This weekend was quite uneventful, luckily.
Hmm, how I wish EP3 ends. I don't have the motivation to work hard anymore, well, there is no reason to... other than my responsibility. I will probably stop procastinating tomorrow. Hopefully. Sorry, but I really have no idea why I am doing this anymore. With retarded people, and assholes. Well, it is a conglomerate of assholes who don't want to appreciate the beauty of things and waste part of their time here in foolishness. I have no idea why I should be trying to change them. I don't want to be a transitional leader, I am not fitted to be a leader either if I don't have the passion nor the motivation to change things. The things that keep me connected to here are just long gone. The feelings of excitement, exhaustion, exhilaration, all gone. What is left, is just an empty shell that is like a walking dead, working for nothing in order to pass the time and complete a seemingly stupid destiny, or rather, meaningful performance with a bunch of assholes who wouldn't appreciate it. I am not functioning, neither is the ExCo. Everybody seems to shirk or want to shirk their responsiblities. Stupid me for making a wrong decision in June.
Well, let's hope these senseless emotions and useless thoughts will be emptied by ranting here. Will expressing here do any good? Nope, it will just be a record for me to view when I finished the year. And an avenue to express my anger towards my stupidity. Towards my inability. Of what? Of leading? Or of executing what I planned? I need to learn more. Yeah, learn. Not rant.
Let's hope at the end of July, there would be no regrets. Only fruits of my hard work. Yeah, my hard work, not only the rest. I want to accomplish something this year. I have accomplished learning what is a Technical Director. Now, I need to learn what is a production crew. The small little puzzles of everything. Then, start to own the puny asses of bastards. Train my mental endurance, not be pissed off by them. In any case, there isn't any way to make Chinese Drama that fun eh. I want to, but well, there isn't any technical way to.
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Anyway, you gotta love lit. And the teacher. She asks us to do a presentation about Simulacra and Simulations. We are doing Matrix this term, and Matrix presents a wrong interpretion of this philosophical treatise. And we, the students, do not have any foundation about philosophy, about what the concept is talking about. What is Borge's Fable? What is postmodernism? What is simulacrum? I think it is quite retarded to ask us do a presentation on something that we have to take about a week's worth of free time to fully analyze and TRY to comprehend its awesomeness. The book is fking hard to understand, and there isn't many internet sources on this book, nor guides to comprehend it. I think it is quite stupid to ask us do a presentation on this when this is such a complicated topic, though worth studying, will take a bunch of intelligent students. I started on the presentation, and passed to Perry and Tiet Ho. I wonder how they will continue it.
Anyway, with regards to the book itself, it is intellectually challenging for me to read it. It took quite a long time before I understood the first page of the book. And I realized that at every paragraph, there are bound to be examples that I have no contextual knowledge (Tasadays? Castaneda?), or unknown words (simulacra, vicissitudes, preces) in which I have to go find myself. I only roughly skimmed through the first few pages of the book, and I only went to search some of the stuff for fun. I think the book is interesting, but super hard to understand.
3rd Order Simulacrum is screwed. We are living in a society where the real has been distorted since there isn't any way to distinct between the real and the imaginary, and the imaginary, or the representations and simulacrum, determines this reality. It means that the signs and symbols we make in this world now determine what we perceive as reality. And these signs now do not have any relation to reality anymore, such that we will never be able to delve into what is the absolute truth anymore.
e.g. Money. Money is used to measure the worth of everything now. What is worth is what is expensive. But what most of us neglect now is the workmanship of an item, the practicality of an item, the hard work of a labourer. We measure items to money, we value them with money. And now, we do not really question the worth of what we really have now, e.g. time. We only measure our lives against this value of money. Plots of land are valued in money, artifacts, paintings are also the same. But that isn't the reality, the real "real".
I admit that my interpretation may be flawed, and totally inaccurate as I have not really tried to understand it sentence by sentence. I am just trying to make sense of the bunch of meaningful words that is too complicated beyond my brain's extent of understanding and logic. But I think this nihilistic view is quite interesting, that only hyperreality exists now and that the real "reality" can no longer recreate itself. But what does this view mean to this world? Is Baudrillard merely making a comment on the postmodern culture? Or does he want to show/express something? Or want to impact his readers? The loss of absolute truth, or rather that now the truth that hides the fact that there is no truth, how does it affect our society? Does he mean that our lives are now meaningless? Since there is no more reality, even in religion (in his book he does state that), whatever we are doing does not have any ultimate purpose or destiny. And that whatever we are doing, only leads to our death. And nothing after that.
