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.