Philip Jong

In May 2014, the European Court of Justice upheld the right of an individual to stop unwanted personal information from being circulated on the internet by a search engine. Most often, such information is of an embarrassing or sometimes criminal nature which, if wildly disseminated, may stigmatize the involved individual for life. Proponents of this right to be “forgotten” consider it a paramount element of international human right, while opponents denounce the same right as a challenge to the fundamental right to freedom of expression and as a form of global censorship. Importantly, this right is distinct from the right to privacy, with which it is frequently conflated, since it deals with information that is already publicly known but may be difficult to access otherwise. When the information concerns criminal history, the right must also be balanced against public safety. Yet, even if this right is upheld, any singular governmental effort to reinforce the right may be of limited success, as such information—once released—is likely accessible by means outside of a government’s control. Most ironically, individuals who are launching legal efforts wanting to have their own past forgotten by the internet are themselves inadvertently aiding its dissemination (the so-called Streisand effect)—placing themselves squarely in the center of public attention at where they least want to be.

American sociologist Robert Merton popularized the theory of role models when studying the socialization of medical students. According to Merton, a role model is an individual who attains a significant status in an established social structure to which a certain set of desirable behaviors is ascribed. The concept is an extension of Merton’s own theory of reference groups that explains why we judge our own behaviors by comparing ourselves against others who occupy certain social roles to which we aspire. Sadly, today we are often too quick to endorse an individual as a positive role model merely by some limited accomplishment which that individual has achieved, while being blinded to other conduct of the same individual which is otherwise unbecoming for a role model. Worst yet, we often misjudge a prominent celebrity to be a role model by wealth or fame alone, mistakenly believing that these are desirable qualities of humanity for which we must strive. While no individual is without faults, positive role models seek to redeem their own failings and do not justify their bad behaviors as a necessity for success. In other words, being a role model is more than just achieving success in life: it is how this success is achieved through positive and moral behaviors, which we seek to mirror in our own lives, that is the essence of a good role model.

The ease by which crowds can congregate online anonymously has given rise to a new kind of negative mob mentality of the net (or internet) generation. Under the false guise of freedom of speech, these mobs feed on each others’ blinded anger and misplaced self-entitlement to viciously demean, chastise, and humiliate some individual for an alleged act of wrongdoing. These attacks have little regards for the whole truth, and their punishments are disproportionate to the severity of the supposed crime. Politicians and celebrities, in particular, make for easy targets for a mob who sees fit to practice its brand of social justice in order to bring them down from their ivory towers and perched pedestals. Social psychologists have theorized that the loss of personal identity in a crowd (deindividuation theory) frees an individual from social restraints and weakens the personal control of impulsive behaviors that are otherwise antisocial. This deindividuation then allows the participant to blindly follow the collective consciousness of the crowd (emergent norm theory) imprinted by self-imposed leaders whose disruptive behaviors are seen as the norm when they go unchallenged. American psychologist Philip Zimbardo’s famed Stanford prison experiment is prima facie of the permissive power of deindividuation in dictating negative crowd behaviors. Alas, regardless of whichever theory is correct in explaining mob mentality, it does little to curb the online behavior of the perpetrators or help the victims of mob attacks in the cyberspace.

Throughout human history, many false prophecies had been made about the impending end of the world. Most commonly, the supposed apocalypse was to be preceded by some significant calendrical date, religious event, or cosmological phenomenon. Indeed, the practice of eschatology (the study of doctrines concerning the end of the world) was prevalent historically in many cultures. The oldest such recorded prediction, made by the ancient Assyrians, prophesied that the world would end not by a catastrophic heavenly strike but by the inevitable corruption of men. Millennia later, German astronomer Johannes Stöffle foretold that a massive deluge would ravage the world as predicted by an obscure planetary alignment. Likewise, French astronomer Camille Flammarion warned that the reappearance of Halley’s Comet would bring upon destruction to the world by bathing the planet in a cloud of toxic gas stemmed from the comet’s tail. In recent years, many unscrupulous self-proclaimed soothsayers falsely touted other oncoming catastrophes, ranging from holocaust to judgment day. Most recently, the Mayan apocalypse was supposed to herald the end of the world, coinciding with the last day of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar used by the Mayans. In reality, the alleged date simply signified the end of a calendar cycle and the start of another. In fact, the original Mayan scriptures contained no doomsday predictions, the latter of which were entirely myths created by popular culture. In other words, the world would never end simply on a man-made falsehood.

