Downfall. Der Untergang. Nominated for Oscar best foreign language film last year. Mike first told me about this film saying it's on his all time top 2 list. It was so good that it made him have sympathy for Hilter. I was scared of hearing him talking about sympathy for Hilter and going down that path, so I did not encourage our discussion until I could see the film myself. It is a very well made film.

Downfall is about the last days of Hilter and WWII Berlin, based on the autobiography of a young secretary and a Hitler historian. We have all seen many WWII movies told from the winner's side. Most movies depict Nazi Germans as a one- or at most two-dimensional beings--the Nazi's were either purely evil, or with a few men having some conscience. This film, however, portrays the Nazi Germans as 3-dimensional real people. They might not be healthy-minded, humanity-loving people, but they are still people. (Another WWII film told from the German point of view is Das Boot, excellent excellent film. Unlike Saving Private Ryan and many others which glorify wars and simplify issues such as justice and human survival, Das Boot is an anti-war movie.)

In Downfall, Hilter is an old man who grows old everyday, and is losing his mind. We see him in private life. He is kind to subordinates like his secretaries, and reasonably caring for his closed ones, but strict toward the military and the German people as a whole. He tries to be reasonable and heroic, and truthful to his ideals. He wants to die for his causes, and so do many of his last followers. We can only say he is a madman. But can we say he represents pure evil?

I remember whenever the sort of discussions on "love your enemy", "love all people, for we are One Life together" come up, the suspicious always asks, "what about Hilter? how should we love him? how do we explain the existence of such pure evil?" In the western world, Hilter is synonymous with the concept of pure evil; nobody sees him as a human being. How to put Hilter and universal love in one consistent world view is a difficult and sensitive task. My answer is something along this line--Hilter was a man with defects, like most of us, but due to the social and political position he was in at the time, his defects unfortunately was fatal for millions of people and destructive to civilization. His existence caused a large disturbance in the human history. Hilter was totally idealistic, but in a defective way. He and his followers were very passionate about their belief. They wanted to make the world a "better" place for their people. When Hilter realized his war was lost, he grieved, felt defeated, got married, and commited suicide. Many of his followers killed themselves for their cause. There was a Nazi mother who would rather kill her six children than letting them live in a world without National Socialism. (Here I can argue the suicide act is not an act of bravery. On the contary, it shows how their belief leads to a dead end. The "good" ideals should preserve and cherish life.)

Hilter and many of his die-hard followers really believed in building of a perfect world. They wanted to rid the world of "inferior" people for his own people. In simple words we say he did not believe in racial equality. There are many people like him, in one way or another. Some might want to rid the world of people with different religious beliefs, or different political ideas, or different sexual orientations, or different work ethics, or different value systems.... They assign a value to the natural human difference, and they consider their own is superior. These are all defects of being human. If nowadays we hear someone says, those who lies should be punished; or those who does not practice American democracy should die; or those who are lazy deserve to be poor.... these words sound just as arrogant and unsympathetic as those of Hilter. Of course the strong, the honest, the generous, the hard working people are the positive traits our society encourages. But we must realize the difference in people, and celebrate our difference, good or bad, strong or weak.... Who are we to make moral judgement of others? Who are we to design a "perfect" world and subject others to follow?

Here's a question. Does a perfect world exist? Or one step back, what is a perfect world? Is there a standard for perfection? Who decide?

Perhaps we can learn a lesson here, that anyone who is arrogant in thinking himself superior in one way or another, is in danger of going down a path like Hilter. Hilter is unsympathetic to the weak and the wounded. He did not care about the lives of even his own people during the last stage of the war. He said if his people could not win the war and bring victory, it was their own fault and they deserved to die. To most of us this sounds like a madman speaking. Or a mad machine. Yes, sometimes I think Hilter and his followers operated like machines. They had lost compassion for people. They had lost any thinking capacity.

