Tag: encyclopaedia

Posted in Philosophy

Memento Mori

Posted on by Jinavie

No matter how special you may be, there is one universal truth: we will all die someday. It may be in fifty years’ time, or it could be tomorrow. But nonetheless, we all have to eventually face our mortality. Memento mori, which is Latin for “remember you must die”, is the philosophy of being mindful of this fact.

It may sound morbid to ponder one’s own mortality day by day. However, the true meaning of memento mori is not to live anxiously fearing that death may be around every corner. Instead, it teaches us to not take life for granted, as it is finite and will end someday.

Many of us stress about the future so much that we cannot enjoy the present. We are ambitious: always aiming higher, to reach a higher position, to gain more wealth and to attain pleasure. But we forget that on our deathbed, none of these material things matter. What matters is whether you will be able to look back on your life and say that you truly lived with little regrets.

That said, it is okay to fear death. It is human nature to fear the unknown. Instead, we can harness our fear of death to live a fuller life. Fear is a poison that prevents us from seizing the day. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of judgement… But when we compare it to the weight of our inevitable demise, it is nothing. Although we are all afraid of dying, the vast majority of us are able to live without the fear of death interfering with our day-to-day lives. Therefore, unless death is an immediate consequence of your actions, nothing should make you afraid of trying.

Lastly, memento mori is a reminder of the temporary, impermanent nature of the human condition. Any moment could be our last, no matter how banal it may be. A brief phone call with your loved ones arguing about something petty may be the last conversation you have with them. It is a well-known fact that the human brain remembers the first and last things or events the most (primacy and recency). When you remember that death awaits all of us, every moment becomes a little bit more precious. We start paying more detail to how wonderful life is and how fortunate we are to have loved ones in our lives.

Remember you must die; you might as well make the most of life before then. Or as Ferris Bueller put it:

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Posted in History & Literature

Halcyon Days

Posted on by Jinavie

There is a story in Greek mythology about a woman named Alcyone. Alcyone was married to Ceyx and the two were madly in love with each other. They would go as far as playfully calling each other Zeus and Hera (the king and queen of the gods). When Zeus heard of this, he became infuriated and plotted a way to punish the couple for their sacrilege.

One day, while Ceyx was sailing, Zeus threw a thunderbolt to raise a furious storm. The storm made quick work of Ceyx’s ship and Ceyx sank to the bottom of the sea. With his dying breath, he prayed to the gods to bring his body to the shore so that Alcyone may see him one last time and give him a funeral. The gods took pity and arranged for this to happen.

Meanwhile, Morpheus, god of dreams, appeared before Alcyone in the image of Ceyx, to gently inform her of her husband’s death. Alcyone ran to the shore in grief. There, she found the cold, lifeless body of her beloved husband. The loss of her true love was too much for her to bear. After Ceyx’s funeral, she threw herself in to the sea and drowned, so that she may meet her husband again in the underworld.

The gods, who were admirers of Alcyone and Ceyx’s beautiful love, were deeply saddened by this tragic fate. Zeus decided to atone for his rash actions by transforming the couple into a pair of kingfishers. The two birds lived happily ever after, but found that whenever they tried to lay eggs on the beach during the winter, strong waves would wash them away. Alcyone’s father Aeolus, god of the winds, saw this and calmed the winds for two weeks every winter, so that the couple may lay their eggs and make a nest in peace. Kingfishers have been referred to as halcyons since then.

Nowadays, the term halcyon days refers to a period of peace and calm, particularly during times of hardship.
Perhaps it is an allusion to the fact that we can navigate through any adversity when we are with our loved ones.

Posted in History & Literature

Bechdel-Wallace Test

Posted on by Jinavie

What makes you want to watch a movie? There are various factors to consider: how original the idea is, pacing of plot, quality of acting, emotional engagement, suitable score… Out of all of these factors, one of the most interesting is the Bechdel-Wallace test.

In 1985, cartoonist Alison Bechdel wrote a comic strip called Dykes To Watch Out For, where one of her characters states that she only goes to see movies that satisfy three conditions.

