Canadian Factoids from a Foreigner

Due to the fact that school is not in session today, my friend from Taiwan and I decided to head up to Canada and visit Toronto for a day. The thing is, Buffalo is closer to Toronto than to New York City. So I suppose I didn't have an excuse not to visit. So in order to do this, I went downtown to the Canadian Consulate General in Buffalo a couple of weeks ago, and got myself a visa. Therefore, I now have the ability to cross the border for the next 6 months for an unlimited number of times.

So, we decided to do the two-hour drive up north. I had my passport, and after driving all the way from the I-290 and the I-190, my friend and I were at the Queenston-Lewiston border. We got our passports stamped. Yippee!

Somehow, I find it weird that I can drive to a different country. The fact of the matter is, I come from the Philippines, which is an archipelago. In order to go the nearest country, one takes a flight. So I find it bizarre that one can drive to another country and have one's passport stamped.

Anyway, so miles are thrown out, and kilometers are in. Signs are both in English and Francais. I saw signs on the road saying "Zone de Construction: Fin." Okay then. Exit signs on the Queen Elizabeth Way was marked "Exit/Sortie."

Canadians are daredevils in driving. In the United States, common practice dictates that one adds 10 miles to the speed limit and nothing more, or else risk being pulled over for speeding. So if the speed limit is 65 miles, one drives around 75 miles. In Canada, oh my goodness, people drive fast on the highway. There is a 100 kilometer speed limit, and we were driving the speed limit, yet people were still zooming past by. It felt like they were 50 kilometers above the speed limit.

Canadians strike me as well-mannered and polite. From the visa officer in the consulate, to the border official, to people in the city, I didn't bump into an undesirable person. Unlike in New York City, Torontonians obey the pedestrian traffic light. If it is red, even if nobody is coming, people wait for the green light to cross the road. When we visited the Old City Hall and had to go through security, the guard even apologized when I asked if I can take pictures inside the historic building and he answered that I cannot.

The face of Toronto is diverse, and proud of it. Canadians seem to love the variation in the human race, while here in the United States, I suppose people want assimilation instead.

Toronto has real Chinese food. I followed the suggestion of Lonely Planet for lunch. I had a craving for dimsum, and Buffalo doesn't really have good dimsum places. I suppose I wanted something similar to the Chinatown food in the backstreets of Kobe, where one can just buy on the street and walk along with a skewer of chicken. Anyway, so we found Chinatown, and went into this nondescript dimsum place. They had amazing dimsum, and I was soon busy tucking them in with my chopsticks after dunking them in soy sauce and vinegar.

I suppose I would love to live in Toronto, if I can. I was walking the streets of Chinatown and the fruit looked so fresh. They had dragon fruit, durian, sweetsop, longan, Asian pears, among other things. Too bad I didn't look into whether we could carry fresh fruit or not across the border, I was afraid it was not allowed, or else I would have gotten some.

Oh well, my Canadian visa still has a long way to go, so if I am allowed to take back fruit, then I'll probably get some the next time.



(Graveyard Mansion, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Book Review: The Accidental by Ali Smith

Today I am changing my format for my book reviews. It used to be the case that I have an entry in which I review a book, because I finished it recently, and then I upload the cover page of the new book that I am reading. Somehow, I am changing that. I suppose it would be better to have the picture go with the discussion of the book. So even if I am reading a new book now, I am not uploading the picture, yet.

For this entry, I am reviewing The Accidental by Ali Smith.

Let me start by saying that somehow, I get the feeling that British fiction has some sort of common denominator. Note that I have no expertise in literary theory, so I am not making any claims here. It was just something that I noticed, after reading books by Irvine Welsh, such as The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, and by Will Self, such as Being Dead.

Anyway, this book is rather different in writing style. Sentences seem to flow to each other, and the narratives are centered on a family, taking an extended summer vacation in the English countryside. A stranger walks in their lives, and everything changes.

This is not your garden-variety comedy, nor tragedy. In fact, I do not know what to call it. It is one of those novels that make you think long after the novel is finished. It is one of those novels that you don't know how to call, how to categorize, since it is not like anything you have seen before. It is very introspective, psychological in approach. Although I have to say, I sort of hate the way they categorize fiction as psychological fiction. I tend to think that this has nothing to do with psychology. Or maybe perhaps because my flavor of psychology (cognitive) is not what the laypeople think psychology is.