Nobody is pure evil. Well, maybe the Sith emperor in Star Wars is evil, but it's fictional and symbolic and he symbolize the dark side which means evil. Hilter is not pure evil. He is sadly blinded. His end is unhappy, like all his followers. Only those who asks for redemption has a chance to become a whole human being again. So, here we also learn that any defect in a person can be fatal to the final happiness. I am also thinking, perhaps nobody who dies for a cause can really die in peace. I don't know who will die in peace unless he dies a natural death. I'm thinking about all those Jedis who died in the Jedi purge. And those Nazi officiers and soldiers who committed suicide in the end because they wanted to die for their cause. These are men who have lost all faculty of thinking. Maybe we can say they are no longer human beings. They are merely machines. The arrogance of the Nazi party has turned men into machines. From this we can conclude that arrogance and any form of prejudice is fatal for our happiness, because it kills us and makes us machines. Think about Darth Vadar. When he goes toward the dark side, he is dead, and symbolically he looks like a machine. So, may we say that being human is to resist going to the dark side; being evil or being godly are not human characteristics, for anyone who is purely bad or purely good is no longer in a position to freely choose and therefore not human. Being purely good represents happiness and being evil represents passion. This "conclusion" is similar to what I thought earlier, about how evil people are always so passionate about their pursuit of the darkness. I don't know of any "evil" person who is lazy (laziness is not a trait of being evil, apparently). Can we also say, evil is part of life? Evil is a balance of the goodness and therefore neccessary in the universe? If evil is the opposite of goodness, then yes, evil must exist for the existence of goodness. But is that so? What is evil? What is the definition of evil? Does evil really exist? I know many many many philosophers have thought about the question, and it's unlikely I will give a satisfactory answer. But hey, they are not me so what answer satisfies me is enough for me. Hmmm....

Actually, I don't even believe in the concept of evil! And the goodness? No. Now I will turn to Shakespeare, a quote I read yesterday. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. This I totally agree. In my ideal world, everybody thinks the same way as me. But in a ideal ideal world, many people think differently from me. The world we are living in is an ideal world for me. It is what it is supposed to be. My life is neither good or bad, but I will be more pleased if my life is enjoayble. Thinking, learning, discovery, friendship, love, beauty, enlightenment, humor, life, goodness, colors, flavors, music, nature.... these are things that make my life enjoyable. Therefore I live for these.

(But I hate when I cannot write with a clear thread of thoughts. My thoughts are so scattered and my writing is so confused. Writing is a linear process but my brain works with so many simulaneous thoughts. I must learn to write like a normal person if I want to communicate with others.)

Continue. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. This does not say that thinking is good or bad. It merely states a "fact" that all the values we have for the things are from our thinking process. Of cousre to be human is to think. Also to be human is to have joy and sorrow. Unless we think for fun, like gods. Gods are happy but they are not alive. This is something we need to recognize, but no need to change.

sometime end of may, 2005

I started to write this a week ago.... Some random thoughts again...

Why do we do things that don't make us happy? Why do I do things that don't make me happy? Why do I stay up all night downloading movies from the internet and then watch them? These are not even all good movies. Last year I lived productively and happily the whole year without seeing a single movie in any form. Yet this last month I cannot live a day without downloading movies from the internet and watching them. Any movies. Most movies are not of good qualities because of the compression, and I have to watch them on my small laptop screen. Why do I do this? I don't have a problem with watching pirate copies of movies. If I don't get the pirate copies, I would have borrowed the movies from the public library for free, but those I get from the library are good movies. The not so good movies I would not have seen if they were not free on the internet. Also I don't watch TV so I guess watching the bad downloaded movies is just like watching TV.... But, why do I do this? I go to bed when the sun comes up and I get up late in the afternoon, ignoring my work, my studies, my readings, my writings, .... I download various softwares to play the movies and the subtitles. I don't have enough hard disk space so I have to delete a lot of music I collected over the years, and other pictures and work files to accommodate the movies. Then I have to buy new blank CDs to copy the movies to. Because there is always something being downloaded or played on my laptop, I can never concentrate on anything else anymore, especially the "good" things. Here I ask myself, what are the "good" things and what are the "bad" things? I say, good things are things that make me happy; bad things are things that don't make me happy.

