Laughing Stock

Books: How I became stupid (Martin Page)

Renouncing his own intelligence might be the cure for Antoine. His intelligence is a disease that seperates him from his social life. By the age of 25, Antoine was at the end of the rope. Martin Page’s take us through the satire odyssey to relinquish the burden of his mind by trying different sorts of method; filling his mind with alcohol, remove the neuronal dendrite and even venture into suicide course. The 160 pages of novel take us through the roller coaster ride of his life. Every bits of suspense, idealogy presented by Antoine and the hilarious moments makes this book an A grade. Most important, we see how a person changes his life as Antoine find what defines him at the end. Life is full of challenges but is still important to accept who you really are.  Never lose sight of that.

“Quoting other people….because there are so many great writers who’ve said so many great things that no one would ever need to express their own opinion again”

“Medicine is all powerful, and has no choice but to submit to it. Going to a doctor force us to abandon any power we may have ourselves; we offer our body and dsyfunctions to the sorcery of medical science. “

“Sharks are leathally poison, but in their tissues, there are chemicals that we use to make medicines for saving lives”

“The countryside, the air, the streets, the people, everything had been affected by the violence of wars, by unemployment, disease and daily misery of human overpopulation.

“have a brilliant future,accepted into the best, most sought-after course..follow the path of success..be a CEO, be a president,.. I don’t want to get to the end of the of my life and realize I’ve never realized my dream”

“Let the new world carry him along and he even took some pleasure in it: the pleasure of freedom within a set of framework, of abandoning yourself to the flow…which obeyed every curve of the river.”

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Copyright © 2012 Shino Aaron

Mystery of Intelligence

There are people in this life for whom even the best things don’t work out. They could wear cashmere suits and still look like tramps; be very rich and badly in debt; be tall but lousy in basketball. I now realize that I’m one of that species who can’t get the best from the advantages in life, for whom advantages can be even a drawback.

They say “out of the mouths of babes come the truth.” At grade school, it was the most monstrous insult to be called a brain-box; later on being an intellectual almost becomes a strength. But it’s a lie; intelligence is a flaw. Just as every living person knows they’re going to die while the dead knows nothing…

It stays in Ecclesiates “ he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow:; but I never knew the joys of going to catechism with the other kids so I was never warned of the dangers of studying. Christians are really very lucky being put on their guard like that against the risk of intelligence at such an early age.; they’ll know to steer clear of it all through life. Happy are the simple mind.

Those who think there’s some sort of nobility in intelligence clearly do not have enough to realize it’s a curse. My family and friends, my classmates, my teachers, everyone’s always said I was intelligent.

I’ve never been athletic; the last time my muscles were tested by a major competition was playing marbles in recess at grade school. My skinny arms, my lack of fitness, and my sluggish legs mean I can’t get together enough force to kick a ball effectively; the only thing I have the strength to do is to scour this world with my mind. I was to puny for sport. Intelligence was a fallback option.

Intelligence is one of evolution’s features. In the days of the first prehistoric humans, I can just imagine some little tribe where all the kids run through the scrub chasing lizards and picking berries for dinner. They gradually learn from the adults how to be perfect men and women; hunters, gatherers, fishermen, tanners. But if we look more closely at the life of this tribe, we’ll see that some children don’t join in the group activities; they stay sitting by the fire, sheltered inside the cave. They’ll never learn to defend themselves against saber-toothed tiger, or how to hunt; by themselves, they wouldn’t survive a single night. And it’s not out of laziness, no, they’d like to be capering about with their friends, but they can’t. When nature brought them into the world, it slipped up. Within that tribe, there’s a little blind girl, a boy with a limp, another one who’s clumsy and absent minded… So they’ve got nothing to do and video games haven’t been invented yet, they just have to think and let their thoughts do the capering. So they spend all their time trying to think, trying to decipher the world, dreaming up stories and making inventions. That’s how civilization was born; because a bunch of “ imperfect kid” had nothing better to do. If mature never maimed anyone,; if the mold was always flawless, the human race would have stayed a protohominid secies, quite happy with no thoughts of progress, living perfectly well without Prozac or condoms or Dolby digital DVDs.

I have the curse of reason: I’m poor, single, and depressed. For months now, I’ve been thinking too much and I’ve established with complete certainty the correct relation between my unhappiness and the incontinence of my mind. Probing and pondering and overanalyzing have never given me any advantages; They’ve only played against me. The process of thought is not a natural one, it hurts; it’s as if I were uncovering pieces of broken glass and length of barbed wire in the air. I can’t seem to stop my brain or to slow it down. Probing and pondering and overanalyzing is a kind of social suicide because it means that you cannot take part in this life without inadvertently feeling both like a bird of prey and a vulture picking apart everything it sees. When we try to understand something, more often than not, we kill it and now I can feel the dangers of this encroaching on me; cynicism, bitterness, and infinite sadness. You very quickly become good at being unlucky and unhappy. It’s impossible to live if you’re to aware, too thoughtful. In nature, awareness is an exception; you could even postulate that it’s an accident because it gives no guarantee of superiority or of particular longevity. In the context of the evolution of species, it does not represent any better form of adaptation. In terms of age, numbers and occupied territories, insects are actually the masters of planet. For example, the social structure of an ant colony is far more effective than ours will be, and there isnt’t a single ant with a chair of Harvard.