Anyway, the stranger acts as a catalyst, forcing every member of the family to rethink and re-evaluate who they are. It was as if every member of the family was in a lucid dream, and the stranger wakes them all up. Expect the unexpected in this novel. Nothing can be predicted. I suppose because of that, I do not know how to feel about this, therefore resulting in ambivalence. I am not sure whether I like this novel or not.

So there, that was that. I returned that to the library. I then started on a new novel, and this one has something to do with illegal aliens, Algerians, and stowaways. The setting of my fiction moves across the Atlantic, from England to New England.

See my other book reviews here.



(Grave with Pillars, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Autumn Timbres

This weekend was a rather eventful one for the university's Department of Music. The reason for this is due to the series of concerts and recitals dubbed Autumn Timbres. All concerts are free and open to the public. The concerts started last Thursday, and there are still some that will be staged tomorrow.

However, I didn't try to attend every single one of them, given I wasn't interested in all the genres that are being performed. I wanted to attend four concerts, starting Friday evening, but due to a schedule conflict, I was only able to attend three. Unfortunately, I had to miss the Contemporary Ensemble.

So, the first concert I attended was yesterday night's Percussion Ensemble. This was a rather eye-opening act. I hadn't been to a percussion ensemble concert before, so I didn't know what to expect. Upon entering the hall, however, I figured that it would be a rather interesting night, due to the fact that there are plenty of automobile brake drums, a washboard, different types of mallet instruments, and other interesting pieces on the stage. It ended up to be a concert featuring pieces by Lou Harrison, an American composer who was best known for writing pieces for just intonation instruments. The night ended up to be very rhythmic, and the instruments were very modern-sounding. It's not your typical Mozart evening I should say. I enjoyed this one a lot.

The second concert was this afternoon, the concert by the Klezmer and Tango Ensemble. Now, before listening to this concert, I never knew what a klezmer was. Apparently, it is Jewish secular music. Now this was a concert that was hard to digest. Each piece was wonderful separately. They performed the tangos well, and they even had dancers performing on the stage. Carlos Gardel was represented, and there were a lot of different milongas as well. The thing that I find puzzling is the fact that they juxtaposed klezmers and tangos together. Taken together, the concert was giving me a sort of cognitive dissonance. One piece takes me to Buenos Aires and the next piece takes me to underground Yiddish bars in Brooklyn or in Eastern Europe. The next piece throws me to the South American city again. My brain couldn't exactly find the common denominator.

The third concert I attended was this evening's Chamber Recital. Three student groups performed the following: 1) Beethoven's Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 11 for piano, clarinet, and cello; 2) Beethoven's String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95; and 3) Shostakovich's String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 110. I liked the first piece; the pianist was very crisp in playing her notes, and she did a great job in interpreting the differences in dynamics that the piece required. The clarinetist also her held end as well, and the cellist was also brilliant. The mix of the different instruments was rather entertaining. The second piece was rather disappointing. I noticed a lack of communication between the four players; they did not know how to play as a group. Granted, they were playing a string quartet from Beethoven's late period, but it seemed that the dissonance that was heard was not intended by Beethoven. They did not let the piece shine, and they did not let each musician talk. It was rather chaotic. However, the best piece of the night was the Shostakovich. The piece was rather modern, and was hard to interpret. However, unlike the previous quartet, the four musicians were all breathing in unison, giving and taking cues from each other. I could see that they were all looking at each other, making sure that they were all at the right place. When one musician needed to do a solo, the other musicians let him or her talk. Each musician was giving whoever it was that needed to do the solo due attention. The performance showed maturity and that these student musicians know their stuff.

So there, it was a rather musical weekend for my part. I suppose I am fortunate that these diversions are available, so when I needed a break from my brain waves, I could just go to the next building and listen to some excellent music.



(Scenic Needle from the Graves, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Strata

For a person that doesn't really care about social norms, I spend a lot of time talking about it, and wondering about it.

That was at least an observation that a good friend of mine had, earlier.

