Politics or basic human character?

Several years ago, in a village of China, a guy killed 14 corrupted government officers, and was sentenced to death in the end. Before he was executed, he claimed that he did that for justice and the regret is that he couldn't kill more who deserved the death. Several days ago, the war between Russia and Georgia erupted. Thousands of people died as in many other military conflict.  And this is even a small number compared with 1.3 million people died in Iraq war.

 

No matter big or small, are these things that we are trying to avoid all the time? Are this done just by some "evil" country/government? We don't know how future goes but maybe we can get some clue from history. WWI finished, WWII continued; WWII finished, Code War started; Code War ended, Iraq war broke; etc.. It seems that killing never ends. People all suffered from all those things year by year. Governments all over the world accused each other for doing killing but it is the altitude only to others but for themselves. The war proceed any way no matter it is protested or supported. Usually people commit to the war in the name of "nice" reasons.

 

What is the power behind these social phenomena? Of course every thing when goes to the most fundamental principle is about physics laws, or we can say God here. As a human ourselves, we may ask what the reason in the next understanding level (social science)? As we know our ancestors has been through a long history of evolution, fighting against the environment, other species, our own species. Probably we've gotten some in our soul that we want to fight and live better than others. So killing or massacre is just a thing that we cannot neglect. In another words it is like the moon goes around the Earth. It is the law.

Common points between soldier and scientist

They are all lower class of the human society. No body really respect them though social ethics may encourage them to do so. Actually those ethics is just a tool to trick them to work hard for the higher class. Both of them suffer for their whole life and don't get much payment. Does soldier get paid anyway? Though they spend billions of dollars everyday, which may be taken as a compensation for their poor live, but the money is not for themselves because if they don't do well, they will be sued or dead.

 

Who is the king, or higher class of current human society? The answer is almost for sure: rich people. They may not be as smart as a scientist, or as brave as a soldier, but they can do whatever they want to do. The only limit is their imagination, which is ironically abundant for scientist. But this is even not a problem because they can hire scientist to work for them. Maybe as an individual, they don't have as much money as those government can invest on the research, but in a deeper sense, is politics a still game for those rich people? The Iraq war is a vivid example.

 

Those people who work all day long in the lab or risk lives in the battle field, are not essentially different from the slaves in the ancient Egypt building pyramid for the Farad. Working hard doesn't make them feel better about live.

 

Does anyone still remember the movie: the first blood? maybe the only amusement for soldier is that they are free to use billions of dollars valued weapon to kill some unknown people before they are killed. For scientist, in my opinion, as a perspective scientist, perhaps the only consolation is that they have the ability to imagine.

To regret and suffer is the prominent factor in human character

Long time ago, animals and human, or other kinds of species had to struggle to keep their existence on this planet. They had to search for food and try not to become the prey of other hostile animals.  Of course they want to rest in one place and have sex all the time but they couldn't. This situation has not change at all in the modern time. Or we can say this spirit of experiencing pain is the source of all life on Earth.

 

So trying to think in specific way to eliminate pain or believing that we don't have to suffer is actually bring us to a state of death. Perhaps it is hard to die physically in the modern human society, but it definitely leads to a death in the spirit.

 

However, paying attention to the work you are currently on to avoid the pain itself is sometimes not a bad ideas to keep us walking forward because too much pain leads to fear and if one is not tough enough, he/she may probably gives up. Religions, like Christianity, Buddhism, can relieve some pains, but why don't people just simply ignore the pain?

 

What about the painting, music, sculpture, movie? what are these for? I think the reason for existence of those stuff is that the people need them to keep their spirit, to encourage them. In ancient Greece, statues of Apollo were placed in the city and Apollo was an embodiment of all the virtues that Greek society upheld as worthy; In the war, music are commonly used to incite the will of soldier and other kind of music, for instance those peaceful music, lead people to dream about perfect life which gives man the spirit to fight; in the daily life, those love movies always are used as to tool to encourage man to mate. Other kinds of art have the similar function. The process that we enjoy the art is actually the way we collecting the will to fight, to face the pain, to keep our existence.

 

Regret is another feeling but essentially the same with the pain. 

What's argument for?

Do we argue for honor or for the truth? I think the purpose of argument is of course for the real face of the thing. One precondition is that the arguers on both sides should have the same or close understanding to the same word. For example, one asks: "Is evolution theory good or bad", the other answers:"We cannot say good or bad on this problem, in some cases it is good but in some other cases it is bad for example it cannot apply to modern human society." See, the misunderstanding is emerging. Probably when the first person say"good", he/she means "close", and the whole question can be interpreted as "Is Darwin's theory of evolution close to the truth?"

 

It seems that human tends to think and act that they are smarter than others and sometimes this character goes to an extreme point where he/she ignores the understanding of other people to a specific word, for example the one mentioned above intends to understand the word "good" in another way to make them less stupid. The different opinion leads to the different understanding of the word.

 

Stubborn and showing off actually exposes the narrowness of one's mind. When some one knows very little and  doesn't realize this fact, he/she is  probably ignorant and judgmental because He/she assumes that what he/she knows is the whole world.

 

If we try to avoid this self-satisfied feeling, then the only reason for the argument should be to search for the truth. To make the argument proceed ahead and give some novel result, man would better take the conversation when he is cool down and realize the truth should be above all other things to make the right understanding of the language, otherwise don't do it.

What drives people to work?

As we know everybody has to work on this planet. And by that, we can divide people into two groups: hardworking one and lazy one.  But what's the difference between them?  The answer to this question can be also obtained from another question: is it the result of the work or the work itself (I mean interest here) that drives us to work?

 

When we were kids, we don't have to worry about work (except learning if it can be taken as a kind of work). But we played a lot, running in the yard chasing a cat, fly a kite, play hide and find, etc. Actually playing is also a kind of work because we have to pay attention, burn our energy, focus. The most important thing is that we like this kind of work. We are driven by pure interest; We are eager to participate in it.

 

However, when we grew up to the age that we have to make a living by ourselves, things changed. The basic fact is that if we don't work we will face hunger. We work because we have to.

 

So far we have talked about 2 factors that lead us to do something if the life. Generally speaking the former one bring us fun and the later one makes us suffer. But the thing we care here is that which one makes us work harder?

 

Well if one is purely driven by interest, then he/she may not be able to focus on one problem because there are too many things in this planet that interests us. Or we can say it makes us lazy on one thing that we are working on and has the largest chance to give some practical result. On the other hand, if some one is a hundred percent forced by the result (survive, honor) of the work, the suffer leads to fear, fear leads to lazy.

 

So it seems that we'd better combine them together, which makes us feel less empty. Let's see.

BBCi Languages - Spanish Steps - Taking a taxi ride - Vocabulary

 

BBCi Languages - Spanish Steps - Taking a taxi ride - Vocabulary

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