Arranged Marriage

I was talking with this colleague of mine who hailed from India. He was telling me the story of how he met his lovely wife:

"So my mom summoned me one day after lunch. She opened a book with a few photographs and asked me to pick one."

"After I picked one, the girl I picked went out for a couple of meals with me. Both of us approved of the other side, and her family and my family were obviously alright with it or else her photo would not have been in the book."

"So we got married." He did not tell me how much the dowry was to my great disappointment.

All in all it sounded like a very convenient way of finding a life partner. But to our modern ears, it seems a bit unromantic, and one may wonder whether such a orchestrated approach can lead to romantic bliss or not. However from what I have read on the Internet, its proponents claim that couples produced through such means end up happier than the usual couple on average.

Is this true? I suppose the happiness that stems from an arrangement, especially where that is the norm, is due to the fact that one tends not to lament about unpicked choices, as the pool to pick from is small. In other words, a free-market dating society is akin to a large supermarket where you have twenty different types of bread to choose from and you have to pick one, while an arranged marriage society is more like a store where there are two or three brands only. So people spend less time thinking about the alternatives and tell themselves that "my current choice is the best".

Why I look down on (some) Girl gamers

I do not believe that girls should not play videogames. On the contrary, I believe that the right to play games is an inalienable human right, ranking on par with the rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. What I look down on is a certain behavioral trait among certain girl gamers.

Before I expound on this trait let me relate a tale: I used to play King of Fighters (a highly technical fighting game) in arcades. One fine day I saw this fellow who had a shrunken left arm, probably due to polio or something of the sort. He sat down, and since he could not grip the joystick with his left hand, he used his elbow to handle it. The other players fought him with respect, and he defeated countless numbers of them fair and square, till he earned the everlasting worship of all gamers present at that glorious occasion.

Did he ask for quarter because of his handicap? I'll bet the thought never once crossed his valiant soul.

Yet when I play Dota, I keep seeing girls type "hey don't go so hard on me, I'm a girl". To me this is an affront to the spirit of all gamers, an insult to the gods of gaming, for they admire those who revel in fighting against the strongest that others can throw at them.

If the girl said that she was a new player and asked for allowance due to that, I would grant it no matter what gender the player is. But asking on account of gender is simply disgraceful, unless one were to assume that the female gender is possessed of an inferior intellect, which I disagree with. In the physical realm I would cut girls some slack, yes, but not in the arena of the mind - which games belong to.

So if you are a girl gamer, and you do not say the aforementioned sentence, I congratulate you and welcome you to the realm of warriors. If you do, be inspired by the example of the handicapped guy I raised above, and swear off such cowardly statements for all time.

A small Psychological Insight

There was a woman who lived next door to a family with a noisy baby. Originally she never particularly liked the baby; in fact she felt the baby was rather annoying when it kept crying in the afternoon while she was trying to take a nap. Then one day, the house the baby was in caught fire, and the family was all out. The woman rushed in and managed to save the baby. From that day on, she liked the baby very much and did not dislike its afternoon crying any more. Someone asked her:"How come you like this baby so much more now?" The woman replied:"Oh, because I risked my life for it!"

So we can see that people like something more when they contribute towards it. This is because of two reasons. The first reason is because they feel that they have made "an investment" in it, whether the investment be of money, of time or of effort. This is why you see guys chasing after girls for years and spending tons of money to buy expensive gifts for them, they feel "it would be a great pity" to stop chasing, because of the sunken costs involved.

The second reason is because of the feeling of superiority. This is why you see older people feeling very happy when a younger person asks for their advice on anything; they feel that it shows respect, and it proves the greatness of their intellect and character to be asked for advice. If you don't believe me, go back and ask your boss for advice on your work (when he is in a good mood), and I bet he will like you more after that.

Looking at this, we can tell that if you want someone to like you, the idea is to make them invest in you. Girls often do this inadvertently by telling a guy about their sad moments or how their boyfriend doesn't treat them well, and the poor idiot immediately falls: "She must be confiding in me because I'm a manly man!" Idiot. The idea is to:

1. Make the party you are interested in care for you. Maybe tell a sad story or something, but don't reveal all in one go.
2. Make the other party help you in some way. If you can't achieve this straight out, maybe do an exchange, eg: you treat the other party to eat in exchange for him/her to do an assignment for you. At least both sides have a sunken cost then.

