End of My Catch

I've always wondered what it'd be like to die. I have a list of questions for god when I get there. Questions like why he made the dinosaurs, and what was going on with the humans that came before us. 

I've finally ended what seemed like an eternal fishing trip. I've always felt that life was a long fishing trip. You go out on to the waves paddling on my own little boat, hooking up worms, thrusting the line forward, and waiting... and waiting. My hands have soaked in the much cold salt-water from this world, my worms have at many times been have bitten away, and my back has suffered under the long wait. I now retract my fishing hook for the last time. Only I'm not sure whether I've caught a fish today or not. 

I plan to have a funeral. I don't want it to be too emotional. After all my death isn't something that's just sad- I'm now relieved of my waiting. Nor is it something that's just happy or something to party on about. Honestly how well could anyone party in someone's funeral with a coffin in the room regardless of how nicely decorated everything might be. Afterall, I'm dead. I wouldn't mine some tears. It just seems too unnatural for any single emotion to prevail. 

I want my funeral to be held on the rooftop of my grandparents and our house. There used to be a garden there with fig and pine trees. 하늘공원(Sky Park) we would call it. I used to climb the cold stone stairs and sit on top of one of the 항아리s there and look at the lights and the endless rustling of the city around me. Sometimes I'd go up there with my brother and a laser and point the ray right down in front of pedestrians and have them puzzled. But now the park isn't what it was before. The weight of the trees, the ants and bugs attracted to the trees, and the water seeping through the rood on rainy or snowy days forced us to get rid of the park. The roof is now waterproofed with some green cover and the trees removed. With some of the money I have left, I'd like to rebuild the little park and make sure there are enough 항아리s for everyone who comes to sit down. 

At my funeral I want to play some of my songs. Crude creations on SoundCloud they may be I think it would be cool to have an album I made to be playing at the rooftop park. Songs that talk about my biggest catches, my salty hours, and my home and people.

I've always thought it was strange for dead people to ask their guests to do something for them. But I now I see that I want to ask people to do something at my funeral as well. Through the fishing trips on the sea, I have become both a skilled fisherman and somewhat a wizened old pirate's tack. The day's catch would be on my mind. Times of failure, laziness, and mistakes would come to haunt me. But for those I care about who still have much fish to catch and waves to battle I want them to be free. Free from images and focused on the essence, free from that ruthless and restless energy to catch more, free from worry, free from themselves. So I ask that balloons be inflated on the rooftop and for everyone to write down a message or anything that burdens them and to let the balloons fly at the same time. 

The Trap of "What if"

What if I had done this and that? In fact why don't we go all the way back to my birth? What if I wasn't born? I remember listening to one of my friends talking about all these hypothetical situations and asking with no end in sight the question “what if?” I could see that something was clearly troubling him, but his litany of “what ifs" was only hindering him from simply moving on. From what I was hearing, he seemed to see himself in an abyss and was certain he was going to see worse. "What ifs" generated more "what ifs" and he seemed to funnel himself into a fuzzy rabbit hole of rainbows and unicorns or perhaps a black hole of regret, doubt, and doom. 

But if you accepted and were living up to your current state right now would the answers have been the same? Would the "what if" question have prompted you to view your past in that ultra-negative light? Will there ever be an end to the "what ifs"? Because sometimes the result may be due to your choice but many times there are uncontrollable externalities. I honestly think that this madness would only obscure you from what's important-sustained progress. But directly telling my friend that wouldn't solve the problems and the agitation he was going through. And despite feeling that way, I find that when I’m troubled, I start generating my own “what ifs” as well.

Sometimes wearing nearsighted lenses looking back to the “good old” days and at other times wearing farsighted lenses trying to imagine the future, I often feel like a cyclops stuck in a dysfunctional time machine wandering and sometimes stuck in time. I know it would do me little good, but there are times when I can't help it. In this confusion, the question “what if?” seems to pose itself in my current state with a tone of regret.

After having worked 4 hours on the weekend moving heavy bricks up the mountain, delivered chicken just a few hours ago for chicken day, and scheduled cleaning appointments tomorrow lunch and dinner, "what if" makes me regret my transition from a student to an oxygen mask wearing patient who has to pant and clean and carry bricks and clean umbrellas to keep breathing.

