What are points, lines, and planes?

If one has good faith in psychology, then the reason why the the good should be rewarded while the evil should be punished comes from the ideas of reinforcement, punishment, and operant conditioning.  Essentially, operant conditioning is increasing or decreasing the probability of a certain behavior due to the effects the behavior has.  Reinforcement increases the probability of a certain behavior occurring, and punishment decreases the probability of a certain behavior occurring.  Thus, if the good are rewarded, the probability that they will repeat their acts of goodness will increase, and if the bad are punished, the probability that they will repeat their acts of evil will decrease.  Overall, the amount of good behavior increases.  Humans are naturally hedonistic creatures, seeking pleasure and satisfaction in all that they do.  If good behavior is the goal, then there should obviously be some sort of reward that gives humans pleasure and make then want to achieve good behavior.  Operant conditioning works because humans strive towards happiness.

Biologically speaking, the meaning of life is to create more life, and humans should act ethically to increase the probability of the species surviving.  It is the natural order of things.  If everyone were to kill each other, which can be considered as the epitome of evil behavior, nobody would be left to carry on the human species.  Even if one person was the ultimate victor over all other humans, it does takes two to create life.

However, this is not the only reason why humans should demonstrate good moral behavior; there is some aspect of personal development involved.  Somehow, humans are born with a moral compass that tells one what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, and when there is not somebody, such as God or a friend, to tell one what he or she has done wrong, the moral compass informs the individual, and the individual may punish himself.  So, even if one is punished for acting ethically, the moral compass and one’s inner conscience will provide the reinforcement and confirmation that what one did is right.  Job, even through his punishment, asserts his goodness because his moral compass tells him so.  The aspect of satisfying one’s own moral compass, not one of another, motivates man to act ethically even in face of punishment.  Psychology suggests that acts of good behavior decrease with punishment, but innate characteristics of man can override learned behaviors.  To listen to one’s moral compass provides the personal development that is qualified as “good”.  In simpler terms, good leads to more good and bad leads to more bad.  The world needs people to continue on the good, which is the function of the moral compass.

Even though I can speculate as to why humans strive toward good behavior and try to reduce evil behavior, I cannot say why good is good and why bad is bad. The concepts of good and bad are almost like the “givens” of life, similar to the three undefined terms in geometry - points, lines, and planes.  One cannot define good and bad without it being circular, and I will not attempt to define them.

So if good behavior is desirable, why does God punish Job, a man who has been good his entire life?  It is less of an issue of divine retribution but of divine power.  God wishes to maintain his power and wants to assert his power over Job, to tell him that he is just a man living on Earth while God has traversed the path to heaven and death.  He brings out the behemoth and the leviathan to show the control He has over the world, that even these huge creatures are under his control.  Because God initially punishes Job, he can come down in a whirlwind and tell Job how limited his human perspective is and how unlimited His perspective is.  What applies in the human world does not apply in the animal world; God shows Job and his friends that He has allowed the lion to kill other animals because it is part of the natural life cycle, even if it does involve brutally killing other animals and drinking their blood.  Human morality, on the other hand, dictates that one shall not kill another.  God shows Job the limits of his knowledge by spending a significant portion of his discourse chiding Job for his misuse of imagery and the faults in his reasonings, such as with light and darkness.  Humans, unfortunately, cannot know everything, and God wants them to know it.

I want retrospect in the present.

The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is perhaps one of the most well-known stories around the world.  Retold again and again, many people have misinterpreted the story or made assumptions about it, drawing conclusions that have no concrete basis in the text itself.  In relation to the actual story of Adam and Eve (the one found in the Bible), Emily Dickinson, in her poem “Eden is that old-fashioned House”, describes the life Adam and Even had in the Garden of Eden and the departure from Eden.  Adam and Eve, who live in Eden everyday, are innocent and ignorant, two characteristics that comes from a lack of knowledge.  They live unsuspectingly of evil and sin, not recognizing their nakedness and lacking the ability to foresee the consequences of eating the fruit off of the tree of knowledge.  Eden is a place where they “dwell in every day / without suspecting [their] abode” (ln 2-3).

When Eve eats the fruit and then gives the fruit to Adam to eat, they leave their state of innocence and gain knowledge that cannot be unlearned, thus marking their inability to return to their former state.  Adam and Eve leave Eden without any conflict and “[saunter] from the Door” (ln 6), and due to their development, they can “discover it no more” (ln 8).  They would not be able to walk around Eden naked; instead, they would want to wear the clothes that God made for them.  Eve will not be able un-become the mother of all the living and unlearn the pain of childbirth, and both Adam and Even will never lose the knowledge of good and evil.  They will never be able to return to a state of blissful innocence in which they are not aware that they are not aware of something.

