The Luddites held that the changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution would lead to a moral degradation of society. Many modern Luddites often argue the same thing—that technological progress opens up the door for deeper and deeper immoralities and creates a darker and darker world. Read »
How do leaders and people in authority gain an accurate picture of what’s going on around them and how sensitive (in both senses of the word) should they be towards criticism? Read »
We all seem to outgrow our own emotions. The things I held sacred in my youth are no longer so. The songs I used to think were divinely beautiful sound rather banal now. My universal and eternal ideologies crumbled and blew away over time. This seems to happen not just to individuals, but to the whole human race. As we have become more rational, many superstitious and prejudiced beliefs and rituals have faded away. For instance, not so long ago, race had an inviolable meaning for many people. It just felt right that we organized ourselves according to the colors of our skin. We assumed that our own race was superior to others. Such convictions were largely emotional, but many probably believed that their convictions were perfectly rational. As we educated ourselves better, we came to realize that we were misguided. Read »
Dear DoGooders: I am writing to you because I noticed that you use DoGood Headquarters' advertising service. Please give me a moment to explain to you why DoGood's service is ultimately harmful to all of us. This is not a simple matter to explain but if you could read this letter to the end, I believe we could agree that everyone will lose by using DoGood's service. So, bear with me. Read »
All my life, I’ve been told that my problem is not what I communicate, but how I communicate. Only recently, I’ve wised up to the fact that most people would not listen to me unless the idea is communicated in a form that is acceptable for them, like a restaurant accepting only a particular type of credit cards. The problem with this thinking is that it becomes habitual, and we can’t stop manipulating everything we communicate. After all, it feels good to be heard, so we become addicted to manipulating our own stories. How do we figure out when it is appropriate to manipulate and when it is not? Read »
The people who know me well would probably exclaim, “That’s a good idea!” Well, sorry to disappoint, but this isn’t about the fact that my values are questionable. I would not teach my own values to my child even if I thought my values were immaculate. This brings us to the question: What do I mean by “values”? The simplest way to put it is: To deem one thing to be superior to its counter part. For instance, in the last presidential election, many parents involved their kids into politics by teaching them that Obama is better than McCain. So, we had preschool kids campaigning for Obama. Read »
I’m not at all convinced that plagiarism is an entirely bad or avoidable thing. However, if you’re a student reading this in the hope of discovering a handy excuse to steal someone else’s work I’m afraid I’m probably going to disappoint you. Read »
There are many different types of online networks and each encourages different user behavior. For the purpose of this discussion, I would like to create 4 different categories of online networks: centered-public, centered-private, decentered-public, and decentered-private. "Centered" means everyone is looking at the same thing. "Decentered" means everyone is looking at a different thing. Facebook is a good example of a decentered network; when I login, what I see is different from what you see when you login. "Public" means anyone can view the content, and "private" means only selected/invited users can view the content. Read »
Louis Menand, of The New Yorker, recently reviewed “The Program Era” by Mark McGurl: a book which traces the ways creative writing has been taught in American universities. The overarching question raised by the Menand is whether creative writing can actually be taught at all. Of course, it is taught, in a literal sense, but to what extent is that teaching fruitful? Read »
Why would you start and run your own business? You might say, “Money. What else could it be?” Well, that is the common assumption but this isn’t true for everyone, and depending on your answer, the path you take may be quite different. It sounds like common sense, but I see some very successful business people make bad decisions because they didn’t ask this question. Read »
When I read the autobiography of Emma Goldman, I was struck by how differently people lived here in the East Village, New York, at the turn of the 20th Century. I was particularly surprised by how everyone assumed they would eventually have their own businesses. On the other hand, most of us now expect that we work for corporations all our lives. Today, that became the mainstream, and running one’s own business became an “alternative” way to make a living. As a matter of fact, the corporate world tends to shun people who have defected to the alternative world. So, once you defect, it’s hard to get back into the mainstream. Born into this cultural environment, I had always assumed that this was the norm. It didn’t occur to me to think that people might have lived differently in the past. Read »
“This man was hurting, yet his problem wasn’t mine to solve. In fact, I needed to get out of his way so he could solve it,” said Laura A. Munson in her essay entitled “Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear.” It is her account of how she dealt with her marriage that almost fell apart. Her husband one day pronounced to her, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.” Instead of reacting to it in an expected manner, she decided to stay calm and said, “I don’t buy it.” Her essay struck a chord with many people who are/were in similar situations. Read »