I suppose this is not the first time I wonder about social norms and constructs. Before, I blogged about how I construct my social world, dividing my world into three tiers, the close group, the neutral group, and the danger group. And like I said there, most of the close friends that I have belong to the close group, and most people, including strangers belong to the neutral group. And some people who I positively evaluated as dangerous belong to the danger group. These are the three main distinctions that I make in order to know how I would deal with people.

Another stratum I suppose that I make is two-fold, that is, if I care about the person or not. Unlike the previous strata which consists of three groups, this only consists of two. Basically, one group has the people I care about, and the other group has the people I don't care about. Usually, I do not care what other people think. Do I wear my heart on my sleeve? Maybe. I perhaps am known for speaking what I really think about, and I rarely filter my thoughts. If it hurts people, if those are people I don't really care about, then what the heck, I don't care. But if I do something and someone I care about gets hurt because of that, then I would tone it down and even stop it.

To give an example: a friend of mine was rather pale. With a straight face, I told her, "You look like you have been blood-let." She laughed, but she also didn't know what I meant, to which I clarified, "It was my way of asking whether you're okay." Yes, I usually do a round-about way of speaking, violating Grice's (1975) maxims big time. Was that offensive? Maybe, maybe not. If my friend gets offended, then I would stop, but if a person I don't care about gets offended, well, too bad, life sucks buddy, get it over with.

Life is short. I cannot please everybody. I suppose this is more of a pick-and-choose thing, picking which side I am, and behaving accordingly. It's a type of social give-and-take. I do not need anything from the people I do not care about, so I do not invest in them. If I think I would be needing something from them later, then yes, I might be more sensitive to their limitations. But if I do not need anything, then what's the point of investment?

It reminds me of conversations between me and other friends, about altruism, humans being good or evil, and other things. I suppose taking an economic view in human behavior is what I am rooting for, although I do admit that this is a theory that is rather hard to test. Yes, there are people who give to charities. To which I would argue that they actually have the need to give to charities, and what seems to be altruism is just self-gratification. That is they do not get satisfaction or some other form of enjoyment in doing it, they would not do it. But then, arguing it this way makes it a little hard to prove or test.

Ok, this is getting too philosophical for a Friday night.



(The Path Up, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Measuring Brain Waves

The semester only has two weeks to go. And one of those weeks involve dissecting a turkey for most people, therefore for all intents and purposes, the semester only has a week and a half to go.

I got my two papers that I turned in back. The thing is, this is my strategy to getting a better grade. I write a paper early in the semester. Not that I write it haphazardly, but I write it with the intent that it is the final version. I then turn it in way in advance, telling the professor that this is my final paper. If he can read it and suggest comments and things I might need to revise, then I am willing to revise it and write a better paper. Thus, I can optimize my work within the span of the semester. And that worked for my two classes. Therefore, I am using the last two weeks of the semester to revise my two papers.

One of these papers involve a neurolinguistic paper. Due to the fact that neurolinguistic studies are hard to implement if one is not in a lab, the paper requirement for this class involves designing an experiment and making predictions and discussing its theoretical implications.

So for my paper, I designed an ERP and behavioral experiment that would explore the neural and behavioral correlates of causal relations. That means, this study will investigate what exactly goes in the head of comprehenders if they encounter discourses like Max fell. John pushed him.

First, a note on ERP. ERP stands for event-related brain potentials. This is the actual measurement of the electrical activity that goes on inside the human brain. If you are familiar with electroencephalograms (EEG), then it is of a similar procedure. The participant wears an elastic ERP cap, where there are plenty of nodes that are attached to different parts of the head, measuring the electrical activity of the brain.

Now, there have been findings that different types of stimuli trigger different types of ERP waves. One such wave is the N400, which is called so due to the fact that it is a negative wave that appears approximately 400 milliseconds post-stimulus. Thus, if one reads a sentence like The boy took a sip from the waterfall., then the final word of the sentence will elicit an N400, since that is rather unexpected, and semantically incoherent.

I am capitalizing on this factor, since I predict that humans have an expectation that events happen chronologically, and therefore they expect discourse to proceed in a chronological order. However, it is not always the case, such as in the mini-discourse that I have given above, where the second sentence is not describing an event that occurs after the first sentence, but rather describes an event that occurs before, thereby causing it. Thus, I predict that comprehenders will encounter a momentary pragmatic incongruity due to the violation of chronological expectation, and therefore it will elicit an N400 component in the ERP wave.