What if I had just mustered up the will to get up and force myself to zombie walk to morning exercise? Then, wouldn’t I have not started my weekend hauling bricks? What if I had just gone to school early like my roommate does? Then, wouldn't I have not missed classes to ride around campus in a truck looking for useless toil? What if my excuse that everyone’s eating ramen and I’m the only one unlucky to get caught multiple times was wrong?

And from there I find myself falling into the trap of "what ifs" going back to all that I regret other than penalty points. "What if" followed by regret and blame and sometimes excuse. Everyone has some deep crevices or some festering wounds that are bandaged and given less emphasis to in order to continue moving on. 

The problem of the trap of "what if" seems not to be the question itself, but the attitude of the person answering it. Am I asking and answering questions in a manner that is conducive to progress, or am I falling into the trap of self-generated negativity triggered by "what ifs"? It's always time for me to stop asking negative "what ifs" questions about what is past, reduce the number of potential regretful "what if" moments by acting in the present, and to imagine and aspire for positive "what ifs" of the future to become a reality.

D-leaks

Hi, guys. I’m devil. That’s my real name. I don’t have a last name since I never had a mother nor a father. Perhaps you’ve heard about me. Mostly bad stuff probably. I admit I may have been pretty messed up sometime back, but I’m a mellow guy now. After 2000 years of being blamed for everything from farting to the black plaque and just about any social problem, I’ve tried to keep to myself as much as possible. But this doesn't mean that I don't care about my public image which is outright wrong. I typed my name yesterday on Google, and no matter how far I scrolled down all I saw was red and ugly heinous looking faces.(there was also some cute animated versions of "the devil" but that isn't to my liking either.)Well I don’t blame you for being biased about me. I’m not the author of the world’s best-selling book of all time and nor do I have artists painting my handsome faces on walls all around the globe to tell you guys about me. 

I can’t release this somewhere too public so I’m sending this out on the web through Bryson, this random guy I found online that seemed to desperately need a quick essay and he’ll be posting this word-for-word on his blog somewhere. Public enough, but not so public that god can find me on the web. Believe me that old man is more than you think he is. He’s been doing his reading, so he’s not that stone tablet writing old guy anymore. With the help of Steve Jobs up there in heaven, I don’t really stand much of a chance.

So why did I end up in hell? That’s the story I plan to tell you.

It all comes down to salvation. You guys go crazy over it. I believed it myself back then. All the hand clapping and singing and stuff. But that was until I got to heaven and learned the truth. 

I must explain the process of “the evaluation”. The judgement of god as it probably says in the bible. There’s such an emphasis on being good when you’re alive and believing in the old man. But that’s only partially the truth. Once you’re dead you’re just transferred straight to heaven. But of course no one tells you that. The bible hasn't been updated for some time and god wouldn't want you to know anyway. They don’t send the people to hell straight away. Reason being : (1) relative pain and (2) to get to know the people. Once you’re there you receive the same treatment as angels. There’s only one requirement, you have to submit an an essay about your time or well anything. At that point when you’re free from all pains thinking you've made it into heaven a long time ago you're writing shows your true self. This essay is gone through an extensive process of evaluation. There’s so many essays uploaded that god has a crew of angels to do the work. I was one of them. Until I was caught trying to leak this information. To give you an idea let me give you a sample evaluation. The following is a guy who ended up with me. Read it and think about your own admission into heaven

:  :  :  :  :  :  :

Universal Heaven Application 

----------------------------------------

personal information: 

name-  Jaeho Kim

birth- 4.22.2000

death-11.3.2100

-------------------------------------write freely below----------------------------------------------

From the very moment the last scoop of dense air exited out of my lungs and my now-unbound soul seeped through my dry skin towards the heavens above, there were no more tears. I was dead and so did the pains that I've entailed. Gone. Erased. Yet my free soul was not, though my flesh and blood were naught. I fluttered through the air, racing towards the light above—a cosmic relief.

After hours of mindless flight, I arrived at a gate of gold so marvelous, yet humble. It was silent, but it hummed a divine hymn. I was addicted to it. My eyes fixated, I stand for however long I pleased. It was a fortress of gold standing on a cloud—the outskirts of paradise.

Then came a voice.

