NOTE: This isn't a religious post, as this only shows the recent photos I took. Pics are under 16:9 aspect, taken by the Sony NEX5 with super light editings.
Most of them were taken from my church :) And thus, the theme is this. lols
Admiring this picture a lot. :) The last picture is the one that I'd edited twice. The first one was seen by Ju Mei once. :) But now, I'd added a second layer of flare in this picture. By looking at the pictures, I tend to look at the rants and wishes of the people around me, as well as our hopes and fears of the future. Life is hard, like it or not, we have to move, while waiting for a change.
Photography is back! But this time I continue this with a book review. Haha, I have more spare time for now as I'm currently in my holidays.
The reason why I titled the picture above as "Change Towards Humanity" is this book maybe a guideline for a more humane world. Well, do we realize that the world is getting more and more humane than ever? Well, in the past, our ancestors condemned the criminals blindly while they were sentenced to death, or being put to torture in public. Today, we say "No!" to capital punishment. Even the methods of killing a victim is subjected to the idea of punishing someone with a "painless" death.
To begin with, I began noticing this book, from one of Youtube's most popular talk clip, by one of Europe's finest philosophers, Slavoj Zizek. He included this book as his source for one of his talks called "First As Tragedy, Then As Farce". Well, Mr. Zizek was meant to criticize the idea of charity in today's world, but then I will be talking about this fact later.
But first, do spare some time to view his clip, if you want to.
Now, all I wanted to say is, it's kinda surprisingly that this book, even though was published in the end of the 19th century, has the contents that is still relevant to the present world today. (NOTE: I am not a socialist, in ideological terms I'm for The Zeitgeist Movement's moneyless resouce-based economy (RBE). What this book generally wanted to highlight is the slavery mentality of people who are in a capitalistic world.
With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Well, capitalism is a productivity-based ideology that focuses on supplying the demands, and thus social stratification is encouraged within a society that practices it. In Marxism, Karl Marx divided and identify 2 types of classes in a capitalist world - first is the bourgeoisie (the ruling class/corporate and business owners), and the proletariats (the working class). To survive in such a world, one has to be a capitalist - a person who is capable to capitalize both men and machine to generate profits. In nation building, the same thing happens as the dominant party capitalizes all of its corporations and working class into competing against other nation-states.
And thus, this system can be exploitative. Hence I will move on to:
Part 1: The System Doesn't Care A Damn About You.
I once mentioned this in my Facebook status. "One who votes and supports capitalism or any form of right-wing politics are people who are programmed to be SLAVES, a slave that works under a system that doesn't really care a damn about them".
Indeed, we're living under a system that treats us as if we're under a human resource factory. You were born, registered as a citizen, being sent into the education system where you were told to follow the syllabus from the age of 7 to 18, and then you get your college degree and you enter the workforce. In your "career", you were told to go to work and face unnecessary stress and traffic jams from 8 am to 5 pm every weekdays just for a devaluing thing called "money". Now, with things getting busier and busier over time while the financial system continues to break down, tell me, if your life happier when you know you have to get up in time to work and face stress in the office?
The books quotes
In a community like ours, where property confers immense distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles and other pleasant things of its kind, man can naturally be ambitious, makes it his aim to accumulate this property and goes on wearily and tediously accumulating it long after he has got far more than he wants, or can use, or enjoy or perhaps even know of. MAN, will kill himself by overwork in order to secure property...
True, isn't it? I remembered I'd entered a direct-selling group meeting, seeing a group of people having some ambitions of wanting to achieve statuses and titles, to be rich, etc. And the sense of motivation over there was so strong that it makes me sick to think about other people saying that "I want to achieve this", "I want to achieve that" with a smile on their face. I don't say that it's wrong, but then I can feel that social disease of people. Maybe I have a strong Christianity background that makes me anti-materialism. I am able to foresee the bright future of direct-selling business like Amway, Elken, AMC, etc, but for me to interact with people who are too obsessed with materialistic goals, sorry.
That doesn't just happen on direct-selling members, the career world also faces that. But in an office, things can be shallow and sinister. You can't feel it in a part-time job, but when you're going full time, that is another story.
