In Continuum.

Like some of you may know, I loved COM231 despite the fact that I did the worst in that topic. PHI115 has been great so far (haven't lost a point), but you can't help but feel stupid by the end of every lesson. I don't quite understand why we are taking sentences apart and then trying to group them into categories during a philosophy lesson but, I suppose everything is necessary for something. Conjunction sentences, disjunction sentences, conditional sentences, biconditional sentences, negations, and everything else in between and more. I can't believe I actually remember these very technical names, and I suppose this sentence is a compound sentence by itself. As you can see, this poison is deep, which goes to show that you are a full-blown college student. At least that is what I was telling Corinna, when she quoted from Karl Marx the other day, something to do with religion which she thought to be interesting. The surprising thing was, I actually recognized the quote, which goes to show how much a college student I am at this point. When you see a Karl Marx quote that you recognize, you are probably a college student, no questions about that. While half your brain is dominated by sex, the other is probably dominated by a whole bunch of theories. This entry, is an entry about why some of those theories are plain stupid. 

I remember the first economics lesson I had in junior college. You know, that first lesson when they taught you about scare resources and opportunity costs? Whatever was "opportunity cost" anyway, the words pieced together don't even make much sense at all. That is until the lecturer explained to us the meaning behind this little term, though we could probably explain it as "something you'd lose if you choose A instead of B". Simple, direct, straight-forward terms, but the economists don't really like those. In fact, the entire scientific community don't really like the idea of simple, direct, straight-forward language. It is made worse when some of these scientists disagree with one another, and they come up with their own terms to define the very same thing. Enough that these theories are confusing the hell out of us and killing a billion brain cells everyday, they have to include even more terms to explain the very same theory. Somebody needs to come up with a standardized system soon, or else someone is getting a test tube up their rear. Or worse, a beaker! 

So, back to the point I was trying to make. I remember the first economics lecture I had, and the lecturer told us about how a lot of what we were going to learn is going to revolve around theories. At that age, that naive age, I used to think that theories were the absolute, that they were correct. I thought that you could whip out a theory in an argument and then slap that person across the face, although the idea of contradicting theories never actually came to mind. So there I was, sitting at the back of the class, thinking about the potentials of theories when the lecturer told us that almost none of what we were going to learn is going to be applicable in reality. That is to say, whatever that I learned for two years in junior college during economics lectures were practically useless in the real world, and that they were merely theories to be considered. "Things work very differently in the real world" he explained. "But you have to learn these anyway". I wondered to myself, if it was possible to skip all the theories and then jump straight to the real world stuff instead. 

Of course, the Singaporean education system doesn't really want you to do that. They prefer to choke you with useless theories and then spit you out into the real world, starting from square one. If theories are actually applicable and practical in real world situations, then degree holders would emerge out of universities as being geniuses in the job markets, and people don't really like that. People don't like competitions, or people who are too smart. A country full of idiots is infinitely easier to control than one with a bunch of geniuses, because the former group of people don't think very much. If your theories do not apply to the real world, which they don't, then you are going to start out in the real world as a new bird, or fresh meat. Square one, where everybody else knows more than you because they've been on the job for a much longer time. As you learn more and more of these theories, you realize that they make great conversational topics, if you are into talking about those things over dinner, though they are not really applicable anywhere else. You don't argue the fundamentals of economics with the manager of a supermarket, he'd tape your mouth with price tag machines. 

So, not all theories are applicable in real life. It's like that time in high school when they taught you about Pythagoras' Theorem. You know, the whole a-squared plus b-squared equals to c-squared thing, which is also how you find one side of a triangle when they only give you the length of two sides. It's pretty easy and straight-forward, one of those theories we learned in school that wasn't too hard on the brain to comprehend. But if you think about it, it really isn't that applicable in normal everyday lives. It is useful if you want to be a math teacher, and probably a must if you want to teach high school math, or if you are going to be a father and your son comes to ask you one day of a math question. That is as far as application goes for theories like that, and nobody actually uses them very often really. You don't go to a shopping mall and calculate sine, cosine, or tangent to the power of X, that's not what they have on price tags anyway. Queues would be so much longer if that is the case, and a lot less efficient too. People would be calculating how much a certain brand of coffee is instead of comparing that brand with another. It'd take forever to do so, which is why these mathematical theories aren't exactly practical. 

Some are just sad attempts to explain the human condition as a whole. As a communication student, we always learn about relationships in between two human beings. It just seems like we are always trying to find the best way to co-exist with one another, when this so-called "best way" doesn't exist at all. A truly effective communicator doesn't exist, in my opinion. It's a myth, though we are all trying our very best to work towards it, because we are supposed to know the theories and the theories behind those theories. We learn about conflict resolutions,a and yet we always get into disagreements. If an IKEA user manual doesn't actually teach you how to put that new coffee table together, customers are really going to be very pissed off when they find out. They are probably going to burst the IKEA hotline just to complain about the faulty user manual, but nobody complains about theories that are supposed to explain why we are doing the things we are doing anyway. Like, that relationship theory this guy called Knapp came up with, and he charts how a relationship goes from the initiation stages, to the experimental stages, to the integration stages, and then gradually to the terminal stage. There are stages in between, but I cannot remember very well. It all seems pretty reasonable, but then you realize just how little sense it makes.

Not every relationship follows according to plan, some people skip that experimenting stage altogether. They jump straight to the top of the relationship and then they pack up and leave by morning - if you know what I mean. Most theories focus on how two people can get together anyway. There was this theory, I forgot the name of it, that mapped out the reason on why humans get together with one another and fall in love. A common workplace was one of them, which I found to be a little ridiculous. Perhaps I just prefer to separate love from work, or maybe it is the fear of meeting each other at work everyday despite a nasty break up. You know, seeing your ex-girlfriend in school every single day for every single class - that's got to suck. Of course, you don't go into a relationship thinking about such things, but then perhaps you really should be doing that. The thought of seeing each other day in and out in school is just mind-boggling to me. I need that distance, that desire to see somebody. I don't want to be able to see someone just by crossing over to the desk across the aisle when I want to. That's too easy, and it's just not very exciting. 

Some relationship disintegrates really fast, they don't follow step by step. You could try, the next time you break up, to go through the steps. "I'm sorry, but according to Knapp we cannot go straight to termination. We have to follow the rules!" It doesn't work that way, you might get a tight slap if you attempt to do so. Some relationship ends real quick, from the highest to the lowest, just like that. No questions asked, no sweat broken, just two words and it is over. If you really want to believe that being in the same environment with somebody truly makes the heart grow fonder, then you should also believe in Freud that girls grew up with a penis envy too. I don't think girls are very envious that we have this ugly thing hanging in between our legs, or those two other things that hang behind that first ugly thing. No, they are really not that envious, and I think Freud really only wanted to get closer to little girls back then. Anyway, theories are not exactly accurate, and they could conflict with one another. The point is, don't take everything on surface value, and don't trust whatever the school tells you. Question, then question some more, because that is the only way to derive at your own theories, your own relative truth.