Leviathan

I support a very big part of Thomas Hobbes' idea of human nature and the need of the formation of Common-Wealth (Leviathan). Actually on the lecture about Thomas Hobbes' theory I saw my reasons and explanations to a lot of things happening in the world, even in church (in general). Although most of the time my illustration of thoughts are rejected by people (again, church people particularly), now I know I am not the only one having that in mind, I am not the originator. Eventually being pessimistic to human nature is not a wrong theory, in Christianity speaking, when you consider about the original sin. However there are two main things I differ from TH: I am not a materialist and I believe human nature contains both Good and Bad (note that it's capital G and B).

So what about Thomas Hobbes? Thomas Hobbes believes our voluntary motions are consequences of our endeavours, and all our endeavours are towards something. The things we want, we desire, are appetites; and the things we try to be away from are our aversions. There are something that we are neutral on, that's contemns. Basically this means for everything results in a motion ( i.e. we act), it is base on appetites and aversions, in other words what oneself wants and oneself doesn't want. There is no Good or Bad, but different conceptions of good and bad for everyone -- one sees his appetites are good, and his aversions are bad.

Undeniably, I do think very much about people's actions are just base on their appetites and aversion. The difference is I also believe, some people will show real sympathy, pity and charity etc. to others. Not just knowing that oneself could suffer what another is currently suffering, or seeing another's misfortune a possible misfortune of oneself. Like your family and your real friends, but these all require certain level of relationship and love. The more the love is in the relationship between one and another, the more possible non-egoistic actions would carry out. That is, the Good in human I was talking about.

Thomas Hobbes continued on elaborating what power is. He stated power is the present ability to obtain some future good. Powers are the exercises of people achieving their appetites and getting rid of their aversions. Obviously here the conflicts appear because of the sameness and differences in people's love and hate. There is never a way we can satisfy everybody because people always have conflicts in their interests and most of the time what one wants is on consumption of someone else. All sorts of powers involve power over other people. All of us have natural powers and may or may not have some sort of instrumental powers. Since natural powers are more or less equal in everybody (TH thought!), so instrumental powers are the main differences between people, like wealth, reputation, people, etc.

Isn't this what people trying to do? How many politicians becomes a politician purely because of real concern about people and would like to bring these people what they want (instead of what he wants to happen in the world)? Wealth, reputation, people, are the tools people in the world use to get what themselves want most of the time. How often do you see people use their power to help someone else to get their good without any fulfillment to their own good? Again, I do not deny the existence of Good in people, but just not that often. I hope it's not in Poisson distribution.

What if there is no restrains on power execution? That's the State of Nature TH is talking about, and he believes no civilised life is possible under this situation. I concur. Imagine all of us are fighting for something , using all sorts of mean, all of us would be too busy to protect our stuff and getting what we want. How could us ever develop and improve? That's why when playing Civilization, you can't proceed too far with Anarchy. Ah, just have to love Civilization.

So, that's why we need Common-Wealth. As a society there is a need of something that can protect most people appetites and aversions (I think it's just another application of Generalisation -- on "what most people want and don't want"). People give up some of their power, given that everyone in the society has to do the same, and authorise somebody (or group of people) the power, given that person (or the group) is ensuring peace and safety in the society. Well, you may think this does not sound good, but I think this is one of the best we, human beings, can ever come up with.

IE 7.0 and FireFox 2.0

They are both sitting on my work machine now. The first impression on IE 7.0 is, "ah, now I have two FireFox browsers".

"Are there any good new features", or "is there any bugs" are usually not my concern. As an end-user I only have my mind on the stuff that I need to use and want to use. If I encounter a bug, then sorry, there is a bug, I won't try to find out why it behaves that way or what causes the bug. I believe this is exactly what people do with our products too. End-users do not talk with the word "usability" but "good" or "bad". "Usability" is just a word that we use, which basically means how can we make different kind of end-users happy, from gurus to ignorance ones. So as an end-user I don't care about the usability of IE7 nor FF2, they are either -- "good", or "bad". However, that makes not much difference to me. I have FF there usually just for testing. Everything we develop has to work on both IE and FF (and safari), on Windows and Mac. Other than that IE is sufficient enough for me to do everything. If I have to test both IE and FF and decide to use the better one, should I get Opera as well? I am not that fuzzy in web browsing honestly, it's just something very minor.

路過Zarahn迷的Blog。。。

唔，湊巧路過一個Zarahn迷的Blog，看到阿銘他們的相，還看到阿銘家的相。感覺真的很怪，看到自己認識的人在雜誌，在MTV，在開concert，就是覺得怪怪的。

想起當年玩阿銘套鼓，想起當年聽他們錄下來的歌，想起當年阿銘叫我們夾錢買鼓棍給他，想起我們到現在還常用的"因為肥"萬用原因是從阿銘來的。。。現今看著有人為他們著迷，只覺得可笑。想起當年被無聊人傳出完全互不認識的美寶的哥哥與我有路，更覺無稽，我連他真人也沒見過幾次。。。那就是今天的別人的偶像嗎？! 想起高佬和小姐在一起時的事，唔。。。我還是覺得小姐飛了他是正確的，因為我是Te te派的。XD

不知道今天有多少人喜歡他們，但我相信我們這群一起長大的人，可以支持他們的選擇，但不能成為歌迷了。年青的一輩會覺得認識名人很厲害嗎？我年紀小些時也會想若我認識的人做了明星那會怎樣，到長大了，真的有這樣的事情了，只覺得人生就是這樣吧。昨天認識的人，明天總有些發了達，有些出了名，有些平平凡凡，有些成為社會敗類，有些遇意外過身了。。。甚麼人也有，也沒甚麼特別吧。

十月二十五日

還有一個月。怕嗎？哈哈。。。

準備中

皮蛋人未到紐西蘭，禮先到了，意料之外的，他也真的很錫我呢。。。我們還收到了很多禮物，最高興的是大家都在我們的Wedding Registry lists裡買東西給我們，我們很辛苦去選的東西都有人買呢!想起每一件都會用在我們家裡就很開心了，將來我們的家裡許多東西都有著朋友給我們的祝福和心意，就是我煮飯時和小王子吵起架來，一手叉腰一手拿著大舀子想指著他罵時，也會立刻想起買舀子的人是想我們幸福的，可能就會消了氣吧。。。(笑)

小王子的爸爸終於能有長假期，來看我們結婚，我很開心呢，越多人越熱鬧。一生人一次，我們都想摯親能看見，和我們一同準備，一同實行，一同高興。雖然還有很多要做的，而我們也真的很懶散，身邊的人都比我們著緊，為我們的散慢而憂心，但我相信所有事情都會很順利的啦，我一向使樂天熊仔派的。

還有一個Assignment和一個Exam，我會努力的了。這三天要做好Assignment，然後就開始每日讀一點點書，應該沒問題吧。。。哈哈~