And what if technology grows in capitalism. The incentives for men helped humanity to create more modern machines which will eventually take over human labour, which brings us to...
Part 2: The Rise of Automated Labour.
"Human Slavery Is Wrong, Insecure and Demoralising." - Oscar Wilde.
Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve.
In the past, there are people working as lift operators, factory workers, traffic men (the ones who were then replaced by traffic lights). Today, these jobs are gone. Wanna know why? Technology has allow us to create machineries to overcome human labour. Machines are unlike human beings. They never complain, they no need any income, and they are more efficient than human. Today, we have this thing called "Artificial Intelligence". Slowly, technology will replace human labour, this is a fact. Our system has to change.
This is a good example for the modern world. The picture above is taken in 2007, where you are seeing the world's first automated restaurant in Nuremberg, Germany. Named's Baggers is the name. >link< More restaurants like this means more unemployment.
How about this? Automated robotic surgery? I'm not sure if our own National Heart Institute (IJN) of Malaysia has this machinery or not, but this is surely a state-of-the-art technology that may make millions of surgeons jobless in the future. >link<
Humans have to change the way we live. If we continue our capitalistic ways of living, more people will be jobless, homeless and all will enter poverty.
There is no doubt at all that this is the future of machinery....machinery will be doing all the unpleasant work.
Indeed, machines will set humans free of work nature.
Part 3: Instead of Charity, Why Not Redesign Our Culture?
You see, in the past, I hate Karl Marx and Communism, thanks to the history books. I thought Communism was a form of dictatorship that enslaves the people and cause the Communist nations to spread their ideology through violence (like during the Emergency 1948-1960). But, when we were taught about Marxism in college, I felt that Marx actually wanted to create Utopia, the perfect world you and I wanted to live in. What makes Communism corrupted is the greed of power. A Communist nation should be classless and property-less (also means, moneyless).
And thus, Oscar Wilde proposes an classless, non-capitalism individualism, for the rights of the individual.
During the Cold War, there is this battle of public opinion between capitalism and communism. And I can say is, both ideologies were corrupted by greed of power and profit. Today, communism went into socialism, while capitalism has evolved into a new form of itself called "Cultural Capitalism", according to philosopher, Zizek.
The capitalism we are in today encourages us to be an environmentalist. The Earth Day, the green policy of brands and corporations, and the donations organized and sponsored by them - all of them are categorized in charity. They make you wanted to give to society, help the needy, make the world greener, etc.
But here, according to the book, Wilde argues that....
The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exeggerated altruism. They found themselves surrounded by an hideous poverty, hideous ugliness, hideous starvations. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all of this. The emotions of men are stirred more quickly than men's intelligence.....Thus, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease, they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are PART of the disease..
Like the example of Zizek in the video above, when you enter a Starbucks shop and they tell you that part of the money you spent on them are used to ensure that the coffee bean owners get the fair shares in their business, do you really trust them? A few years ago, there is an airline company added a green surcharge to its passengers, telling that we are also responsible of air pollution while we were travelling by air. Tell me, are they using that excuse to gain extra profit? Think about it.
With all the encouragements by corporations, a.k.a, corporate social responsibility (CSR) going around, you can feel the sense of hypocrisy around them.
Why not redesign the world instead? Haiti wouldn't face much medical and resource crisis in a more socialist world, I believe.
So, in conclusion, this book, though published in 1891, is a very timeless advice for humanity, as we are working towards that now. We have the technology that unites man, with all the social networkings, blogs and instant messengers. People should read this book more, regardless any ideologies that you support. At the end of the day, it's all about humanity and empathy.
....Restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community.
To Christians, Wilde also wanted to leave this message to you.
What Jesus meant was this. He said to a man, "You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. your perfection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you wouldn't want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. REAL riches cannot.
Thanks for the patience of reading it. If you want to read the whole book, >click here< Have a nice day. =)
If you are reading this, this is my pacifism response to the recent racism issues that is currently lingering over the Internet after 2 unscrupulous principals heated up the Malaysian society by you know, the pendatang name-calling.
