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• Being a smarter human vs. Being a better person

  Jocelyn Ling 10:00 am on July 9, 2011 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: motivation, Quotes (11)

  

  “Wittgen­stein made the won­der­fully enig­matic remark: “I work quite dili­gently and wish that I were bet­ter and smarter.  And these both are one and the same.”  Really?  One and the same thing – being a smarter human being and a bet­ter person?

  I am, of course, aware that mod­ern transat­lantic usage has drowned the dis­tinc­tion between ‘being good’ as a moral qual­ity and ‘being well’ as a com­ment on a person’s health (no aches and pains, fine blood pres­sure, and so on), and have long ceased wor­ry­ing about the man­i­fest immod­esty of those of my friends who, when asked how they are, reply with appar­ent self-praise, ‘I am very good.’  But Wittgen­stein was not an Amer­i­can, and 1917 was well before the con­quest of the world by vibrant Amer­i­can usage.  When Wittgen­stein said that being ‘bet­ter’ and being ‘smarter’ were ‘one and the same thing’, he must have been mak­ing a sub­stan­tial assertion.

  Under­ly­ing the point may be the recog­ni­tion, in some form, that many acts of nas­ti­ness are com­mit­ted by peo­ple who are deluded, in one way or another, about the sub­ject.  Lack of smart­ness can cer­tainly be one source of moral fail­ing in good behav­iour.  Reflect­ing on what would really be a smart thing to do can some­times help one act bet­ter towards oth­ers. That this can eas­ily be the case has been brought out very clearly by mod­ern game the­ory.  Among the pru­den­tial rea­sons for good behav­iour may well be one’s own gain from such behav­iour. Indeed, there could be great gain for all mem­bers of a group by fol­low­ing rules of good behav­iour which can help every­one.  It is not par­tic­u­larly smart for a group of peo­ple to act in a way that ruins them all.

  But maybe that is not what Wittgen­stein meant.  Being smarter can also give us the abil­ity to think more clearly about our goals, objec­tives and val­ues. If self-interest is, ulti­mately, a prim­i­tive thought (despite the com­plex­i­ties just men­tioned), clar­ity about the more sophis­ti­cated pri­or­i­ties and oblig­a­tions that we would want to cher­ish and pur­sue would tend to depend on our power of rea­son­ing. A per­son may have well-thought-out rea­sons other than the pro­mo­tion of per­sonal gain for act­ing in a socially decent way.”

  - Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice

   

   

• Imagine

  Jocelyn Ling 10:43 pm on September 9, 2010 | 2 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (21), education (8), innovation (11), inspiration (15), motivation, personal (12)

  June 2, 2010. I graduated.

  I’m at a point in my life where the deci­sions that I make are of my own and not pre­de­ter­mined by the edu­ca­tional path that soci­ety has laid out for me. It’s almost alarm­ing to think about the fact that for the bulk of my life, my edu­ca­tion has been shaped by forces that has approved this path as a “nat­ural” (and nec­es­sary!) pro­gres­sion in life.

  What I have come to real­ize over the years though, through a series of unex­pected events, is the beauty of imag­i­na­tion. I was asked the ques­tion recently of why/what I was pas­sion­ate about inter­na­tional development/life… and the words tum­bled out of my mouth explain­ing social change and the nature of aid before I even real­ized, wait… it was a text­book answer and wasn’t the entire truth of why I love this space — the inter­na­tional devel­op­ment, empow­er­ment, social finance and innovation.

  So, to share a part of my jour­ney, this is why I love this space and what I got out of edu­ca­tion. One word.

  

  This sin­gu­lar con­cept has been the cat­a­lyst in my life to meet­ing amaz­ing con­cepts, peo­ple, books and ini­tia­tives. It is the fact that imag­i­na­tion is the abil­ity to free one­self from the con­straints of the human con­di­tion. The fact that when you allow your­self to explore spaces that leaves you com­pletely out of your com­fort zone, it serves the pur­pose of sat­is­fy­ing your mind’s hunger for knowl­edge. The human thirst for knowl­edge and inno­va­tion is the result of imag­i­na­tion. Humans cre­ate and invent as a result of imag­i­na­tion. But most of all, what I am really excited about, is that with imag­i­na­tion, its the way that we view the world, and how all of that can change, the minute you open your mind to the pos­si­bil­i­ties. i.e. Shar­ing a social finance model to the invest­ment world, empow­er­ing women that there are bet­ter ways to feed your child or some­thing as sim­ple as remak­ing used plas­tic bags into makeshift footballs.

  Most peo­ple get through life think­ing “if I can make it through this, things will be bet­ter later,”. But they for­get that the expe­ri­ences they have, shape who they are and they even­tu­ally for­get what “bet­ter” and “later” means. And we see this phe­nom­e­non every­where, from the polit­i­cally sup­pressed soci­ety to the 40 year old who’s work­ing a 9–5 job and hat­ing every minute. They for­get how to imag­ine. To cre­ate. They for­get that the pre­de­ter­mined paths that soci­ety has some­how con­jured along the way may not nec­es­sar­ily be the best path, and who is to say it is the right path to begin with? The world/people are quite eager to give you a set of cri­te­rias for your life, if you let it. They for­get that we have the power to change edu­ca­tional sys­tems, to change the way we inter­act with our envi­ron­ment, to bring on the cul­ture we wish to see at work, or to even bring on that New Eco­nomic World Order!