I suppose I should not repeat my whole paper here, since this is a blog after all, not an academic journal. But, I suppose I am frustrated due to the fact that I really cannot run my experiment as it is, since I do not have access to an ERP lab at the moment. But, who knows? I'd love to measure your brain waves if I can. Who knows what I would find?



(The Path Down, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Winter is Here

Okay, okay, I know that the official start of winter is December 21. At least that is what the calendar says. However, for me, I suppose the beginning of winter is the first time snow has actually accumulated on the ground. And that happened to be yesterday.

I suppose this was the first time that snow actually fell and remained for a while. Earlier, there have been a few instances of snowfall but they didn't really remain in the ground. I suppose it was cold up there to snow, but warm down here to remain in that state. Now, it is different.

So the weather forecasts about freezing temperatures for this week. That's why the evening is pretty, and the snow is falling. The clouds are hovering, and the flakes are descending. I know, I must be a masochist if I like the view, but somehow, its exotica trumps everything else.

So there, winter is officially here, according to my book. My gloves are out, my snowcap is ready, and my boots are deployed. Time to bundle up again.

I suppose the fact that the seasons change make me feel that time moves really fast. Well, I know it is just an illusion, but if you live in a tropical country, where the weather is pretty much the same all year, then the feeling is different, than if there is a visible cue of time passing by, such as the weather. You know, one can count, such as in my case, this will be the fourth winter I am spending here. But if I were in a tropical country, what would I count? Typhoons?

I watched the latest episode of The Amazing Race a few hours ago. This time, the remaining teams are in Kazakhstan. I love the show for not failing to give me exotic locations. I also love the show for endlessly showing Americans that are politically incorrect and have low traveler's IQ. I suppose I hate the fraternity brother team, where they described the local Kazakhs as horrible people, simply because they did not understand the English that the team spoke. I actually hated the outcome of this episode. I would rather have Andrew and Dan get eliminated than Terrence and Sarah, given the fact that Sarah consistently showed an effort to learn local expressions to her benefit. I always notice her saying "Thank you" and "Faster" in the local tongue, which was a sort of admiration. I feel that the intellectually deficient fraternity brothers did not deserve to stay in the race. However, that is how the race panned out, and of course, life is unfair.

Oh well. The semester is nearing its end. And winter break is around the corner. Time indeed is moving fast.



(Jarmon, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Erik Satie is Alive Again

I suppose this entry is a mixture of things.

First of all, I somehow got inspired to go to the Music Library and photocopy a bunch of sheet music by Erik Satie. Specifically, the music in question is his series of Gnossiennes, written around the turn of the century. There are six of them all, and as I remember, I know how to play the first four of them, and I was working on the last two pieces, when things didn't work out with me and the music scene.

So I once again decided to work on them, and I photocopied all six scores just a few hours ago, and went to my practice room and worked on it. I was glad that I still had it in my hands to play the first four without stumbling badly. So there, Erik Satie is back in my working repertoire. Wow. The folder containing all of my photocopied music is slowly getting thick.

I finished reading the novel entitled Ghost. I loved it. The main character David, sees something, maybe a ghost, maybe something else, in the slumber room of the funeral home that he works in. The novel doesn't actually tell the reader what David saw, so both sides took the whole book in arguing what that actually was. People who believed in the supernatural courted David into joining some nutcase Second World Society, while people who were skeptics such as the scientific university community went ahead and dismissed the events. It was a hilarious, yet very interesting book.

So there, I returned that book to the library, and started working on this new book, entitled The Accidental, by Ali Smith. It supposedly is about a stranger in a town in England. How it goes I don't know yet, I just started it, but I will review it once I finish it, as usual.

The sky is so clear at the moment, and I take that as a sign that it must be very cold outside. Winter is back, and I suppose it is again the time for long coats and gloves.




(Taft Up Close, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Motivation

A conversation I had with a good friend of mine just an hour ago made me want to blog about this topic. I suppose the concept of motivation is just very basic to us humans, but the way they interact with our lives is very different from one another.

