Communication

"You can speak the same language, but still fail to communicate."

In a Personal Statement workshop in Nanjing University last Thursday, MCK, an American and my group member of When Pigs Fly, translate "stereotype" to "成见" and "偏见", and then talks in Chinese about the stereoypes of Chinese students in US graduate schools. The audience get confused when he refer both strength and weakness of Chinese students to US gradute school's "成见". The difference between stereotype and 成见 is subtle; the later has negative connotations while the former does not.

Not only would misuse of specific word cause failure of communication, but also the unawared disagreement of the definition of word. In a E-mail to MCK, I talk about the "design" of When Pigs Fly website, which in my mind means the CSS design, a computer programming language. But I fails to mention it explicitly. MCK get confused, because what he perceive design is the layout of contents displayed in the browser.

Enlightened by my first expeirence, I try a different strategy when explaining the structure of the website to Matt, another group member who does not know anything about the web technology. "The webiste is like a building. The domain of the website is like the name of the building. The domain are listed on the signposts of internet, the DNS, which guides the browser requesting specific pages to the website server. The website server is like the land the building stands. The webpages are the actual building, which you can modify, decorate and reconstruct by rewriting the page codes." I feel satisfied when he understands what I mean after my explanation.

Knowledge and Wisdom by Bertrand Russell

Most people would agree that, although our age far surpasses all previous ages in knowledge, there has been no correlative increase in wisdom. But agreement ceases as soon as we attempt to define 'wisdom' and consider means of promoting it.

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There are, I think, several factors that contribute to wisdom. Of these I should put first a sense of proportion: the capacity to take account of all the important factors in a problem and to attach to each its due weight.

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There must be, also, a certain awereness of the ends of human life...Perhaps one could stretch the comprehensiveness that constitute wisdom to include not only intellect but also feeling. It is by no means uncommon to find men whose knowledge is wide but whose feelings are narrow...

It is not only in public life ways, but in private life equally, that wisdom is needed. It is needed in the choice of ends to be persued and in emancipation from personal prejudice.

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I think the essence of wisdom is emancipation, as far as possible, from the tyranny of the here and now.

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...Hatred of evil is itself a kind of bondage to evil...

A sense of proportion, a certain awareness of the ends of human life and emancipation. Intellect and feeling.

We need a scale to determine the weight of each factor in a problem--the sense of proportion. This scale varies from person to person and from culture to culture. Consider physical beauty: some like big eyes, some like high nose and some like oval face. And the aesthetic standard differs greatly between cultures and even between ages.

The phrase 'ends of life' is confusing; does it mean the purpose of life or the termination of life? The context does not provide a clue, and it seems the two meanings both make sense in the context. Or maybe Russell use the word 'end' to express the both. Everyone exists for a purpose. If he does not have one or does not find one, he does not live. "Everyone dies, but not everyone lives."

Emancipation is desperately needed in China. Most people judge propriety of their deeds according to solely what others think, especially what their master think.