New Perspective

Apple computer, plasma TV, cell phones, satellites, the Internet, and much much more! What a great civilization, this must be the best situation humans can live in, right? Actually no, humans have lived in this "modern" society for all our lives, people are used to live this way, if you take a single thing away, our lives will be disastrous. There are many ways to live life, and this is only one of them. There are other ways like living in the mountains at a few thousand feet, living in your own world, seperated from the other humans, and live a non-polluting life, you can go and achieve enlightenment, there are many ways to live. But they don't get to do anything, right? Again, no. Our cities, cars, and all the other objects that humans have created seems all good and great now, but it's only temporary. The groups of people who seperates themselves from all these stuff are the ones that do things that help in the long run, and anthropologist Wade Davis said that "If you took all the genius that allowed us to put a man on the moon, and applied it to the understanding of the ocean, you will get polynesia." We don't know more things than the people that lives in the polynesia, we just know different things. The people who live in the polynesia has a great civilization as well, same with the people in Tibet, they think in a way we don't know how, they can go inside the dark for their life long retreat for 55 years, and when the person comes out, you don't see a crazy person, but a person more clear than a pool of water in a mountain stream. No matter what we know or believe in, biologists have proven that we are all the same, we are all humans.

There are many unique cultures and languages in the world, but we are losing them each passing day. There are roughly 6000 languages in the world, but there are only half of the languages are being taught to the children, and the children are unable to pass it on. Every two weeks, there will be a person with a language which no one else can speak pass away, bringing the culture and the language with them. Another reason is because of the "modern" people, they think they are superior because they know how to program a computer system, they think they are better because they drive cars and use cell phones. They don't think much about other people elsewhere, the people who are doing nothing to pollute the planet we all live on. They assume that the world should just have a few of the most spoken languages because the rest aren't important. Most of the people don't really care or know about the dying cultures and languages. The disappearing languages and cultures are still actually very important.

We shouldn't just ignore the minorities, we should help them and try to get the languages and the cultures to go on, every culture and language is just as important as the other. There are things the people who lives in the polynesia can do, and we can't even imagine it. These are people that even today can name 250 stars in the night sky. These are people who can sense the distance of an island beyond the visible horizon, simply by watching the waves of the sea. Their knowledge of the sea is simply incredible. There are people in the amazon who went monkey hunting, and Phil Borges who was with them at the time said that the people can see things he couldn't see, smell things he couldn't smell, and hear things he couldn't hear. To us, it may seem like they are just randomly shooting darts in the air, but they are actaully shooting them at the monkeys. There are Tibetian buddists that are trying to understand the nature of existence. Buddaism is the imperial observation of the mind. The Tibetian buddaists have four nobel truths: 1. All life is suffering. 2. The cause of suffering is ignorance. 3. Ignorance can be over come. 4. The deniniation of a contemplative practice that not only had the possibility of a transformation of the human heart but had 25,000 years of empirical evidence that such a transformation was a certainty. The first one doesn't mean that life is negative, it just means that things happen. The second one means that the Budda meant that clinging to the illusion of life as static and predictable. These are things we should all learn, it's like a different way of seeing life, it must be very good truths, the people who believes it knows how to face life in reality. There are much more incredible things that these people can do, so it's very important to keep them here.

I would be willing to exchange places for a while, I don't think I can stay forever, because I am polluted by the society today, all the technology in everyday life. We should not forget these dying cultures and languages, we should try to protect them. The cultures and languages will never come back once it's gone, it has come, and we have to protect it. After all, no matter what, we all all brothers and sisters, we all share the same intellectual acuity, we are all humans.

What aspects of human life over the past several thousand years could be likened to a gorilla going from a forest to a zoo?

