Philip Jong

As the Christmas holiday season fast approaches for those who choose to celebrate this festivity, so does another busy holiday shopping season for many business merchants. Sadly, the commercialization of the holiday season is not new. Even the custom of sending holiday greeting cards, which once began as a personalized exchange of messages of goodwill that dated back to ancient Chinese times, was commercialized by the modernization of the printing press and the development of lithography that eventually led to the introduction of the first commercial Christmas cards in England in 1843.

Last month, while many in the US celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday, most US merchants were busy striking sales deals on the following Black Friday, a secular non-holiday invented solely in the age of commercialism. In Canada (where I live), many retailers have already started their Christmas sale last month and some have even advertised their Boxing Day deals a whole two months early! I cannot help but chuckle each time I walk by a large sale sign advertising Boxing Month sale—not Day, not Week, but Month! Unfortunately, this is irrefutable proof that our holiday season has been lost deep in the black hole of modern commerce, in an age when we choose to celebrate not the holiday spirit with our family but the best deal we can find with our shopping.

Last month, the province of Ontario in Canada held its general election for a new government. In the end, the incumbent Liberals won another majority government, while other parties, including the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats, all lost after disappointing supports from voters. Regardless of one’s political affiliation, however, the biggest disappointment for Ontarians of this election was the poor rate of voter turnouts that barely hit over 50%—the lowest in history for a provincial election. This was despite that the fact that this year’s election also included a historic general referendum on electoral reform that would have replaced the existing First-Past-the-Post system with an alternative Mixed Member Proportional system (the latter was ultimately rejected in the referendum). As a proud Ontarian (and Canadian), I take pride in exercising my right to vote freely for my electoral representative and voice my opinion on the choice of an electoral system. Yet, with so many Canadians now disillusioned of our political system, I fear that someday our government and politicians will no longer truly represent the majority of the people’s interests. Protecting our political freedom and liberty must not only be a right, but also a responsibility, for all of us.

Years ago, I chose to register my own name as a .com domain. At the time, I did it more for novelty than for a need to secure an identity for myself. For most people, the need to establish oneself as a global individual seems both superfluous and egotistical. Yet, as we choose to increasingly congregate in this global village (both virtual and real) of ours, we are also unwittingly forfeiting our individual identity to exist in this shared space. This is because, in the history of civilization, societies have never seen a need to establish a global system to identity their citizens. Such identities are not meant to be exploited by a government to control its people. Rather, they are meant to liberate the people to exist with a global presence so that any oppression of an individual can be openly challenged. Much like a global corporation that struggles to keep its brand, a global individual must fight to maintain a distinct identity. We cannot afford to be lost in this world, and the world cannot afford to lose us as individuals.

Last month, Research In Motion suffered an unforeseen system failure that caused an interruption of its email service to all Canadian users of its BlackBerry devices. BlackBerrys are mobile devices widely used among business executives, professionals (including doctors and lawyers), and even politicians. Despite that the service interruption lasted only less than a day, the outage made much news in the mainstream media which reported many users to be suffering from the so-called CrackBerry withdrawal during the service outage. As a longtime avid technology user, I have been mindful not to let myself to grow addicted to using such a device, regardless of the potential great convenience that the device seemingly offers to its users. I believe that we must only use technology to enrich the lives we live but not to let technology dictate instead how our lives are to be lived daily. In this extreme, it is distributing to see that we can grow so attached on such technology, as if it replaces all real forms of human interactions in our desire to communicate. Rather, we must learn to detach ourselves from becoming the slaves of such technology, for otherwise we may find ourselves one day unable and unwilling to live our lives any other way without it.

I will be the first to admit that I am terrible in both making and following my New Year’s resolutions. Like every year before this year, I have made it one of my New Year’s resolutions to follow through all of my unfulfilled resolutions from last year (if you must ask, my list of resolutions for 2007 is indeed very long). Surprisingly, the tradition of making a New Year’s resolution is not rooted to modern times but to Roman mythology and the ancient god Janus. The two faces of Janus—one facing forward to the future and one looking back to the past—symbolize the transition with changing of the years. The month of January, which the Romans named after Janus, is then designated as the first month of a new year. Despite this, early Christians had once chosen to instead celebrate New Year Day on the day of Nativity (December 25) or the day of Annunciation (March 25); it was not until later that the Julian calendar was revised so that New Year celebration would return to January 1. As a Chinese myself, I also celebrate the new year according to the lunar Chinese calendar, which for 2007 falls in the month of February. In other words, I may have yet another month to procrastinate on my unfinished resolutions, before I have to add them to my list for this year!