So, the question comes back to, why do I do the things that don't make me happy???

I spent some time downloading the new Star Wars the day when it came out. I was not a Star Wars fan, and I didn't even see the Episode II before. I guess I do it for the fun of it, the fun to claim that I'm resourceful enough to know how to get a free copy so soon. Then I watched all 6 episode, and found some inspiration in them.

My relationship is great in a way I just begin to understand. Now when I get depressed, I don't ever become desperate like before. I know no matter how low I fall, there is always someone there who will connect me back to this world. Well, I have always had my parents and my sister who are there for me. But family is different. Why? Maybe because I feel family comes as part of life's package, and I take them for granted. But a spouse is someone one have to earn, and I have worked hard to earn his love. So when I am low and down, a spouse seems especially more valuable and helpful, because his being there for me shows that at least I am not completely worthless. I know this doesn't sound all that positive and inspiring, but these days I am not inspired and can hardly be positive.

I saw a cover story on the newspaper the other day a pictures of two young college students praying. I suddenly felt an urge to sanctify myself. I know I have fallen to spiritual low. I know I might have been trying to go all the way down to the bottom until I'm sick of it, and then to climb up. It's just as Frank has told me once--to quit a bad thing, you will have to do it so much until you are sick of it, or otherwise you can't get out. But why??? Why do I so much want to go down until I hit the bottom? Why don't I have the will power to make a positive change for the better? I know what I can do to make me happy again, but why don't I do it?

Do I really know what to do to be happy again? Maybe I enjoy being unhappy, unproductive?

Our heart knows what is right and what is wrong. When we do the right or the good things, we are genuine happy and at peace. Otherwise we feel irritated, afraid, angry, even hatred. Even when we do things that we think are just or fair, we don't walk away with happiness and peace. This is another evidence that our heart knows what true happiness is. That's why people say we should follow our heart. But sometimes we don't know what our heart wants. How can that be? Is it because we are too noisy, we crowd our heart with too much thoughts, that we cannot reach our heart? So it is important to clean our consciousness often so when we need the guidance of our inner wisdom from the heart, we can find it. This is perhaps why a religious person needs to pray everyday. Also I remember Lao Zi said something about dusting off the mirror of our soul in Tao Te Ching too.

One of the downloaded movies I watched was American History X. An excellent film, and I've always liked Ed Norton. The moral story I learn from the movie is this one question that black teacher asked--Has anything you've done made your life better? This should be a judge of what is good and what is bad. When our life is improved because something we do, then we are happy and our heart knows it. Or when we are happy, this is an indication that our life has improved (not in the sense the money or the social status, but the general happiness). When we are confused and don't know what to do, think what we can do to make our life better. If we know we are not happy, recognize it first, and then decide if we want to make a change or not. Maybe sometimes I am just too tired to make a change in the positive direction. I just need to go low and lower and to the lowest, then rise again. I don't know.... But at least I know I am not doing the things that make me happy. Or perhaps I am going so low just to understand how much I can swing?? Just to learn this one lesson that my heart is teaching me?

I am generally happy that I have had this enlightenment experience last year. It is like a distant light or star for me. Whenever I feel lost, I can always find it and find my direction again. I think I will never feel utterly lost. What depresses me is that knowing I have a star, I still shut my eyes and turn myself away from it. When will I gain the courage to embrace the light again?

