Thoughts on Flatland by Edwin Abbott

Flatland by Edwin Abbott illustrates society, and how society desires stratification and resists equality.

It is world where everything is 2D, and everyone appears as a line, with various shades and shadows depending upon the angle.

“In Flatland, the men are all polygons, and the women are lines. The fewer equal sides a person contains, the lower the class in society. Isosceles triangles are the lowest order and form the working class and the soldiers. Equilateral triangles, because they are more regular form the merchant class. Squares are lawyers (as is the proclaimed author of this work – A Square). Pentagons are doctors and progressive numbers of sides, up to virtual circles, move up higher in leadership and governance. The circles form a sort of nobility. The more sides there happen to be, the more intelligent and educated they are supposed to be.” [1]

Irregular Polygons are considered as criminals and are eliminated in society.

“At one point in the history of Flatland, painting was discovered. It had the unfortunate consequence of upsetting the social order because it allowed every polygon or triangle to look like another. In this way the various stratifications of society were erased. The rule of the “circles” seemed to be coming to the end. But a reaction occurred and the use of colors and paints was outlawed. The social structure was ratcheted back to its previous state.” [1]

Flatland also illustrates how a higher-order being (3D Sphere) would appear as a God to the lower-order being (2D Plane Figures), and however this higher-order being (3D Sphere) tries to tell the truth to the lower-order beings (2D Plane Figures), the truth of the existence of three dimensions just gets rejected.

Even though the 3D Sphere shows its powers, and even though it shows the truth to a 2D Square so that the 2D Square could share the “gospel of Three Dimensions”, the 2D Flatland just rejects it and even imprisons the gospel sharer.

Likewise, the 1-D Line could not accept the truth of having Two Dimensions, and the 0-D Point is not even aware of any existence of “another” and is the king who is contented with its own Zero-Dimensional World.

REFERENCES
[1] http://www.indepthinfo.com/flatland/synopsis.htm

Pearls from “A Modern History of Japan from the Tokugawa Times to the Present”

If we improve our country’s transportation system and build more railway lines, can we remove “Filipino Time” and make it on par with Japanese punctuality?

Meanwhile, don’t you think that studying history in detail will make one realize that no nation, religion nor political ideology is truly “special”, as each is mired with violence? (I used to think eastern religions to be more “peaceful” ones.)

The congestion we experience in Manila was similar to the conditions of Osaka in the 1700~1800s. Moreover, the culture of traps (Kabuki Theater) and maid cafes had their origins in the Tokugawa and Meiji era.

It is also interesting to note the factors which gave rise to Imperial Japan in World War II. As mentioned by the book, the factors include economic crisis, sharp polarization of left versus right politics, intense conflict in industrial workplaces, and murderous right-wing terror. To add to that, there is also blind obedience to an absolute monarch (the emperor) and “purification” of any dissent.

Student activism and rural militant activism played a major role in modern Japanese history (Showa era). Tokyo University had to stop its operations for about one and a half years because of a massive boycott. Likewise, Tokyo University also bred the craziest minds, one of whom became a terrorist (refer to Aum Shinrikyou) who planted poisonous gas in a certain train.

The recent Dengvaxia incident can also be compared to their 1996 Blood Transfusion incident.

While Japan was not yet a world power, they believed in their own race and identity. Relative to the Philippines, one might say it’s kind of extreme, or “ultranationalist”. It became “too good” to the point of imperialism.

There seems to be a parallelism of what’s happening in our country to those mentioned in this book. There was likewise tremendous conflict and struggle for a better society in modern Japan.

Here are some notable excerpts from the Japanese history book “A Modern History of Japan from the Tokugawa Times to the Present”. There are other excerpts which may be notable to you; with this, I recommend reading this book.

 

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Excerpt of the last two chapters of Every Day, by David Levithan.

Day 6033. [latter part]

When first love ends, most people eventually know there will be more to come. They are not through with love. Love is not through with them. It will never be the same as the first, but it will be better in different ways.

I have no such consolation. This is why I cling so hard. This is why this is so hard.

“There might be a way to stay,” I tell her. “But I can’t. I’ll never be able to stay.”

Murder. When it all comes down to it, it would be murder to stay. No love can outbalance that.

Rhiannon pulls away from me. Stands up. Turns on me.

“You can’t do this!” she yells. “You can’t swoop in, bring me here, give me all this—and then say it can’t work. That’s cruel, A. Cruel.”

“I know,” I say. “That’s why this is a first date. That’s why this is the first time we’ve ever met.”

“How can you say that? How can you erase everything else?”

I stand up. Walk over. Wrap my arms around her. At first she resists, wants to pull away. But then she gives in.

“He’s a good guy,” I say, my voice a broken whisper. I don’t want to do this, but I have to do this. “He might even be a great guy. And today’s the day you first met. Today’s your first date. He’s going to remember being in the bookstore. He’s going to remember the first time he saw you, and how he was drawn to you, not just because you’re beautiful, but because he could see your strength. He could see how much you want to be a part of the world. He’ll remember talking with you, how easy it was, how engaging. He’ll remember not wanting it to end, and asking you if you wanted to do something else. He’ll remember you asking him his favorite place, and he’ll remember thinking about here, and wanting to show it to you. The grocery store, the stories in the aisles, the first time you saw his room—that will all be there, and I won’t have to change a single thing. His pulse is my heartbeat. The pulse is the same. I know he will understand you. You have the same kind of heart.”