Well, anyway, these events are preventable as the pendatang issue is totally an irrelevant thing to be mentioned. It has been 53 years we have been accepting each other as Malaysians, and yet there are still tragedies happening in our community:
We are still making racism relevant
A friend mentioned in his Facebook status, saying that, "instead of labelling people as Malays, Chinese and Indians, why not accept each other as Malaysians?" And I got to agree with him. And when you look at the reality, people tend to get piled up according to their own races, doing business and recruiting according to race-based mentalities, and so on.
Look, for all the 50 years being together, we shouldn't be told to accept one another all the time already, since we had been in this together for a long time. I had a lot of Malay friends, and they are the best group of people whom I enjoy talking to. There are even some Chinese girls whom I know mentioned that the Malay guys treat them better than the Chinese ones! HAHA.
It's better to accept one another. In Malaysia, you can see the hottest girls from various races. Forget about the usual Chinese leng luis you see in the PC Fairs or some other events, go check out the Malay and Indian leng luis. Some of you may argue about their skin, but let me tell you something - it's their tanned skin that make them a special class of their own. Haha. I'm serious :) Those in the First World countries wanted to tan their skin a lot, you see.
Plus, what about the foods like nasi lemak, rendang, char kuey teow, wan tan mee, chapati and roti canais? Enjoy them, they are all delicious. :)
"Malaysian Ignorance"
This you can't escape from. Everytime whenever there's a news occured (e.g. The BHP case that I'd >blogged< during May), people will be throwing out their thoughts and sometimes, spam in the Internet space.
Well, this is one of them, though it is attempting to defend Siti Hajah with a statement that she is a victim of politics. According to this>blog post<, the author suspected that there is a conspiracy theory going on that insisted that the principal was a puppet in this racist scene. Sounds like the questions raised during the Church burning events that happened earlier this year, eh?
Anyway, what I wanted to say is, in order to get yourself out of your ignorance, it is better for you to use your brains to look into a case, rather than your eyes and ears. As Albert Einstein mentioned, "Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance," it is better to have some good reasoning for the conclusion that you'd done, instead of providing a blind one.
When you know that these things are provoking your anger, try not to get mad against it, for they are meant to make you mad without even questioning about that news.
Last but not least, I would like to wish you a Happy 53rd Independence Day. We need to be grateful for what we have now, but we cannot just stop there. All of us have the roles to improve our nation.
Though I am a political atheist, I believe that the true power of change lies within the people, because we are the real ones that are able to decide for our future, not by the words of the politicians that claim more than they act. We already seen this in the current political system, where we are the ones who promote or fire the ones in power.
Forget our differences, people. Racism is an outdated approach of understanding the world. It is totally irrelevant, as the world today are already concious that we are ONE human race. We live in this temporary world, as life is short, why should we hate? When we die, we are only remembered by our deeds. Stop the cynicism and individualism. Collaboration for progress is what we truly need.
Well, I'd been encountering people with this motivation force called "Optimism". Yes, it is nothing wrong to be optimistic and to think of the brighter future. But then, the reality is still there, isn't it?
And indeed, I do have some issues with these type of mindset. Whenever something goes wrong, people will tend to be like "Oh! Everything should be fine! Just change, be positive, and then things will change". And what they do is just think about the good things that will change, well, without the actions.
And that clip was absolutely correct about the book called "The Secret". I once read that book and believed. But then, let's just say, for 100 days you'd been thinking that you can score 100% in examinations without reading, will it be crazy? Some of my friends have been practising that idea of "attracting" the positive ideas and the world will change, but logically, I don't believe it. Obviously nobody expects a Haiti disaster, or a Chilean tsunami by just a thought, isn't it?
But that doesn't mean pessimism is a good ideology of confidence. In fact, pessimism, to me doesn't contribute to solving a problem. You just let it linger there, waiting for it to eat you up alive.
I regard both of these perspective as equally delusional in a potential manner, because one hopes for the better, while another one hopes for nothing, and both are without actions.
But for sure, you're trying to run away from the problem, by either thinking it is not there, or you are letting it to crush you down.
So, be a realist!
Why? You should know that you are not able to escape from reality. Instead, you have to think that you, and everyone else has the power as a whole to change the reality for the better, thus generate idealism.