As a child, I was not aware of what my life was like in my home.  I did not know a life in which my parents were not there to teach me, to make decisions for me, and to perform tasks that I could not do myself.  My parents made every decision that affected my life, such as initially choosing to sign me up for soccer and basketball or setting aside money for my future.  God set the rules for Adam and Eve, in a way making their decisions for them, and they lived in blissful innocence, as I did as a child and am right now, even if it is not so blissful anymore.

While I will not “[saunter] from the Door”, in a casual and relaxed manner, I will leave my home without much thought, having known for a years that after high school, I will move away to a different city and live separately from my parents.  I can guess what my home means to me, but I will not truly know the significance of living with my family until I move away.  However, the terrible thing is, once I move away, I can never return.  Adam and Eve, while living in Eden, do not recognize their great living conditions until they are forced to leave; everyday they live without any worries and have an endless supply of fruit to eat.

A great majority of people have encountered at least one person who talks about their high school days and their college adventures.  I always thought that these people had such remarkable things happen to them, and I lived a bland life with no incredible stories to recount if I were to ever share anything about me.  As I come to the end of my high school career, I am starting to wonder if it is the notion that one cannot return to being a teenager that makes a simple event, such as stopping at a truck stop on a band field trip, into a significant and remarkable event.  One does not recognize the uniqueness of Adam and Eve’s living situation until they are forced to go.  I anticipate that the unsuspecting stories of my childhood and teenage years are the ones I am going to reminisce about as I grow older and depart from my teenage years.

Perhaps what I am most afraid of is not that my home will change or my parents will change, but that I will change.  Because I have lived my entire life under the roof of my parents, I am afraid that living out on my own will alter me.  I will lose the quirky things that characterize me, habits that I have acquired because I have lived in such a secure environment for 18 years.  These little things somehow make me feel like I have a connection with my parents, a connection that I perceive is weakening between my sister, who is in college, and my parents and that I fear I will lose.  When my sister comes home, she is different; she does not accept the strange things we do as a family, criticizing the family traditions that she used to partake in.  Even though I know that our family dynamic has adjusted to her absence, it seems as though she is the one who has changed the most, not us, because she now lives with other people, and I do not want to be another misfit in my family when I return.  I may not outwardly show it, but I like my family members and prefer to be like them rather than adopt the customs of the others.  I know change is inevitable, but I would like it if I could avoid it for a while.

Ender's Game ! ! !

For those who have read Ender's Game, this is too great not to share.

At MIT.  Source of photos.

Mi est visum

Advice freely floats around in everyday conversation, from the simple reminder to put on pants before leaving the house to choosing whether one should buy the house he or she really likes but cannot afford.  However, the hardest part is not seeking sound advice but rather deciding whether or not to follow the recommendations.  I often wonder if a person really has my interests in their best intentions and whether or not they know me well enough for the advice to actually be applicable to my situation.  While I have received and followed advice from others, I do not hold them in as high a regard as the guidance I receive from my parents.  I know, undoubtedly, that their advice will always hold true within the limits of their knowledge.

As a child, I perhaps was a little egocentric and thought I was the smartest of the class.  I could read and write before entering kindergarten.  I thought I was great, considering that I knew that the word “know” was not spelled like how it sounded and was proud when a parent thought I was brilliant for knowing that.  I even distinctly remember telling the teacher I was the best reader in the class, which is now embarrassing to admit.  While my parents did recognize my fast development, they kept on advising me that I should be aware of the people who were better, smarter, and stronger than me.  In my childhood, I regarded myself as one of those people who were better, smarter, and stronger than the rest of the population and did not really believe in my parents’ advice.

When more years passed, I started to realize my limitations.  People were just inherently better at me at some things than I was.  Some of my peers were more athletic, more musical, or more intellectually inclined, and my parents’ advice to always know that there were these types of people in the world resurfaced.  As I crossed the boundary into middle school and then into high school, I could not keep this statement out of my head.  I found that its purpose was not meant to shame me into thinking that I was the worst person out there and not as good as everyone else, nor was it meant into making me think I was a member of the elite group of people who were the best, the smartest, and the strongest.  Rather, it taught me to be self-aware and analyze myself from a third-person perspective.  I started to recognize my position with respect to other people, which sort of niche I belonged to in high school, and where I fell in that small group of people.

A very fine line exists between knowing one’s abilities and being arrogant and egotistical.  While I definitely recognize the extent of some of my abilities may be greater than those of other people, I also know that I am not the best and am actually very far from being it.  I am fully aware that I do not possess the skills and abilities that other people naturally have.  Even though people may perceive me to be arrogant and conceited, I am very aware of what I can and cannot do.

