Embracing Beauty

This is a week for socialising! I've chosen to go on leave starting today, which is Thanksgiving Day in US, and usually a quiet day at work. I have many social activities lined up for today, tomorrow and Saturday. 

I'll be catching up with my old Indonesian colleague W. later who is on a business trip to KL. We used to go out together a lot to Kota, Jakarta's bustling Chinatown during those good old days. The challenge for many of us these days is finding time and inclination to meet up with friends. Everyone has family responsibilities and these usually take priority. But it's important to meet up with old friends every now and then as it gives us a chance to rediscover who we are and how far we've come.

I'm not the type who would harbour regrets in life for I do not think we'll ever know which path we took would have turned out best. In life, we do not get to conduct control experiments: like "let's take path A and then path B with exactly the same starting conditions and see how they both unfold". If we had chosen path B and some bad outcome happened, how would we know that path A wouldn't have been worst?

Life is a complex system. Small changes now could lead to unexpected outcomes further down the road. We are all interconnected in a nexus of forces that play out unpredictably. We can only judge every moment based on immediately available fact, some which we are conscious of, many which we aren't. Many scientists and philosophers would even say that whichever choice we make, we have no control over the matter. There is no free will.

So my philosophy is to embrace the totality of every moment. There's no good or bad experience, but I know every experience contributes to my learning. My goal is to continuously train my NI (natural, as opposed to artificial intelligence or AI) model so that it performs better and better over time.

Emotions come from the bio-chemical reactions in the body.  Drugs can easily induce a feeling of wellbeing, happiness and love. If we have the right NI model, such states can also arise easily. Sometimes, a negative feedback loop of information can drive a model towards a state akin to depression. It's all up to us. What kind of information do we choose to consume and how do we consume them wisely, given our knowledge of the human body and mind?

There are many recommended paths laid out for us. Religion is the most prominent one. It is the easiest course to follow because its contents are rich and layered enough to provide something for everyone. It can satisfy the ritualistically inclined masses and the high-brow mystics and philosophers. 

When we follow a well-travelled path like religion, we feel secure and reassured. Finally, you have a map that lays out a path ahead for you and you are confident that it is the right one because so many have travelled the path before. Every fibre in your body also says so, because its religious tenets have awakened something in you. You have become a believer and how utterly sure you are that whatever you feel so right in your bones is the ultimate truth!

I love Jazz. But I also love baroque, classical, keroncong and popular rock music.  Do I think there's only one school of music that's the true music? Most certainly not! One deprives oneself of many beautiful aural experiences in life, if one were to be dogmatic about music. Similarly with religion.

I always think it is stupid to argue over which religion is the true one. Religious supremacists are ignorant of the beauty and vastness of human spirituality. Neither do I think that all institutionalised religions are the same. There's good music and so-so music. But the impulse to make music is a universal one. And that's what interests me most. Where does it come from? Is it a spandrel of evolution?

Purist Jazz lovers will think Fusion Jazz is bad. They are like religious fundamentalists. To me the evolution of religious beliefs is inevitable. It is like language. Teach English to a remote tribe and they will naturally develop their own slang and pidgin version of the language, spoken in their unique accent. Music, language and religion--they are all socio-cultural artifacts, the products of being human. 

Every time I listen to Bach, I would ask myself: isn't this the most beautiful music in the world? It feels like an awakening, like falling in love. It would be a problem if I were to stop there and just listen to Bach all my life, thinking that it is the ultimate music. There are different types of music out there that are beautiful in different ways. 

Life, put simply, is a process of embracing all the beauty that's out there in the world. Let's not be naively enthralled with just a single manifestation of it. The act of embracing is what makes life beautiful.