Legibilus

    There is an old saying in Korea: Good medicine is bitter in the mouth.      Think about our childhood. Those unhealthy snacks we strived to have more were all sugary and sweet while healthy vegetables like spinach, broccoli, and asparagus were so bitter and astringent. We always wondered 'Why can't medicines taste like lollipops and popsicles?' every time when we had to swallow the bitter pills. Looking back into our history solidifies this saying even more. Notorious kings and queens who suppressed our ancestors and darkened the era tended to cut off the heads of the loyal, faithful, and outspoken subjects and bestowed the fanciest titles and rewards for the whisperers. Why? Because what came out from the loyalists' mouth was too bitter--in other words, straightforward and right-to-the-point--for them to swallow while the whisperers knew what did the majesty wanted to hear. Think about Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi and Jeanne d'Arc, for sure those unwi...

  When we were young, we all had vast and unlimited imagination. Inside my head, I was simultaneously entering Hogwarts, becoming the High Queen of Narnia, fighting the Minotaur in front of Camp Half-Blood, and reading in a magic tree house. My mind was always going here and there throwing a bunch of “what if” questions in everything I encountered. I do not recall most of the things that passed through my mind at this time, but there is one thought that I clearly remember and still hold onto. Let me introduce you to my childhood invention: the Mind Flash Drive.  In elementary school, I remember that I had to memorize a lot of Chinese characters. (By the way, it is a thing in Korea for parents to teach and make their children learn the shapes and sounds of Chinese characters when they are young, because a lot of these sounds are used in the Korean language.) I also clearly remember that I absolutely hated it. The younger version of myself did not understand yet why I had to me...

     Time FLIES. Time literally flies like an arrow. If you cannot agree with this bold statement, probably you are too exhausted, bored, or fed up with all the trivia happening around you. Or maybe--and luckily--you are still young enough. I can make this assumption because I was very much the same when I was young.       When I was in elementary school, I always thought adults are liars who always say "time flies, you have to well-manage your time before you miss everything" as the hands of a clock barely moved whenever I stared at them. When I was in middle school, I still could not agree to that 'flying-time' theory. Similar things happened again and again every day; I had to listen to similar classes, submit similar assignments, chat with same people with similar topics, and walk back home with the exact same route. However, I began to feel the difference when I entered high school. Time suddenly started to speed up. Even though the daily routine ...

  Reading Jin’s previous post on suicide, I was reminded of a novel that had prompted me to think more about suicide and its meaning. Why do some people deliberately choose suicide? What does suicide bring to one committing it? Ghassan Kanafani’s seminal novel Men in the Sun shows a glimpse to the answers of such questions.  In the novel, three Palestinian refugees, Abu Qais, Assad and Marwan, attempt to escape extreme poverty in refugee camps by illegally entering Kuwait on Abul Khaizuran’s lorry. Abul Khaizuran is a lorry driver for a rich man in Kuwait and is willing to illegally transport the men in his truck to Kuwait at a reasonable price. So the men climb into the water tank on the lorry and try to cross the vast desert, burning under the Middle Eastern sun. They are desperate enough to do this as they and their families are on the verge of starvation and homelessness. This bleak reality motivates them to embark on the journey to secretly enter Kuwait to earn money....

"What is your favorite cereal?" "What kind of sports do you like the most?" "Do you like summer? Why/why not?" "Which movie among the Oscar winners did you like the most?" "Who is your favorite, Captain America or Spider Man? Throughout lifetime, we ask a lot of questions. To friends, to interviewees, to colleagues... Especially when we are not that close with another person, we tend to throw random questions like the examples above in order to break an ice and soften the awkward atmosphere. And you know what did I discover last week? Most of such questions share a same pattern: they ask what do you ' like '. Why does this happen? Why do we almost automatically ask other people about what they like instead of what they dislike ?  After discovering this intriguing phenomenon, I started to think. After three days of contemplation, I... could not arrive at any conclusion. Yeah, I know, it is very disappointing to say this, but I could ...