Even though I hate to mention it, the college application process, which is in the minds of many, if not all, of the students writing this assignment, has strengthened my belief in my parents’ advice that I received when I was five.  Every time I answer one of the questions that ask what attribute of my personality I am most proud of or what is my best accomplishment, I have to evaluate myself and become aware of role I fulfill, or, in other words, know who I am.  I have come to the realization that the accomplishments and skills that I am most proud about myself will not be impressive when compared to some super-student who has the same interests as me but has done everything with ten times the success I have had.  Still, I should not not apply just because someone looks more spectacular on paper than I am.

While it may seem like my parents’ advice to always be aware of those who are greater than I could ever be makes me feel inferior, it actually has contributed to my motivation and determination to always be moving forward, learning new things, and discovering new concepts.  The knowledge that humans can split the atom and build a space station (things super smart people figured out) gives me the hope that maybe I can do something amazing in my future, and I aspire to do things I cannot do now.  Even though I may not ever achieve something as big as developing the nuclear bomb, I work hard toward having the possibility of doing what others innately are able to do.  I just wish to reach the upper bound of my reaction range.

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space.” - Albert Einstein

Humans are just a temporary part of the universe.
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Individual humans are rather insignificant.  Their existences are fleeting.  Homo sapiens have existed for only 200,000 years out of the total 4.54 billion years Earth has been alive, and in my 17.46 years of life, I have merely lived through 0.000000385% of the total time ever elapsed on earth.  If I placed all the individual humans together, the human race as a whole is a little more significant, having lived through 0.00441% of the time.  From an biological standpoint, the lack of permanence of the human species facilitates change, as new proliferations of a species foster mutations in genetic code and the inheritance of these mutations in offspring.  A permanent human race is a static one, and a static race fails to adapt to the environment.  Of course, permanence eliminates the need for adaptation, and the lack of it forces humans to change.

Impermanence does not only lead to biological change; it also influences the mind.  Gilgamesh, when he does not find permanence on his quest for immortality, changes his perspective on death and accepts his own mortality.   He would not have to if there were indeed a solution to immortality because, well, he would be immortal and his initial thoughts about the existence of immortality would be right.  Instead, after he fails Utnapishtim’s test and cannot stay up for seven days, he knows his life is leading him to death.  Even Enkidu, whilst on his death bed, alters his opinion on becoming civilized after he becomes aware of his fleeting moments on earth.  Otherwise, he would have remained content living in society.

Humans draw attention to the impermanence of life ironically through the fight against it.  When Jennifer Aniston says, “The secret it out; hydration is in” in her commercials for Aveeno, she is bringing attention to the one thing that the product is trying to hide.  A cream whose sole purpose is to reduce brown age spots is another reminder that the body changes over time and cannot remain youthful.  The cream tries to hide or prevent change in our body, but it ultimately cannot create human imperviousness to time.  Even the vitamins that my parents eat, such as Omega-3 and calcium supplement pills, that supposedly make them healthier are daily reminders that their bodies are aging and getting older.

My 0.000000385% is rather insignificant relative to the entire planet.  It is fleeting only when I compare it to the total amount of time that has passed.  Relative to my time on earth, I have lived 100%.  While everyone may not think, and should not think, that their time is the only time that occurs on Earth, humans do not necessarily consider the entire universe when they get up and and go about their business.  They only think of the immediate future, say the next few hours, days, months, or years.  To each human, 10 years is not short and does not pass by in a blink of an eye.  For a person who lives one hundred years, it represents 10% of their life, a significant portion of their time on earth.  Humans make their own lives significant, which motivates them to go about and do their business.  Humans choose to analyze the effects of a decision in the next five or ten years, when it is still significant, not the next million years, when their decision will have no meaning.

Biologically speaking, the meaning of life is to create more life.  A species’ primary purpose for existing is to reproduce and carry on the genes that make the species exist.  When each parent dies, the offspring are what they leave behind; they are their meaning in life, and the concept of having a part of an individual remain after death carries on to everyday life.  Humans do not make choices whose influences only last in the present moment but instead last through many more, which explains their obsession with making something that “lasts.”  Members of society are preoccupied with fame because they think fame brings remembrance after death.  Celebrities seem to have a lasting legacy that a “normal” human desires.  The meaning of life is to leave something behind.

