In an average typical life of a city dwellar, we live in a routine. One week rarely differs from another. The small variations between a week's schedule and another are the inputs we put into our free spaces in our schedule, the one we intentionally left blank for the sole purpose of putting a flexible activity to fill our time. It could be a meet up with an old friend, dinner with the colleagues or attending a birthday celebration. The majority of our time, discounting sleep, are spent on work; a certainty in a globalised world. Our system works in a way we work for a large proportion of our time and the reward is your survival and the little dose of exhilaration we get from spending that hard earned reward on experiences. Let us take a prototypical example of an office worker, Tom. Tom works from 8-5pm as a sales representative in a medium-sized company. Depending on the amount of work, his work may end a lot later at 10pm during sales peak period or it may end exactly at 5. He takes public transport to work and thus spend approximately 2 hours on transportation. He sleeps for about 7 hours. One hour for dinner and that leaves him with 5 hours of spare time each weekday. In actuality, with the advent of marketing media which pays to capture portions of your time, the average person would have far lesser than that. For example, one may find themselves spending an hour looking through Facebook or YouTube. Taken out of context, 5 hours of liberalised time out of 24 hours in a person's life is absurd. Those working in menial jobs and are working more shifts to supplement their income may even have less time than that. It is an irony that cities, with their hopes of a better future and life experience are limiting their occupants in terms of another commodity which is in short supply, time. Does the extra income and accessibility to more resources in the cities justify this limitation in time? That really depends.
I like to take the viewpoint of life as a play of chemical hormones in our head. In the three traditional theories of perception -direct realism, representative realism and idealism- I choose to adopt the idealist theory where the world really is not a physical reality but simply something which is logically created by facts from the human sensory experience. Thus, I am gauging the rationale of life based on what I feel is good for me; the interplay of chemical hormones in my head. More pleasant experiences relates to a better life. So, in a global city living where competitiveness is the value most treasured in the establishment, a person who equates work as dull, stressful or monotonous to their life should not choose to continue living in that way. However, if a person love their work (for example, in cases where cities fulfil their intended purpose in providing sufficient opportunities) and receive continued dose of positive chemical hormones, then this life is meant for them. In the concept of experience, however, the structure of specialisation in bureaucratic corporations in cities limits the experience of new experience in most workers, thus work if remains unchanging will become dull no matter how interesting it was at the beginning. However, an increasing number of large corporations are tackling this problem to their own benefit. They understand that renewed mental stimulation can incite renewed vigour and loyalty to the corporation's objectives. As such, we hear of indiscriminate hiring of general-skilled employees who would then be trained and rotated to different departments all over the corporation for certain periods of time throughout their employment period. The result is increased satisfaction, greater skilled and more flexible employees who can independently help steer the flagship through a volatile economic environment.
But diverging from the personal benefits of experience, the more elusive question to be answered should be what is Experience? An intriguing dream got me startled and pondering for a couple of days to this question. It was a dream which I could very clearly remember because it was the last dream, and I actually believed it happening, just before I was rudely awakened by my alarm clock. The dream does not makes sense but at the point in my dream state, it was very much believable to me. I was riding my bicycle to work one evening and realised I had hours to spare before work officially starts so I decided to cycle North. I cycled past distinct security posts, a couple of landed properties and then, after about a couple of hours, I reached a lake called Lake Ochin in Russia. The view of the lake was magnificent and there was an empty winding road that curved along the edge of the unobstructed lake. On the other side of the road is a beautiful maple leaf laden ground stretching to as far as the eyes could see. I sat on that ground as I gaze across the lake and soon fell asleep. When I woke up, it was cold and approaching night and I remembered that the temperature could be freezing here. I started to be genuinely afraid for my life and in part, I was afraid I would be late for work. Hence, I quickly lifted my bicycle up and peddled as fast as I could back to work through the same way I came from. By the time I reached work, it was daylight and I had missed the entire night shift of my work.
The question I wanted to ask and am still figuring out is, "Did that experience happen?" "Had I actually been to Lake Ochin?" The fact that I believed it to happen and could picture the places clearly in my mind, together with the associated emotions and even temperature of the scene, shows that it exists in a similar mental plane as memories. Just like memories, these vivid dreams does not physically happen on the linear timeline we call "now" but it is every bit possible to conjure the emotions and senses one had "experienced" when one was "there" at the scene. For example, I live in a tropical climate which is hot and humid all year round. Yet, when I envisioned myself back in Japan during autumn for example, I could recall how it had felt and my body remembers the associated feelings of how it had adapted to the different climate. I could picture the coldness in my head such that temporarily I felt myself to be in Japan during the said moment. Of course, it could be every bit possible that my experience in Lake Ochin be a combination of my different experiences across my lifetime. In fact, many dream experts share this point of view that there cannot be an utterly novel dream ever created. But then, it begs the question of is the alteration or mixing up of past memories just as real as an unadulterated memory?
In this line of thought, the concept of Experience by itself is like a physical entity with real life consequences. In my opinion, experience is intrinsically linked with one's genes and in one's veins holds the history and vestiges of one's ancestors. While it is not yet possible to prove the direct invocation of experience of one's ancestors experience in one's own mind, at least some DNA coding would have already been ingrained in one's body as a result of one's ancestor's experiences. As such, physical attributes are reflected in one's physical appearances. One's physical attributes tells of one's ancestral background, ties and experiences that they had experienced. The only confirmed assertion is that one's own experience will immortally be ingrained in one's mind at least until one dies. Before that happens, anything can be done to mix, alter and shape this massive amount of fascinating entity in our minds which can be utilised to "create" novel ideas and solutions to existing problems. Hence, in my argument, alterations or mixing up of past experiences such as my dream of Lake Ochin is very much as real as my experience in Japan eventhough I have never been to nor is there a place such as the former.
