Our Pale Blue Dot

There is a lot of bullshit in this world. Pardon my French, but it’s true. I see it everyday with my own eyes, and it saddens me. However, I do accept the world the way it is, and I also know that change is possible.

Carl Sagan brilliantly does something in the video above that is the most eloquent way of waking someone up. It is to put things in perspective.

Perspective. I’ve always tried to grow my perspective to the point where my head is in the skies. It has helped me overcome petty insecurities that drove me to act in ways that were not favorable to myself or others.

I’m not sure if this message can get through to everyone as there is so many people out there who still struggle for food and water. Our population is growing uncontrollably in many poorer parts of the world, but how can we stop it?

It’s wonderful to see people trying though. Recently, an effort called Pangea used television and a global audience to portray the world to ourselves. Part of me feels like this is a wonderful thing, but a part of me wonders who effective this really is.

The people who would watch Pangea are already of a specific demographic of viewers who are among the most privileged in this world. They are at least in the top 10 percent of the world in terms of economic status.

But maybe the top 10 percent need it the most.

It’s interesting to hear about corrupt politicians and the rich do awful things even though they don’t have to. Not one of them seem genuinely happy or at peace with themselves. It all seems like a race to accumulate more wealth without any care for anyone or THEMSELVES!

What’s the point of screwing everyone else over for your own greed if you’re absolutely misreable yourself?

There are a lot of unknowns in our world. I’m not sure how my future will turnout, but I do know we shape our future as individuals. We can do so much to change who we are and our environment just by sheer will. I’ve seen and experienced this first hand when I completely changed who I was and what I focused my time on.

This gives me faith that it is possible to do the impossible.

One thing I have to remind myself is you can’t get too caught up in it. You need to just accept the world as it is. Don’t struggle or feel bad just because it isn’t the way you want it to be. Just accept.

Once you do this, then you can start to see the truth. And then… invoke change.

This post is really for myself, and I know I’m just preaching to the choir. If you disagree, then you were already on a similar page as me.

I sometimes struggle with what I should be doing in this world or even for this world? 

The only conclusion I have come to is to take action. Follow your instincts. I have a vision of a wonderful future for the entire world, and I’m determined to get there. No one will stop me.

Whatever I do in my lifetime, I will accept and be grateful. Whether I help a few people or help a few billion, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I managed to get over myself and just started doing what I know I should be doing.

Anyway, I just hope I can do something for our pale blue dot.

The East vs West on Child Raising

This topic gets into my head every now and then because it is so relevant to the development of a child. Another reason is that I always find myself interacting with different cultures which gives incredibly different perspectives.

I guess it’s kind of odd for me to think about how I should be raising my kids, but it isn’t for me. You have a huge responsibility as a parent to make sure your child does well in a world that is changing faster than most can adapt to.

Since I’m half Swedish and half Korean, I can really see the difference in cultures in terms how each raises children.

For example, Swedish people including any Western nation seems to be quite light on their kids. The parents still impose the proper behaviors of society upon them, but they don’t resort to a lot of beating. However this has changed as spanking was much more common back in the day, but it  was still kept to a minimum or just for really bad behavior.

On the other side, eastern cultures including my Korean side are a lot more strict on their children. This of course is all in good intentions just like Westerners, but Eastern cultures take it to what Westerners would call extreme. Parents will goto extremes to make sure their kids get good grades and get into a good college. Many times the parents feel forced to do it because what college their kids get into greatly affects their quality of life.

You always see those YouTube videos sometimes of Asians who mock their parents, and it always gets all the asian viewers a laugh. Even Americans who have Asian friends get a huge kick out of it.

But what are the pros and cons to each method?

Well first of all, the Eastern repression of children leads to a strong acceptance of society and culture. They are much less likely to stray away. However, this is because they now have an extreme sense of insecurity about their world. They never were able to make their own decisions because it always forced by an authority figure (parents etc).

Westerners are quite open and are getting even more open with their kids. By open I mean they don’t tell their children what to do in life as much and give less direction. This forces many of them to figure out who they are at an earlier age. This leads to a lot more variety of personalities, which also leads to a lot of creativity.