My friend and I were on our way back from downtown Buffalo. We watched a play entitled Tromping on Sacred Ground, by Susan Dickie. It happened to be the World Premiere of that play. It concerns about the scientist Thomas Huxley, and how he had scandals with the religious organization in Oxford, for supporting Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. In short, the play emphasized the importance of considering evidence over dogmatism when investigating which belief to support.

Anyway, that is not why I wanted to blog tonight. But rather, it was about a conversation we had while we were in the car. She told me how different people around her encourage her to move forward with her work. She then is worried that what would happen if no one is around to push her forward? She also asks whether it is a good thing to be pushed forward, because that makes it look like we are puppies, and we simply operate on a reward-and-punishment system.

The thing is, I do believe that humans operate on a reward-and-punishment system. There is this thing called motivation. If one does not see the worth of pursuing one thing, then chances are the person will stop pursuing that thing. However, if the person sees that there is a reward at the end of the tunnel, then the person is more willing to undergo the difficulties of the task. Simple psychology.

Now what if there is nobody to tell oneself that there is a cookie at the end of the tunnel? Then one must learn to motivate oneself. My friend asked me this, how I motivate myself. I then reminded her of the incident in which she caught me tuned out, and she asked what I was thinking. In fact, I was daydreaming. I was daydreaming of what life would be say 5 years from now. I suppose 5 years from now, I already have my degree, and I am doing research in an institution in Europe perhaps, ideally. I have a lab in which I work in, and I am designing experiments testing human cognition and language. Perhaps I have a couple of publications under my belt, and I am cited by other scholars. Perhaps I also have a cool apartment in the middle of the town, and I enjoy my St. Agur together with some wine.

For me, that is real. That is my cookie at the end of the tunnel.

Some of my friends have periods of depression, and I am sure we all do. Whenever I find them down, and they ask me for my opinion, I always ask them what they really want. Because if their work is what they really want, then they will find a way to bring themselves up and continue forward. If they really want the Ph.D. degree, then they will be motivated to move forward. If they do not really want the Ph.D. degree, then I ask them why they are still here. If you don't really want this, then I am not surprised if you find it hard to move forward.

Motivation is powerful. The key is finding what you really want, and going for it.



(Taft, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Post-Mortem Fiction

It is such a happy thing when one is already done with the semester's work when there are still 3 weeks left of the semester. I am already done with the two papers that I have to write for my two classes, and all that is left are a couple of presentations here and there, and that is it for me for this semester.

Some of my friends have been planning on freezing me, like cryogenics, so that I would stop and not work, but apparently, that plan has been foiled.

Anyway, I still have plenty of reading to do. I have a dissertation proposal to write up, and I need to dish that out within this academic year. And regarding that, I have been harvesting plenty of ideas.

This afternoon, I attended a cognitive science talk about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It was rather interesting and impressive. I also had a chat with the speaker after his talk, and it actually gave me ideas on how to test my predictions and what experiments to run.

Speaking of experiments, I am reading a book on experimental syntax. The thing is, I will be a research assistant for a syntactician next semester, and the deal is that he takes care of the theory, I take care of the experimental design. It's empirical research, which indeed excites me, and I know how to do the stats, there isn't a problem with that, but I haven't applied statistics to syntax yet. So I am doing my background reading so I will have an idea on the works that this area produces.

Anyway, I am also reading a new book, entitled Ghost, by Alan Lightman. This is about a guy who starts working in a funeral home. So far, I like what I am reading. The last book I was reading, however, was interesting, interesting good and interesting bad. The thing is, the book is about a terminally ill woman, who dies. But instead of expiring, she just goes on living in another part of London. The book is entitled How the Dead Live by Will Self. Somehow, the premise was interesting, but the book was dragging. I suppose I found it unsustainable to the very end, that I dragged myself into finishing the book. It didn't sustain my interest, is what I am saying.

Anyway, so I returned that book to the library, and I moved on.

What else should I write about in this entry? Not much, except that the weather is getting a little colder every day. Winter is slowly creeping in, and the leaves are all gone now. Another year ends, and another year begins pretty soon.



