Eupraxsophy

I know some people want to move past the Boston bombings that occurred yesterday, but I have some reflections and initial reactions I’d like to share:

• I wonder how many people reflexively assumed or imagined it to be the work of a Muslim.

• I saw some people on either the Right and Left blame one another’s political persuasion as being responsible. 

• It is interesting, even a bit disturbing, to see the news spread live and organically across social media. 

• What are the implications of such instantaneous and socialized news, especially on our sense of community (e.g. we feel for people thousands of miles away from us, whereas in most of human history, our sense of connectedness was limited to our small tribe or town). 

• For all the horror of the event, the amount of compassion I saw in both the online commentary and on the scene is encouraging — as is the attention to said compassion.

• Indeed, it seems that many people made a point of trying to point out this silver lining, even in the media (although I noticed a good amount of pushback against the “overload” of news).

• There seems to be conspiracy theories about every one of these acts of violence, and they seem to emerge far quicker than they used to.

• It’s disturbing to remember that events like this – which continue to grip the nation long after – are very common in many countries in the world, often to the point of being weekly affairs. This isn’t to make light of this event, but to consider just how much more horrifying it’d be if this sort of thing happened frequently in this country. 

These are just my two cents. Feel free to share your own. 

The US has a woefully inadequate mental health system, with among the fewest people receiving psychiatric help of any developed nation. Now, many of these mental health clinics are closing down or facing budget cuts, including in public school and prisons. Imagine the consequences of this

In just about every one of these massacres I read about, there is  at least one incidence, if not several, of people sacrificing themselves to save their loved ones (or even total strangers).

It’s such a strange juxtaposition of human nature: at the very same time that someone is senselessly murdering others, people are unflinchingly giving their lives to save each other. I wonder if I am capable of that sacrifice? The best or worst aspects of us can emerge during such tragedies. I hope I never have to find out. 

Looking back on the period of your life before you knew your current friends or lovers, while keeping in mind that they were still around out there. Before I knew any of you, we were each going about our own independent lives completely unaware of each other’s existence. Then all of a sudden, on some fateful day, our lives intersected. Your presence became known, and our lives were no longer totally separate. From my perspective, your history doesn’t begin until I meet you.

Furthermore, you were a very different person before I got to know you, and visa versa: with time, I began to forget what it was like not to know or love you; it starts to feel like you were always there in my life. Even if we lose touch, our lives will remain irreversibly influenced or impacted in some way. You’ll be a part of my narrative in some way or another until my story ends.

So I’ve finally obtained a smart phone of my own, complete with unlimited 4G access (I was due for an upgrade, so it was thankfully affordable). This gadget is a news junkie’s dream: I now have instantaneous access to all the events of the world at all times. I can look up anything and everything whenever a random thought or question comes into my mind. I have a constant stream of knowledge available wherever I go.

Of course, like most innovations, this one is a double-edged sword. It’s nice to have all this information literally in the palm of my hand. But will my often distracting obsession with data and news be made worse by this newfound capacity to expand on it? Sure, I don’t plan on playing any of the games that often distract many of my peers: all my apps are strictly functional (so far). But a distraction is a distraction…how intrusive will this remarkable device be?

I suppose this will offer a wonderful opportunity to test my willpower – or to learn by experience just how difficult it is for the human mind to adjust in this era of constant stimulus. I already know the feeling of data overload firsthand, as I’m sure most of us well-connected youth do. Have I just upped the ante here? I’ll see with time, but for now I’m thoroughly enjoying having so much to read and learn whenever I’m stuck waiting somewhere. For better or for worse, boredom is a thing of the past (though I’ve always carried reading material with me wherever I go, so keeping myself entertained has never been an issue; now I get to save on space).

Another profound thought struck me as I started reaping the benefits of my new toy: that in the palm of my hand, in this lightweight and sleek machine, lies access to almost the entire sum of human knowledge. Anything and everything I could ever want to know – from the mundane, to the profound, from the practical to the philosophical – was available to me almost instantaneously with a few strokes of my fingers. Not a single reportable event in the world can go unnoticed. No conceivable question could go unaddressed. All of that lies within something smaller than my hand, which I can take with me anywhere I wanted.