  Is imag­i­na­tion merely a tal­ent, such as a good singing voice, the abil­ity to “make things up: or “think things up” or “get ideas”? Or is it, like sci­ence, a way of know­ing things that can be known in no other way? We have much rea­son to think that it is a way of know­ing things not oth­er­wise know­able. As the word itself sug­gests, it is the power to make us see, and to see, more­over, things that with­out it would be unseeable. In one of its aspects it is the power by which we sym­pa­thize. By its means we may see what it was to be Odysseus or Pene­lope, or David or Ruth, or what it is to be one’s neigh­bor or one’s enemy. By it, we may “see our­selves as oth­ers see us.”

  It is also the power by which we see the place, the predica­ment, or the story we are in.”

  – From Wen­dell Berry, “God Sci­ence, and Imag­i­na­tion” in Imag­i­na­tion in Place

  
  

   

• Of Talks: Terry, Ted and Tedx

  Jocelyn Ling 8:18 pm on September 17, 2009 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (21), impact (20), inspiration (15), motivation, presentation (5), TED (2), ubc (2), Vancouver (2)

  Before June 2006, very few have heard of Ted, much less Ted­Con­fer­ences, TedTalks and Ted­Fel­lows. That all changed when TED decided to release their Talks online, with this mission:

  

  “We believe pas­sion­ately in the power of ideas to change atti­tudes, lives and ulti­mately, the world. So we’re build­ing here a clear­ing house that offers free knowl­edge and inspi­ra­tion from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a com­mu­nity of curi­ous souls to engage with ideas and each other.” http://www.ted.com

  Start­ing out in 1984 as a con­fer­ence bring­ing experts from the world of Tech­nol­ogy, Enter­tain­ment and Design, it has since evolved into some­thing more. Ideas and con­cepts that res­onate. Shared. Spo­ken about. In the spirit of spread­ing ideas, TEDx has been cre­ated, enabling com­mu­ni­ties around the world to con­struct a TED-like con­fer­ence with sup­port from TED.

  Here at UBC, we have our very own TEDx Terry Project. The project launched last year and was received with tremen­dous suc­cess. This Octo­ber 3rd would be the 2nd Terry round of talks and reg­is­tra­tion is now open!

  “Imag­ine UBC’s most fas­ci­nat­ing and engag­ing stu­dents com­ing together for a day, giv­ing ‘the talk of their lives,’ shar­ing their ideas and dis­cussing their visions for UBC and the world. Now imag­ine being there, with stu­dents, alumni, fac­ulty, admin­is­tra­tion, and mem­bers of the gen­eral pub­lic watch­ing this unfold and par­tak­ing in the var­i­ous dis­cus­sions, and think of all the pos­si­bil­i­ties that this idea-share holds.” — http://www.terry.ubc.ca
  

  
  photo credit: abdal­lahh

  Reg­is­tra­tion is free and comes with a free lunch. It is cur­rently restricted to UBC stu­dents, staff and fac­ulty and some alumni. To reserve a ticket, click here, and to have a glimpse of what is in store for us, check out what hap­pened last year!

  I had the plea­sure of attend­ing Ter­ryTalks last year and it was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. UBC has some of the bright­est stu­dent minds in North Amer­ica and the ideas that were shared last year blew me away. I am def­i­nitely not miss­ing this year’s! Get your tick­ets now and see you there!

   

• To volunteer or not to volunteer: That is the question

  Jocelyn Ling 1:58 pm on July 15, 2009 | 4 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: motivation, sustainable (5), volunteer (2)

  In my pre­vi­ous post of my expe­ri­ence in South Africa, Andre raised a great ques­tion in his com­ment that I felt deserved more than just a reply, and I wanted to address it prop­erly in a blog post.

  The question/issue was: Would I rec­om­mend peo­ple to be involved with pro­grams like SE101 with the issues of sus­tain­abil­ity, cost and knowl­edge at hand? ( Please read my pre­vi­ous blog post for more insight)

  Essen­tially, what I believe can be framed in 3 ways:

  1) Moti­va­tion

  

  Image taken from: http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/motivational-cartoons

  It has become the social ‘cool’ these days to par­tic­i­pate on trips to devel­op­ing nations to ‘help’, be it a stint in Kenya to build wells, build­ing homes in Mex­ico or help­ing the Orang Utan preser­va­tion in Bor­neo etc. I believe that if you want to par­tic­i­pate on a trip of such, you need to believe in its cause,  what you are con­tribut­ing and what you want to learn.

  The worst thing to do is to spend over $4,000 on a trip like this, write it down in your resume and tell your friends you’re going away to a 3rd world coun­try receiv­ing [insert ’ that is so cool’ response here] and… that’s it. I believe that peo­ple need to be account­able when vol­un­teer­ing. No one is going to turn around and say “you are so self­ish for vol­un­teer­ing because all you are tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion in your trip is your­self and hav­ing that expe­ri­ence.” The responses would likely be along the lines of “that’s so cool you’re vol­un­teer­ing. You’e doing such a good thing!”