Everyone’s got something to say about women, men, policemen, and murders. We generalize according to our experience, to suit overselves depending on what we understand within the slender neuronal networks and in the context of our perception of things. This faculty enable us to think quickly, judge and take a position. It has no intrinsic value, it’s just a system of signals, of little flags all wave. And everyone defends their virtues of their own advantages, their sex, and their positions.

In a debate, generalization has the advantages of simplicity and of making arguments more fluid so that they’re readily understandable, therefore they have greater impact on listener. To translate that into mathematical terms, discussions based on generalization are like additions, simple operations that are so self-evident they seem convincing and relevant. On the other hand, a serious discussion would seems more like a succession of equations containing several unknowns, intergral, and reshufflings of complex numbers.

A learned person taking part in a discussion will think they’re simplifying things, and all they really want is to make deletions, alterations, sticking asterisks at the end of words, putting footnotes at the bottom of the page and endnotes at the end of the book to explain what they’re really thinking, and from where it stems. But in a casual conversation at the end of a corridor, at a sparkling dinner party, or in the columns of a newspaper, that can’t really happen: there’s no room for vigorous accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, or honesty. Virtue is a rhetorical handicap, completely insufficient in a debate.

Men simplify the world with words and thought, and that’s how they create their certainties; and having certainty is the most potent pleasure in the word, far more potent than money, sex, power all combined. Renouncing true intelligence is the price we have to pay for having these certainties, and it’s an expenditure that we never even noticed by the banks of our minds. In this instance, I actually prefer those who don’t huddle behind the cloak of reason, and come out and admit the illusory nature of their beliefs. Like a believer admitting his faith is just his own belief and not preemption on the truths of the world.

There’s a Chinese proverb that goes something along these lines: a fish never knows when it’s pissing. The same applies perfectly well to intellectuals. An intellectual is convinced of his own intelligence because he’s using his brain. A mason uses his hands, but he too has a brain that can say,”hey ! That wall’s not straight and anyway, you’ve forgotten to put cements in between the breeze blocks.” There’s a dialogue between his hand at works and his mind. The intellectual who works within his mind doesn’t have that dialogue; his hands don’t pipe up and say,”Come on, man, you’re really goofed up! The Earth is round.” Intellectual doesn’t have that distance, that discrepancy, so he thinks he has or can have an enlightened view on every subject

Intellectuals obviously aren’t the only people infected with intelligence. I’m convinced that intelligence is a defect shared by the totality of the population, without any social distinctions: there’s the same percentage of intelligent people amongst history teachers and Breton sea fishermen, amongst writers and typist.

One thing that can be conceded is that, even if we get no guarantee of intelligence from familiarity with great works, using our minds and reading the work of geniuses, it does not at least increase the risk. Of course, there will be people who’ve read Freud and Plato, who can juggle with quarks, and tell the difference between a peregrine falcon and a kestrel, and who’;; still be an idiot. All the same, by being in contact with a multitude of stimuli and by exposing the mind to an enriching environment, intelligence can potentially find a breeding ground just like any diseases.

Page, M. (2004) how I become stupid. Antoine
Anyone who can grasp this concept deserves a clap for yourself  =)
The highest level of comprehension is to be able to place yourself within the scene and experience the thoughts of that person.

Anything is Possible

from Malaysia Chronicle.com

The Education Ministry had endorsed “guidelines” to help parents to identify gay and lesbian “symptoms” in their children so they can take early corrective measurements.
The guidelines list four symptoms each of gays and lesbians:
Symptoms of gays:
Have a muscular body and like to show their body by wearing V-neck and sleeveless clothes;
Prefer tight and light-coloured clothes;
Attracted to men; and Like to bring big handbags, similar to those used by women, when hanging out.
Symptoms of lesbians:
Attracted to women;
Besides their female companions, they will distance themselves from other women;
Like to hang out, have meals and sleep in the company of women; and
Have no affection for men.
“Once the children have these symptoms, immediate attention should be given,” the guidelines warn.

