I guess when we were young, we only think of one thing: ourselves. Our needs, our wants… we are self-centered. We don’t really think about what anyone else wants, mainly because we probably haven’t developed our empathy – and after all, who is to say that “other people” are not just an illusion, a figment of our imagination? We can only be sure of our self, because we can only perceive what the self feels, not anyone else's.

And yet, somehow along the lines we begin to feel “sorry” for people. We become “happy for someone”, because they achieved something, and we feel “guilty”, because we know how we made someone else feel, and we think outside of the self, and into the surrounding world.

And going further, there will be times where the world seems to overwhelm us so much that we lose the sense of who we are, and the only thing in our minds is what the whole world needs, and what the whole world wants. It eats us and it consumes us… until we are nothing but a sponge that the world constantly hits on. And we lose our individual identities.

And most of the time… it’s just really simple. It’s only you and I, and nothing more.

It’s funny, isn’t it? The concept of self. How do we get this transition of thinking for only yourself, into thinking for others, and then opening up your heart to contribute to society and go beyond ourselves?
The thing is, I think, we all start from the self. But we humans are socializing creatures. We feel lonely if we don’t have anyone to talk to, if we become too self-centered. And this is why I feel that why while many people are starting to look at books about self-help, they never really feel happy about themselves.

The reason? Because they don’t go BEYOND self help. We feel happy and fuzzy inside when we help people. And the main reason for that is because we empathize. We are given the ability to understand how something feels without having to experience it. And we know how good it feels to be helped in times of need – and our brain replays it for us.

Self Help often just means putting us in the right state of mind so that the world seems better to us. It means making yourself do things that you probably wanted to do a long time ago, but never bothered.
It means changing yourself. But if you help others, not only do you change yourself, you also change other people’s lives, even if it’s just that one bit. And that gives you double the pleasure, and double the satisfaction. And not only that, people will often appreciate what you have done for them, and help you BACK when you are in need.

So what does this mean? I guess, it just shows that this is how we can get self-help from: We help others, to help ourselves feel better.

Every time that we throw a dice… every time that we get the computer to generate a random number… and every time we play cards and takes the card from the top of a deck… we call this randomness. A random event.

Or is it really random, or is it predetermined already? One can easily hack into the computer system and look at the way random numbers are generated. A dice throw is determined NOT by randomness, but by physics and the way that you threw the die. Taking a card from the top of a deck is already predetermined, and definitely not random.

From one of my previous posts, I have stated that perhaps if we look for the meaning of death, we may then find what many have been looking for centuries: the meaning of life. And today, I am going to explore one of the possibilities of the meaning of life, derived form the meaning of death.

Perhaps one of the main reasons that we have to have death in our lives is because death enables us to think about the possibility of having a life beyond death. And this is the only reason why many religions exist. What religion gives us is not a way to living your life to the full, or being nice and good to others, but it gives us the belief that we can live beyond death through the act of doing good.

One of the readers on this site once told me that God did not create evil in this world, but he created a lack of good instead. And as I was rather skeptical about this, I thought I should do a post on it today.

This was the argument: God is a perfect, all-knowing and kind deity that created the world for us to live in. Since God is perfect, he can only create goodness in this world. However, because he needs something for us to choose other than good to test our faith and our loyalty to him, he can only give us good, and a lack of good. However, this does not mean that there is evil in the world, as a lack of good is different to being evil.

Why do we philosophize? Is it just a hobby that many people like to dwell in or does it serve a bigger purpose? Is it just a futile thing that we humans like to dwell in, or can something good come out of it?
I mean, does it matter whether we wonder about philosophy or not? Many of the questions, like what is the purpose of life and whether there is a God, are going to be answered when we reach the end of our life anyway.

The human body has five basic senses: Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch and Smell. And from these senses, we are given the ability to perceive and we perceive the world and everything that is outside from ourselves.

But are our senses reliable? Do they really show what this world really is? This is what we are going to explore in this session: whether what we normally perceive with our senses is definitely what the world actually is.

Sight: What makes glass transparent? Glass is transparent, because the structure of the molecules in glass is structured in such a way that it does not distort light, making us perceive it as transparent.

Communism – it’s a very idealistic view of how a society can be run fairly, isn’t it? Where everyone is equal, and where everyone gets his or her share of the rewards and the profits where they work to their own ability. Communism lets everyone to have their fair share of work and the profits, and it does not let certain single individuals to take most of the profits for the work of his or her laborers.

Karl Marx, the first philosopher that proposed this idea, did say that communism is going to happen in a society where the laborers didn’t get their fair share of what they had made. And yet, while this theory does look good and perfect on paper, it does not hold together due to human nature and how it is prone to corruption, greed, and selfishness.

It seems that the human world is obsessed about being rational and logical, and the ability of it. From the moment that we are born, we were tested and labelled with our "intelligence" with the ability of our rational and logical thinking . Maths and Science are the two biggest areas in our human knowledge that uses our rational and logical thinking. And rational thinking, I must say, have given us the ability to conquer many "impossible" things, especially in our knowledge of our universe, and the developments of technology.

But let me give you this problem:

Occam's Razor states that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity", which can be understood as: the simplest explanation or strategy is usually the best one to solve or explain problems. Developed by a English philosopher, in the 14th century, it is now widely used for philosophy, science and other aspects of the modern day life.

Basically, for example, if you had to explain why you don't have your friends photos, an "I lost it" or even an "I forgot it at home" is better than "an alien took them while I was asleep last night for experimental purposes".

Which came first? The chicken or the egg? This is one of the first questions that we are asked when we were young relating to philosophy. Because the chicken and egg cycle goes around with no end and no start, we find it hard to find an answer.

Or is it?
Let us go back to when the earth was created, and when there were no chickens. Obviously, there has to be a first chicken, and a first egg. The first life form was probably the first type of bacteria, and that is probably your pre-chicken. Assuming that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is correct, then this pre-chicken, after millions and millions of generations, gave birth to the modern day chicken in this process.