  1. First, the film must have at least two women in it. Modern adaptations of the rule state that these women must be named characters.
  2. Second, the women must have a conversation with each other at some point in the film.
  3. Lastly, they must talk about something other than a man.

It is quite easy to pass this test. Even a simple conversation between two women, such as about the food they are eating or what happened at work count. As simple as it sounds, the test is surprisingly powerful. 

Upon review of all movies listed in major databases, it has been shown that only 50 to 70% of all movies pass the Bechdel-Wallace test. The most common reason is the lack of any conversation between two named women characters. This suggests that a large proportion of female characters are put in the movie as a romantic interest or support character for the male, or they are the “token woman”, such as a sole female soldier in a special forces unit.

The Bechdel-Wallace test initially started as a joke in a comic strip, but it highlights the depressing fact of how poorly women are represented in films. There is a strong tendency for women to be portrayed only as a damsel in distress, a love interest for the (male) protagonist or someone who helps the (male) protagonist develop their character, such as their mother. This may be an extension of the fact that the overwhelming majority of directors, producers and screenwriters are men – a gender gap commonly known as the “celluloid ceiling”.

The scariest part is that many movies only passed the test because of a single, short scene where two women have an extremely trivial conversation. It is almost as if those scenes are inserted by moviemakers to tick a box saying that they are not sexist.

The test has many flaws due to its simplicity. For example, it does not account for movies with very few characters, such as those focussed around a female protagonist who does not interact with many other people, or movies focussed purely on one woman and one man conversing with each other. 

Nonetheless, it sends a powerful message regarding the rampant inequality women have to face in day-to-day life.

Posted in Philosophy

Quantum Immortality

Posted on by Jinavie

The famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment illustrates the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. Quantum physics is an extremely complicated field of study, but the gist of the Copenhagen interpretation is that a probability remains in a superposition – that is a state where many possibilities exist at the same time – until it is observed, when it collapses into a certain state.

For example, imagine a cat that is locked in a box sealed with a vial of poison, that is set to break open only 50% of the time. Until the box is opened, we do not know if the cat has been killed by poison or not. Therefore, the cat can be said to be both alive and dead at the same time (Erwin Schrödinger initially devised the experiment to mock the Copenhagen interpretation).

There is a fascinating theory that takes this strange thought experiment one step further. Another interpretation of quantum physics is the Everett many-worlds interpretation. This explains that instead of the wavefunction collapsing (i.e. producing a single result such as alive or dead) on observation, two parallel universes are created instead: one universe where the cat died and another universe where the cat is still alive. Essentially, it states there are infinite universes containing every permutation of possibilities that can exist and that whenever a probability is observed, we enter a specific universe.

This is a very confusing concept to grasp, so let us return to the cat in the box. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat has a 50% chance of surviving the experiment the first time. From then on, the chance of the cat being dead grows exponentially with every experiment. However, according to the many-worlds interpretation, no matter how many experiments we perform, there always will be a universe where the cat miraculously survived each one. From the cat’s perspective, it would not know of the universe if it had died. Therefore, the only universe where the cat is able to tell this story to its friends at the end of the day is one where it survives every single experiment

Now let us apply that to our own lives. Imagine that you are crossing the road and a bus is about to hit you. If there is even a 1% chance you might survive this event, your quantum self will move to a universe where it is possible (otherwise you would be dead and your consciousness ceases to exist). By extrapolation, you can never really die as a version of you will forever live on, beating improbable odds until a point where there are literally no possible universes you could be alive.

Quantum immortality is a thought experiment that relies on the many-worlds interpretation. However, it is also extremely difficult to prove wrong. The only way you could confirm this is if you attempted to kill yourself over and over (quantum suicide) and failed each time. But if you were wrong, you would die and not be able to tell anyone. Ergo, you cannot rule out the possibility that you will live forever.

The scariest part of the theory is not that you are potentially immortal. It is that quantum immortality does not account for your well-being – just your consciousness. If an accident were to leave you horribly disfigured but alert, it would still satisfy quantum immortality. You could be trapped in a motionless body for the rest of eternity, unable to communicate to anyone. Yet quantum immortality will keep you alive, forever and ever.