Seminars
According to Sin Chew Daily, the guidelines published by Yayasan Guru Malaysia Bhd and Putrajaya Consultative Council of Parents and Teachers Associations, and endorsed by the Education Ministry, were launched during a seminar in Penang yesterday.
The seminar on “Parenting in addressing the issue of LGBTs (lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders)” was organised by Yayasan Guru Malaysia Bhd and officiated by Deputy Education Minister Mohd Puad Zarkashi (right).
Penang is the fourth state to hold such a seminar, after Selangor, the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur and Perak, and yesterday’s seminar in Penang was the 10th in the country.
Puad is quoted by Sinar Harian today as saying that the exposure of symptoms of gays and lesbians was the best approach to address the spread of such unhealthy phenomenon among students.
“Youths are easily influenced by websites and blogs relating to LGBT groups. This can also spread among their friends. We are worried that this happens during schooling time,” Puad told some 1,500 teachers and parents.
The guidelines were distributed to all those who attended the seminar.
In an immediate response, Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin sent out this tweet message: “I wear fitted, v-neck t-shirts. I’m okay.”


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Hiatus

I'll probably take a time off now.

If time permits, i'll still write some inspirational articles in this blog.

Have a look at a new blog under my management, which i will probably spend time developing it currently.

http://englishlanguageclubelc.blogspot.com/

If you like my articles so far, then you should try out reading this blog...Enjoy =)

Relationship with God

It is hard to believe that you have God in your life, life would be a big change. I cant believe that i'm saying this but one month ago, i was a totally different person. Life changes everyday as human keep improving, I absorb new methods and implement it in my life. I made a promise to God and i never regret it so far. I felt glad actually i have this opportunity. For every challenges i faced, i have God walking side by side with me. All the pain, suffer, agony and stress was worth it. Because of them, i seek answer to solve them that lead me to God.

One month ago, I held strongly to my principle which was the absolute of my life. I believe my self integrity was my reliable method but it failed me. There comes a time when a greater challenge posed in front of you and you felt as weak and feeble as never before. The answer is faith in God, I trust Him though i never see Him. I learned to express my thoughts through writing, in hopes to remind myself all the times and serves as a motivation to others. This is what God wants me to do in some mysterious way. My life improve with the posts in my blog. You would not find me expressing these thoughts from my past articles.This is a big change.

Relationship with God requires time. You dont expect that by believing in God, problems would be miraculously disappear or you would have good luck all the time. Life is not an easy sail. Pain, tears, sweat, suffer are indispensable elements in our life. By believing in God one should think in such a way that with God by your side, you gain confidence and power to improve yourself daily in hope with countering those difficulties in life. People always believe that their voice to God was not heard, their effort was not rewarded by God and their prayers were futile. I never felt that way because by believing in God, i get to improve my relationship with God and my spiritual life, emotional quotient. Having God by your side in every actions, give you the initiative to reflect yourself and  be a better person day by day. You will not see the results immediately. However, you must believe in God that every test set by God mould you into someone who will excel in life. That's the reward.

Source of Strength in Life

I would say most of my coursemate survive an entire semester based on 100% cheat and fraud on every test, quiz, etc. By the time exam period is over, they would say they want to release their huge stress load despite not making a good effort i would say. Even if, they do study, they would still be stressful. But in end, how much have they learn through the stressful study remains a question mark.

People easily resort to cheating whenever they face difficulties. They are either a coward or being kiasu. Some people who never put in effort and accept their destiny, I have much more respect for this kind of person. I believe in what you get in proportional in what you put in. People who view in different perspective may disagree.

Even if they have time to prepare themselves for the difficulties, they would still not put in a better effort because they know they can cheat. There is always a shortcut they can take. Even if you claim that you put in enough effort and didnt not get the intended result, you should put in more effort. This is the way of improving. Human face steep learning curve every day in my opinion. To reach a state to be completely unfazed and resist the devil that taunted you to cheat requires high mental strength, self confidence and the power of faith. How much stress, tension, pressure, agony, setbacks faced are beyond words to describe. Despite all these difficulties, one should not stop himself from trying hard. I faced a situation where everyone circling me are happy with cheating and i persist in integrity because i made a promise to God. I always set knowledge and integrity as a priority and results are just decoration that is useful for one small  occasion. No one really care about how much you score in future career. It boils down to what your knowledge can help. My friend prove me that and i always look up to him. I faced countless disappointment in life and i accept it and also improve myself daily to prevent that from happening. To be successful, you have to learn to accept failure and i managed to accept failure. Integrity in my frontline and when i have a difficult question that i cant answer, i would choose accept it despite people are being happy to cheat. I believe success is just one step ahead of me.

In the past, i seek for inner principle set in my life to help myself to get through all the troubles. I always have a voice in me that tells me what is bad and not to do it despite the temptation. I live a life with principles. It is not until i face uphill challenge that i know that this kind of strength in me wouldnt take me far. I have a breakdown and my productivity decreases. It was the hardest challenge in my life that challenge both my physical condition, mental strength and emotional burst. It was 12 August 2012. Never i have ever in my life felt so weak and powerless. I started hyperventilation and met someone while passed out. It was a man with a white robe and he hug me. I never get to see his face and I saw a dead flower bloomed in front of me. I made a promise with him that i will have Him beside of me in every action i have. I think i finally found a new strength that i can tap in for my life. However, every new method takes time to practise and i would persevere.