Faith

We're never gonna win the world

We're never gonna stop the war

We're never gonna beat this if belief is what we're fighting for

-from Belief by John Mayer

Everyone in this world believes in some things, from emptiness to everything. One may believe in god, another may not. Everyone believes in how they think it ought to be. 

Is belief the most important value in life? Some may say yes, others may say no. In my personal account, I would have to be on the side of the latter. Throughout the history, there always have been people who are close-minded and only believe in what they think is right. And the extremes of those people have decimated others who were against their belief. 

Language

One thing humans differ from other animals is that humans have a sophisticated and complex system of language to communicate with each other. Although animals do have some means of communication such as movement, chemicals or hormones, they are rather used for simple and basic purposes that are directly related to survival and basic needs like gathering food and alerting the emergence of natural enemies.

Sense Perception

Do we believe the senses we perceive or do we perceive senses the way we believe? Many would say the former, but there definitely are some cases whereby our bodies tend to distort senses and deliver fabricated information to the brain, usually to support whatever the brain thinks beforehand.

As aforementioned in the 'intuition' post, intuitive people tend to gain information from internal world whereas sensible people gain information from the external world. Therefore, sensible people are usually more likely to be relatively objective, as the information they would perceive would not so much be affected by their own subjective opinions. They would see, smell, hear, taste and touch things the way they actually are. Their kind of sense perception would be fairly direct, straightforward and unfiltered. On the other hand, intuitive people would not really care about or learn much from the outside world. They would believe in their own hypotheses, and their senses may deceive themselves.

There is one famous anecdote about Saint Wonhyo. While he was travelling to Tang to practice asceticism, he stayed the night in a cave. Among the dark there was water in a bowl, which Wonhyo drank it and it was so fresh and cool. The next morning, Wonhyo then finds out that the water he drank was the water stagnating in a skull, not a bowl.

Intuition

I, personally, have a very strong sense of intuition. It occurs in every part of my daily life, such as when I pick an answer for a multiple-choice question or choose what menu I would go for this evening. I don’t think or consider thoroughly about the conditions of each choice I could make, like each of their benefits and drawbacks. All people have times when they can make a decision without any hesitation because they have a feeling that it’d be right. Though it may not always be a right and rational decision, people would probably not change their minds if their inner voice says, “Go for it”. We call this ‘intuition’.

The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, also known as MBTI personality test, examines whether the person is extraverted (E) or introverted (I), sensing (S) or intuitive (N), thinking (T) or feeling (F), and judging (J) or perceiving (P). Hence the result can come out 16 different combinations. For me, I was told I was an ENFP person: extraverted, intuitive, feeling and perceiving. To focus on sensing (S) and intuitive (N) factor, it represents the method by which someone perceives information. Sensing means that a person mainly believes information he or she receives directly from the external world. Intuition means that a person believes mainly information he or she receives from the internal or imaginative world. Hence, people who got N would be more likely to go for their own decisions and care not so much about what others say, as the information from their own outweighs that from outer world. 

Emotion

Emotion is powerful: it can control many things. It can raise billions of dollars, or kill a person, or create amazing masterpieces depending on who and what kind of emotion was used.

Emotion can either be individual or social. It can simply be what an individual person feel, or can be shared among a group of people. Emotion can become more powerful when shared by more people. The more the people share the common emotion, the bigger change it can provoke.

Pity is one of the most significant and most humane emotions humans can feel. In a human's mind, there lays a hill of pity. When one walks by that hill, s/he would feel a strong sense of pity in his/her mind about something. Hence, when the one goes down the hill, s/he would perform a kind action that can improve whatever s/he felt sorry for, usually someone in harsh situation such as a beggar.

There is one example in South Korea, where the citizens are very emotional,
when the emotion was powerful enough to raise two hundred thousand dollars, to help a patient diagnosed with neurofibroma. Neurofibroma is a very rare disease that deforms the patient's face and body.

Her target fund was only thirty thousand dollars at first. However, as her tragedy was introduced to the public via TV programs and social media, more people who felt pitiful for her gathered and raised money for her. They were sharing the common pity towards this lady, and they've managed to work a miracle.

Such disease, rare and hardly curable disease which did not enable her a normal social life, created only a pure sense of pity to help her. However, some other tragedies not only evoke pity but also fury. The sinking of MV Sewol was one of those. Only 172 out of total 476 passengers were rescued. The captain, who should be responsible to save as many passengers as possible, escaped from the ferry the very first. The ferry, old and broken, was carrying more passengers than its capacity, in only purpose of earning more money. Most of the passengers were young high school students, aged only 17, heading for a school trip. The incompetent president, who should have mobilised and directed maritime police officers to save the passengers, did not appear for 7 hours when all those hundreds of people were dying. It is recently revealed that she was in a hair salon getting her hair done, doing nothing for such accident while people were sinking in the cold sea. This made the whole citizens in Korea furious, and there were yellow ribbons hung everywhere and a myriad of protest. Now, two years from then, there is an ongoing protest in Korea that is one of the biggest in the entire history, to impeach the president. 

Reason

What are reasons needed for? Why do people tend to have reasons behind their actions? Reasons validate, or justify, certain things. It moreover convinces others to understand things that are usually not plausible.

For example, Jean Valjean stole a loaf of bread. Stealing is a crime, one of the things that are prohibited to do in order to maintain peace within the society. However, Jean Valjean had a nephew who was starving and close to death, and he had no money whatsoever to give him any food or medicine. His stealing was due to his harsh situation, and was from a noble reason, to save a life. Some people, after the reason revealed, would be convinced and say Jean Valjean’s theft was reasonable. However, others, who stand with Javert, would say theft is never allowed under any circumstances. They would argue that Jean Valjean could have chosen other ways to save his nephew, such as working hard to earn money and legitimately buy the bread, or even begging to the bakery owner. But still, those alternatives would not have been as immediate and practical solutions to solve the problem, though they are considered ‘moral’. For Jean Valjean, what was more important was saving his dying nephew, than such cliché like moral.

Imagination

People these days definitely lack imagination. It is due to their lack of time and creativity.

Ironically, in this modern society - where it is fully composed of the imaginations the people from the former era imagined - people are super busy and do not have any time to imagine. They are all worn out by their harsh reality and fatigue. They are busy working, competing, beating each other and stepping forward, because that's the only way to survive in this rat race. Not to fall behind and be left alone.

People call the ones who imagine as ‘daydreamers’, or ‘idealists’, because they live in dreams and do not think of reality. Or at least people think they would do so, because they generalise them with their superficies. People argue whatever they imagine in their minds are mere ‘dreams’, not achievable ‘goals’. They believe thinking and talking about those unachievable delusions is totally a waste of time.

But are imaginations really that valueless? Are they not important at all? Imaginations are only evoked from creative people, and in other words, are called as the creative ideas, which a myriad of corporations are looking for. All those innovative inventions, for example like smart phones, were at first ‘imagined’ and then were actually produced. Moreover, the more the creative the product is, the more it appeals to customers, and the more profit it earns. Hence, corporations are seeking to recruit people who are capable of coming up with creative ideas. And those people are, in other words, the ‘imaginers’, who were pointed at.