There is a lot more I can talk about this, but one thing I want to focus on is economic growth. Hard work is very important, but creativity is also just as important. The problem is that society and culture moves a lot slower than the world. It is ALWAYS lagging behind to huge detriments. Thousands of years ago, the world moved extremely slow, which meant that culture was usually in everyone’s best interest. This lead to a reverence for the elderly who always knew all the tricks for survival such as protecting yourself from grizzly bears and tigers.

However, the world is changing fast. We are living in epic times. Computers were introduced to the masses just a few decades ago it is completely changing how the world works. This leaves HUGE divide between the young and old, which is causing a lot of problems. The Eastern idea of repressing children is becoming much more harmful by the day. However, being too open might make the children less focused which might lead to less success or well being in life.

It seems like the answer is always balance, but I think the most important key here is that the world is changing too fast for culture, and we need to start shedding ourselves of old archaic beliefs and accept a new world which in many ways can be better or worse. Since there is not stopping it, we might as well roll up our sleeves and handle it the best we can with open minds.

P.S. Thanks for all the votes guys. Keep up the voting as I’ll need all I can get. I’ve recently been a target of a automated script that pulled me down 10, so let’s make sure these unethical people don’t get their satisfaction.

http://topaffiliatechallenge.com/users/czett

Passion?

I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot recently. I have seen enough to understand that having passion in whatever you do will produce great results. It may be a combination that you’re motivated to go the extra mile while others are only thinking “good enough”.

However, what is passion?

My best definition so far is that it is doing something you get never tired of.

If you look at great artists, they have this innate drive to create. The ones who are great absolutely love it and they really never seem tired of doing it.

To a stressed out corporate worker, it doesn’t make sense that an artist can be an artist for the rest of his life. After all, it’s like having the same job for the rest of your life. What’s the next step on the career ladder?

However, this is through the lens of the stressed out corporate worker. He or she never took the chance to jump completely in various subjects to really see what sparks their interest. Usually, it requires a luxury of freedom that might have not been possible.

There are also people out there who love whatever they are doing in their corporate environment. The only ones I’ve met are the ones who were in very high positions.

So what is something I’ll never got tired of?

I’ve personally taken to step to become an entrepreneur. I found that this environment a million times better than working for any company or for anyone. I really enjoy calling all the shots, and being directly responsible for all the good and bad that come from my shot calling.

So is being an entrepreneur my passion?

I really don’t think so because it’s not an end in itself for me. I’m more interested in what I create out of being an entrepreneur. If working in a corporate environment helped me create what I wanted, than I would be still working in a company.

Since I am very purpose driven, I need to find meaning out of everything. This drives everything I do. However, the problem is my goals end up being incredibly large, which makes it harder to see the direct connection with what I’m doing day to day to the bigger goal.

So I’m still fairly driven to do a lot of dirty work to get there, but is this REAL passion?

I’m not sure. Having done a lot of web development recently, I’ve realized that I really enjoy design. Even though I make sure I don’t spend too much time on it, I find that I could almost fiddle with design for hours on end without getting tired.

Does this mean I might be passionate about design or maybe art? If so, why I am not doing more to cultivate this?

Then I think I must be practical. A part of me believes that painting for the rest of my life is overly selfish and contributes little to the world. I feel like I have to go the rough path to accomplish more. This is not to discredit artists, but I really believe I can make a great positive contribution to humanity.

It’s strange because I can somehow relate to eastern cultures in that I am willing to give myself up to my society, but the thing is, my society is not my community, city, or country.

My society is the universe, and I’m willing to go through a lot of pain if it’s necessary, but is it necessary? Maybe following my bliss is what really allows your great contribution to humanity and beyond?

Who knows.

Choice.

Choice.

The devil that is choice. I’m not talking about the simpler choices in life like whether to buy the blue or green car, but the choice of what you spend your time on throughout life.