For most of our history, the majority of our species couldn’t even read or write, let alone have access to the world’s knowledge. We barely knew what went on beyond our little villages. Suddenly, a growing number of us are connected to this immaterial repository of human knowledge known as the internet, and now, if we so choose, we can delve into the near-totality of collected human knowledge.

As I mentioned before, there is certainly a catch as far as the social and psychological effects of all that data – the human mind was never meant to absorb so much information so regularly. We’ll probably come to adapt to it as we have to so many other developments, but it may be a difficult process nonetheless. Who knows? Whatever the caveats, we shouldn’t underestimate how marvelous it is to live in a time when knowledge is no longer (entirely) the domain of the rich and powerful. The accessibility and affordability of these things is getting better with time. Whatever the impact, it’s sure to be weighty.

A disturbing thought sometimes seeps into my mind while I try to fall asleep: what if I never wake up? What if something happens to me while I’m unconscious and this moment before ends up being my last? It’s a bizarre thing to consider before bed, but my mind tends to wander the moment it’s given a pause from the daily concerns that occupy it.

Few people ever go to sleep or wake up wondering what day will be last. For obvious reasons, most human beings tend to avoid such thoughts, even though death is always omnipresent. Too many people die random and pointless deaths, never having fair warning or a chance to prepare. It scares me to no end to know that this could happen to me at any moment, even as I write this. There are so many ways for our fragile lives to end.

I wonder what the end would be like. As an (agnostic) atheist, I obviously don’t envision a world beyond this one, although I’m open to the possibility, however unlikely. So if we don’t enter another state of existence when we die, what happens? Does everything just go black? The only reason anything exists to me is because I am a conscious and cognitive being: if that awareness ends, then what? What would it feel like to be nothing? If there is no feeling, how does one imagine not feeling it or seeing it coming?

It’s ponderings like these that not only keep me up at night (literally) but that make understand why so many people believe in an afterlife. It’s difficult to wrap one’s head around non-existence.

In the meantime, I’ll keep making the most of this persistent neurosis by trying to live each moment like my last. It’s a morbid thing to consider, but it really helps me enjoy life to the fullest. As far as any of us knows for certain, we have but one life and one Earth, and it’s best not to take any chances as far as squandering them – including through nerve-wracking but aimless thoughts like these.

Post Script:
I apologize to any long-term readers who have already read similar musings on here before. As you can imagine, this is a recurring issue for me. But since this is partly an online journal, expect me to share what’s on my mind for it’s own sake, rather than for an intended audience.

I just read about a poor girl who contracted a nasty case of flesh-eating bacteria. She’s already lost one leg and several parts of her abdomen, and she’s still clinging to life. All this started from a normal cut that she got while kayaking with some friends now far from her home. Apparently, the particular strain that has infected her is extremely rare: 99% of people never get it.

When reading stories like this, I often ask myself: why those people? Why not me? Why am I so lucky? This poor girl had a less than 1% chance of getting this horrible illness, and like anyone of us would probably never have imagined contracting it. I wounder how would I feel being eaten away by something that few people ever get; to be that 1% or less that’s dealt a bad hand for no good reason.

The randomness of death and misfortune will never cease to scare and fascinate me. Most of all, it’ll always make me appreciate every moment of my good fortune while it lasts. 

I saw a mummy exhibit when I visited a museum yesterday, and it was one of the most impactful experiences I’ve had in some time. After a while, I grasped the amazing fact that I wasn’t looking at a mere archeological finding, but a human being just like me. This was someone who had emotions, thoughts, fears, and joys largely the same as my own, despite the thousands of years separating us, not to mention a culture and belief system that would be alien to one another. Imagine what it would be like to have a conversation with this person.

According to the caption, he was in his 40s when he died, probably due to an accident. He was apparently a physical laborer, maybe a craftsman, who was successful enough to afford the honor of being mummified. I wonder what his name was, or what kind of life he lived. What did he like to do for fun? It’s weird to think that billions of individual personalities existed before us, and many more will come into existence long after we’re gone too.

