Suggestion

Let me give you a plan as to the Olympic Games to be held in Beijing.

In July, if the polluted atmosphere there is not improved, the games might be held in Asian countries except China.

I think it absurd atheletes will enter the competition with asthma inhalers(NY Times) in a Beijing described in NY Times.

Give a thought to this suggestion.

The Best Intentions

The words in Jurassic Park III reminded me of what was stated in his books by Theodor W. Adorno, who admired non-coordination, or in another expression, who disliked a theorized view without any contradictions.

The words are "Some of the worst things imaginable have been done with the best intentions." It's important to build a theory with no defects, but it's arrogant to think human beings are capable of constructing that.

Anyway, it was so catchy.

Democracy and education

What is democracy? I have been thinkig about this since I read a post in Aljazeera English, which emphasizes violent actions have been done by those thinking and stating democracy is the most important.

Democracy is a system selected by the people to govern a community in which they live based on the religion, philosophy, environment, and history proper to the community, so first of all, democracy cannot be given by any other force living outside the community.

Of course, dictatorship should be criticized but it must be taken away by the people. This statement is not mine but Edward E. Said's.

I'm beginning to think he was right, while I found I hadn't given enough thought to what democracy is.

But if this is true how should I react to dictatorships, like Saddam Husayn or Kim Jon Il?

When US was preparing for the war with Iraq, Said was afraid what would happen after the war: chaos.

He didn't live long enough to see the result but he was right. Before, Churchill called democracy was the least good system of government. When it is thought to be bad, the people are not wise enough to judge, so Said was also right in saying intellectuals play important roles in establishing good democracies in communities.

Intellectuals need to let people know what will happen after each of the opinions on the table is selected, so they must not belong to any other factions. But as discussing with a friend of mine in university, recently intellectuals work on their majors in universities but do not work to improve societies or to let people know what they should know. Rather, looks like they work to keep the present framework of society unchanged.

I must confess till now I didn't know how important education is....

I'm the person

I love this joke:

A: "I'm sorry--- I quite forgot your party the other evening!"
B: "Oh, weren't you there?"

I'm always the type of person who are treated in this way (TEAR).

Layman's Question

My favorite Japanese artist, Okamoto Taro, frequently said, "Be a layman." I guess he meant by this phrase that you should have a direct view into objects, letting nothing intervening between the objects and you. Probably, we have some assumptions on which our social lives go easily, but they sometimes prevent you from seeing the truths and making good decisions.

For example, when old persons insist that they need enough money to let them live peacefully, they seem to forget that theri request would impose big burden on their children and being destined to pass away soon. They are the members of the community, so they need to find a fair way to distribute money and foodstuff to the members of the community.

This came to me when Okamoto told me a story about a system adopted by Eskimoans as to how to reduce the number of the older persons in the society. They, turning some age, are required to throw themselves into the sea. If one of them has not drown to death, his grandaughter who was cherished by her grandfather will put his head under the water, saying "Thank you and good-bye."

I don't mean older persons should be useless. An extreme view may let us see problems in perspective, consequently to let you know your life depends upon the society in which you're living. No one knows the meaning and significance of life. Without knowing this, how can you choose your own way to live and spend your time living in this world. This awareness, I believe, will lead us to live less greedily and arrogantly.

"Be a layman" is one of my favorite words. I'm professional, so I need to keep this in my mind, like other professionals in power.

Sentenced to Freedom

In a sense, philosophy tells you that you cannot have an objective view on anything you think existing in the world. In short, you have a very limited view of the world in which you are living now.

In this limited view, some of you, including me, should try to find a better way to spend your time in this world. This type of persons are categorized into existentialists by Heidegger.

As an existentialist, I have found Sartre's existentialism and Buddhistic philosophy, but they just tell you "you're sentenced into freedom," "you have no doctrine to cling to in living in the world but to think, more exactly, to struggle.

Recently, I've found myself in impasse. I know this is common, and I need to do what I should do.

What is a Faulknerian?

I didn't know I had been deeply immersed in Faulkner's spirit until I was required to answer to the question by one of my girlfriends of why I'm so pessimistic. I answered, "I'm not pessimistic, but just a Faulknerian," by which I meant we're required to see the whole scene of human experience in transformation, in which each individual is trapped in his own past.

Chi

Did you hear about CHI, seen in Dragon Ball Z, a Japanese animation? It is something mysterious, a kind of supernatural power. I didn't believe its existence until I found myself emitting it.