For many people, it seems they are just given an illusion of choice. America is famous for this as we are told at an early age that we are a free country where each individual gets freedoms to do what they please.

The question is, are people as free as they think?

The single factor I want to focus on revolves around insecurity. People are always worried about what society, strangers, acquaintances, friends, and family think of them.

This places the person in a stressful state. Everyone has an opinion of how you should live your life, and they often feel they need to impose this opinion on you.

However, it forces you into a corner, but it’s sometimes hard to see that. Insecurities are imposed by your environment all the time. Brilliant marketers create magnificent advertisements that show beautiful people doing beautiful things.

This message gets ingrained in us as we start to compare ourselves to these ideals. The advertisement itself doesn’t seal the deal. It is when we start looking around to others to see if they are thinking the same thing.

Since everyone is being influenced to a certain degree, you will pick up the signs that others also believe the same so it becomes deeply accepted by your mind.

Now take this one instance and multiply by a million and welcome to your world.

What choice is left? Not much, but I guess you get to pick the color of the car you like.

So something happens and you somehow get rid of your insecurities and realize that the people you looked to to confirm your beliefs weren’t so sure either despite acting the part.

All you need to find is one instance where what you belief clashes greatly with reality. For some people, that is depression and for others it is an eye opening experience.

After your first experience of a new reality, you start to wonder if more of the things you know are wrong.

You hunt and hunt and hunt for the truth. You question all your beliefs to the point where you aren’t sure about anything.

You start trying different ways to live. You adopt new beliefs. You start to associate yourself with different people.

You may find a few more things that you had completely wrong, but then you also quickly realize that there are a lot of questions out there without a certain answer.

There may not be that right way to spend your life.

Choice.

Journey of Face

Everywhere I look, people have a face. It’s not a pleasant face. It’s a face that is looking into itself. The face doesn’t pay attention to the surroundings.

The face pays only pays attention to what others think of the face. It digs and craves it. It leeches off the life of others.

However, the face doesn’t realize there are many faces out there just like the face. The faces feed off each other until there is nothing left. The void.

The face tries to fill the void with anything it can find. The face finds comfort in materials. The materials give the face a temporary enjoyment. The face is happy, but for only a moment.

The face thinks… I need more. If I keep getting more materials, I will be happy forever!

The face finds itself unhappy most of the time.

The face becomes depressed.

The face contemplates death…

The face awakens.

The face starts to realize that it just doesn’t matter.

The face finds out that just being the face, others accept the face.

The face realizes that materials don’t give the face happiness.

The face seeks another path.

The face does not need permission to feel happy.

The face is happy.

The journey of face begins.

What Keeps Me Genuinely Sane?

This just popped in my head while listening to someone I really trust and admire talking about his life story. What makes someone really sane in their life? The one thing that I seem to have is that I have huge idealistic goals that would take me a whole lifetime or several lifetimes to accomplish.

So a question I have is that is it necessary for me to have such huge and massive goals to keep me sane?

The reason I am bothered is that many people have smaller goals and aspirations in life. The ones who really seem to get messed up mentally are the ones who reach their goals, but don’t have anything else past that. This seems like a small group too. It is a group that does NOT believe in God or religion, so they don’t have anything to comfort no matter what happens.

This means me wonder. What if I didn’t have such enormous goals? What if my only goal was to become free from a 9 to 5 which I have already done? What would I feel then?

Unfortunately, I think I’d feel quite lost and confused.

So I wonder, is religion or spiritual beliefs necessary to keep the sanity of humanity. I’m really not sure, but this is an amazing concept to me. It could explain why many people are so screwed up despite having everything. Celebrities are one group that come to mind.

Maybe I have replaced meaning with goals?

I Have No Culture

That’s really not the truth, but living in India sure makes me feel this way. The culture here is so amazingly powerful. I’m just astounded with the strength ideas are shared between generations. You really can’t escape being Indian in India.

It’s well known that even Indians who travel the world keep a strong Indian culture throughout. If you look at many Indians communities in America and England, they seem to have created small pockets of India everywhere. Likewise, other strong cultures such as the Chiense do the same.

