reach home at midnight for 2 consecutive nights... it is actually nothing but considering the fact that i need to wake up @ 7am for work.. best... dunno how to survive in the morning later... has a bad headache from the moment i woke up yesterday morning till lunchitime. then the headache resumes again after lunch till a few min before the movie starts... therefore wondering if im really unwell or its just a show put up by my brain... hah..
watched the da vinci code just now which explains me arriving home late... its a very Hollywood style thriller, fast paced with few boring moments although it is a tad confusing for me since i have yet to read the book.. BUT discovered two interesting things in the movie.
1. Tom Hanks wore a Mickey Mouse watch in one of the scene. i really admire my fren for her observation cos it just appears for only a few seconds!!
2. The British police drove BMWs!! din realise that the British police is loaded.. lol.. thought they will drive British cars instead.. anyway they made the BMWs look rather ugly in the movie until my frens almost couldnt recognise it.. Imagine BMWs in white, blue and orange... Oh dear, reminds me of NUS school colours.. *faint* =P
walk out of the theatre with lots of questions bubbling in my head.. had an interesting discussion cum debate with my friends on the way home. obviously it left us with more questions... 1st up: what is religion? 毛泽东 once said that religion is the opium of the masses. it is actually a political tool used by the rich and the powerful centuries ago to reaffirm their wealth and power. most religion teaches people to be good and kind and any hardship they suffer now is a test put forth by the God and they will get rewarded in their next life. the rich and powerful make use of this to continue oppressing and exploiting the poor and the poor, after being 'brainwashed' by the teachings, will 逆来顺受 instead of rioting against them.
bearing this in mind, this brings me to another question: does God exists? if so, why is it that some religions have a God (eg Christanity, Islam) , others have many (eg Hindu) and a few handful have none (eg Taoist)? why do people kill using 'in the name of God' when God is supposed to teach people to be good and kind and magananimous? now people usually think Islam is a rather violent religion due to the 911 incident. but Christianity/ Catholic is also a rather violent history a few centuries ago. Numerous free-thinkers were killed and scientists who proposed ground-breaking truths (eg Galileo Galilei who siad that the Sun, and not Earth, is at the centre of the solar system) were tortured. also why is there the argument of my God is better than your God that led to countless bloodshed??
next up: what is fact? what is truth? is fact = truth?? i personally think that facts are only a piece of jigsaw and truth is the whole jigsaw puzzle. history need not necessarily protray the whole truth. history is written by men and men can decide and choose wat to write and wat to left out.
eg 乾隆 is considered one of the best emperors in the Qing Dynasty after his grandfather 康熙. But is 乾隆 really that great? the sheer number of 文字狱, especially in his latter years, tend to suggest otherwise. in fact there are historians saying that the Qing Dynasty is already on its decline during the last few yrs of 乾隆 ruling. apparently age has caught up with him and clouded his thinking back then. but is it recorded in history?? hardly so. at least i dun remember reading about it when im reading china history written in chinese. the above example is one of the many 'hidden' facts throughout the history of mankind.
so why are we so convinced that whatever is written in the books are nothing but the truth? and remember, each fact is also subjected to different interpretation as well. 正所谓尽信书不如无书, we ought to take everything with a pinch of salt. we are living in a grey world, a world of half-truth. Even the famous science theories cannot explain everything. eg Newton's law cant explain the erratic rotation of Mercury. we accpet these theories not bcos they are the whole truth, but rather it is bcos we cant find counter evidence. the science theories we accept now are merely just here for the time being before it is proven otherwise.
sonetimes i really wonder what's the purpose of studying. i still rem the shock i had when i was in JC1. apparently some stuffs we learnt in sec school chemistry are not entirely accurate. if most of the stuff we learnt are entirely correct, why are we still learning them? perhaps learning can help us better understand our surroundings, but the teachers must refrain from insisting that they are nothing but accurate. we are always seeking out truth but i dun think anyone has found the truth yet. the 3 fundamental questions still plague people's mind. who are we? why are we here? chicken or egg comes first?
there are certainly tonnes of hard question we have yet to find an answer. there are also tonnes of delicate questions that need people to determine where to draw the lines. one hot topic: development vs conservation. personally i think both are not necessarily at odd with one another, but rather it is really 鱼与熊掌难以兼得.
有时想想，人活在这世上也何尝不是如此？年少时雄心壮志，一心想要实现梦想。但是到了最后，许多人为了五斗米而折腰，不得不放弃理想。不知为什么这世上有这么多扰人的事情和问题? 想逃却逃不了，不想想却又不直觉想起来。会与能思考是人与动物之间最大的差异，但我真不知这是祸还是福。。。。