Humans create eternal life by investing in the things that inherently cannot die.  Anything that one generation passes on to the next cannot cease to exist until the human race ceases to exist (or a person is horrible enough to stop the flow into the next generation).  Religion, literature, and ideas all cannot, strictly speaking, die.  Even some few thousand years after his death, a reader who opens the book version or reads the clay tablets containing the Epic of Gilgamesh will feel as though Gilgamesh is alive.  He is alive when he fights Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven.  He is alive when he laments about the death of Humbaba.  Gilgamesh is not crying and ordering a statue in memory of Enkidu in his grave.  The ideas and items that trickle down from generation to generation create eternal life and order in what may otherwise be a chaotic world.

Still, even though humans may deceive themselves into thinking they are important, they cannot change their amount of insignificance.  Even though I get up and do my business everyday, I still cannot deny the fact that I am just another insignificant point in a continuing universe and continue to grow more insignificant as even more time passes.

I Am Not a Hero

Lyra Belacqua is the hero of His Dark Materials, closing all inter-dimensional windows to stabilize the universe.
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The word "hero" comes from the Greek word meaning "protector" or "defender", and heroes in Greek mythology are demigods, implying that those who can be considered heroes are never fully human, nor can any regular human hope to achieve such a title.  However, readers and critics alike recognize protagonists from Beowulf, The Odyssey, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as heroes, heroes who are fully human.  The definition of a hero has expanded to include not only humans from this world and demigods, but also creatures and humans of another realm, as seen in movies such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, or The Lord of the Rings.  The division between good and evil in all of these works of art allows heroes to form.  Regardless of which world the characters come from, these heroes have all gone on some long, extended journey (of the works that I have read or watched) that require sacrifice on their personal part to save or protect something near to them or the world at large.  A hero need not be of an un-human race, but what they do makes then seem superior to humans and other-worldly.

Heroic actions or behavior is an act that represents or mimics what a hero would do in a certain situation, but the doer is not necessarily a hero.  The individual may have some other defining characteristics that contradict those of a hero.  If I were to save a child from a burning house, my action would be heroic, but I would not be a hero.  I did not go on a long, extended journey that required personal sacrifice.  To have the adjective “hero” describe a person takes time and repetition of heroic acts, not just one single selfless act.  Superman is not a hero because he saved one person once, but because he does it repeatedly without selfish motive and for great good!

Being called a heroine does not make a woman any less of a hero.  There is no difference in meaning, besides the gender issue, between these words, but the word “hero” conjures up images of masculine figures of the male gender.  Female heroes are present in the works of literature or film mentioned previously, but most not think of them as the heroes of the works.  When prompted to say who the hero of the Harry Potter series is, the majority of readers will respond with Harry Potter.  Yet by the same definition that makes the boy who lived a hero, Hermione Granger is also a hero, and she is certainly no less of a hero than Harry.  She makes many sacrifices to help Harry defeat Lord Voldemort, and her sacrifices may even be more difficult to make than Harry’s.  While Harry has no choice but to grow up without his parents and fight Lord Voldemort, Hermione consciously erases her parents’ memories and any trace of her life from their brains to safely embark on a journey to defeat Voldemort.

Heroes represent their moral values.  They do what is right for others and the world, intentionally or unintentionally, and better the lives of all humans.  Huckleberry Finn, by ripping up the letter that contains the location of Jim, intentionally makes a decision to follow his conscience and to view Jim as a human and not just a slave.  However, he unintentionally and unknowingly does what is right for the country as a whole and not just for Jim, recognizing African-Americans as people and not just property.  Still, even though heroes are seemingly the best examples of human conduct, not all humans need heroes.  Some may need them to have as role models, a person to idolize and help shape their goals in life.  Others need heroes to get work done that they cannot do themselves, such as destroying the Ring and defeating Sauron, but some people do not need heroes at all, choosing to do the work themselves and making their own goals.  These people choose to lead their own independent lives regardless of how others lived.

“Unhappy the land that needs heroes”, says Bertolt Brecht, a statement that reflects the exact purpose of heroes.  All heroes change some undesirable aspect of the world, and the presence of a hero indicates that there is, or there was, something wrong with the land.  Nobody needs to make personal sacrifices like heroes do if life is ideal.  Frodo would not need to destroy the Ring if Sauron did not exist and Middle-earth was a land of peace.  Without Lord Voldemort terrorizing the magical world, Harry Potter would not be Harry Potter, the boy who lived.  Even though some humans do not need heroes, the world needs heroes to save itself from chaos or destruction.

The Panserbjørne

The Panserbjørne are armoured sentient bears who make their own armour out of sky-iron.  Panserbjørne can never be deceived, unless the panserbjørn is Iofur Raknison.  Some live in Svalbard, and they can speak many languages.