  “You can’t partly agree with me and you can’t partly be lesbian.” is a quote from the Netflix series Grey’s Anatomy. Here, Dr. Hahn, a world class heart surgeon, accuses Dr. Torres, a orthopedics resident in the same hospital, of partly agreeing with her to report their hospital on a misbehavior and only partly being committed to a relationship with her. As I was watching the show, this quote led me to think that the refusal to accept any partial status is not just in decision making or relationships. We like viewing the world as an entire dichotomy; we want to know if it is a yes or a no, if it is right or wrong, if it is a success or a failure.  Here are some examples of the most prevalent dichotomy in our society. With the Olympic games happening at the moment, popular and catchy news headlines start with A won/lost to B, the reason and the score coming second in importance, because we define each team as a winner or a loser and nothing in between. In an exam, we want to...

One of the biggest changes happened to me after spending two years in university is that I began to redefine things in my own ways rather than passively perceiving them. Let’s take ‘democracy’ as an example. Before experiencing the entirely new type of enlightenment in college, I associated democracy with phrases like ‘one person one vote’, ‘will of majority’, and ‘every man is born free and equal’. But thanks to all those courses, professors, and colleagues I met in the previous years, I now know that none of them truly depicts what democracy is; in fact, it is very difficult to define democracy in a concise manner. Under the same context, a TED lecture delivered by Sir Ken Robinson inspired me profoundly. After watching the video, I could establish my own definition of ‘diplomacy’: diplomacy, according to Jin, refers to any act of interpersonal, intercultural, or intergovernmental communication done by anyone. The speech was fascinating as he pointed out two things that I saw but...

  Reading is one of the most common hobbies around the world. People like reading a lot of different things. Since I was young, I have loved reading as well. Now, academics and outside work don’t allow me to devote a lot of time to reading books, but it still remains one of my favorite activities. So in the middle of doing other things, I sometimes find myself wanting to sink on a couch and grab a book. And this had me wondering: why do I want to read? Why do people read?  Perhaps the most obvious reason for reading would be knowledge. Many of those who prefer to read non-fiction novels may say that reading books helps them gain more information about the world, which can be eye-opening in many ways. So they turn to books that introduce them to new perspectives and ideas and throw new questions that prompt them to view the world differently.  But I think there is something deeper behind the process of reading that makes people find comfort in it. The reason would most lik...

     Euthanasia . This act "of painlessly putting to death persons suffering from painful and incurable disease or incapacitating physical disorder or allowing them to die by withholding treatment or withdrawing artificial life-support measures", according to the Britannica Dictionary, is also called 'mercy killing' in some countries. Well, judging solely based on its definition, euthanasia sounds like a perfect, merciful, angel-like thing: helping a patient who have suffered from endless pain for a very long time by removing artificial medical assistance and stopping further life-support measures. Today, I would like to invite you to my stream of thoughts regarding the topic 'euthanasia'.     1. I am an enthusiastic advocate of euthanasia. Though I am still young to plan my death ahead, I personally aim to sign a will that states my intention to go through euthanasia when I am under certain medical condition. My reasoning is simple: I do not want to go throug...

  In his seminal work The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin illustrates his revolutionary theory of evolution about the “survival of the fittest.” Darwin argues that the species existing today evolved from a common ancestor and through a long series of natural competition, only the traits favorable for survival survived. Now this theory solidified almost as a fact to explain the history of evolution.  As I was revisiting this concept in a course, however, I learned that there is another side to Darwin’s theory. As the theory of competition and natural selection became more and more accepted, there appeared a group of social scientists creating a new concept under the name of Social Darwinism. In essence, Social Darwinist employed Darwin’s theory of evolution to provide an explanation to political, social and economic phenomena which were often unjust. I would like to introduce two of such examples and discuss the implications of this.  The most commonly cited incident of ...