"Majesty, welcome back to your shelter."
I liked the size and magnificence of the gate, and that I was the master of this house? something felt wrong yet everything was better than I could have imagined. Had I already gone through god's judgement house? To think that I was here... hmm...This whole business amused me. Though I wasn't religious, wasn't I supposed to go to some devilish place where souls rot and suffer, where suffering is existence? 'God cannot be stupid.', I thought as I entered this house at which I was master. When I entered the house, I was blown by the size and all its elegance and magnificence. "Come in, sir." said a soft voice, kind and gentle. These tender words spoken through lips of equal softness. I was led through hell, gaping at the furniture. As I followed behind the women, I could see she was an angel. I could see the wings on her back, almost like a cape.

The whole while I thought... 'Where is the Devil?' or, 'maybe there is no devil. Maybe I am the true master of this place, but I was simply living in the human world as a sin. Now that my life has ended there, I am free to be back in this kingdom of elegance! Stream of thoughts glamoured, and that was when I decided to live there and reign. I sat on my golden throne, decorated with rubies, diamonds, and every other luxury you could name. There, I could see the entire world by just sitting there. Fountains of fortune, I hummed, that familiar lullaby from my childhood. Maybe I had been destined for this all along.”

--------------------------------------------do not write below this line--------------------------

Evaluation :

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This guy was sent out of heaven to hell. But not before trying to change his essay. His diction, his tone throughout, his incorrect grammer, everything. But he was caught and as is the rule for cheaters was sent to hell straight away. That guy was me. To think I got stuck in this mess just because I wanted to change some parts of my essay..But why am I telling you this in the first place? Is this some "devilish" scheme? Well to be honest there’s a huge welfare problem in hell. The old man's not happy with so many people that it's getting pretty crowded here. And, well the more people in heaven with me to thank for will lead to my ultimate goal: the assimilation of hell and heaven. A win-win situation for me and a win-win situation for you. Nothing would be better. 

Toss Writing

Once upon a time, there was a boy who dreamed of the ocean. Though he lived in the city he yearned for the smell of sea salt. He would spend most of his days admiring all kinds of goggles of all sizes and shapes, swimsuits that were of all kinds of watery smooth textures in the local marine accessory store. He would buy one of the goggles on display and at home in his small bath tub would turn the water on and pretend as if he were under the sea. The spray of the nozzle was the splash of the waves, his fallen soap a marine animal that the world had never before seen. The steamy air and the water droplets that accumulated on the worn ceiling and dripped down would be rainstorms. His bathtub was his ocean. He was the world's pirate, adventuror, and ocassionally the unlucky sailor sent to Davy Jone's locker, which happened when his bathtub clogged with hair. But his bathtub drained. The ocean never drained. As he grew older and taller his ocean became swallower. He couldn't dive as deep as he could until one day his ocean could barely contain him the only marine animal in it. Frustrated he turned the knobs of the bath tub this way and that as if opening a combination lock. Suddenly the drain opened up and he was sucked into the hole below him. Ahhhh! He barely had time to scream.

Naked, he could feel the wind howling in his ear as he fell. It was a long fall-and all of a sudden, he felt some fragrance of the sea touching the tip of his nose. There he was free. Free from the plastic tub that used to limit him. Free from the bitter scent of the old bathroom, free from the concrete jungle that made him almost impossible to breathe.

Everything was elongated as he rushed through time and space. As if in a trance he blinked slowly, letting the colors fly by his eyes. Voices, old and new maybe even from the distant future, whispered in his ears. Music to his ears and fire to his lips, the boy opened up his mouth. It was just on the tips of his tongue as voices hammered on his eardrums. They rushed through his blod streams rising in crescendo."This is everything" voices rose in harmony as wind rushed through his hair. He opened up his arms, letting the wind take him, as voices shouted in chums, calling, calling-calling out to something that had been dormant inside him. Like delicate fingers drumming on the heart of the guitar, delicate voices rang inside him, coaxing him to open himself wider and wider. The words tumbled out of his lips, not even faking those step of stairs. The boy's eyes, electric blue, opened up in shock. The deep blue folds of the ocean waves were getting closer and closer to him, but caught up in the word that just left his lips, he let himself fall. The word, that lay in him forgotten for year, decades, eons, maybe for a time longer than time itself was finally out. Bursts of air left his lungs in gasps and his senses, sensitive than ever were lit on fire. The word was....