I remembered that a friend told me that problems should be seen as a problem. Indeed, if everyone is a realist, having the same radical mindset and being aware on what is happening around the world today, then all social problems should have been solved already. Combining optimism and pessimism together to both examine and formulate solutions is one healthy way to bring the both dimensions of seeing a half-empty/full glass together for a better picture.
Remember, the reality is there. Humanity needs collaboration to overcome problems. But first, the public must not be ignorant. :)
A number of years ago, a 12 year old activist named Severn Suzuki bravely stepped herself in front of the world leaders by addressing the them on the environmental-social issue. Indeed, she stunned the whole world with such speech.
And today, her voice still impacts the whole world, but even so, the same bullshits happened time by time and the unlucky people are still suffering in hunger and poverty, leaving the other working class individuals to struggle for their lives, fighting and earning money for their families and themselves.
Well, I'd viewed that clip ever since March 2010 when I was following the Z-Day 2010 live update from New York, and I was so astonished that there are people in such ages who are trying to express our social problems to the leaders. I wonder if people really take her message so seriously, as we're only focusing on our self-interests in our career, family and education. Whenever something wrong happens to them, they just complain. And when they complain, they only think about themselves. Most of the time, there's no solutions in complaining.
Like it or not, that's the mentality of the global society.
I'm typing this out not only to complain and rant, as I look at blogging NOT just a hobby or sharing our my photography posts, I am also dedicating my online space for the public sphere in order to provoke the thoughts to demand for a social change. You see, we can't afford to live like this. You earn extra income monthly, but the inflation's devaluating your money value. You see people dying in war, accidents and natural disasters, financial crisis, recession, unemployment, the increasing poverty rate, the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the lack of sustainability of consumer products, price rise, etc, don't you feel that something is wrong?
Think about it.
If a 12 year old can address such problems, why can't you? Don't you want to see a more humane change? Our society is already screwed up with many unnecessary problems.
But first, the change must begin within you. If you are change your ways of thinking, question our ways of living and be vary of the problems of it, provoke others' thoughts about this social issue as well. Make a viral transformation out of it, and make others' realize that how important it is for us to understand our roles to change the world.
There are already several documentaries telling us the necessity to change the world. Check this >site< out and view them by yourselves. You will realize how serious my message is here in this post.
I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change - Michael Jackson.
This is one of the things that I question myself nowadays.
The presenter was Jeremy Rifkin, a social and ethical prophet and a political adviser. And this clip is from theRSA.org, one very good site with such presentations with clear illustrated mind maps.
I am hoping for something like that in my lifetime, though it sounds idealistic. We'd been talking about the caring society who really helps the broken and the needed, as well as being told in our society and our religions to love one another and care for the needy. Besides, we were being told and moved to donate to those who are victims of war and natural disasters all the time, as well as to promote peace.
But then, why the world never changes, despite our technologies have been advancing over the years? As what the author said, we'd been trying to find our true identities, and slowly we'd been evolving from families, to religious/theistic identity to national identity (like 1Malaysia). Well, religion and patriotism have only managed to unite one region of people, and they usually contradict each other, though they provide good values to a certain extent.
The old appeals to racial, sexual, religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work. A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. - Carl Sagan
The TRUE identity of us is, we're one human race - 1Human species - homo sapiens/homo empathicus. We have grown from our ancestors' conciousness which we may refer to as "barbarism" (like when they were sending some people into the Coliseum and see them fight to the death - when compared today we're seeing Fernando Torres and Frank Lampard playing football, what do you feel?)
Of course in order to change, idealistically speaking, we have to change and remove our business mindset. Money is such a delusion when you check in the process called Creation of Money. The banks are just creating debts.
That is what I'm hoping for -a moneyless, caring society which is resource-based. The current world has witnessed billions of people are facing hunger and poverty. We can actually do something about it. Instead of complaining, why not discuss those problems and provoke these thoughts to others to question the system itself?
If things can't change, then ask yourself, why in the 1960s, Americans are able to overcome the influence of their Vietnam War propaganda? Why in the past we are able to surpass all racial statements and criticize the Apartheid policy? Why the people in the former Soviet Union managed to overthrow the corrupted Communist government?