What does “Virtue is its own reward” mean? And, what does “virtue” mean? When I searched the web, I came across this video of Barry Schwartz speaking at a TED conference about virtue. In his case, he defines virtue as a moral and social concept. I believe this is the most common way that the word “virtue” is used. Despite my respect for his ideas on the paradox of choice, I disagree with his thesis on this topic. I think he got the order wrong. When you practice virtue as its own reward, what appears to be moral is actually not moral at all. It only appears so to other people who are observing your act. Read »
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of creativity. It’s an elusive concept, like the concept of God. A friend of mine told me about a recent article in New Yorker dealing with the same topic: “Should creative writing be taught?” My view is in line with the “official position” of The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Read »
I’ve known many people in my life who are smart and talented yet somehow cannot manage their own lives well. I’ve always been puzzled and fascinated by this phenomenon. I figured there must be some careers perfect for their intelligence and talent. The only problem, I thought, was that they weren’t aware of these careers. In fact, most career orientations offered at schools are based on the same premise. It’s an encouraging and exciting premise too, like finding a Mr. or Ms. Perfect. Needless to say, I’ve never succeeded in finding such a career for anyone. This is when I began doubting my own premise. Maybe the problem does not lie in the careers they choose, but in everything else that they have to deal with no matter which careers they choose. In other words, it’s not about what they want to do; it’s about what they don’t want to do but have to. Read »
The artist Jenny Holzer said in her work: “The abuse of power comes as no surprise.” I share the same view. In this essay, I want to persuade you to use search engines other than Google because it could come as no surprise that Google’s dominance in the search engine market leads to abuse. Don’t get me wrong: I love many of Google’s products, and I use them every day. I’m not bashing Google as a company. My argument has to do with their dominance in the search engine market, and why it is in our own interest to help others be competitive with Google. Google essentially has a monopoly in this market and a monopoly can happen even if a company has no intention of monopolizing or have no predatory business practices. English as a language, for instance, has a monopolistic power, because our desire to have a universal language is strong. Nevertheless, a monopoly is a powerful and dangerous force because the abuse of that power can happen almost unconsciously to the holders of the power. Read »
I think we often underestimate the value of small talk. I should know, because small talk is something I’m really bad at. When I go to a party, I often start talking about serious issues, business, and/or highly technical things, and within minutes, I’m standing alone in the middle of a crowd. If you intellectually think about the idea of small talk, everyone tends to dismiss it as being superficial and pointless, but it must have a very important social function, otherwise people would not do it so often (and otherwise I should be the life of the party). Read »
I have a 4-year old girl. As a father, the experience of raising a girl has been enlightening to say the least. It has given me an insight into what girls and women experience as they grow up. Firstly, I am now thoroughly convinced that many of the feminist arguments about the environment causing girls to want to be beautiful, be nurturing, love the color pink, etc., are wrong. Those arguments must be coming from feminists who have never had children of their own. If you do have your own, you would have to be blind to think that. Not just my own girl, but her friends too, required no effort, encouragement, nor even introduction for them to love all things pink and glittery. Read »
I have never seriously wished to be a rock star, but like everyone else, have occasionally fantasized about being one. In my college days and 20s, rock music was practically a religion. (Here, I’m using the term broadly to mean any styles of music popular among the youth, not the specific genre or style of music called “rock”.) Virtually all my friends have, at one point or another, tried to form a band or be somehow associated with one. Rock music is a perfect remedy for the feelings of insecurity, loneliness, and angst that come with being young. To top it all, most parents do not want you to pursue a career in rock music. That makes you want to do it more, so that you can feel you are your own person, not a product designed and programmed by your parents to be a certain way. The unfortunate thing I see now in my 40s is that your parents’ warnings have some truth to them, which is being ignored or misunderstood. Most of the parents don’t explain it well either. They sound like they are making excuses for their failure to pursue their own dreams. So, in an attempt to avoid becoming a wimp like your parents, you try even harder to be a rock star. It’s a vicious cycle. Read »
I’ve always believed that male and female brains were biologically different from the day we were born. Now that I have a child of my own and see many of her friends grow up, it is hard to imagine how anyone could deny the difference. I have been so vocal about the gender differences that many of my friends think I am a sexist. I became so used to it that it doesn’t bother me anymore. Given this reputation of mine, one would assume that I would agree with everything stated in the book “The Essential Difference” by Simon Baron-Cohen, which explores the difference between male and female brains. To my surprise, I found myself disagreeing with him in a fundamental way. Read »
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