The Leash on the Underdog (Carlos Doesn't Remember)

No pain, no gain. Work hard and you can make it. If only the equations for success were as simple as the equations that these numerous idioms give us. We all agree that equality is necessary for fair competition, but the many differences and the capitalistic society that amplifies these differences make it seem to some extent impossible. In our current society these idioms seem far outdated and a good excuse for the well-off to say to the poor, "You're in that state because you didn't put in your work like we did". Equality in education is especially important given the role education plays in our society as a certain safe haven where anyone with good grades can move up the ladder. But even within our schools and education system, there seems to be many instances in which the seesaw is made shorter on one side and longer on the other, where there is still a leash on the underdog. 

In this post, I'd like to talk about 3 things.

(2)Are there really a lot of smart and poor students out there? 
(3)Are these Carlos students really achieving their potential?
(3)Socializing

(1)the reason we seek higher education and the benefits that education gives us
Why do we seek higher education? Although some might say for the sake of studying itself, most if not all people do it because they believe that there are better job opportunities with a more prestigious diploma. It is to some degree true. Most higher paying jobs are occupied by those who went through good colleges. It seems especially in Korea that a good college ensure a good future.


(1) Are there really a lot of smart and poor students out there?
In "Carlos Doesn't Remember", Malcolm talks about an exceptional group of students; the poor and smart. He tells us that there are more of these poor and smart students than we think there are. But honestly I wasn't too convinced. I thought of the English Hakwons in Korea. How would Carlos be able to speak English without going to hakwons without being an exceptionally rare genius? Given that in Korea almost everyone goes to Hakwons it seems to me that not being able to go to the hakwons that everyone goes to severely disadvantages you. The starting line is not school, but the hakwons. That is why the performance of public schools can't be measured accurately as in many cases those numbers merely reflect  the performance of the hakwon teachers that teach the students after school. As the age kids enter hakwons seems to go down more and more this seems to pose an even bigger problem. Korean mothers nowadays go through fierce competiton to get their child into a private Pre-K school that has better English programs, they actively enroll their children in hakwons from as early as possible. I wonder what fair competition can be ensured when students who can't access such education are largely disadvantaged from a young age. It's also not entirely a matter of money as well. As mentioned in the podcast, geological distance also limits access. For example, in rural areas even if you want and can afford hakwons there just aren't any hakwons to go to in the first place.
Without access, and when a very large percentage of Korean students recieve some form of private education, I doubt there would be many good English speakers among those poor Carlos kids who couldn't afford the English hakwons.

(2)Are these Carlos students really achieving their potential?
I thought that even if these students somehow make a breakthrough, it could be a good thing for society that Carlos is doing something, but not exactly good for Carlos.
I noticed how the attitude Carlos changed towards studying and his talents changed. At first he tell us how he liked studying and math. And then later on we see that his interests in math become a means of survival. It is not the pure interest that propels him now as much as his need to take care of himself and his family. This new motivation is something that seems problematic to me. It reminds me of the civil service exam in which many talented students from all areas of society rest their lives upon. Many of these students would rather do better in would want to do better in other areas, but due to reasons outside of there control and the need for money instead choose to use their talents memorizing thick law books. Once Carlos is not allowed to be motivated by his interest in math, he has to turn to other more feasible options perhaps to engineering which guarantees better employment. This problem is especially worse in other prodigies. At least Carlos is good at studying, which is something that is recognized in Korean society. What about artists or those with other "less priority" talents. We may see many of them turning away from their talents to pursue more feasible opportunities.

(3) socializing
Another problem I thought of was socializing. The problem of Carlos achieving his potential isn't just about him getting a spot in a university, but also about how he can interact within those new environments. I was reminded of KMLA and the difficulty many rural students have when they come to KMLA. Most of the students comes from Seoul and from 4 academies. In many cases students already know each other before even coming to school some going all the way back to going to the same private elementary schools. With these relationships already there, it can be hard for a rural student to befriend such students though this also varies depending on the character of the student.