A couple of months ago, I found my feet paralyzed when I was getting into computer, so I thought I should have got a serious problem in my brain or backbone. Additionally, I realized I was losing weight, no less than 5 kilos. I said to myself, "It may be a cancer somewhere in my body."

I tried not to depress myself with that guess because a couple of decades in my life told me my feelings would affect my sickness. I told myself to be positive and relaxed to take away any bad disease from me.

Then I realized my hands were wrapped in something warm and it was so abundant that I thought I could throw it away. I threw it to my sister, she said something was felt in or on her forehead.

I had seen a middle-aged woman, one of my colleagues, using chi to heal middle-aged persons. Then, I thought she was trying to deceive us, though I heard one of them say, "my pain in my head has gone." Anyway, I recalled how she used chi and began to use it.

I have used it for about 80 persons; some are fine and others have headache and stiff shoulders; more than 90 percent of the persons felt something emitted through my hand. 95 percent of the persons with either headache or stiff shoulders said the diseases were gone.

I want to know what is emitted through my hand or what has been called chi. Let me know if you know.

Korea is different from China

Some of the riots in China to protest againt Japan 1) making a bid for a permanent seat for the UNSC, and 2) allegedly distorting some of the descriptions in the textbooks adopted in Japanese schools have been reported in the world, but some of the mass medias fairly pointed out that that was a fake. Most of Japanese were relieved to see the news. I hope China would understand cheating and unfair propaganda would make China look a second-rate country.

Korea has also been protesting against Japan for the same reasons, but this country is different from China, you should notice. Korea has been struggling to change. Some of the professors in Korean universities are beginning to admit that Japan was not quite evil in invading Korea. That is, they are beginning to know how the war looked not only to Korea but also Japan. A war is not so simple as to be attributed to one single cause. Japanese invasion over Korea was also caused by complicated circumstances.

Intelligence

I thought Gulliver's Travels was written just for children. But I have to admit I was mistaken. One of the remarkable phrases in the work is "Reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot either. So that Controversies, Wranglings, Disputes, and Positiveness in false or dubious Propositions, are Evils unknown among theHouyhnhnms."

I saw the report by the commission ordered by President Bush to trace the misjudgement about the weapons in Iraq. After reading that report, I brought myself to wonder why we need intelligence. It should be used to judge troubles beyond our knowledge. If they don't judge, that failure of such a magnitude may be avoided.

But this is also incorrect. President Bush would tell me that not all of the human beings have had reason, so we need to get accurate intelligence timely.

Mystery or Miracle

Some pieces of the first movement of a good Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 floated to me while I was still sleeping. My body remained resting but my mind worked well enough to wonder how this music was being played, because the CD should have been buried in a corner of one of the bookshelves in my room for so many days that I couldn't locate it. The only information I inferred was my wife picked it up in the CDs piled up and put it into the place. The questions that had been filling me up with were sorted through my scrutiny and reduced into the one: how could she choose the one?

On that day, in the evening, I was going to a fifteen-years-old city theatre to listen to Symphony No. 7 of Bruckner, played by GewandhausOrchestra Leipzig and conducted by Herbrt Blomstedt. But I chose this neither because the orchestra and the conductor were great nor because I love Bruckner. Those could not be enough for me to decide to buy an expensive ticket for that concert on the day, the deathday of Mr. K, a teacher who taught me Faulkner and classical music. He was said to be queer in aesthetics, but I shared it with him. And he also loved Bruckner, as I do. When I found a poster to let us know the concert would be held, it was as if his motto reiterated in my mind, "something moving can be the motif for you to live, work, and survive in the world, so you have to keep your sensibility working; therefore, you have to give yourself so many opportunities to move you." And I also remembered how happy he looked when he was preparing to leave his office for the concert theatre to listen to Bruckner, who was his cup of tea.

My wife, I guess, is an esoteric buddhism worshipper in some cases. You know, Esoteric Buddhism would be a little bit different from other sects of Buddhism in that, according to the doctrine, you could be allowed to get a magical power or a clearest insight to enable you cause miracles. Probably, on that day, she got the power, so she picked up a Schricht's Bruckner No. 7. without knowing anything about the concert and classical music. She is not interested in classical music as art but as a cradle song. Nevertheless, she chose the one the teacher mentioned as the best conductor for Bruckner's No. 7.

Blomstedt performed terribly cool and great. I clapped so much, murmuring "thanks, Mr. K."