I am watching Star Wars (all 6) and for the first time have a slight idea of who all those creatures are in the movies. In Episode III, Anakin Skywalker turned to the dark side and beame a Dark Lord of the Sith in the hope of saving his love from death, of becoming the most powerful, of becoming the master of the universe. Well, a Sith might be powerful but with the dark side, he is afraid of death. A Sith can reverse the natural course of things (anti-Taosim approach) but cannot prevent his own death (ironic, the Emperor says). When a Sith fights a Jedi of equal power, a Jedi is selfishless and unafraid of death, so he can never loses. Someone as bright as Anakin Skywalker must have known this all along during his Jedi training. He must have seen how at peace a Jedi can be with the world. Yet he never understood how he could be one of them, because he had memory of his mother's suffering and he wanted to avoid the suffering of his wife. Therefore it was only his fate that he could not be a true Jedi. Not his fault. The two sides of the force always exist and each person in the universe has to fulfill his own destiny. It is only that the ones on the dark side can't gain ultimate freedom.

If Anakin Skywalker knows all these and still chooses the dark side, then he is free. Why do I stress freedom? Because I found this Sith Code below, and freedom seems to be the ultimate goal of the Sith.

The Sith Code

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

----
But then I think, to be human is to have earthly passion and fear of loss and all that. A Jedi master is no longer "human", but like a Tao master (神仙). A Sith is a more engaged "human". Anakin is given a choice, but he is not ready to be a Jedi in this life, either because he is not enlightened, or his desire and curiosity for life is too great. His masters, being older and wiser, failed to train him properly. He lived a confused life and died in passion.

I was looking at a photo in Physics Today of a "Dance for Physics". The first sentence reads "'All dance is about time, space and light,' says Mark Baldwin..." At this, I thought I might not appreciate how this choreographer illustrates his vision of time, space and light unless he explains it to me first. Then his art will fail to connect with me. Then I had a small realization in the spirit of the "force" (yes, I am watching Star Wars).

When we are reading a poem or watching a dance or listening to music, we are actually piercing into the creative mind of another person. The creativity comes from the universe and is imprinted in each of the creative minds. When we appreciate arts, we are appreciating the creative force of the universe through the artists. This way, we don't say, "This movie is bad; the director is bad", but "This director of this movie has a different perception of the world from mine", thus we gain a better understanding of the world even when we are watching a movie not so agreeable. (Of course this is not to say that we should not use our time wisely to make a preference of what we do. We should always optimize our learning and experience when we have a choice.)

不要抱太大希望于高人出山。真正的高人也不可能一两句话摆平让大家都明白。这世界上是一个人一个方子，一个人一个时机。有人要靠指点，有人要靠修炼，有人要靠求索，有人要靠运气。你的时机到了，灵光自然就罩住你了。

学术讨论就不同了。大家都可以来讲，反而越深层的越高级的事情越好象讲不到一起（鸡同鸭讲，同义反复），意思恐怕都是早已互相明白的。所以讨论是不大可能有个人突破的。

我的道路是这样的。原先是什么都要反对，什么高人都要怀疑，什么逻辑道理都不信的。灵光过后，我什么都信了。信了之后，能更清晰地辨别是非。当然具体技术上的问题还需要学习和运用。我相信别人的道路是不同的。只想走过了，能在路上留个记号，给后来走到我这边来的人作个伴。

－－于玛雅咖啡 mayacafe

When someone is fair, we have respect for him. Being fair often shows the ability to treat others as equals. But fairness can also be a sign of arrogance, the arrogance in one's ability to judge and to evaluate situations in order to come out with a fair solution. However, in the general sense, nothing in the world is fair, and no fairness is absolute (or else there would be no lawyers and law suits). What seems fair in one moment can pass to unfair in the next moment especially in delicate personal relationships, and not the most powerful computer can track and evaluate the fairness of a situation. Maybe that's why fairness always sounds so cold to me. Humans are not machines and therefore should not put fairness above everything. Fairness is a good conduct in business practice, because business is about profit making. In relationships among people, the basic conduct should be love and understanding but not fairness. When someone is fair, it's because love is lacking. Fairness makes things work but does not make life wonderful.

Beware when we pride ourselves for being fair, for we know that what makes us truly happy is not fairness but love.