With the holiday season approaching, I wonder what the true meaning of Christmas is in a multicultural society such as Canada today. As a secular tradition, Christmas Day is originally a Christian celebration that marks the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. It is now celebrated worldwide, partly because of the widespread of Christianity and the influence of western culture in many countries. The tradition of winter festivals, such as the Natalis Solis Invicti celebrated by the Romans or the Yule celebrated by the Pagans, to which Christmas in part owes its origin as a festival holiday, has largely been forgotten by history. Instead, in modern times, Christmas is often celebrated in conjunction with or in place of other religious holidays. Hanukkah, a Jewish celebration that starts on the 25th day of Kislev in the Hebrew calendar, is observed by those who are seeking a Jewish alternative to Christmas, even though the Hannukkah festival can fall in as early as November and as late as January instead of December that is for Christmas.

Today, Christmas is recognized as both a secular and non-secular holiday. As a Chinese myself, I do not celebrate Christmas as a religious festival but an opportune holiday to spend time with my family. In a multicultural society, the new meaning of Christmas goes beyond that of the celebration of a single religion; it is an opportunity to celebrate family values and to be together with those who love us and those who we love back, regardless of religious beliefs.

This month the public witnessed the unfolding of two very differently held elections in the United Status and Canada. In the United Status, the midterm elections heralded the downfall of the Republicans and the ascension to power by the Democrats in both the House and Senate. In Canada, the municipal elections in Toronto (where I live) oversaw the domination of incumbent mayor David Miller over the two frontrunners Jane Pitfield and Stephen LeDrew. Notwithstanding any obvious dissimilarity in the landscapes of these two elections and in the policies by which they had been driven, an understated difference was the presence in the former and the absence in the latter of a major political controversy over which the respective voters had to contend. For the United Status, the continuing war with Iraq had deeply divided the country during election and ultimately became an embarrassment for George Bush and his administration. By contrast, for Canada, the election was a low-key affair for which David Miller had coyly avoided any political scandal in the media that would have attracted unwanted criticism by the voters. In the end, the defeat of George Bush and the victory of David Miller stand as a great example in the study of elections in extreme. In politics, after all, no news is perhaps truly good news.

Early this month the world mourned the five-year anniversary of 9/11. To this date, my memory of this tragic event remains vivid. At the time, I was attending a conference in Washington DC and was only blocks away from the White House. Since that day, the world has learned of the ongoing threat of terrorism on the masses and the price we must pay to protect ourselves from fanatics whose moral and ideology differ from our own. More importantly, 9/11 reminds us that we do not live our lives in isolation from other people around the world and that plans to achieve peace must extend far beyond the arbitrary borders created by nations, ethnicities, and religions. Any attempt to achieve long-lasting peace and security by building rather than breaking the walls that divide the human race is doomed to fail. Even though one day the memory of 9/11 may finally fade in people’s minds, the lesson which the human race has learned from it must never be forgotten, since those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it again.

The dominance of Microsoft in personal computing is undeniable. The launch of the Xbox 360 last week marks the next effort following the original Xbox by Microsoft to dominate the personal gaming market. Its competitors are the Sony Playstation 3 and Nintendo Revolution that are not due out until 2006. More than a gaming console, the new Xbox differentiates itself from other systems by also billing its own to be the ultimate convergence device for all digital media—music, video, and pictures. Little attention, however, has been given to the “social” convergence that this device may bring. While the powerful hardware of the Xbox 360 is no doubt a technological marvel, its Xbox Live service may turn out to be the “killer” architecture that will bring on true convergence. The development of a persistent online community with its Live Marketplace creates an unique social construct through which gamers around the world can interact seamlessly with each other without ever meeting face to face. Over time, this social convergence beyond any geographical border will make a greater impact on our young generation than any technological convergence such machine may bring. Regardless of which platform emerges as the winner of this console war, ultimately it will be the social and not technological impact it may make that will determine its legacy.

Is truth simply the way we may explain most easily what we observe of the world around us? My work as a scientist demands that I continually question the perception of truth. Long ago, the Catholic Church hailed Ptolemy’s geocentric view of the universe as the truth to explain God’s creation of our world. When Copernicus proposed a simpler heliocentric model to predict the motion of planets in our solar system, his view was quickly scorned as a challenge to the biblical truth. Today, we know that the heliocentric view of the universe explains not only the motion of our planets but also the motion of planetary bodies in other galaxies. Yet, it will be wrong of us to choose the heliocentric view over the geocentric view just because it provides a simpler explanation of our universe. This is because while Occam’s Razor may dictate the principle of parsimony when selecting a theory to explain our world, the same principle may not guarantee that the chosen theory indeed represents the truth. In other words, truth is not simply the way we may explain most easily of the world around us. Truth does not stand alone. It stands besides all other truths of the universe. The only way to pursue truth is to continue to challenge existing belief with other truths, rather than accepting it in isolation.