It’s funny to hear about an Indian who grew up in America their whole life and still has a strong Indian accent.

Now, what’s so interesitng to me is that I feel like I don’t have a culture. I know I’ve had influences from my Mom or Dad, but all I really saw was a conflict of ideas. It was like the East clashing with the West throughout my whole life.

Instead of picking one side, I was forced to look at both objectively and create my own identity. In a way, I feel like I created my own culture.

So I had a blank slate in life, but how did I build a culture or identity for myself? Initially, I was stuck in the American system where there is a sort of strange consumerist culture. You identity yourself with material things like clothes and cars. Having to deal with this, I followed this type of thinking, but I always resented it in the back of my mind and that’s only because people looked liked they were running around with their heads chopped off.

I then became incredibly individualistic and decided that every idea and concept ever given to me needs to be look at closely and then either tried out or put in the gutter. Slowly I just started embraced what I saw really worked and really helped me cope with the world.

However, a part of me still wants to experience what it would be like to grow up in a strong community based culture like that of most Asian ones. When I look at Japan, I’m incredibly impressed with their system. People’s identity is tied with the country. If the country does well, they feel great.

That makes for one kick ass culture. However, the individual is taken out of the equation completely. However, some of the most out there and crazy ideas come out of Japan to counter balance the strong culture.

I think it would be exciting to create my own culture that started with me. One that is strong, but like water. What I mean by this is that a great culture needs to be flexible which I don’t see in many existing cultures. They resist change which only slows them down.

Yet, I will have strong foundational principles that I will teach to my kids and others that will make sure they can handle anything that comes at them in the future. Our future is now incredibly unpredictable, so it is even more important that we teach our kids to be strong, but flexible.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

I did something different today and actually created a video! This one is about me messing up my new Nokia N82 and then learning an important lesson from it.

Argh…..nooo……yes……happy….thoughts….yes…..smile

Living in India is Fantastic!

So I’ve been in India for about 3 months now, and I’ve gotten very comfortable with my surroundings. It’s not like at first where I was jumping at anything that seemed out of place which was pretty much everything. I now stroll down to the internet cafe like I’ve been here for my whole life, but something has happened to me that has me forgetting how crazy and awesome it is to be living here.

So I basically sit in this internet cafe all day working. Other than that, I’m at the gym in the morning, and I buy fruits in the evening while I try to learn Hindi on the walk there. As you can see, I’m definitely not your typical tourist, but that’s the way I like it. Actually, I’m not a tourist at all

I haven’t even seen one major monument or tourist location in Lucknow. I’ll be sure to visit them before I leave, but until then, I’m just acting like I’ve been here for my whole life.

However, I am forgetting how unbelievable and amazing it is for me to be living here at age of 22.

I realized this when I took my standard 10 minute break after a hard 50 minute work session. I walk outside into the bright sun that’s blasting warm air to my face and think. Ah hah…

I’m in INDIA!!! How in the world did I get here? This is freaking amazing!

It was one of those realizations that made me reflect back and think of how unpredictable my life has been for the past few years. I would have NEVER of thought I would be living india just a year back. I would probably have called you crazy to even suggest it.

But now I’m here, and there is no turning back. Awesome.

Now I can only imagine what the future holds for me or should I say, how I will hold my future.

The Rawness of Human Nature

A huge realization I have is that the way I was raised and things I believe are very different from the beliefs of the people I am interacting with in India. This is quite a complicated subject, so I will only graze the surface in this post.

I was raised in a nice bubble. My mom always did the best to keep me away from the “evils” of society. I guess one of those things would be to keep me away from people who places little value on my life. Another thing was to keep away from bad neighborhoods where people are not so fortunate. I guess those may go hand and hand sometimes.

The result is that I grew up in a fantasy land. The people around me or the ones I chose to be around were not worried about their basic well being which forced them to focus on their greater self. This is what most people refer to as the upper levels of Maslow’s hierarchy.

Read the rest of this entry »