Days from now, scientists at l’Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) are expected to make the long-awaited announcement confirming the discovery of the Higgs boson. Named after Peter Higgs (though credit must also be given to Satyendra Nath Bose), the Higgs boson is an elementary subatomic particle theorized to exist by the current Standard Model of particle physics. According to this theory, the associated Higgs field is assumed to govern the mechanism by which mass in elementary particles is derived. In 1998, CERN began construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), with a goal (among others) to detect the remnants of the Higgs boson (which itself would decay too rapidly to be detected) that would have been created by high-energy particle collisions inside the particle accelerator. Previously, limited experiments were able to exclude ranges of energy and mass that could be carried by the Higgs boson. However, the exact characteristics of the particle remain undefined to date. In popular culture, the Higgs boson has also been dubbed the “God particle”, lending it both a metaphysical and a religious significance that it neither deserves nor warrants. Failure to confirm the existence of the Higgs boson may imply that the current fundamental theories of physics are not correct. Indeed, the discovery (or not) of the Higgs boson will mark a watershed moment for science, when we strive to question the most basic assumptions that we make about our physical world. Yet, regardless of the subsequent findings, this research will also represent a triumphal moment for science, for we are destined to gain a deeper understanding of how our universe works.

The proverb “with age comes wisdom” lends the supposition that old age is a symbol of sagacity. Yet, I question the wisdom (pardon the pun) of this advice. I believe, rather, that age is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for wisdom, even though their coexistence is viewed as a truism in most cultures. For example, in many ancient tribes, elders are regarded as wise teachers who possess great virtues or values. Today, many religious figures, philosophical thinkers, and world leaders are revered for their wisdom in their spiritual, moral, or political beliefs. However, it is a mistake to equate wisdom with intellect, for wisdom encompasses more than the mere acquisition of knowledge but reflects a deep understanding of human nature. Indeed, contemporary interpretation of wisdom, relying on a scientific framework based on psychoanalytic and cognitive theories, asserts that wisdom can only be achieved when there is a mastery of the cognitive, reflective, and affective domains that together represent the human condition. In Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, for instance, wisdom is only attained in the final (eight) stage of life when ego integrity is won over despair as we are forced to look back at our lives in retrospection. Most recently, the Berlin Wisdom Project have found little evidence that wisdom necessarily increases with age. Worse yet, there may be a critical age beyond which wisdom begins to diminish, perhaps due to declines in mental functions associated with aging. Regardless of how wisdom is defined and measured, it is likely that individuals who believe they have attained wisdom are ones who fail to truly grasp this virtue—as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi once said, “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom.”

In social media, crowdsourcing has become a common and accepted practice to elicit ideas and feedbacks from the public-at-large online. The anonymity and accessibility of the internet have removed many barriers that would otherwise prevent this mass collaboration. In crowdsourcing, an inquiry is broadcast to an open community of participants (known as the crowd) who are tasked to respond back with information. Although the term crowdsourcing was first coined in only 2006, the first practice of crowdsourcing likely occurred centuries earlier. In the 19th century, the Oxford English Dictionary leveraged the public’s help to index all words in the English language by accepting submissions from volunteering contributors. In 2009, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) sponsored a competition in which teams were encouraged to leverage crowdsourcing in order to be the first one to locate a set of geomarkers that were previously hidden across the United States. Regardless of the medium wherein such practice is being used, the success of crowdsourcing depends entirely on the good will of the community and the motivation of its participants to contribute to the greater good of the crowd. Without this collective wisdom, crowdsourcing yields merely an incoherent collection of noise that is neither informative nor illuminating.

