Ryu's Blog

A year passed by since I wrote about my insignificance in this universe, my thoughts on the topic haven’t changed much (except becoming more skeptical of any significance I might truly have). I feel like I’m creating my own little universe through which I interact and see the world. It’s like a movie, which I view as an abstraction of the world. Movie tends to focus on a certain aspect of life it wants to emphasize and manipulate the temporal and spatial experience to convey a story. Similarly, we tend to abstract from our experience to create a story we like to live, and our brains help us to achieve this through our subjective memories and experience of time. Science, religion, cultural and moral teachings as well as popular media all help shape the story we want to create in life and the way we see and experience things.

Now I don’t think there’s any particular meaning in asking the meaning-of-life type questions. I’m also content to know that there’re lots of things I’ll never be able to know and probably won’t matter (life as we know will eventually cease to exist). I don’t think there’re any absolute moral or ethical standards. They exist to serve a purpose but are easily dispensable by most people under conditions where survival’s essential.

So what am I left with? I probably can’t escape from creating story that satisfies my hypocrisy. But I’m content to make it consistent enough so I can enjoy myself and strike a balance between transient, superficial/sensual pleasures and the sustained, deeper satisfactions gained from accomplishment brought by personal effort.

On that slightly cynical note, I’ll end this year’s entry. Happy new year to all.

*it’s likely I’ll disappear for a while again to reorient my life and focus on my studies.

‘All scientific view of the world is really just in our minds. When you look at it carefully, it is not something that is out there in the real world.’

-Robert Aumann