(Wilhelmina, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

My Manifesto

This is a post that has been long overdue. It is long, bear with me.

For the past several months, I have been facing a dilemma. I suppose I have had this dilemma for a long time, for years, even, but it was not until recently that it bothered me enough to actually pay attention to it.

It has something to do with religion, whether I needed to believe in one or not.

For years, I have been raised in a religious family. I cannot remember a period in which attending religious services was not part of the picture. Religion was the core of everything in which everything else revolved around it. Whenever my family moved to another location around the globe, one of the foremost considerations was whether we can practice our religion safely and freely. When selecting a place to live, a consideration to make was where the nearest place of worship was. School was also another location in which religion was a factor: all the activities in which it was in clash with the religion I was brought up in was avoided at all costs, and as a child, I was trained to defend my beliefs.

However, as I was growing up, as I was learning to think on my own, I started to wonder whether those were really my beliefs, or whether those were just what my environment conditioned me to be.

There was a time in undergrad in which I questioned all the things I took for granted. I questioned things, from sexual orientation to my religious belief. And the thing that always bugged me had to do with the metaphysical realm. I suppose I was able to supress it until a few months before, when I found myself feeling that my head would explode if I do not release this thought in my head.

I suppose this all boils down to whether I believe in the existence of God or not. I was raised into believing that God indeed exists, but there are plenty of reasons why I would opt to reject that belief. I suppose this is the thought that I was wrestling with in my head, that there was a point back in August of this year, in which I found myself losing my appetite, and there were nights in which I cannot sleep, as I was tossing and turning in my bed, thinking back and forth, weighing the pros and cons of believing versus not believing. Sometimes I found myself in the dark night walking on campus, losing grip of where I was, only to realize later that I have been walking for more than an hour without direction. It was at this point that I decided to see a psychologist, since I know there was a problem and I wanted to fix it, but I didn’t know how.

I suppose at this time, it would be beneficial if people know how I think. According to the Myers-Briggs Personality Typology, I am an INTJ. I have taken that personality test many times in the past, and I have been consistent in getting that combination.

I am a pragmatist. I subject every idea to the ruthless test of whether it works or not. I would drop an idea if it does not seem to be practical. I highly value critical thinking, and I don’t think it is wrong to question authority or convention if it does not work. I am the type in which I know what I know, and I know what I don’t know. If you ask me something and I do not know the answer, I won’t pretend that I do know the answer, but rather, I would point you to whoever I think would be better capable in answering you. There are some social conventions that I do not understand, simply because they do not seem to make sense. For further reading about my personality type, I would point you here.

Thus, slowly, but surely, religion was also subjected to this rigeur. If religion makes sense, then sure, I am willing to embrace it, but if not, I will lose it.

Many people asked me what triggered this dilemma, and I suppose upon introspection, I could trace it to the time in which I dissected a human brain in a class one day. This was back in August, early this semester.

What I saw fascinated me. The human brain is very intense, intricate, and complicated. Compared to other animals, the human brain is very uniquely designed. I have to say that the idea of a creator is very appealing in this regard. But I felt there was a contradiction here, of which I will explicate. Unlike other animals, the human brain has more cortex, and more areas that are not pre-assigned to do a certain task. Other animals perhaps may have an enlarged occipital lobe, because that is the area that processes their sense of vision. Other animals on the other hand have an enlarged area that deals with the sense of smell. Most of the animal brains have large areas that are designed to protect them. However, there are areas in the human brain that the animal brains do not have. And most of these have something to do with thinking and learning. In the human brain, there simply are plenty of areas that are not pre-assigned to do a certain task, because the human has the capacity to think and learn and therefore develop.

In short, the human brain was designed to be the core machinery for thought. Humans therefore have the capability to think critically and independent of external influences. If one entertains the idea of a creator, then this creator wants humans to use this brain critically. The design shows that humans were not created to be robotic and programmed into simply doing one set of tasks. From the brain dissection that I did a couple of months ago, I was impressed by two thoughts: that humans were made to be capable of critical thought, and humans are intellectually independent.

This runs counter to what the Bible says, that humans are incapable of ruling by themselves.

