To Know Or Not To Know

300 years ago German philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz, pondered on a topic:

"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal described the predicament of those who do not know about their life:

"why I am set down here rather than elsewhere, nor why the brief period appointed for my life is assigned to me at this moment rather than another in all the eternity that has gone before and will come after me. On all sides I behold nothing but infinity, in which I am a mere atom, a mere passing shadow that returns no more. All I know is that I must die soon, but what I understand least of all is this very death which I cannot escape."

From both philosophers, we can understand that they do not know about what happening in their life and of those surrounding them. Pascal was curious why he was living in that era and not another, was his purpose in that place and time important? He is not the only one who pondered on such questions and remained unanswered. All who pondered before him and after could not find a satisfactory answer.

Thus, it is not a choice to know or not to know why and how things are happening in your life. It is something that are out of our comprehension. The only thing to really ponder on is how to make your life meaning and if you are someone who is looking for fame, then you may try hard to leave a mark on the history. But always remember that you are just a mere atom or passing shadow that never returns and history can be erased or forgotten by the future generations but the way you live your life will always be unique to yourself.

Fortunate As Singaporeans

I believe all men and women should have equal share of the resources in the world, but this is not true in the current world context. Poverty and wealth exist in different parts of the world, leading to unfair and unequal share of the Earth's resources. I believe that a pure communism which promotes the establishment of an egalitarian (a system where all people should be treated as equals and have the same political, economic, social, and civil rights), classless society based on common ownership of the means of production and property in general is great for the world, but most communist structures in the world are not able to achieve it.

Farmer working hard to earn a living

Most Singaporeans are fortunate because we are able to get a huge amount of resources that others are deprived of. My trip to China last week let me realized that we are actually using the resources that should be theirs by right. Thus as the fortunate batch of people, we should live our life more meaningful than those unfortunate batch of people. But this is not true as most fortunate men and women just waste their life trying to reach for more wealth and power and neglect the fact that it is those unfortunate ones who give up their rightful resources to us.

A market in Nanjing, China

A fruit market in Nanjing, China

The fortunate group of people do not understand that they have the obligation to contribute back to the society by helping the poor. In Singapore, some recognize the fact that Singaporeans are selfish and do not help those in need. I do not really know how true it is, but I just hope that we as the fortunate group can do our part to help those in need as a repayment for the over usage of Earth's resources that do not belong to us rightfully.

I chatted with a young lady when I was at 千岛湖 Thousand Islands Lake to find out the standard of living over there. I found that she has about RMB 5 as her daily food expenditure, it might be hard to imagine how little it is. Over at there, a cup of instant noodle or a 500 ml bottle of soft drink sell at RMB 3 plus, so it is considered luxury for her to eat such stuff which is junk food to us. The 2 photos above are showing the better well-off city, Nanjing, China.