  Therefore, I  believe that peo­ple  need to be aware of the costs asso­ci­ated with vol­un­teer­ing. Let me break a typ­i­cal 3 week trip down for you ( con­ser­v­a­tive rough estimate):

  Air­fare $2,500

  Acco­mo­da­tion $500

  Food $500

  Pay­ing the organization/prof/administrative fees/utilities $500

  Total: Approx $4,000

  That’s alot of money. Now, with the same amount, you can make 160 $25 micro­cre­dit loans at places like Kiva and change the lives of 160 peo­ple. You can spon­sor 200 chil­dren at World Vision by pay­ing $20 for their yearly school fees. You can feed the home­less for a month in Van­cou­ver donat­ing to the soup kitchen. That’s 160 lives you can change. From sit­ting in front of your com­puter with sev­eral clicks of your mouse.

  Get the sense of com­par­i­son? You may argue that donat­ing the money is dif­fer­ent than the actual expe­ri­ence of vol­un­teer­ing, and yes I agree. How­ever, what is stop­ping you then from vol­un­teer­ing online in places around world ie. writ­ing grants, doing research, or even, actu­ally fol­low­ing up with the organ­i­sa­tions and places that you have vol­un­teered at? Or even vol­un­teer locally at your home­less soup kitchen?

  Or are you one of those peo­ple that vol­un­teer for the sake of its exotic­ness, take a ‘hol­i­day’ jump­ing from one coun­try to another each for a month, to write down in your resume that you’ve helped build refugee cen­ters in Cam­bo­dia or [insert some form of pro­gram vol­un­teer­ing here].

  Vol­un­teer­ing is alot more seri­ous when you think of it in terms of oppor­tu­nity cost — what you are giv­ing up and whose life you are impacting.

  2) Sus­tain­abil­ity

  

  Now, if you have the right inten­tions and moti­va­tion, the next ques­tion you should really be ask­ing your­self is: Is  the pro­gram I am plug­ging myself into sus­tain­able? Is this the most effec­tive way I can con­tribute my time and money (refer to point one on cost com­par­i­son) to give the most impact?

  This is where research comes in. Research your pro­gram, talk to peo­ple, con­nect with past par­tic­i­pants, find out where your money goes to. Research, research, research.

  Let me give you some examples.

  Pro­gram 1: Build­ing wells in rural Kenya to pro­vide a water source for local villagers.

  Sounds great right? Well, a lit­tle more research would tell you that by par­tic­i­pat­ing in a pro­gram like this and build­ing wells, you’ve just put the local water source provider, who has a fam­ily of 5 out of busi­ness along with the sev­eral other vil­lage water source providers out of busi­ness because you not only built one well, you built 3 wells in 3 dif­fer­ent vil­lagers. Congratulations.

  Pro­gram 2: Col­lect­ing old clothes for donat­ing to local vil­lages in Vietnam

  Sounds like a good cause? Well, a lit­tle more research would tell you that all your clothes have just put the local tai­lors who sells shirts for $1 out of busi­ness. Congratulations.

  These 2 exam­ples are the clas­sic typ­i­cal pro­grams that you can find all round.

  So essen­tially, please par­tic­i­pate wisely. There are so many NGOs these days that you need to research and fil­ter. The world doesn’t need another vol­un­teer that is help­ing oth­ers at the expense of another person.

  3) Pre­pare

  

  So you have the right moti­va­tions, the right pro­gram and organ­i­sa­tion. The last thing: Pre­pare. In the right way.

  I can­not even begin to empha­size this last point enough. In my last post I described what it was like, to be on the ground and be com­pletely par­a­lyzed by my own igno­rance. Yes, I have been guilty of it and wish what I know now.

  Just like any nor­mal sit­u­a­tion, you need to be pre­pared as much as you can. Don’t swal­low what is given to you. Inves­ti­gate and learn.

  Side Note: I want to make it CLEAR, that there is a big dif­fer­ence between sign­ing up for labour vol­un­teer­ing, as opposed to ‘pro­gram’ vol­un­teer­ing. The dif­fer­ence lies in 1), you are tap­ping into an area which needs your time and labour, ie. hur­ri­caine relief work in New orleans, as opposed to, 2) you are par­tic­i­pat­ing in a pro­gram that has a frame­work ie. build­ing homes in Mexico.

  What I have been address­ing are PROGRAMS.

  ***

  So, in summary, to answer the ques­tion of whether I would rec­om­mend peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in vol­un­teer pro­grams… My answer is: I would. As long as they:

  1) Have the right moti­va­tion. Know the cost ben­e­fit break­down of the trip.

  2) Make sure it is a sus­tain­able pro­gram. Research.

  3) Pre­pare. In the RIGHT way.

  These 3 cri­te­rias seem very sim­ple, but it’s the sim­ple things that we for­get when we get caught up in an idea and in our lives.

  Good luck vol­un­teer­ing! If you have stories/experiences to share, I would love to hear them.