A future possibility which I was pondering to delve further on is; will reading thoughts on another person's experience or reading a fictional book or even learning a foreign language (a possible form of encoding one's culture) enable one to similarly relive the said external's experience as well? Could I be every bit German as a German who is living in Germany be by just learning to speak as they do? Experience is such an intriguing topic to try to understand as it is a topic to understand about ourselves and crucially, about our potential and the future direction of mankind. I will end of with a very relatable quote by Albert Einstein: The only source of knowledge is experience.
I like to take the viewpoint of life as a play of chemical hormones in our head. In the three traditional theories of perception -direct realism, representative realism and idealism- I choose to adopt the idealist theory where the world really is not a physical reality but simply something which is logically created by facts from the human sensory experience. Thus, I am gauging the rationale of life based on what I feel is good for me; the interplay of chemical hormones in my head. More pleasant experiences relates to a better life. So, in a global city living where competitiveness is the value most treasured in the establishment, a person who equates work as dull, stressful or monotonous to their life should not choose to continue living in that way. However, if a person love their work (for example, in cases where cities fulfil their intended purpose in providing sufficient opportunities) and receive continued dose of positive chemical hormones, then this life is meant for them. In the concept of experience, however, the structure of specialisation in bureaucratic corporations in cities limits the experience of new experience in most workers, thus work if remains unchanging will become dull no matter how interesting it was at the beginning. However, an increasing number of large corporations are tackling this problem to their own benefit. They understand that renewed mental stimulation can incite renewed vigour and loyalty to the corporation's objectives. As such, we hear of indiscriminate hiring of general-skilled employees who would then be trained and rotated to different departments all over the corporation for certain periods of time throughout their employment period. The result is increased satisfaction, greater skilled and more flexible employees who can independently help steer the flagship through a volatile economic environment.
But diverging from the personal benefits of experience, the more elusive question to be answered should be what is Experience? An intriguing dream got me startled and pondering for a couple of days to this question. It was a dream which I could very clearly remember because it was the last dream, and I actually believed it happening, just before I was rudely awakened by my alarm clock. The dream does not makes sense but at the point in my dream state, it was very much believable to me. I was riding my bicycle to work one evening and realised I had hours to spare before work officially starts so I decided to cycle North. I cycled past distinct security posts, a couple of landed properties and then, after about a couple of hours, I reached a lake called Lake Ochin in Russia. The view of the lake was magnificent and there was an empty winding road that curved along the edge of the unobstructed lake. On the other side of the road is a beautiful maple leaf laden ground stretching to as far as the eyes could see. I sat on that ground as I gaze across the lake and soon fell asleep. When I woke up, it was cold and approaching night and I remembered that the temperature could be freezing here. I started to be genuinely afraid for my life and in part, I was afraid I would be late for work. Hence, I quickly lifted my bicycle up and peddled as fast as I could back to work through the same way I came from. By the time I reached work, it was daylight and I had missed the entire night shift of my work.
The question I wanted to ask and am still figuring out is, "Did that experience happen?" "Had I actually been to Lake Ochin?" The fact that I believed it to happen and could picture the places clearly in my mind, together with the associated emotions and even temperature of the scene, shows that it exists in a similar mental plane as memories. Just like memories, these vivid dreams does not physically happen on the linear timeline we call "now" but it is every bit possible to conjure the emotions and senses one had "experienced" when one was "there" at the scene. For example, I live in a tropical climate which is hot and humid all year round. Yet, when I envisioned myself back in Japan during autumn for example, I could recall how it had felt and my body remembers the associated feelings of how it had adapted to the different climate. I could picture the coldness in my head such that temporarily I felt myself to be in Japan during the said moment. Of course, it could be every bit possible that my experience in Lake Ochin be a combination of my different experiences across my lifetime. In fact, many dream experts share this point of view that there cannot be an utterly novel dream ever created. But then, it begs the question of is the alteration or mixing up of past memories just as real as an unadulterated memory?
In this line of thought, the concept of Experience by itself is like a physical entity with real life consequences. In my opinion, experience is intrinsically linked with one's genes and in one's veins holds the history and vestiges of one's ancestors. While it is not yet possible to prove the direct invocation of experience of one's ancestors experience in one's own mind, at least some DNA coding would have already been ingrained in one's body as a result of one's ancestor's experiences. As such, physical attributes are reflected in one's physical appearances. One's physical attributes tells of one's ancestral background, ties and experiences that they had experienced. The only confirmed assertion is that one's own experience will immortally be ingrained in one's mind at least until one dies. Before that happens, anything can be done to mix, alter and shape this massive amount of fascinating entity in our minds which can be utilised to "create" novel ideas and solutions to existing problems. Hence, in my argument, alterations or mixing up of past experiences such as my dream of Lake Ochin is very much as real as my experience in Japan eventhough I have never been to nor is there a place such as the former.
A future possibility which I was pondering to delve further on is; will reading thoughts on another person's experience or reading a fictional book or even learning a foreign language (a possible form of encoding one's culture) enable one to similarly relive the said external's experience as well? Could I be every bit German as a German who is living in Germany be by just learning to speak as they do? Experience is such an intriguing topic to try to understand as it is a topic to understand about ourselves and crucially, about our potential and the future direction of mankind. I will end of with a very relatable quote by Albert Einstein: The only source of knowledge is experience.
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