“But what about you?” Rhiannon asks, her voice breaking, too.

“You’ll find the things in him that you find in me,” I tell her. “Without the complications.”

“I can’t just switch like that.”

“I know. He’ll have to prove it to you. Every day, he’ll have to prove he’s worthy of you. And if he doesn’t, that’s it. But I think he will.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I have to go, Rhiannon. For real this time. I have to go far away. There are things I need to find out. And I can’t keep stepping into your life. You need something more than that.”

“So this is goodbye?”

“It’s goodbye to some things. And hello to others.”

I want him to remember how it feels to hold her. I want him to remember how it feels to share the world with her. I want him, somewhere inside, to remember how much I love her. And I want him to learn to love her in his own way, having nothing to do with me.

I had to ask Poole if it was really possible. I had to ask him if he could really teach me.

He promised he could. He told me we could work together.

There was no hesitation. No warning. No acknowledgment of the lives we’d be destroying.

That’s when I knew for sure I had to run away.

She holds me. She holds me so hard there’s no thought in it of letting go.

“I love you,” I tell her. “Like I’ve never loved anyone before.”

“You always say that,” she says. “But don’t you realize it’s the same for me? I’ve never loved anyone like this, either.”

“But you will,” I say. “You will again.”

If you stare at the center of the universe, there is a coldness there. A blankness. Ultimately, the universe doesn’t care about us. Time doesn’t care about us.

That’s why we have to care about each other.

The minutes are passing. Midnight is approaching.

“I want to fall asleep next to you,” I whisper.

This is my last wish.

She nods, agrees.

We leave the tree house, run quickly through the night to get back to the light of the house, the music we’ve left behind. 11:13. 11:14. We go to the bedroom and take off our shoes. 11:15. 11:16. She gets in the bed and I turn off the lights. I join her there.

I lie on my back and she curls into me. I am reminded of a beach, an ocean.

There is so much to say, but there’s no point in saying it. We already know.

She reaches up to my cheek, turns my head. Kisses me. Minute after minute after minute, we kiss.

“I want you to remember that tomorrow,” she says.

Then we return to breathing. We return to lying there. Sleep approaches.

“I’ll remember everything,” I tell her.

“So will I,” she promises.

I will never have a photograph of her to carry around in my pocket. I will never have a letter in her handwriting, or a scrap-book of everything we’ve done. I will never share an apartment with her in the city. I will never know if we are listening to the same song at the same time. We will not grow old together. I will not be the person she calls when she’s in trouble. She will not be the person I call when I have stories to tell. I will never be able to keep anything she’s given to me.

I watch her as she falls asleep next to me. I watch her as she breathes. I watch her as the dreams take hold.

This memory.

I will only have this.

I will always have this.

He will remember this, too. He will feel this. He will know it’s been a perfect afternoon, a perfect evening.

He will wake up next to her, and he will feel lucky.

Times moves on. The universe stretches out. I take a Post-it of a heart and move it from my body to hers. I see it sitting there.

I close my eyes. I say goodbye. I fall asleep.

—–

Day 6034.

I wake up two hours away, in the body of a girl named Katie.

Katie doesn’t know it, but today she’s going far away from here. It will be a total disruption to her routine, a complete twist in the way her life is supposed to go. But she has the luxury of time to smooth it out. Over the course of her life, this day will be a slight, barely noticeable aberration.

But for me, it is the change of the tide. For me, it is the start of a present that has both a past and a future.

For the first time in my life, I run.

We emphasize the stark biology of behavior not to deny the patient’s sentiency nor to dehumanize, but to create conditions that allow that sentiency to flow forth uninhibited by the physician’s biases or censorship. Treating each patient as a coequal organism consisting of neural circuits that operate a set of levers, apertures, tubes, and glands focuses on our elemental unity and limitations—the pathos of being human.

“Because I was flesh and a breath that passeth away and cometh not again.” By biological necessity, each of us originates, lives, and dies alike, and each of us exults and suffers alike. Ironically, in the necessity to recycle the food we eat, the water that quenches our thirst, and the air we breathe, as creatures sharing one biosphere, we continuously exchange with each other the very molecules that compose us. The oxygen atom cycling through me once cycled through you. If you regard all and every behavior objectively simply as clinical phenomena, as the product of neural circuits, operating glands, and adjusting the length of muscle fibers, you will react professionally, not socially in liking or disliking the patient.

