Dreams: Is it even a good thing to have?

Remember those times when you were a kid? Your parents probably would ask you such question:

“What do you want to be in the future?”

Most of us (as a kid) would say anything that seems cool to do in the first place. I used to tell my parents that I wanted to become a pilot (a fighter jet pilot, not even a civilian airplane pilot) and they smiled and assured me that I would be able to do so.

Influenced by fictional characters in video games, particularly those fantasy-based games. I grew up and was greatly influenced by the personality of these characters. They held on their dreams so stubbornly until the very end with the attitude of “Even if I were to die, I would die trying.” As the result, the concept of having a dream is engraved in my very principle of life where it is as important as having a name to me. For me, it is something that defines who you are, just as how your name defines you.

I happened to stumble upon this series of illustrations about something that is very real  (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151529969805597.832108.576980596&type=3) and sad. As adequately put by the album description, it is not a sadness of losing someone dear, but more towards the sadness on how a kiwi could not fly. The story was perfectly realistic and a satisfactory representation of today’s society. Starting from the days where you were optimistic, you dreamed on doing things that you like. You blindly stopped doing things that you dislike. It was not until later that you found that life is not a sweet thing. Life is all about compromise. To compromise not being able to get your dream job and to compromise not being able to do what you want. People call that: “growing up”.

Such story provided me with a food of thought of the nature of having a dream at the first place. Is it a good thing to have? Or is it a bad thing to have? If you have a dream, you would consciously (or subconsciously) divert your whole energy towards the fulfilment of your dream. While it sounds rather good and easy at first, the journey towards your dream is often harsh and unforgiving. Why? Simply because you can’t have everything. In life, I (or at least, I thought) I learned that perfection is an illusion. There is no way one could board on two different ships sailing towards two different directions. As depressing as it sounds, pursuing your dream would mean to devalue all other things that will not bring you closer to your dream.

You see, it’s all about compromise indeed and I find it very depressing. For your dream, you have to spend less time with your friends. For your dream, you have to leave your loved ones behind. For your dream, you would even need to disappoint many of your peers. For your dream, you might need to jeopardize a relationship. And worse, in the end, with all those sacrifices, there is no guarantee that you would ever reach your dream at all. Thus, I ask myself:

“Is it really worth it? To have a dream.”

I have yet to find the answer to that. Probably, it might not be worth it at all. Why settle for such hardships while you could enjoy a good job, get married, raise kids and live happily ever after in the expense of your dream? I really don’t know why. Really. Probably, it is between the difference in our upbringing, culture we enjoy, environment we lived in, experiences we had, books we read, quotes we shared, friends we talked to, parents we loved, teachers we asked advices from and figures we aspired to be like.

For me, I think I am fighting a losing battle here, but at least I am fighting for something that I believed in. I would like to seek the answer by myself and the only way to do that is to pursue my dream until the very end, appreciate the journey and decide the answer for myself. Life is, anyway, all about making mistakes and learn from it and thus, so be it.

“Why should we win all the times? Why could not we afford to lose? Nobody’s keeping the scores anyway.”

I would consider myself a lucky one. I was surrounded by my parents and bunch of friends who I can’t thank enough for being my pillar of support throughout all my trials. I am very grateful towards their never-ending support and love and it often saddens me that there is nothing much that I can do to them to return their favours.

As adequately put by a quote shared by one of my friends to me:

“To reach a dream, one has to break many walls in between.
Life is a test; She just want to see how bad you want it.”

peace
vixklen

…..

Raw brain power.
Dedication.
Communication skills.
Curiosity.
Attention to detail.

Tales of Razgriz

Amidst the eternal waves of time
From a ripple of change shall the storm rise
Out of the Abyss peer the eyes of a demon
Behold the Razgriz, it's wings a black sheath

The demon soars through dark skies
Fear and death trail it's shadow
Until men united wield a hallowed sabre
In the final reckoning the beast is slain

As the Demon sleeps man turns on man
His own blood and madness spread throughout the earth
From the depths of despair awaken the Razgriz
It's raven wings ablaze with majestic light

Make KONY famous!

Joseph Kony, world’s worst criminal, who was previously unknown to the world now has came into the world’s spotlight thanks to an impactful movie by InvisibleChildren group.

We need your support to make him famous! Want to know why?

We need the Uganda army to keep moving with the technology which would be mentored by US Army advisors which would be deployed by US Government in the interest of the public. If the interest lives, the search will lives and Joseph Kony would be captured in no time.

Spread the awareness!

peace
Vixklen

Idiocracy and evolution

I happened to stumble upon this movie named “Idiocracy” in facebook. One of my friend shared the youtube link quoting the importance of knowledge for our future generation even knowing that you won’t innovate some time-machine; but the least one could do is to preserve the good genes into the gene pool. What does she mean by this? First few minutes of the movie said it all loud and clear.

The movie kicked off by showing a case study. Suppose that we have a couple with an average IQ of 140 and another couple with an average IQ of 85 in two different environment. The former adhered to modern, civilized, proper lifestyles and education while the latter succumbed to nearly anarchic with improper education and chaotic lifestyles with their main focus revolving around uncontrolled hedonism i.e. booze, drugs, adultery etc. Logically speaking, according to Darwin’s theory of evolution about the natural selection, the superior species often will emerge victorious, survive and pass on their genes to their offspring. However, being on the top of the food chain and the absence of natural human predators, Darwin’s theory of evolution would no longer hold.