Yes, it is true that in the thousands of years in which humans have existed in this planet, there isn’t a time in which everyone was happy, and everyone was satisfied. Humans have tried every type of government, from communism to capitalism to fascism to any other –ism there is, but it still fails. Now is that proof that the Bible is correct, and therefore one should posit the existence of God? That due to Adam and Eve’s sin, God decided to do a social experiment, handing over to humans the reins of government, in order to prove humans wrong? Or is it simply the case that humans are inherently evil, therefore what may be the happiness of one is the grief of another? Which one is the better explanation? Everything else being equal, which one is the explanation that needs less assumptions?

The thing is, for many years, in different cultures, humans simply take God and religion to be the explanation for things otherwise cannot be explained by current human knowledge. Take the Black Death in Europe back in the 1300’s for example. At that time, people had no knowledge of bacteria and how it spread, so humans had theories that would be considered ludicrous by the current scientific thought. People thought that only God’s anger would be the cause of such immense destruction.

The same thing with death. People wanted to explain why a human grows old and die, and since they cannot come up with a rational explanation, they turn to the supernatural and say that God takes people away and therefore that is the reason why humans die.

The thing is, humans are rational beings. Humans are also curious. After all, they have a brain that was designed to think. Thus, if there is a phenomenon that happens around them, they would want to search for an explanation why that phenomenon happens. And if they cannot attribute it to a certain cause, then they invoke the supernatural. Every culture has it, no matter where in the world one goes, every culture has a supernatural belief system. Now does that become proof that the supernatural indeed exists? Or is it just the human intellectual explanatory wastebasket, a catch-all criterion for everything that is not yet explainable by human reasoning?

The thing that irks me most is the reasoning that God is infallible, and that humans are in no position to question God. Why? From a scientific point of view, this is an untestable hypothesis.

Regarding this, it is the common rhetoric that the Bible is indeed the word of God, due to the fact that humans have constantly revised their advice, but the Bible stays the same from old times, and yet is still effective. Some people take as proof the authenticity of the Bible the fact that the Bible has stayed effective in giving advice about child-rearing, while humans have constantly revised their self-help books on parenting. The Bible allegedly stays the same with regard to medical advice, while humans have shifted from blood-letting to blood transfusions. The Bible has been saying from old times that the world is not flat, while people only found that out when the crew of Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the world. People cite this as proof that the Bible is indeed the word of God.

However, what is wrong with revising one’s hypotheses? Isn’t that a major tenet of the scientific method? One puts forward a thesis, and another tests it, and if it holds, then good, if it does not, then a new thesis is put forward. That is how humans increase their knowledge base.

Come to think of it, even religions revise. With regard to the religion that I grew up in, revisions also occurred, with books being published constantly, and previous publications being revised time and time again. Understandings of Biblical interpretations have changed as well.

Infallibility: this is the concept that I ultimately have problems with. The fact that people are told to believe in something, and they simply accept it, is a concept that I cannot accept. The concept of faith, in which one believes in something that has otherwise no empirical proof, is for me like a boat who simply lets go of its sails and lets the waves drift him here and there. Can’t the people see how organized religion has abused this concept? People are willing to die just in the name of faith! People pay money, people shut off their heads, people hook their bodies with bombs, all in the name of faith.

I find it unbelievable that people are willing to surrender the use of their brains, and rather follow blindly to anything in the name of faith and religion.

The concept of hope: It is true that people use the concept of the supernatural as a comfort strategy. People are afraid of dying, so what do they invent? The afterlife. It is true that religion can be a source of hope and comfort. People find comfort in the notion that someone keeps track of their good deeds, and that even if they are not fortunate in the present life, if they keep on doing good, they will be rewarded for their good deeds in the afterlife. But is this notion true, or is it just a coping mechanism?

Back in Manila, just by observing the religion in which I was a part of, most of its members were not so fortunate in society. There were members who were living next to the railways in pilfered land, there were members who were abandoned by their spouses and had emotional issues, there were members who simply did not have the ideal life. So isn’t religion the best solution? That by doing what God wants you to do, you will be rewarded with a better life later in the future? But is it really true what the religious teachings say about the afterlife? Or is it just a coping strategy to ease the pain of suffering?

