with human activities.

Okay, now that we had set the parameters, let’s move on by examining if this God exists.



First of all, I’m going to start with the God that created the known universe. It was said that in the beginning there was nothing, and the God created everything! How cool is that huh?!

This God created everything! Wow, awesome! Hmm… But the question is, does the universe need a creator?

A person with theological perspective would simply say, “If there’s no God, then how can EVERYTHING come from NOTHING?”

Common sense tells us that the second part of this argument is a strong argument, of course, it is beyond the physical laws to create something out of nothing, that’s just impossible, in our universe at least. But do you have to bring a creator into the argument?

Well one thing to consider is that there are many other existing theories on the origin of the universe and all of them were yet to be proven. But let’s say that God created the universe, then who created God? Do you mean to say, God as a being, came from nothing?

That just doesn’t make sense right? The universe must have a cause, and so do God if you were to put Him as part of the explanation. What is it then, that caused the God to exist? Surely it must be something else isn’t it?

Then again, for God to create the universe, He must not be governed by our universe’s law of physics, or else He wouldn’t have had the ability to do so. So there might be a possibility that God came from nothing, because even though it’s not physically possible in OUR universe, it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible outside our universe, as it might have been governed by a whole different set of physical laws.

So yes, I’m saying that there’s a possibility that our universe was created by a creator, which in human context is called “God”.

You might think that I am self-contradicting in my arguments, it doesn’t seem like I’m standing on either side of the argument. Yes, I am taking a neutral stance. The thing is, both the creator theories and the non-creator theories are equally viable, and none of them have more evidence than the other, why should I act like I know everything and decide that one of the MUST be correct and the other MUST be wrong?



Now, that aside, I’m going to talk about the God that seeded Earth with life.

This is a very interesting question, “Did God created Life?”

According to the Abrahamic religions, yes, God did.

In Christianity, God created all lives on Earth and even the first humans, Adam and Eve, in His 7 days of creation. Well I had addressed this topic on my other post Adam, Eve, Noah.

No, I don’t think God created all living creature as described in the Bible or any other religious scriptures, literally or not.

Why?

I’ll say it’s very arrogant of us to think that a God that created this vast universe would want to put some sort of life-forms on this tiny little blue dot in the backdrop of majestic stars and galaxies. Why would He?

You? A tiny little human? Created by God? Do you really think a being that had created this massive universe would even care to waste His time on decorating this small planet that can hardly be seen from the nearest star?

Why?

Because He just wanted peoples to worship Him? Doesn’t that make you a slave? Then don’t you think it’s unfair? To be born in this world, just to be a slave of worship?

Why would God need people to worship Him anyway? Does He have some self-esteem issues?  Has He been bullied by other Gods lately and needs assurance from us that He is Awesome?

Humans outlawed slavery a few centuries ago but yet they do not find this religious binding with God offensive against human rights?

I don’t know, you think for yourself.

But I can tell you, no matter how you would like to defend the theory that God created life as described in the religious scriptures, you’ll find that the burden of prove is on you.

How did you know God did it? Because that’s what the book said? How did you know what the book said was real? Because peoples that wrote the book said God told them? How did you know God told them at all? Because they insist God really told them even though they cannot prove it? WTF? Come on, children can tell better lies.

Anyway, back to the topic, did God really gave life universe, but not literally as the religious scriptures claimed?

Is it even possible for God to enter our universe, given that He cannot be expressed physically since He is infinite and timeless, and therefore incompatible with our universe?

It’s quite tempting to say God gave life, since scientists weren’t able to explain the origin of life, yet! But does that mean science cannot explain at all and that you really had no choice but to put God into the equation? Science is making progress, and there are new findings towards the ultimate explanation of the origin of life daily. The Earth was once “flat” too until someone proved it to be round and globular, what makes you think science will not find the explanation to origin of life?

I hope I had stimulated enough thoughts here so far…



Now, let’s move on to the “All-powerful, all-loving, just, perfect, omnipotent, omniscient” God that the Abrahamic religions have been talking about.

Take a look around the world, what do you see?

Billions of peoples suffering from famine and poverty.

What do you see?

Natural disasters creating more and more refugees.

What do you see?

Diseases, inherited, contracted, deadly, millions dead.

What do you see?

Wars, conflicts, religious crusades, threatening world peace.