In the video I’ve posted below, a young woman who has been deaf her entire life hears her own voice for the first time thanks to new advancements in cochlear implants (you can read her blog here). As you might imagine, her reaction is quite heartwarming and inspiring.

This video has touched me in more ways than one. Firstly, it reminds me of the vast benefits that have come out of the application and refinement of science, particularly when coupled with compassion for the public good.

Imagine the millions worldwide that will benefit from this sort of invention once it becomes tenable on a mass scale. Think of the myriad ways that centuries of innovation have already contributed to the well-being of humans today: the multiplication of human longevity to a near century (and increasingly beyond that); the eradication of dozens of debilitating and fatal diseases; the vast understanding we have about the complex world around us; and much more that could not fit within a single post.

But what most impacted me is the realization that numerous miracles enchant our lives on a regular basis, and that they’re very often overlooked and underrated. For the woman in the video, hearing her own voice brought profound joy; for the overwhelming majority of us, such an experience hardly merits any acknowledgement – it’s natural and unspectacular.

Yet much of what we consider to be “a given” is far beyond the reach of many others: an education, literacy, a warm bed to sleep in, good health, full-functioning limbs, eyesight – the list goes on. We could have been born with any number of disabilities and ailments; we could fall victim to crippling or fatal misfortune at literally any moment. Of course, probabilities vary based on circumstances and other factors, but they’re always there – no one is immune to the randomness of birth, freak accidents, or human action.

Basically – and I’ll gladly own up to this – I’m merely issuing another tired tract about the importance of counting every blessing and never taking anything for granted. As cliché as all that might be, it’s a lesson that nonetheless needs constant reinforcement. We’re too quick to forget the little miracles that pervade every moment of our lives, including the very fact that we have lives to begin with.

This won’t be too surprising to long-term readers, but I have a morbid fascination with death (it’s a category in the menu for a reason). Like most human machinations, it’s hard to pin down why or how this developed, although it does sort of come with my line of work: studying international relations and humanitarian issues exposes you to a lot of death and human suffering, and that in turn gets you thinking about the value and fragility of life.

Also, once upon a time, I used to have an interest in being a psychiatrist, and to that end I worked with a lot of people through the internet to help them with various mental illnesses (namely suicidal tendencies and clinical depression, the latter of which I relate to). I still engage in this kind of amateur “citizen therapy” occasionally, though I don’t have as much time any energy to devote to it as I used to.

Anyway, a few scientists did some research into the different ways we die and what exactly happens to us when it happens. Obviously, it’s difficult to get a real understanding of these things given the end result, but accounts from survivors provide the closest ideas we could imagine. If you’re as macabre as me, you can read the summary of their conclusions here. I would share the original study, but the publisher, New Scientist, requires you to subscribe.

In any case, I’m fortunate to live in a part of the world where death is so rare, even discussing it is taboo. Most of my fellow humans who have ever lived haven’t been so lucky.

…isn’t that the party is over, but that it will continue without you long after you’ve been abruptly kicked out.

The somewhat lighthearted party analogy aside, I think that that truly is one of the greatest tragedies of death: the world, and all the beauty and experience it has to offer, will leave you behind. It will grow and change in ways that will forever be inconceivable. Think of the millions of people who ever lived, and how different the world now is from when they were alive. Imagine what it’ll be like centuries after I expire (if it’s still around).

Who knows what I’ll miss out on once I die. It kind of pains me to imagine the possibilities that may eventually come to fruition, if only I’d lived to see them. Now that I think about it, I realize that, in a strange way, our own death means the end of the world as we know it. Without consciousness, the world effectively ceases to exist, just as it does when we sleep (minus dreaming of course).

I’m not quite sure what spurred on this train of thought, though it’s nothing new. This seems like an odd topic to reflect on right before heading to a party, so I’ll probably be revisiting it later. In any case, please, share your own thoughts on this matter, and my apologies to anyone who finds all this to be despressing.