Back again with one of my philosophical blog posts. There are many emotions I would want to eradicate. Anger, frustration, sadness, jealousy, just to name a few. The list is endless. There are times when I feel frustrated when I don't know the answer to a question or cannot finish my homework and feel very frustrated. There are also times where I fail to achieve my ideal test mark and lament. However, I feel that the main emotion that deserves to be eliminated would be: GREED.
Greed is the excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of money, wealth, power. It is generally considered a vice and is one of the seven deadly sins in Catholicism.( Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride).
Why greed? Simple. Greed is responsible for many other emotions that appeal to people, like anger, betrayal and jealousy. For example, Harry and John are bosom friends. They decide to open an oil company. As Harry is rich and John is poor, the former finances the business while the latter provides the expertise. However, they fail to hit the mother load for many years. One day, John's intuition pays off and they strike oil. Though they both initially agreed to have a 50-50 cut of any profit, John is greedy for more wealth and argues that since he was responsible for their windfall, he should take a larger share of the profit. Harry maintains that without him, John would not even have the capital to start up the business at all. As a result, their friendship sours over a business squabble and they now hate each other.
In this case, John's greed causes him to lust for wealth and thus he demands a larger dividend of the profit. This makes Harry angry and frustrated. In the end, they are deadly enemies. Greed has caused two close friends to be jealous, angry and at loggerheads. It is an extremely lethal emotion that deserves no more than to be abolished.
Greed can cause someone to betray even his/her closest friend and even steal or kill from him/her. It arises mainly because of a false illusion that material wealth equals happiness. In John's case, he might have thought that since wealth is happiness, having more wealth would mean more joy. This is of course false, as material goods can only give a person a basic level of comfort but never true happiness. Happiness can only come from being satisfied with what you have and not be envious of what others have. As the sage Confucius once preached, “To be truly happy and contented, you must let go of what it means to be happy or content."
Monday, July 26, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
What is the purpose of SG's Community Involvement Programme?
"Hey, anybody got time? Want join tomorrow go old folks' home?"
The most likely reponse: "Umm... Got CIP hours not?"
What is the use of CIP? To some students, CIP is a bothersome quota of 15hours a year of voluntary work; a waste of good time which could be used for playing computer games or watching television. Others may regard it as something more important and ponder upon its underlying purposes. Let me share with you my own personal experience of a CIP. This was the 1st CIP activity I had in HCI so it had a rather large impact on me...
Unlike other secondary school students, our entire Sec 1 cohort spent 4-5 hours collecting old newspapers and clothes from residents in the Taman Jurong Area during the Friday before National Day, instead of merely sitting through a series of meaningless performances in the hall. Initially, I was quite annoyed at having to spend this important occasion doing CIP. The thought of slogging away while my ex-classmates were having fun and even released from school early was almost too much to bear. The only compensation I would have in return would be a few miserly CIP hours. As I still had to fulfill the minimum requirement of 10 (then, now 15) CIP hours annually, I resigned myself to my fate and boarded the charted bus for Taman Jurong with a reluctant sigh.
When we arrived at our destination, we split ourselves into groups of 5s, each taking one block. 2 of us were to do the even floors, the other 2 the odd ones and 1 was to remain to "guard" the newspapers and old clothes harvested. I was assigned to do the even floors and went about ringing doorbells and knocking the doors, asking for newspapers and clothes. As it was a Friday, most of the residents were working, hence, about half of the flats were empty. After gathering the donations, we assembled at the void deck and stacked them into neat piles for collection.
I recall that at least 25%-35% of the flats I visited housed Indian and Malay families. For your information, this is because of Singapore's HDB Ethnic Integration Policy. Today, eight out of ten Singaporeans live in Housing and Development Board (HDB) estates. In a bid to get the major races mingling, the HDB’s Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) was introduced in 1989. It works in such a way that each race can only occupy a fixed percentage of flats in an area at any point of time. Once that quota has been reached, no more families of that race can move there.
There are some who feel that this EIP policy is a bane of our society. They feel that it is troublesome, as they would not be able to live near their family members if the quota is full when they marry and settle down. There are also those who are selling their flats and have many willing buyers but they are all of a race which has maxed its number. Hence, they supported abolishing this rule.
However, I feel that this policy is in fact a boon to our society. I understand that it may be irritating for some for the above-mentioned reasons. However, there is a reason why Singapore's government implemented this rule. In the past, when Singapore was a British colony, the different races were separated into different areas to prevent potential racial riots or conflicts. However, fights among the races still broke out. Hence, instead of dividing them, PAP introduced the EIP policy to foster a multi-racial environment and unite the different races. To date, this has turned out to be the right decision, as racial conflicts in Singapore are far and few in between.
Overall, I feel that racial harmony is not a given for Singapore. Thus, we must have the EIP. By maintaining a multi-racial environment in our housing estates, we maintain social stability, racial harmony and religious tolerance, hence keeping Singapore safe and secure for all races.
So, what is my opinion of CIP? A waste of time? Definitely NOT! Voluntary work then? Not quite... As you can see, I did learn quite a bit from my CIP activity of collecting newspapers. Its like Service Learning; not only do I serve the community, at the same time, I learn. Its better than blindly doing CIP or only learning in theory; essentially, the best of both worlds. I get to help the less fortunate and improve myself. So, next time anyone asks you whether you want to go for CIP, be sure to answer with a loud, hearty ...
source:http://www.fotosearch.com/bthumb/ARP/ARP101/yes.jpg
The most likely reponse: "Umm... Got CIP hours not?"
