The Importance of Human Affection and Love

Our general condition in human society is that we all depend upon each other. We are social animals, and we must live and interact with one another. Yet it seems that we have lost any feeling of basic human affection or a sense of relatedness and closeness to others. Our society does not place any value on the idea of love or indeed show much interest in it. With material things being prized above all else, nothing is said, is it, about the importance of love for our fellow human beings? Lacking any such feeling of love, instead we put all our energy into making yet more money. And if we are concerned solely with exploiting others whenever possible, exerting control over them whenever we can, forever hoarding and competing, we will end up using any kind of situation whatsoever to further our own ends. In such an eventuality, the principle of loving our fellow human beings will have no currency whatsoever. Yet without this ideal of human affection, there is no happiness in the family, no happiness between couples, and no happiness between parents and children. However many millions of us there are all living here together, in our hearts each one of us will feel lonely and isolated.

What about the feeling of joy in one another's company? What about caring for other people and feeling they are our friends? What about trust and confidence in our dealings with others? They all seem to be cooling off. They seem to be lacking, don't they?

The reality is that we all have to live together on this one small planet of ours, and, in this day and age especially, we have to depend on one another to an enormous degree. Circumstances dictate that we have to think of the good of the whole planet and of all humanity. Yet we stay stuck in our limited personal views, dominated by ideas of "me" and "us." In the worst of cases, this leads to open conflict. What is missing, or never occurs to us, is a sense of cooperation or pulling together, and this is a recipe for all kinds of disaster. With the world population being what it is, it means we are facing real problems.

-- The Dalai Lama (Mind In Comfort and Ease)

There's something about chess

There's something about chess that helps me think through the issues of life. Not the where-do-i-go-after-i-die kind of issue, but the where-should-i-go-for-dinner-with-whom kind. Strange eh?

Welcome to me treating my blog like twitter (except with longer posts!). I'm wondering, will twitterphiliacs learn how to express complex thoughts succintly till we're surrounded by twitterites akin to haiku poets, or will they get twitterot and think only bite-sized thoughts?

Strange eh??

Insanely confused about 'formative assessment' / informal prose whee!

So, I'm part of this team that's writing a paper about formative assessment right? And I've read a shitload about it right? But not enough, so I'm still confused as hell, and I need to submit a draft of part of my section soon. It's not a lot of writing, but it's forcing me to confront the assumptions and gaps in knowledge that inevitably are exposed when one tries to define something carefully and thoughtfully.

But anyway.

It's really important to keep the mind fresh, and I actually haven't been writing informal prose (as this is, I hope), so this is my keep-mind-fresh activity of the day! I'm actually thinking about Don Goewey's work over at http://www.mysticcool.com/. He's got a whole book devoted to how continuous stress and fear contributes towards an unhealthy brain, and how the lack of fear and PRESENCE of positive emotions can contribute towards optimal brain function.

So let's think about happy things:
- cute little dog who's licking my foot as I type
- fantastic music (listening to Arch Enemy's "Wages of Sin")
- 7 original songs that I'm pretty proud of!
- loving girlfriend who's on her way over to my place :)
Plus, I'm employed on my own terms (which is a huge deal, given the state of the world/local economy).

Wow, rambling post. Ok, toodles, back to work!

I was wondering

I would still like to play chess on the streets. Matches that are quick and fun, matches that are more about -fun- than winning with the latest opening trick. At the same time, I'm wondering: if I set up at Clarke Quay, will I get chased away? Maybe I should just set up and see what happens.

"Chess neva die!!" / Jim Wallis / The Daily Show

Started playing again yesterday, after a layoff of months. There's something just more rewarding about chess than any other goof-off I could do on/offline. That being said, I realized it's quite impossible for me to blog about chess ALL the bloody time. So. I'm probably gonna expand this blog to include other non-chess stuff.

Like how awesome Jim Wallis was on The Daily Show. Go look it up. That guy's something else. Social justice!!

Take care of your pawns, because that's gonna ensure a really easy-to-win game.