Mankind has bounded themselves for a long time before they even start noticing it, humans are not limited by cages and bars, they are limited by the absract things they created themselves: the law, so called civilization, and small rules humans have in everyday life. Mankind if bounded by the law because there are actions mankind has agreed on not to do, for example killing someone or stealing something. If one does and commit the crime, then they will be punished for what they have done, people have rights because the law says so, everyone agrees that we should have rights to do what they want, as long as they don't interfree with other people's freedom. Humans are also limited by civilization, it's not against the law to sneeze in someone's face, it's not against the law to fart in public, and it's not against the law to just swear (not directly at someone), there are more things that are what people consider uncivilized behavior, but not against the law. People don't usually do rude things if they can help it, we will control ourselves not to pick our nose in public even if it's itching a lot, humans are bound physically this way. People are limited mentally by civilization as well, for example: getting angry is natural, but it's not welcomed in this so called civilized world, we calm ourselves down when we get angry, we practice not getting angry, this is an action against nature, it is not normal to not get angry, it's welcomed in the so called civilized world. Humans are not bounded by cages like the gorillas they put behind bars, gorillas who never did anything wrong, who didn't do this to themselves. Humans on the otherhand limit and create an invisible line around themselves and force themselves to adapt to it, and for those who can't, they get outcasted. This is how humans are in the same situation with gorillas, they both are limited, both of them can't do what they want to do.

The Choices We Made

The current global situation is good for mankind, but it's devastating for mother nature. Mankind has always created and invented for their own benefits. The impact we have made before used to be small and ignorable, but about a few decades ago, the impact stared to influence mankind. The weather is getting more and more unpredictable, the strongest storms we know have all happened recently, the droughts are becoming longer and deadlier, and much more disasters are created because mankind has fought against nature and has crossed the line. We chose to go against nature and construct cities and civilization without knowing at first that we are destroying the only world we can live in. We have only started to acknowledge that we are polluting the Earth and should stop attacking nature. But we have lived this lifestyle for years, and changing it will be a blow for everyone, so the result was that mankind are selfish and decided to just help the world a tiny bit and recycle once in a while, but still keep on polluting.

Inspiring?? Hmm...

This is the story about Rashad Williams, he is a track star of Bay Area. He heard of the tragic shooting thing at Columbine High School, and he felt really sad, because it was track season, and Williams though that if it was him, then that would be a disaster, that's why Williams decided to help this Lance Kirklin, who was one of the two dozen people wounded during the accident. Williams raised money by competing in some track races, and told other people to do so as well, not to run races, but to donate money to help this person, and people helped him. He thought he was doing well when he got 300 dollars, but the mayor found out and loads of people started to donate money to it! In two months, Williams raised 18000 dollars, and even more are donated straight to the Kirklin family.

This inspires me because, I would never ever do something so good. But lots of people do good things, and even great things, why did I choose him? It's because he is also an athlete, I can just feel the feeling he's feeling more than someone who is a doctor, I just never been in a doctor's shoes, I don't know the feeling of it. That's why I chose it. But even if I can feel it I would never do something like that, people get killed everyday, every hour, every minute, how are we going to decide who to help, and how to do it? One more thing is do I have the ability to help anyone? 

What is "PEace"

Peace means everything is in harmony with everything else. But that's quite impossible, so peace for us is just living in a non-violent world, where we get to sleep at night without the fear of getting stabbed in the night.

What I got minutes after the science movie

I kind of know that quantum mechanics is talking about that everything is possible, it's just that the chance is large or small. I don't really get what string theory is, and I don't understand what relativity is either. I feel pretty amazed that people can even think of things like this, but I feel pretty dumb not to be able to understand it.

Science Project: Centripetal

It was organized pretty good, it started from the basic and to the difficult ones. What I didn't like about it was because we forgot to look at the rubric when we were practicing our presentation. I still like it when the teacher teaches, because, then individually, we can spend time on the part we think is most difficult, but if we are learning this way, even if we know our topic clearly, but then I don't know the stuff other people were presenting. Presentation is good, but I think everyone should learn everything.