Even then, we can question, so what is the use of helping others? Doing what is defined as right in the society, helping others, which is deemed to be a kind and selfless act. It seems to be true that it does not really have any technical value to such acts, since all of these only disappear when we die. But there is this question of what happens in the afterlife. Is there life after death? It is such incertainty that still encourages people to believe in karma, in god, in divinity. It may be true that the God we worship now in temples is just but representations of its own, and there isn't any truth in it as the signs are only symbolizing the signs created. But it may be also true that in the true reality, God does exist. This is the region where we are unable to venture to, since there isn't any way of proving it or disproving it. Or is there? I think we will never know. And if by helping someone, you make somebody feel positive to his or her life, even if that is false happiness or whatsoever, at least that individual feels sort of better. Whether this positive feeling will make any meaning in this unknown universe or not, we will never know. But at least these individuals are conditioned to know that this positive feeling is a positive one, and they feel good. Isn't that enough.
But again, I think the book makes sense in what it is saying. It seems as if we humans, are plunging ourselves to further stupidity, since we are now only distancing ourselves forever from the real truth, where the knowledge is surely definite. And this plethora of concepts and logic of everything will never be known if his argument is true. If I have time, I will want to read an introductory book to philosophy, read the fundamental philosophies that most of postmodern works are founded on, or are trying to disagree with, then read this book. Joshua recommends reading Fight Club. I have no idea what it is about. But I think such books will allow us to learn a lot and change our thinking. If we delve into sentence by sentence, I will probably learn a lot more vocabluary, learn some history stuff that they list down as examples. And most importantly, the way they present their argument, articulating these concepts in an understandable manner.
I want to try to disagree with such nihilistic views, so as to find meaning in life. It will be very fun to do so, if I had the calibre to. I wonder how the authors create such arguments from zero to that whole chunk of text. Like they just created another new domain of knowledge.
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Then, I also tried to follow some drawing tutorials. Crap, I totally failed. It takes time to get used to drawing the body in proportions I guess. All my drawings look super weird. At least, I know how to draw a basic eye properly now. And the basic anatomy of humans and chibis. Knowing it and applying it... totally different. This is like knowing the physics of what makes a bicycle stable and being movile, and knowing how to ride it. Totally different. Crap... I want more time to try drawing!!!
I should just try and draw from manga I guess. Then, I will have some basic concepts. Let's go!
And I want to touch on photomanipulation again, a super fun domain.
Rain.
Desert.
Forest.
Need to try these!
And after drawing people, I shall learn drawing backgrounds as well. But I am not taking time to draw. I want to improve goddamnit. I want to be proer than AEP students. Lol, impossible. They are forced to draw every week, forced to design something, and here I am slacking. I have not touched photoshop for 3 months.
Design seems to be no longer an integral part of my life. But it is still my passion, I guess. Sadly, I doubt that it will be my job or anything. Unless I take up impossible pangs of courage to go on a design course in poly, or go La Selle, in which I need a great foundation or I would be rejected. Impossible. I am not that courageous yet, nor would I want to disappoint my parents.
I do not really have any other interests... perhaps Philosophy. But, I seriously do not have any foundation in it either. I wasted too much of my youth in games, I should have read up more, drew more.
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Life seems super screwed. But I can't dwell on the past... I want to make use of my future.
Every tiny bit second. Don't waste time...
Let's hope I achieve it. Jiayou!
The past is long and gone,
The present is fading every moment,
And the future is being grasped every second.
Memories have faded like the sunset,
Time has eroded like the sand on the beach,
Regrets have withered away like the winter leaves,
But the dreams must not be forgotten like the monuments,
But the wishes must no be parting like the butterflies on migration,
But the wills must never disappear like mist.
Some items are allowed to leave us,
But some must be grasped.
By grasping onto them,
do we remember what are we here for.
With dreams, wishes, and our wills, can we strive to make the difference.
Whatever the difference is, by leaving the marks on the world,
We know we are breathing,
and living.
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Hmm, I can still chunk out bullshit, not bad. I need to improve my vocabluary to prevent some nonsense from occuring again.
