WEDNESDAY, 1 JUNE 2005
15:41
The feudal order and the organised societies that followed the feudal order are good illustrations of how one is born with certain information – never anchored in concrete, but according to which people nevertheless live out their lives.
A similar situation exists today. Unless you are born with excellent – indeed, superior – pedigree and other information in terms of position, wealth and prescribed role and function – you fall in the group in which most people find themselves: where your position and your value for all practical purposes amount by default to next to nothing in the Greater View of Things, or Only of Value for Friends and Family.
What it comes down to is that by the time you are a functioning adult, you sort into one of three groups: a) next to nothing in the Greater View of Things, Only of Value for Friends and Family; b) role, function and value that extend beyond your Circle of Friends and Family; c) next to nothing in the Greater View of Things, and of No Value for Any Living Being. (Train arrives. The point: if it is not given, make it a reality.)
16:08
Statement: Some people’s lives only have value for friends and family, and by chance possibly for a few outside this circle. (Let us call it for the moment Type A.)
Statement: Some people’s lives have value for family and friends, and by their own will also for a few outside this circle. (Type B)
Statement: Some people’s lives have value for family and friends, and by their own will also for people they will never personally meet, in places that will never be visited by this person. Thus, his or her value exceeds the time and place where his or her existence takes place. (Type C)
Statement: Some people’s lives have value for family and friends, and by their own will for people they will never personally meet, in places they will never visit; these individuals’ names will be recorded in the official political history of a nation. (Type D)
Statement: Same as Type D, but to a significant extent because of given factors rather than own will, for example, the crown prince of the British royal family. (Type E)
Note: Some Types A accept their fairly limited value. Others murmur, but never actually do anything to change it (can therefore be called, respectively Type A and Type A2).
Statement: Some people’s lives have no value for friends and family (possibly because of the absence of the person in the lives of family and former friends, and/or the absence of friends and family in the person’s life), and also has no value for any human or animal. (Type A2)
FRIDAY, 3 JUNE 2005
01:45
I don’t write often enough that she is wonderful, that my life without her was dull, and that a life without her knowing that she exists is unthinkable. […] I hope indeed this is the end of a very long road, and the beginning of one that will prove to be much longer.
19:10
[…]
Still I wonder:
Should life be enjoyed,
or should life be utilised productively to achieve certain results,
or should life be applied to the realisation of a purpose that transcends given time and place?
Or all three, perhaps?
19:25
Young Taiwanese gang members are among the most conservative members of society. They obey their masters; they do what they’re told; they don’t question anything, and they obligingly wear the same uniforms every day.
[The above is my observation. I have never spent any time in a Taiwanese criminal organisation, so I wouldn’t know how many young members actually rebel against the old guard, how often orders are ignored, and how often plans are questioned. About the uniforms, I am pretty sure, though.]
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