What do you see?

Climate changes, humans on the brink of extinction.

What do you see?

Just tell me…

Do you see an all-loving God? Do you see a just God? Do you see an omnipotent, all-powerful God?

If God is all-loving, why are there still billions of kids of Africa suffering hunger? Does God love them not?

If God is just and treat all man equally, why are there billions of people who died undeservingly while we have mass murderers roaming around killing in the name of their religions? Why do peoples suffer diseases at all while most don’t? Is that fair at all? There were devoted Christians and Muslims that had cancers and died, is it fair for them that they had worship God for all their lives and suffer immense pain in return?

If God is all-powerful, why doesn’t He use His powers to help those in need? Why doesn’t He give enough food to everyone on Earth so that the word “famine” may be removed from the dictionary? Why doesn’t He stop earthquakes and volcanic eruptions from hurting peoples? Why?

What is really happening? Is God on vacation?

There are only two possible explanations:

One, God is evil, unjust, maybe still all-powerful, but He doesn’t care, likes to incur natural disasters for fun, zaps you with lightning occasionally, puncture your car tires while you are in a rush, sends robbers to rob you even though you need the money more than the robbers do, makes your girlfriend breakup with you because she wanna date a hot guy she just met.

Two, there is no God.


Which one is more comfortable? The belief that there is a God that is looking at us laughing at our sufferings? Or the belief that there is no God and everything happens because it needed to?

I don’t know what you’d think, but let me ask you this…

If you had a religious family, and your family goes to church every weekend, make donations to the church, do services, and all the sudden one day your parents died in a car accident. What would you do?

Do you blame God? They were the nicest people around, and yet they had to die in this manner, was God out of His mind? Maybe you’d say God had a plan for them, but what about that little brother that is still lying in that cradle? Who’s gonna look after him? Did God planned him to be an orphan so that he may live His whole live not experiencing the love of a family? Is this fair for him? Why the special treatment? Why not make all of us orphans so that it is fair for that baby?

More questions than answer it seems…

So tell me, why do I have to believe that there is a God willing to offer us a hand when in need, when He can’t even help the other few billions people that deserves better out there?





So, there you go, that’s all I have to say for today. I apologize if you can’t agree with me, maybe you need to talk to me more, then you’ll understand. What I hope to achieve in this thing I’m doing is that, I want you to think.

What does that mean? Does that mean I think you’re not using your brain? No, of course not. But I want you to do is that I want you to think of what you believed in, and why do you believe it? Do you believe it just because you were brought up to believe it? Or do you believe it because there are sufficient reasons to believe in it?

Do you eat vege because your mom told you to eat it? Or do you eat vege because it’s good for you? That’s the question.



Till next time, cheers~

p.s.: Are you sincere?

Let me start by asking you this one simple question - Are you a sincere person?

Don't have to think too long. It's just a simple question... Or is it?

So most of you would say "yes", well that is no surprise and no doubt, in my mind, that you are being true to yourself in answering that question.

But what do you really know about sincerity? Do you really think what you do is really sincere?

What does sincere means anyway?

Quote the definition of sincere:
sin·cere (sn-sîr)
adj. sin·cer·er, sin·cer·est
1. Not feigned or affected; genuine: sincere indignation.
2. Being without hypocrisy or pretense; true: a sincere friend.
3. Archaic Pure; unadulterated.

To me, it means doing something with the right intention from the heart, not driven by extrinsic motivations, not driven by benefits it gives.

So imagine this, a person is a philanthropist, he does charity all the time, he donates money to organizations, he never hesitates to help those in need.

But there's one question you may ask, what is/are his motive(s)? 



One might say, if that person is a politician, his real motive is to gain popularity, to get public support, to buy the peoples' heart so that he can further strengthen his position and staying power in the world of politics.

So tell me, is that sincere? Well the answer is an obvious No! No explanation needed.



Well then what if the person is just a wealthy businessman who happens to have a lot of spare money?

His motive, like the politician, might also be to gain popularity. If he's really a business-minded person, he'll surely be taking advantages of the publicity he gets while he does charity to further promote the name of his company. I'm not saying that the person does charity just to get more publicity, he might really be a kind-hearted person who really wanted to help other peoples, but deep down inside him he knows that doing charity will bring himself collateral benefits, and that's what motivates him.