This works for both genders!

The Source of Moral Values

An argument often used to support the existence of a Creator is that there are certain absolute fundamental moral values which are common to every society, and that these values must come from a higher being. When these values are violated, our conscience feels pangs of disturbance, hence our conscience must be divinely given.

I feel this argument is not valid.

Are there really absolute moral values? Let us look at the first commandment: Thou shalt not kill.

For many ancient societies, the duty of a son to avenge his father's murder was sacrosanct - take Hamlet for example. The ancient Chinese felt just the same way. Yet today, we believe in the law taking its due process, and some societies believe that the death penalty should not be given out no matter what the situation is. Many nations impose capital punishment that would not have been imposed in another nation, for instance the mandatory death sentence for selling or transporting drugs where I stay.

Clearly there is no absolute moral value here.

Another touted "absolute value" is the prohibition against stealing. But if we look into folklore, Robin Hood is regarded as a hero. In an era where the rich lived large and the poor went hungry, a thief like him WAS a hero, but in a more egalitarian society he would not be one. Here again the idea of rules that always apply fail.

Therefore we can see that there are no absolute moral values, as they change to fit the situation in different times and places. If there are values that coincide between societies, that is because such values are those that help most societies survive and prosper.

Perception Bias

One day I was chatting with my friend. She was pinching her arm and lamenting how fat she had become; when in truth she wasn't fat at all, which I pointed out. "Compare me with X (a slim girl)," she exclaimed. I then said "But you are thinner than Y (a plumper girl)."

She then answered "hey don't compare me with fat girls." After we had finished laughing, I gave some thought to the matter. Surely if one wishes to determine one's level of fatness in society, one should compare to everyone, both the fat and the slim ones. But my friend only compared herself to slim people.

An analogous example is when one says that businessmen are rich. From my observation, the successful ones are rich, yes. But many are just surviving, and many have failed. Why do we not include them in our overall assessment? Obviously there is a bias here - we tend to observe the ones which we aspire to be like, thus skewing our perception of the average towards that direction.

In a way, this biased perception serves a purpose for society: it spurs us on to achieve more. Yet we should also maintain a sense of perspective, for if we keep shifting the line of comparison upwards, the level of stress in society will constantly increase as well.

Liberal vs Conservative Values

We often hear arguments about whether premarital sex is moral or not. I think this topic of argument is an interesting one to dissect; as it is a very good example of the clash between liberal and conservative values.

The liberal side of the argument cites the principle of freedom in supporting the legitimacy of sex before marriage, i.e. if both parties are adult and willing, and nobody is hurt by the act, why is it not moral? On the other hand the conservative side attacks on two fronts: the first being that religion and tradition forbid it, the second being that the risk of STDs, pregnancies, and distraction from study is a negative influence upon society.

If we analyze the conservative side carefully, the first reason can really be included under the second reason, for why does religion and tradition speak against premarital sex? Obviously because of the aforementioned practical risks of disease and unwanted babies. Religious doctrine is usually closely tied to practicality (in its time), for example the Jewish and Muslim edict against eating pork is due to the high risk of parasites in pig meat compared to other edible animals. We can see that most cultures traditionally place a higher value on female virginity compared to male; this is because if a woman had sex before or outside marriage, it is hard to ascertain the paternity of the baby she gives birth to, so the husband's family property might go to a genetic outsider. A man obviously cannot pass off a kid born outside as his wife's kid, so his virginity is of less importance. Therefore religion and tradition both speak from a practical viewpoint.

Let us generalize this to other points of dispute between liberal and conservative viewpoints:

A. Premarital sex - Liberals argue on the basis of freedom, conservatives argue on the risks of STDs, pregnancies, and historically the doubt of paternity.

B. Listening to parents - Liberals argue that children, once past the age of adulthood, should have complete freedom in deciding their future, as well as marriage partners, due to the fundamental right of liberty. Conservatives argue that parental opinion should be given more weight as parents have more experience and can often make better choices.

C. Gay marriage - Liberals argue that people are people regardless of gender, so everyone should have equal rights to get married. Conservatives argue that this is against religion and tradition, and that marriages are meant to be between men and women so that kids can be produced. I will elaborate on this later.