You are not subject to the patient’s sorrows, seductions, and transgressions nor captive to your own reactions to the patient’s personality and lifestyle. Free from fears of censure or entrapment, patients can reveal their full sentiency and needs. Although you should achieve empathy, you must remain emotionally calm because you cannot think rationally when weeping over a patient’s illnesses, fuming about a patient’s behavior or faults, or feeling too attracted to the patient. Perhaps this approach through elemental biology will work for you; if not, it may encourage you to find your own way to foster the professional humility and grace that enables patients to fully reveal their personhood.

from DeMyer’s Neurologic Examination, 6th Edition

 

“The construction of an organ that perceives, thinks, loves, hates, remembers, changes, deceives itself, and coordinates all of our conscious and unconscious bodily processes is undoubtedly the most challenging of all developmental enigmas.”

“But because the human brain may be the most organized piece of matter in the solar system and is arguably the most interesting organ in the animal kingdom, we will concentrate on the development that is supposed to make Homo sapient.”

Building the Brain, Developmental Biology 10th Ed. by Scott F. Gilbert

 

Introversion

Some [long] quotable [and relatable] quotes from the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain:

“In fact, public speaking anxiety may be primal and quintessentially human, not limited to those of us born with a high-reactive nervous system. One theory, based on the writings of the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, holds that when our ancestors lived on the savannah, being watched intently meant only one thing: a wild animal was stalking us. And when we think we’re about to be eaten, do we stand tall and hold forth confidently? No. We run. In other words, hundreds of thousands of years of evolution urge us to get the hell off the stage, where we can mistake the gaze of the spectators for the glint in a predator’s eye. Yet the audience expects not only that we’ll stay put, but that we’ll act relaxed and assured. This conflict between biology and protocol is one reason that speechmaking can be so fraught.”

“In fact, the very thing that many high-reactives hate most about blushing—its uncontrollability—is what makes it so socially useful. “Because it is impossible to control the blush intentionally,” Dijk speculates, blushing is an authentic sign of embarrassment. And embarrassment, according to Keltner, is a moral emotion. It shows humility, modesty, and a desire to avoid aggression and make peace. It’s not about isolating the person who feels ashamed (which is how it sometimes feels to easy blushers), but about bringing people together.”

“How is it that Asians and Westerners can look at the exact same classroom interactions, and one group will label it “class participation” and the other “talking nonsense”? … Asia … is introverted, Europe extroverted. … Americans are some of the most extroverted people on earth … Similarly, Chinese high school students tell researchers that they prefer friends who are “humble” and “altruistic,” “honest” and “hardworking,” while American high school students seek out the “cheerful,” “enthusiastic,” and “sociable”.”

“Many Asian cultures are team-oriented, but not in the way that Westerners think of teams. Individuals in Asia see themselves as part of a greater whole—whether family, corporation, or community—and place tremendous value on harmony within their group. They often subordinate their own desires to the group’s interests, accepting their place in its hierarchy. Western culture, by contrast, is organized around the individual. We see ourselves as self-contained units; our destiny is to express ourselves, to follow our bliss, to be free of undue restraint, to achieve the one thing that we, and we alone, were brought into this world to do. We may be gregarious, but we don’t submit to group will, or at least we don’t like to think we do. We love and respect our parents, but bridle at notions like filial piety, with their implications of subordination and restraint. When we get together with others, we do so as self-contained units having fun with, competing with, standing out from, jockeying for position with, and, yes, loving, other self-contained units.”

“The “catharsis hypothesis”—that aggression builds up inside us until it’s healthily released—dates back to the Greeks, was revived by Freud, and gained steam during the “let it all hang out” 1960s of punching bags and primal screams. But the catharsis hypothesis is a myth—a plausible one, an elegant one, but a myth nonetheless. Scores of studies have shown that venting doesn’t soothe anger; it fuels it.”

Quotes from Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning

Too much quotes to collect for Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning:

p.28
In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as “delusion of reprieve.” The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. We, too, clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad.

p.42
Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner’s psychological reactions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. By means of this insensibility the prisoner soon surrounded himself with a very necessary protective shell.

p.47
Apathy, the main symptom of the second phase, was a necessary mechanism of self-defense. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one’s own life and that of the other fellow.

p.57
The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

p.60
“Et lux in tenebris lucet” (Light in darkness shines.)

p.63
Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

p.86
the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

p.87
Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually.

Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”

It is this spiritual freedom – which can- not be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

p.87-88
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

p.94
It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future – sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.

p.97
“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how, (Nietzsche)

p.98
it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.

p.103
Nietzsche: “Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker.” (That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.)

p.104
Nietzsche: “Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben.” (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.)

Thoughtcrime

After reading George Orwell’s novel, 1984… My reactions are in a sense of doublethink.

(Spoiler Alert)

My first thoughts and reactions can be considered thoughtcrime:

Making a language that has its words lessened every time to eliminate ambiguity is doubleplusungood.

Winston is doubleplusungood, or probably tripleplusungood. What he did.

Why.

Last sentence of the book: “He loved Big Brother.”

Why.

Winston and Julia… It wasn’t love at all.

Why.

The anticlimax. Rats.

Why.

What is two plus two? Four. *tunes up needle of zapping torture* What is two plus two? Four. *increases voltage of zapping torture*

Why.

Four fingers are not five fingers. Never.

Why.

However, after delving deeper to the ideas discussed, I find this book awesome, even better than the Divergent series.