Why is that the case? The movie showed it very clearly in its first few minutes. Back to our case study, in 5-10 years in the future, the former couple still do not have any children due to prolonged financial considerations. Worse, our society is moving towards a more liberal-thinking realm, magnifying our individual desires to be of higher priority than having kids which are often seen as ‘dead-end’. But, what about the latter couple? You’ve guessed it. Hedonistic lifestyles may translate into more accidental pregnancy and therefore, more (accidental) offspring due to loose and irresponsible social behaviour.

So, what so bad about it? Suppose that both couples have the same life expectancy and would die at the same time, the former couple may only have 1-2 offspring while the latter may have a lot of (accidental) offspring. These results translate into the reduction of ‘good genes’ and increment of ‘bad genes’ in the population. If one is to extrapolate this, constant drop of average IQ in the population will be expected. This movie highlighted this possibility of mankind moving towards the idiocracy as the result of increasing ignorance towards knowledge and science. More and more people are moving towards a more practical and easier life (simply because we all know science is not a walk in a park; we’ve all been through it), while less and less people are interested in preserving the knowledge for the future i.e. teachers.

The movie itself is actually not so fantastic, with a lot of profanity and absurdities. But, I like how they are able to pinpoint this particular aspect of human life and extrapolate it to give us – the viewers – a heads-up on a brewing genetic catastrophe.

Here’s the movie link:

Kudos for the guy for uploaded the WHOLE movie up on Youtube.

peace
vixklen

Just Kang Gary

Someone asked him, "What's the three main element in making music?"

He answered, "Feel~ Soul~ My life~"

peace
vixklen

Fine Art Photography

A few days ago, the online community gave me a pleasant surprise on my deviant-art gallery. One of my works was chosen as the “Daily deviation” in the category of Horror/Macabre Photography. From what I understood from deviant-art FAQ, “Daily deviation” was kind of a form of recognition from the deviant-art staff community to a few particular artworks of quality which deserved a wider recognition and appreciation from the greater audience. I happened to upload my photography work during my exchange to Seoul National University to deviant-art and one of the pictures from the sequence was chosen. The quote given by the staff read as follows:

“The wonderful abstract macabre photo, Social mockery by ~vixklen, is reminiscent of ones worst feelings of rejection and discrimination. As if you were nothing more than a ghost among them...” ( Featured by `Reaper-X )

The funny thing was that I never thought that THAT particular picture would be of significant interest to the viewer. I always thought that the last picture of the series would be the one that gave the highest impact to the viewer. But, I guess this is what make ‘art’ interesting – the interpretation of a work is something boundless and highly imaginative process. The majority of the comments that I received from the community due to my overnight-fame was that the objects in my photograph seems to resemble ‘penguins’ mocking the viewers. Honestly, until today, I still can’t see any penguins in that photograph.

My work titled “Psychopath” was a photography assignment that I received when I took a fine-art photography class in Seoul National University. The assignment was to produce photographs of certain artistic value. Every week, lectures given were mostly about the works of famous (if not legendary) photographers such as Henri-Cartier Bresson, Duane Michals, Diane Arbus etc with the objective to spark certain inspiration and idea in our heads. I was particularly fascinated with the work of Duane Michals on horror-themed photographic sequences. The horror value combined with photographic elements made the works so beautiful and impactful as well as scary. A particular work that I was very fond of was named “The Bogeyman”.

It all began when I was deciding on which topic should my assignment adopt. I started the conceptualization by asking “What does I really want the audience to see?”. I found this question terribly hard to answer even after a prolonged time of contemplation and visualization attempts. A few days after that, I realized that it was easier for me to visualize what I dislike rather than things that I like. Thus, I began to explore the fearful side of mine. I began with my near-phobia trait of mine towards horror-themed movies and I realized that I have a very low tolerance towards murder-based stories in which the murderer may have developed a certain mental instability. This realization led me to the university library researching about particular antisocial personality disorder named ‘psychopathy’.

In the next few days, I surrounded myself with psychology journals and published medical records of a few patients available at the library which was relevant to this topic. I have to say that some of these records were pretty ‘graphic’ to read. One story that I remembered was about this son and his rich father who would supply him with excessive wealth which led to the personality disorder in his son’s mind. After gathering a few stories and trying to understand the mental disorder, I managed to come up with a certain ‘story’ on how one would develop this personality disorder due to his/her social environment.

The most interesting fact that I learned about ‘psychopathy’ is that these guys are the most talented humans who are capable of hiding their true nature in front of the society. They are often hold top positions in their career due to their exquisite ability to convince others to believe that they are indeed ‘normal’. They are reported to have a very strong charisma and often, one may have fallen to this ‘disorder’ without even realizing it at the first place. They always have ‘motives’ behind their self-made ‘personality mask’ and this may be either positive or negative traits. Hollywood portrayal of psychopathy often correlate psychopathy towards ruthless murderers and this is actually an exaggerated portrayal of such mental disorder – an extreme case, if I may add. On other hand, true motives of a person with such disorder may be positive and may not fit well in the immediate society, resulting in the personality disorder.

It is interesting to note that ‘psychopathy’ is NOT equivalent to ‘double personality disorder’. “Double personality disorder” is a personality disorder where one would assume dual and distinctive personalities subconsciously. In psychopathy, one would consciously plant the ‘seed’ of his/her second personality inside him/her which he/she will use when he/she is in contact with external society to hide the true motives/obsessions that he/she may have.

peace
vixklen