The common points between these three examples are that liberals argue based on absolute values such as freedom and equality, while conservatives argue based on practical points, probabilities. The probabilities are:

A. Higher chance of something bad happening. (STDs and pregnancies)
B. Same as above (if the kid pursues an art or musical career, it is statistically much more risky than pursuing a career in law or medicine)
C. A society which has more gay marriages will, on average, have fewer kids than one in which it is banned. In times where population growth is important, which was most of history, this is a negative.

Conservatives attempt to define a course which is "more likely to produce a stable outcome".

This is why liberals are stronger now than a hundred years ago: society is now much more prosperous and advanced, so we have more room to make mistakes. Two hundred years ago a women with a baby out of wedlock would be in a dreadful state with no man willing to marry and provide economically for her, but now women can work and support themselves, there is government welfare, and abortions can be obtained. With the modern economy, more economic opportunities abound so kids who do not listen to their parents and do something strange do not starve as easily, even without the support of the family. And lastly for gay marriage, with our current population levels we are not worrying about not having enough people to fight against bears or invading barbarians, hence the gradually relaxing attitude.

If we consider current attitudes towards homosexuality, it can be seen that urban areas tend to be more accepting of it that rural areas. This may not only reflect a more progressive mindset, but also that a higher population density affects our subconscious mind in the sense that for us city-dwellers, increasing population is fairly low down on our list of importance.

In other words, we now have more room to make mistakes, so the 'high probability of stability' path of conservatism can be increasingly forsaken for the 'absolute ideals' path of liberality. I predict that if times get tough, conservative values will again rise to greater importance.

My Religious Beliefs

Disclaimer: Please do not read further if you tend to feel insulted by unorthodox religious beliefs.

Personally my belief is somewhat close to Buddhism.

I think somewhere in the universe, probably in another dimension, there is a clearinghouse where souls wait to be assigned to different lifeforms. Each time we descend to enter a body, all memories of the past are locked so that we cannot access them, thus when we are born our mind is a blank slate. However when we return to the clearinghouse we can access all the memories of all our lives.

So coming to this world is really like starting a new game, one that restarts each time we are born. What would be the purpose of this then? At first glance it seems rather meaningless. But I think each time we come down we receive different experiences; we explore different facets of life. For instance, in past lives I could have been a pregnant mother, a king, a beggar, a great warrior, a victim of war, a scientist or a man of religion. When I go back to that clearinghouse all the memories mold together so that I can understand the universe and the true nature of life better.

The more diverse these experiences are, the faster we get to understand truth. If I had been an ordinary worker in every life, this would not help me attain wisdom very quickly as all my memories would be mundane ones, the most vivid might be banging a different girl in each life, but after a few lives that would feel the same as well. What would help would be something like being a conqueror that slays millions in one life, then a man whose family is killed in war in another.

As for karma, does it exist? I am inclined to doubt it. For compared to our true form as souls, life as flesh is truly insignificant. For us to hold on to grudges from these lives would be as foolish as two people fighting because one fellow killed the other in a computer game (not that I have not seen this happen before). So why should deeds from one "game" affect the starting conditions in the next round?

I think that the conditions which we are born under, whether rich or poor, healthy or sick, beautiful or ugly, smart or dumb do not reflect our deeds in the past, but instead represent different starting conditions in which we begin each round of gaming, and these variations paired with our actions bring us different life experiences. Just the same as you would play a hand of poker differently depending on whether the two cards that were dealt initially were a pair of aces or a three and an eight.

Then we may ask: is doing good of no consequence? Should we commit evil since this life is unimportant anyway? This is the question my philosophy cannot answer. My personal feeling is that although the actual impact of our actions are of no consequence on the cosmic scale, if we keep harboring negative intentions in every life it may impede our understanding of the universe, thus slowing down our ascension to divinity.

So when we finally understand everything and do not need to go into the cycle of life again, we merge with all the other souls that achieve enlightenment. This entity is the most powerful being in the universe. It would also be very very bored as there are no challenges, so its pasttime would be to contemplate within itself. Fortunately its members bring in a lot of experiences and perspectives. So for their sake, we must all strive to attain nirvana so we can join them and add our experiences into the pool.