In other words, would I be willing to fool myself into believing in the supernatural just to give myself hope? Or would I rather opt to accept that this life is all there is, and just suck it up and make the best out of it? Would I choose comfort and hope knowing that it is false, or would I choose reality?

I suppose by now my choice is clear.

Before, I made remarks to the effect that I wish my parents took me religion-shopping when I was growing up. In effect, I blamed them for immersing me in just one belief system, and not showing me the rest. I do not blame them now.

I believe that humans are born with a blank slate. A tabula rasa. And good parents give the children a set of beliefs to protect themselves. My parents did exactly that. They gave me what they thought is the best set of beliefs for me, and I do thank them for doing so. For a long while, it worked. However, there came a point in which I needed to evaluate whether I believed in those beliefs myself, or whether I only believe in those because I was told to do so.

This is my manifesto. This is my belief.

I believe that the human race has three core characteristics: 1) Humans are inherently selfish. 2) Humans are inherently evil. 3) Humans are inherently curious. Most social phenomena can be explained by invoking any of these three tenets.

Everything else being equal, the world is better explained by abstract rules. If the universe operates on abstract rules, you could learn them, and you could protect yourself. If a supreme being exists, he could squash you anytime he wants.

Life is a puzzle. In solving a puzzle, the simplest explanation is the best explanation. Positing the existence of the supernatural is not the simplest, nor is it the most rational explanation. In connection to this, the concept of falsifiability has a close connection with the strength of a theory. If a theory is testable, and it passes the test, then it is a strong theory. If a theory fails the test, then a counter theory can be posited. If a theory is untestable, unquestionable, or otherwise infallible, then the theory becomes dogma.

This life is all there is. Once I die, I am gone. I do not believe in the afterlife. I do not need to fool myself that something better awaits me after I die. I only have 70-80 years to live, of which I have lived 26 years of it already. Some people feel the need to posit the existence of the supernatural to explain the concept of life and death, but I would prefer to not embrace that belief, as the supernatural has been replaced as a plausible explanation for other phenomena, as seen in human history.

I value truth. I also value critical thought. I value scientific inquiry and empiricism. I value my mind. I am not a robot. I am not programmed to believe in a certain set of beliefs without questioning it. I have the capacity to think, and I will always exercise this right.

Seeing Pilobolus

This past weekend I had a great time watching a dance company. I watched the performance of Pilobolus, and if you are interested, you can visit their website here.

Anyway, I first was see-sawing whether I would buy a ticket or not. The thing is, I didn't invite anyone, since it was still pretty recent when I invited a bunch of my friends to an event, which was when we watched Twelfth Night. But then, I went to their website and I suppose I made my mind to buy a ticket.

That turned to be a crucial moment, since when I went to the box office in the university theatre, the only remaining seats were the last row. So I bought one ticket for myself.

Good thing I did, because I didn't regret it.

The first time I encountered this dance company was when they did the introductions for the movies that was vying for Best Film in a recent Academy Awards ceremony. They were performing behind a screen, and they produced silhouettes of images from the films, which was pretty awesome.

Anyway, they performed 5 pieces, and everything was magical. Lanterna Magica was a performance of 6 people, four males and two females. It tells a story that concerns a lantern, and it has magical illusions. The next piece was entitled Pseudopodia, which is a solo performance by a male dancer, dressed in a red full-body suit, to the accompaniment of all-percussion music. Most of the time, the dancer was moving along the floor, not standing. His body was horizontal most of the time, and the floor work was extensive. Rushes was a funny piece, concerning a big yellow circle in the middle of the stage, and a series of chairs. The dancers moved the chairs around, and there was a dream sequence, where one of the dancers slept on the stage, and a white cloth was draped over his head, projecting images that are supposed to be his dreams.

After the intermission, there was Ocellus, which was a rather dramatic piece. The background music reminded me of deep oceanic sounds, quasi-heartbeats, and dark brooding silence. This was performed by four male dancers, who wore nothing except for a very thin dance thong. They were hugging each other, doing acrobatic movements with each other, and dancing. It was very protean. Finally, they performed Megawatt, which is a rather electrifying performance. They used hard rock music by Radiohead and other bands. The whole dance company seemed like they were having seizures and electrocutions. In short, it was a very amazing performance.



(Another Angle, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)