Now then, can you label this business man as a sincere person? It's debatable, but surely more people would agree that "No" should be the answer. 



What if this person is just a typical person you will find? A normal middle-class person, let's say, with Buddhism as his/her religion. Tell me then do you think that person is sincere in doing those charities?

Most of you might say:

"Yes of course he's a sincere person! How could you question that? He doesn't have any hidden agendas."

True, to an extend. Let me ask you, "what drives him to be a philanthropist?"

Your answer: "Religion?"

"There! Gotcha!"

"Huh?!"

You see, that is what motivates him. As a Buddhist, he believes in Karma. What he does is, while in his charity act, he gives benefits to others, and in this process he hopes to collect enough merits in his life, so that HE himself can reap the benefits later.

"What benefits?" You asked.

Well as a Buddhist he would have believed that when a person do good things, more good things will happen to that person; when a person had collected enough merits, that person will be promoted to a higher dimension and possibly achieving "Moksha" (The highest happiness, free from suffering).

So in the end, what he or she really hopes for is to get the benefits for himself/herself. So that means that person has a motive, or rather, hidden agenda. Now tell me, can you consider this as a sincere act then? Well my answer is... No!

I don't see any difference that sets this person apart from the previous two mentioned above, the only difference is that this person will only receive the benefits when he/she is dead(which is not much of a use anyway).



Well let's move on to another classic example. 

A Christian doing charity? This is so much easier. 

The answer is... an obvious... No!

What might be that person's motivation? He/She might be doing charity just to please the God, which is a motive anyway. He/She might be buying himself/herself a ticket to Heaven and eternal joy, which itself is also a motive.

You see, whatever philanthropy that person does it all goes down to getting benefits for himself. Try asking a Christian this question,"Why do you do good things and help other peoples?".

I'm VERY sure the answer will be something like this,"Because I want to go to Heaven."

That's the typical answer you'll get. If not eitherway, it will be the "Propagating religion" answer, which itself is much worse in terms of sincerity.

So tell me, am I wrong at labeling this person as insincere? 


So...
Extrinsic sincerity? Intrinsic sincerity?



What do you really believe in?

Do you believe in doing good things so that good things will happen to you? Or do you believe in doing good things because it is good?

My philosophy is - If you want to do something, let that something be the reason, and not something else.

I study because studying gives you knowledge, not because I want to show to other peoples that I'm smart. I play music because I like playing music, not because I want to show off my skills to the world. I do charity because I like to help other peoples, not because I want to gain popularity or fame.

And let me end by quoting something from a Boyzone's song :) - "Don't love me for fun, girl ... ... Love me for a reason, and let the reason be love"


So ask yourself, what do you really want?



Ask yourself...






That's all for tonight. Till next time, cheers~

21.9.09 Episode 1: International Day of Peace, His story and mine

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21st of September, The International Day of Peace, has come a long way till today.

In the year 1981, the UN General Assembly declared, in a resolution sponsored by Costa Rica, that the third Tuesday of September every year as the International Day of Peace devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace.

The holiday was celebrated, albeit not in a global scale, the UN itself seemed reluctant to push the idea of a day of peace where arms shall be put aside and peoples are allowed to think for themselves. The idea grew cold, peoples were saying," A day of peace and ceasefire will never happen on earth."

Until this man came into the picture.



Meet Jeremy Gilley, born English, previously an actor. He was the founder of the charity One Peace Day that started this global tsunami.

Jeremy Gilley has spent the last ten years promoting the idea of peace, non-stop. He was the one who got the United Nations General Assembly to put forward a resolution declaring the 21st of September as the official International day of Peace after almost two years of meeting peoples and writing letters and so on. Why on the 21st of September? Well, first of all, the original Peace Day was in September, and for the number 21, it is Jeremy's grandfather's favourite number.

His story is well documented during the last ten years, for he wanted the world to see how by pushing this one day alone, can change the world.

I've posted the video below, uploaded by the One Peace Day foundation. To be honest, of all the documentaries I've seen, this is really the first one that got me feeling touched. So please, I know the video is long(1 hour 20 minutes), but it'll worth every single minute and I'm sure by the end of the video you'll feel that you're contribution to the earth is just so tiny all this while.Yeow Minyi, who is ever so dedicated to making the world a better place. And always end up doing funny-funny nonsense  :P Joking lar...