What is the use of CIP? To some students, CIP is a bothersome quota of 15hours a year of voluntary work; a waste of good time which could be used for playing computer games or watching television. Others may regard it as something more important and ponder upon its underlying purposes. Let me share with you my own personal experience of a CIP. This was the 1st CIP activity I had in HCI so it had a rather large impact on me...
Unlike other secondary school students, our entire Sec 1 cohort spent 4-5 hours collecting old newspapers and clothes from residents in the Taman Jurong Area during the Friday before National Day, instead of merely sitting through a series of meaningless performances in the hall. Initially, I was quite annoyed at having to spend this important occasion doing CIP. The thought of slogging away while my ex-classmates were having fun and even released from school early was almost too much to bear. The only compensation I would have in return would be a few miserly CIP hours. As I still had to fulfill the minimum requirement of 10 (then, now 15) CIP hours annually, I resigned myself to my fate and boarded the charted bus for Taman Jurong with a reluctant sigh.
When we arrived at our destination, we split ourselves into groups of 5s, each taking one block. 2 of us were to do the even floors, the other 2 the odd ones and 1 was to remain to "guard" the newspapers and old clothes harvested. I was assigned to do the even floors and went about ringing doorbells and knocking the doors, asking for newspapers and clothes. As it was a Friday, most of the residents were working, hence, about half of the flats were empty. After gathering the donations, we assembled at the void deck and stacked them into neat piles for collection.
I recall that at least 25%-35% of the flats I visited housed Indian and Malay families. For your information, this is because of Singapore's HDB Ethnic Integration Policy. Today, eight out of ten Singaporeans live in Housing and Development Board (HDB) estates. In a bid to get the major races mingling, the HDB’s Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) was introduced in 1989. It works in such a way that each race can only occupy a fixed percentage of flats in an area at any point of time. Once that quota has been reached, no more families of that race can move there.
There are some who feel that this EIP policy is a bane of our society. They feel that it is troublesome, as they would not be able to live near their family members if the quota is full when they marry and settle down. There are also those who are selling their flats and have many willing buyers but they are all of a race which has maxed its number. Hence, they supported abolishing this rule.
However, I feel that this policy is in fact a boon to our society. I understand that it may be irritating for some for the above-mentioned reasons. However, there is a reason why Singapore's government implemented this rule. In the past, when Singapore was a British colony, the different races were separated into different areas to prevent potential racial riots or conflicts. However, fights among the races still broke out. Hence, instead of dividing them, PAP introduced the EIP policy to foster a multi-racial environment and unite the different races. To date, this has turned out to be the right decision, as racial conflicts in Singapore are far and few in between.
Overall, I feel that racial harmony is not a given for Singapore. Thus, we must have the EIP. By maintaining a multi-racial environment in our housing estates, we maintain social stability, racial harmony and religious tolerance, hence keeping Singapore safe and secure for all races.
So, what is my opinion of CIP? A waste of time? Definitely NOT! Voluntary work then? Not quite... As you can see, I did learn quite a bit from my CIP activity of collecting newspapers. Its like Service Learning; not only do I serve the community, at the same time, I learn. Its better than blindly doing CIP or only learning in theory; essentially, the best of both worlds. I get to help the less fortunate and improve myself. So, next time anyone asks you whether you want to go for CIP, be sure to answer with a loud, hearty ...
source:http://www.fotosearch.com/bthumb/ARP/ARP101/yes.jpg
Friday, July 9, 2010
What is Beauty?
What is Beauty?
I question myself as I glance through the latest fashion magazines, grossly inserted with colorful, artifical advertisments ranging from Botox treatments to plastic surgery. They all have 1 thing in common; the promise of beauty. So, let as return to the topic at hand; What is Beauty?Some people think that beauty is skin-deep. This means that they feel beauty is superficial and not important as to how they judge a person. Instead, they see a person for his/her true character. This point of view is thought to be very noble. However, is it reflected in our present society? Do we really take a person for his/her behavior and not looks?
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Simply put, it means that beauty is as one sees it. That means, even if you think that something, for example the Mona Lisa is absolutely perfect, another person may think it is rather plain and lacks depth. It really is a matter of opinion. In our modern society, there is a generally accepted perception of beauty by the public. There are even readily available methods to beautify a not-so-beautiful person, like spas, treatments, plastic surgery, etc. Products like diet patches, diet pills, and face masks are readily available and are thriving even in the current economic crisis. It does not help that the media helps to propagate this mindset by broadcasting shows like "Ms. Universe" or "Extreme Makeover", encouraging us to adopt this warped version of beauty as our own, shunning all other definitions of the word . Furthermore, teenagers idolize stars, blindly devoted to them. They believe that since their idols go for plastic surgeries and beauty treatment, this must be the "correct" type of beauty. Thus, they fall over themselves in achieving it, even forgoing their own morals and principals for the sake of becoming beautiful.
In conclusion, how does this reflect on us as a society? Are we a merely a bunch of apathetic fools, controlled by the media in an iron fist unconsciously in our eagerness to achieve the so-called beauty? Are we able to break free of the media’s perception of beauty or are we forced to go along with the flow, surrendering ourselves to the latest options the beauty industry has to offer? What do you think?
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