In the end, when dealing with the problem of education inequality, I think that we shouldn't just look within the schools, but also look at the society and social welfare on a broad scale. Malcolm Gladwell mentions Eric, a person who is necessary for Carlos to ever be able to continue on with his studies. Why can't it be that the government can act as Eric? We should consider why it is that students seek a social education and improve the overall environment for Carlos by providing better welfare.

The Big Man Can't Shoot

In this episode, Malcolm Gladwell tells us how the spread of ideas depends upon the openness or the threshold of the individual to accept the idea rather than how rational the idea is. I liked how the threshold argument brings back a degree of responsibility back to the individual actor. He tells us that mob mentality can't be an excuse. That being swayed has to do with how high or low our individual thresholds are. But I didn't quite get the difference between thresholds and peer pressure as even if every one has a different threshold, aren't thresholds also influenced by the others around me?

In the podcast, Malcolm Gladwell tells us that we often times do things that are irrational even though we are aware of it. To illustrate his point he uses the free throw and the NFL draft as examples.

I thought that with the free throw example, Malcolm Gladwell takes too much of a scientist's view of sports. I think he missed how sports is a competition and also at the same time a show. The reaction of the crowd seems to me an essential and natural aspect of sports itself just like the way we review movies or any TV show. If sports was solely about efficiency, players would never even practice dunks or do anything fancy.

Why would anyone go for a dunk when a normal layup achieves the same result and takes up less energy. People want to be "oohed and ahhed" and brought to their feet by some ridiculously cool move and that's why they're watching the game in the first place. I think people would rather see the player who loses, but shows them awesome moves, then the team that wins by strategically planning everything and not really giving much of a performance.  Sports stats are one thing and the number of crowd on their feet is perhaps another. (though most often than not most teams and players that show us the cool moves usually do win the game and have great stats as well) This aspect is something I think Malcolm Gladwell overlooked in his argument.

But, at the same time I do see how wanting to be cool can be problematic to a player who doesn't yet have the basics, but practices only the fancy looking maneuvers.
Playing basketball I always wanted to start with the shooting, the moves that can make me get a few points rather than doing the boring dribbling or basic passing practice.
(Below is an advertisement I was reminded of)

Moral Licensing

I had two main questions after listening to the podcast: 
(1)Why does moral licensing happen and when are we susceptible to fall into licensing? 
(2)Are we forever doomed to just continue on opening and closing doors with racism still in the house?

(1) Why does moral licensing happen? I thought that Malcolm Gladwell gives a very interesting framework from which to examine the bigotry of our current society and an explanation as to why racism and sexism has been able to persist for so long. But, he doesn't really explain why moral licensing occurs and why we are so vulnerable to it. Is it just human nature?
I thought of instances in which people are motivated to continue to do good work in order to maintain their good grades and thought that there are also many cases in which we continue to do morally good behavior. One difference between grades and morality is objectivity. We may be vulnerable to moral licensing because morality can't be objectively measured. It is up to the individual to grade his own racism/sexism test sheet, and he may be cheating himself. This is perhaps what differs racism from diets and tests because when you indulge you'll know sooner or later by the number on your weight scale that eating that hamburger after exercising wasn't the best idea. But when we moral license our prejudices we may never have a number on ascale warning us that something went wrong somewhere. Those who moral license may even go so far as to aggrandize their previous good behavior to make the license more legitimate. This distorted idea of the progress allows a little show of morality to become more than enough to justify disproportionately immoral actions. Perhaps another reason why moral licensing happens is because there is less linkage between moral behavior and morality then we think. External factors like the fear of your peers thinking you indulge in racism can make you conform to moral behavior, but this doesn't necessarily mean you've become a more moral person.


perhaps we feel now that having such values aren't important as jobs seem to go down

So, (2) how can we motivate people to do moral behavior consistently?
I think it all seems to come down to being sincerely awareness of our biases and having a clear committed goal. People have to be sincerely aware that the biases they harbor can be wrong and dangerous, not just because society frowns at those who aren't tolerant of different people. 
Perhaps the problem is that people don't "know" that being misoginist is really wrong. Even though America considers itself more open, considering how there were so many "shy trump" voters fooled the polls seems to suggest that perhaps we only flout the values that bring us vanity. Perhaps these values are only things that are said to be important, but not truly understood.


Perhaps we should stop frowning as much at those we think are intolerant and immoral and pursue a different approach to cultivating morality.