(Infinity Mirror Room by Yayoi Kusama)

Posted in Life & Happiness

Snowflake

Posted on by Jinavie

From a young age, we tend to be placed on a pedestal. We are consistently told that we are unique – that we are special. We are told we should make something of ourselves and to be brilliant.

But as we grow up, we realise that this is not necessarily the case. Society does not particularly appreciate us for our uniqueness. We learn that in many situations, we are treated as a dime a dozen. This could not be more evident than the example of job hunting, where you are competing with other young adults of similar qualifications, skills and general background. Once you enter the working world, you soon find that you have become a cogwheel in the machine.

As adults, we start to lose some of the things that made us unique when we were younger, such as our passions and imaginations. We even start to lose our identity as an individual as we become categorised, such as an accountant, a doctor, somebody’s partner or a parent.

Instead of feeling like a unique snowflake, it is easy to feel like a plain white dot in a field of snow. Perhaps this is why we yearn to find someone who will treat us like we are the most important, special person in the world.

However, there are some downsides to being unique. More often than not, people feel alone because of their niche interests, specific perspectives and strange imperfections. Then you meet someone who shares a quality that you thought was unique to yourself.

It might be the way they think how it’s odd how an object looks different as you move past it or even something as little as sharing the same guilty pleasure song. When we meet someone like that, we feel connected with them and that we are not alone in our weirdness.

Furthermore, thinking that we are special makes us feel entitled and act less kind to others as we believe we deserve special treatment. Not being unique grants us empathy as we can see ourselves reflected in another person.

Statistically, most of us will lie within the bulk of the bell curve where we are not so different from the average person. But perhaps that’s okay as long as we can find someone who we can be uniquely weird together with.

“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

~ Dr. Seuss

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(Image source: Puuung http://www.grafolio.com/puuung1)

Posted in Life & Happiness

Passion

Posted on by Jinavie

“People love what other people are passionate about – you remind them of what they forgot.”

~ Mia, La La Land

What do you do for fun? It sounds like a simple question, yet a surprising number of people have difficulty answering it. Some fortunate people will talk passionately about their hobbies and interests for hours on end. Others, reflect on their day-to-day lives and realise that they haven’t been truly passionate about anything for a long time.

We all possess passion deep in our hearts. Think of your childhood – fulfilling curiosities, exploring new places, playing your favourite instrument or sport… But at some point, they became lost under the mounting pressures of stress and fatigue from work, financial responsibilities and relationships. Sadly with time, passion falls lower and lower on people’s list of priorities. Ironically, passion is the cure to the reasons why people forgo their passions.

Passion is one of the best ways we can obtain happiness. This intense emotion overwhelms us with a rush of excitement and joy, motivating us while dissolving away our worries and fatigue. With passion, we can enter flow state – the magical state where the world around you fades away and only you and the subject of your passion remain, leaving you in perfectly focussed bliss.
For most people with a passion, they will often say that it is part of their identity. They feel the desire to engage in the activity at the end of a rough day and when they do, they feel cathartic and recharged.

An interesting aspect of passion is how we will happily sacrifice time and money for it. Perhaps this is because we know that this is an example of how money can actually buy happiness. We are happy to pay the cost of happiness, whether it be waiting two days in the rain for a tennis tournament ticket, buying an expensive instrument or losing sleep practising intensely for a tournament.
In a sense, passion for a hobby or interest is quite similar to love.

For those who don’t know what their passion is, think back to your younger self and remember what made you really happy. If you can’t or if it is no longer feasible, there is always the option of finding and learning a new passion. There are some common qualities in hobbies and interests that people are passionate about:

  • Ideally, it should be skill-based, so that you can improve in it through investing time and energy. The desire to be better is an excellent self-motivation tool and the key to reaching flow state.
  •  It should be sustainable and not self-destructive. For example, luxurious parties, drugs, alcohol, sex are all examples of dopamine-inducing activities that are not sustainable as they cause “lows” where you feel miserable without the next “hit”. Furthermore, some of them may damage your physical and mental health rather than improve it. You should also consider whether it is financially sustainable, as at the end of the day, you still need to pay the bills.
  • It should excite you and make you happy. Sometimes people force themselves to like the same things as their significant other. It is okay to have different passions in a relationship, but you should try to understand why that person is passionate about that particular thing instead of blindly copying it. Plus, it is healthy to have something in your own life outside of your relationship that can keep you happy.