Well, it's plain easy - the ideology of humanity is growing. We want peace and harmony. Life is short, and we only live it once, why not give us a chance to love one another and to cherish each other? As what the author said, we're designed foraffection and companionship, NOT violence and all the anti-social bullcraps.
P.S - I don't believe in anarchism, in case you ask, unless humans really know how to make use of technology for the use of automated labour to replace human labour. For now, we need a leader, it's just that we don't know who's corrupted and who's not. Ever since my 2nd semester in my Journalism course, I developed a sense of Neo-Marxism towards the world we're currently living in. Having such ideology in mind further increased my understandings about this planet.
In case you assume me as a secularist, sorry, I'm a Christian- Humanist. I do believe in God's existence, but then we shouldn't be just preaching about God's words, we should practice it. Our religions teach us to love one another, don't they?
Keep in mind that I am not paid for typing this. I am supporting something that I believe.
How about a reality check on global hunger and poverty?
- 15million children are dying due to hungry every year, someone dies every 3.6 seconds due to it.
-3 billion people are currently struggling as they are surviving less than $2 per day, as waves of financial crisis affecting inflation impacts global prices around the world.
- 183 million children facing malnutrition
- 500 million in Asia, Latin America and Africa listed under poverty level.
- World Health Organization (WHO) stated that 2 thirds of the world are not well-fed, as half of them are under chronic hunger.
These are just a few facts on today's hunger issue. If you do your own research, you might find out how much threatening this problem is to humanity if we just keep an ignorant eye away from it.
Don't you want to do something about it? Of course, you can't take it anymore when you look at the numbers of those who are suffering, DON'T YOU?
Do check this site out, >click here< 1BillionHungry Project. It is an organization that fights for the hungry and helpless men with a vision to gather 1 billion concerned voices to pressure the United Nations' leaders to help eradicate hunger (and poverty).
Please sign if you care.
Meanwhile, do take a look at this clip. Don't you feel that the world is NOT in a good shape?
At the same time, dear readers, when you feel like complaining about such issues, why not question the system itself at the same time. Think about the root causes of why our society becomes sick and dysfunctional. Once you understand the importance of relating our social problems to the corruption of our system, spread this awareness to your friends, family and relative. We cannot allow ourselves to continue living like this, as many had already been left out.
Recently a number of bloggers updated their pages with this news. >The Star<, and gosh, we're going to be in another hell of crisis again.
Well, to those who are lazy to click on the link. Let me tell you some bad news.
Prices are going up for fuel and sugar.
I don't blame our Malaysian government for making this decision. Well, they no longer subsidized fuel and sugar for the sake of the people, while at the same time, they are facing an increasing number of debt to the central bank, just like any other nations in this Earth.
Looks like oil prices are now feared to rise in conjunctions of the April Gulf of Mexico oil spill incident, as humanity has witness the biggest pollution event that ever happen in the history of mankind, where we have lost thousands of gallons of oil leaking across the oceans surrounding the area. Until now, there is no proper solution for the leaking problem.
And once again, oil prices will rise due to the sense that we have been losing many resources due to the oil spill. It once happened in the mid of this decade where there were wars in oil dominant nations and many destructions of refineries happened in Iraq and Nigeria.
And then the food, oil and financial crisis punch in later in 2008-09.
Get the idea here? Just now, I had triggered an open discussion in Nuffnang Innit to ask people not to look at politics, as our community tends to question our Malaysian politics too much. Instead, please question about the system itself. It's the system that corrupts everyone of us.
Of course, you will see how much cunning the monetary system is to us. Do make some research in economics, and you'll see that our financial system is nothing but a fraud. Why money? Why the social stratification? We're all born the same way, isn't it?
Of course, you will feel why our place is no longer safe. We've been hearing increasing numbers of crimes and terrorism internationally, as well as the financial crisis and recession. You can't even trust the news anymore. If you relate all of them together, well, money is the roots of those everyday problems.
Once again, my point here is, instead of complaining about the troubles, why not question the system itself?
I end my post with this clip from the 1976 film called "Network". This makes sense to our world today, isn't it? Different periods, same old shit.
WAKE UP HUMANITY.
By the way, view this >documentary<. It's called Zeitgeist: Addendum. It may not be 100% accurate as it is a secular-type of film, it advocates the message for social change for the better.
