career goal

I want to live a meaningful life. What's absolutely essential is that I make some positive contribution to society, and I've been thinking for a while about the best way for me to do that. I think the more of a contribution I make, the more fulfilling my life will be. It will be easier to make a contribution if it's in something that I'm interested in and that I'm good at. I think I pretty much want to devote the rest of my life to teaching math. The significance, the good it does, is that I would be helping people think more clearly and logically, and that I would try to get people to see the beauty of mathematics.

a more thorough explanation of my thoughts

For a long time, many thoughts have been lingering in my mind and last night I decided to get most of them down on this blog. That resulted in last night's post. For some reason I kept meaning to write them down but I never did until last night -- I was paralyzed by all these thoughts and kept putting it off. But I did write them down, and I felt much better. I don't know whether or not it is uncommon for someone of my age (21) now to be so preoccupied by those thoughts. But then again, my whole life has been pretty unusual. I think I'm more reflective than most people my age, and it probably has to do with the fact that I've been alone for a great deal of my life. It's not that I don't have friends, but I was never really someone who hanged out with lots of friends. And I was unlike most boys my age in that I was more quiet and focused on academics, and I didn't understand the symbols and gestures that boys used. By that I mean words that were deemed cool, and slang terms and handshakes. I think I only went to one school dance in my entire life and I didn't enjoy it. 

Nor did I play a sport, or go to prom, or do many things that are typical in high school. This doesn't mean that I don't like to have fun. I do have fun, but what I find fun is not what probably most people find fun. When I was in high school I loved math and chess, and I loved to read history. 

But anyway, it is true that in the past few years or so I've been thinking more about what I want to get done in my lifetime, and what I want in life. I am not ready to die. Why not? Simply because I don't feel that I've accomplished what I want to accomplish before I die. Most people want the obvious -- wealth, a happy marriage, maybe children, health. I want those things too, but above all, I want to feel that I have made a real contribution to the world; or, in other words, to justify my existence, to know that something good has come out of my life. I don't want to just go through the motions of life. That my life has amounted to basically nothing is a haunting thought.

There is some comfort, though, in believing that you have contributed something to the world, even if it seems small. Someone will miss you if you were to die, and if you were a good person, people will recognize that. So don't worry that you haven't contributed anything. You have made some impact -- don't be in such a big rush to accomplish something. Just living appropriately, being kind, and so on, is an accomplishment. That's what led me to write that a fulfilling life probably comes from exemplifying goodness and pleasantness. But I also mentioned expression in art. That's based on the feeling that you are replaceable, and that there's nothing special about you. Self-expression in art rejects that. The idea is that if you really put your heart into your art, it will come out as something that nobody else could exactly have made. Neither could anyone else produce the exact thoughts that led to the making of that art.

A long time ago I made a list of things I wanted to do in my lifetime. A lot of it was a list of books I wanted to read and destinations I wanted to go to. But those are personal pleasures and they should come second to real accomplishments. 

An example of one such accomplishment is an answer I came up to a question that has been pressing on my mind: is it rational to have any kind of religious faith, or is a belief in anything without adequate (or any) evidence defensible? If it is defensible, can it be applied to a belief in the existence of God? Science is all about withholding judgment until there is sufficient evidence to support a claim. That way, we can spread the truth and curb the spread of superstition and misinformation. I don't have enough time to discuss this matter more fully, but in short I think the answer is Yes. That is because people who are religiously devout have a strong feeling in their heart in what they believe, and, if there is a difference between what your heart tells you and what reasoning tells you, it is wiser to follow your heart. Many times there is no such decision to be made, because you believe that it is best to follow what reason tells you -- your heart tells you to trust your reasoning. But there are exceptions.

This extends to the question of uncertainty in things in life in general. If I am strongly convinced that I am right about something and a friend of mine disagrees strongly, it would be profitable to have a civil debate. But if he/she isn't convinced, that's OK. Something is telling him that he is right. Besides, the way in which we believe things is based on experience and a limit of time. If I have to make a decision about something, I will have only so much time, and I have only so many facts (relations) to work with. We should make the best decision we can and then leave it, and not regret our choice if things go bad.

Whew! That was a lot of stuff to get off my chest, but I feel much better now that I've gotten my thoughts down. I'm sure most 21-year-old guys don't think about these things that much. But I'm comfortable contemplating these things. Thinking about these big questions is very important to me. It gives me a sort of stability in how I go about living.

thoughts

Still glides the stream, and shall forever glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies,
While we, the brave, the mighty and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish. Be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour,
And if as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith's unending dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know. (Wordsworth)

The best feeling in the world is: That you know that you contributed something in the world.
Everyone has contributed something--made someone laugh or done good things, and had a good nature.
The most fulfilling life probably comes from exemplifying goodness and pleasantness, but also from self-expression in art.
If you made true art, nobody could replicate it. It is yours, the product of all of you--not just the mind or artistic skills, but most of your energies are given direct form in art.
Belief, for example belief in religion, is grounded on passion, warmth, the heart--it just feels right. It is wrong for scientists to tell in a matter-of-fact way that based on lack of evidence, people shouldn't believe that a divine spirit exists. Even reasoning is driven by a passion.
It is wiser to do what your heart tells you than what reason tells you.
We have to make a lot of choices everyday, and we cannot know for sure what the consequences will be and what will happen in the future. All we can do is make the best choice we can in a limited amount of time, act on it, and not to regret too much if a choice turned out to be a mistake.
No absolute certainty in judgments exists. We should be aware that even our strongest convictions may prove to be false. This is a good thing, because it prevents people from seizing absolute power under pretense of being absolutely correct.

January 16, 2011

Tomorrow I start second semester of junior year. Yep, no holiday off for MLK Jr. Day.
I think I've reached the point in life where I've started to think seriously about what I want to do with my life. I would like to teach math at a university. A great part of me wants to avoid having to get to work in a suit and tie and perhaps a briefcase. I wonder if my fear is irrational and groundless. Wearing a suit and tie should not be so bad, and I cannot think of an alternative. But what if an employer or some other adult were to go up to me holding up a clothes hanger with a suit and saying to me that I have to wear it? It's not something that I can at this moment think of as something I would want to do.

I've been thinking quite a bit over the Christmas break about science. Everyone wants to know more about science; science explains the world. If you go to Barnes & Noble and look at their "Thought-Provoking" section, you will find that many of the books deal with some aspect of science. For example, there will probably be at least one book about neuroscience, and perhaps books about global warming, science and religion, and some recent bestseller. The current bestseller is about how science can supposedly "explain moral values," whatever that means.

The scientific method is one way of knowing about the world, but it is not the only way.

January 5, 2011

Welcome to my new blog! I'm a senior at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. I'm a math major, and I intend to go to graduate school in math, with the aim of eventually becoming a professor. I started this blog because I think it would be a neat way of getting down whatever thoughts I want to express.