Unfortunately, you are the only person that can find your own passion. If you have forgotten passions, then that is a great starting point. Pick up a camera, brush, guitar, pen, racquet or whatever it is that made you happy, and revive your passion.

If you truly cannot think of anything, then focus on something that has piqued your interest and give it an honest try. It will be a much more effective use of your time than lamenting that your life is dreary and unhappy.
A practical tip is to start with a creative hobby, such as music or the arts, or a sport. These tend to fulfil most of the above criteria while also offering a creative or physical release, both of which can easily be lacking in our modern day lives.

Passion is a renewable source of happiness that does not rely on other people. Many people rely on the company of other’s for their happiness, but this is ultimately unsustainable and will lead to resentment.

How can we make someone else happy if we don’t know how to make ourselves happy? Maybe this is why we find passionate people attractive – it reminds us of what we had forgotten and how happy we could be if we tried.

So go on, be passionate about something.

(Image source: Puuung http://www.grafolio.com/puuung1)

Posted in History & Literature

Night Vision

Posted on by Jinavie

During World War II, the British Royal Air Force boasted an impressive accuracy in intercepting Nazi German bombers despite the cover of darkness at night. The British air ministry reported that their fighter pilots ate a large amount of carrots to boost their night vision. Since then, it has become public knowledge that carrots help you see better in the dark.

Unfortunately, this is false. The British air force were not actually using carrots to help see better in the dark; they were using a revolutionary new technology called radar to spot enemy war planes from a far distance. The carrot propaganda was spread to hide this fact from the Germans.

The carrot myth sounds plausible as carrots contain a large amount of beta-carotene, which is converted into vitamin A in the body. Vitamin A is a key chemical required for vision, in the form of retinal. It is true that vitamin A deficiency can cause night blindness. However, the dose of vitamin A required to improve your night vision is so high that it cannot be achieved by simply eating a lot of carrots.

Posted in History & Literature

Namaste

Posted on by Jinavie

Yoga has become a popular fitness trend in the developed world. People enjoy yoga as they feel it combines regular exercise, flexibility and meditation all in one session. One popular tradition that is seen in modern yoga is how instructors (yogi) will say “Namaste” at the start and end of a session.

What does namaste mean? Some people think it means “goodbye” in Hindi, while some people ascribe deeper meaning to the word such as “love and peace to all” or “the divine in me bows to the divine in you”. All in all, it has become somewhat of a catchphrase in the yoga world.

In reality, namaste is simply a greeting. It can be used either when you meet someone or say goodbye, but the important point is that it is a very formal greeting. It is more often used in formal settings such as important meetings. The word comes from the Sanskrit roots namas, meaning “bow” or “to pay homage to”, and te, essentially meaning “to you”. Therefore, a literal translation of namaste would be “I pay homage to you”.

Interestingly, namaste has never been an important part of traditional yoga. Yoga in India generally come from religious traditions. Since Hinduism is a polytheistic religion involving many gods, each yoga lineage would have a specific greeting praising their respective gods. This is in contrast to namaste, which puts more importance on the individual person than the god. So ironically, namaste somewhat contradicts the traditional philosophy of yoga.

Unfortunately, the worst part is that most people do not even pronounce the word correctly, saying “NA-ma-stay” instead of the correct “nuh-MAS-the” (“t” is pronounced as “th” in Hindi) with the emphasis on the middle syllable.

It is unclear when the trend of saying namaste in modern yoga came from, but it is certainly a product of the Western appropriation of the practice. Perhaps it was introduced to add a more spiritual, faux-profound flavour to exercising.