In March 2011, a massive earthquake struck off the coast of Japan east of the Oshika Peninsula in Tōhoku. Within minutes, the quake triggered an unstoppable tsunami that swept through Japan’s northern islands. Both the earthquake and the tsunami caused catastrophic damages to many parts of the regions hit by the disasters. The resultant death toll, which currently exceeded 14,000, was the largest casualty from a single event to hit Japan since World War II. Over 300,000 people had been displaced or evacuated so far from the affected areas. Furthermore, the Fukushima nuclear accident that occurred after the quake had escalated to become the second largest nuclear accident in history. The Japanese government estimated the total cost of the damage from the disasters to be approximately ¥16-25 trillions.

The Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami attracted immediate worldwide media attention. Much of the news had rightly been focused on the humanitarian crisis that followed. Some media, however, were quick to criticize Japan on its disaster readiness, citing that the country was ill prepared to defend itself against such disasters. Yet, these critics ignored the fact that Japan was actually one of the few nations in the world most prepared for earthquakes and tsunamis. In fact, if it were not for Japan’s substantive infrastructure which was built to withstand these disasters, the devastation that would have otherwise occurred would likely be substantially worse. Moreover, the relative lack of large-scaled rioting and looting across the country was a testament of the restraint, dignity, and perseverance practiced by the Japanese people, even when they were facing extreme adversities.

Undoubtedly, lessons would be identified someday from this tragic event that could serve to improve a nation’s readiness to deal with catastrophic natural disasters. Notwithstanding this criticism, cynical outsiders who dwelt on unfairly criticizing Japan should first examine their own country’s readiness to deal with similar disasters before blindly asserting that their country would fare better.

We seek, wherever possible, to be the masters of our domain. We are comforted by the knowledge that we are in control of the world around us. We feel secured with the realization that our action or inaction can exert a measurable influence on our surroundings. It matters even little how small such change may be, for we still feel satisfied simply knowing that we have some power to reshape our own reality. Yet, our emotional needs to be in control frequently blind us from the truth that we are sometimes at the beckons of others who truly have the power to control our world. Thus, any control which we perceive to have of our own lives is at best only an illusion—however comforting this illusion may be.

For example, it is known that the thermostats in many offices and hotel rooms are fakes, placed there solely for the false benefits of their occupants to manipulate so they may believe that they can adjust the heating and cooling of the building space. Likewise, the close buttons in many elevators are mere dummies, such that pressing them will not shorten the time until the doors will close. Perhaps the most pervasive implementation of these placebo switches is the pedestrian signal buttons installed in many busy city street intersections. With the emergence of centralized traffic control, most of these semi-actuated signals no longer function. Pushing the buttons (even repeatedly) will not change the speed by which the pedestrian traffic lights have been programmed to change. Even so, many unwitting pedestrians continue to push these buttons, deriving some satisfaction that somehow their small action may make a subtle difference.

Everyday, we crave for control of our small lives. When this control is not possible for real, we are quick to accept as substitute any illusion which may be proof that we are the masters of our domain.

I am appalled by the indifference shown by some individuals between cynicism and skepticism. They habitually question with a jaded negativity the integrity and professed motives of others, and they reject without due justification others’ values and opinions that are necessarily different from those of their own. Often, they mistakenly believe that they are the best judges of society’s ethical or moral standards and that their nonconformity to the established institutions serves only to reflect their superior intellect and character.

Further, these individuals are quick to defend their practice of cynicism as healthy skepticism, incorrectly believing that they are one and the same. While both may be used to question current thinking or beliefs, blanket cynicism is all but a cowardly shield that is used to try to hide the cynics’ own insecurity of the world around them of which they understand very little. For them, it is an easy escape to adopt to remain morally superior by senselessly denouncing all societal conventions. Moreover, cynicism requires no recognition of the boundary between truth and lie, fact and fiction, reasoning and ignorance. It demands little from its practitioners, who are seemingly comforted by the empty knowledge which their indifference brings.

Skeptics investigate to search out the real answers. Cynics believe in their own answers without even looking.