Nevertheless, to quote Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride:

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Posted in Science & Nature

Kessler Syndrome

Posted on by Jinavie

When we imagine catastrophes, we think of disasters involving mass destruction such as volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and nuclear war. But there are so many creative ways the future of humanity can go awry. For example, there exists a possibility of humanity losing the ability to launch anything into space for the foreseeable future.

This interesting hypothetical scenario was described by astrophysicist Donald J. Kessler in 1987. Earth is currently surrounded by many layers of orbiting satellites. Unfortunately, satellites eventually break down and its components can end up as space debris. Since there is nothing in the vacuum of space that will degrade them, space debris stay in an endless orbit around the Earth unless they fly low enough that they get caught by air resistance and burn up in the atmosphere.

Kessler proposed the following problem: what happens when debris collide and set off a chain reaction? Although we think of orbital objects as slow moving or even geostationary, orbital objects are travelling at extreme speeds – at least 8km/s (or 28,800km/hr). When two objects collide at such incredible speeds, there is a huge amount of energy released in the form of shrapnel.

If the orbit is dense enough with debris, it is theoretically possible that these shrapnel will hit another piece of debris and set off another reaction. If the chain reaction can sustain itself long enough, soon the entire orbit will be littered with high-speed shrapnel, obliterating any object trying to cross the orbital layer.

The implication of the Kessler syndrome is that it would essentially make it impossible for us to launch any new satellites or rockets into space. This would stop us from exploring the depths of space and dash any hopes of interstellar travel and space colonisation. Scientists are already working on policies to reduce further space debris and experiments on how to clear up debris. But without awareness of the issue, no change would happen.

With climate change becoming an increasingly pressing issue, it is ironic that our littering of space could potentially ruin our chances of escaping and finding a new home if the need should arise.

Posted in Life & Happiness

Should I Stay Or Should I Go

Posted on by Jinavie

Life is a series of choices. As you only live once, you must decide what type of life you will lead. However, we are plagued by the uncertainty of the future. How will we know that we made the right choice? The career you decided on as you entered university could become obsolete in 20 years due to technological advances. You might end up regretting uprooting your life to move to a new city.

Perhaps the most difficult choice is the question of whether we are in love with the “right person”. Even if your partner is a perfectly nice, kind person, you may feel that something is missing. Some people call it chemistry, others call it connection, some even believe in fate and destiny. We are wired to try predict the future to protect ourselves. Therefore, it is natural to be concerned that we may end up with the “wrong person”: love’s equivalent of buyer’s remorse.

Ideally, we want to be with someone who we can’t imagine not being with. Someone who you can enjoy the silence of a Sunday afternoon with comfortably. Someone who you can be silly with like children. Someone who you can open up to for support and understanding without fear of being judged. Essentially, someone who completes the equation of 1 + 1 = 3, rather than the typical 1 + 1 = 2.

If you find someone like that, all you have to do is focus all of your energy in making that relationship work, through communication, compromise, kindness and love. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to find ourselves feeling that the person is 70% the person for us – maybe even 80% – but we are not sure if we are sacrificing the possibility of being with “the one”.

There are two possible solutions. If you have hope that this is the right person for you, you could give them a chance by giving it your best shot and see if things improve or not. Perhaps there are barriers easily solved through communication.

But if the seed of doubt in your heart grows, saying that this is not the right person for you, consider what you would do if you were unhappy with other aspects of your life. If you hated your job, you would train in a different discipline. If you hate the new city you moved to, you can always move to a different one.

Love is a choice. Whether you choose to stay and try to make it work, or choose to leave in search of a person who you feel a deeper connection with, it is up to you to make a choice.

Life is difficult, but at least we have the luxury of choice. Fear gives us tunnel vision – we can only envision one possible way our life will play out. By settling with the comfortable choice, you may be extinguishing the possibilities of a happier life.

It takes great courage to make a choice. But regardless of the outcome, at least you gave it an honest go; you took charge of your life and tried to live a happier life with less regrets.

Take a step back to examine your life – are you truly content with it? Or is fear blinding you from the leaps of faith that can make you happier?