Lately, the world seemed to be in chaos. From the North Korean crisis to the deadly killings of students by a man in US, the media are constantly bombarding us about their headlines. We read about the tragedy of people dying everyday in the war torn areas from Sudan to Iraq. Sometimes, I am very afraid that I will be desensitized by these kind of information and start treating lives and deaths as a statistical exercise.
Reading this article "Killer's wife salutes Amish mercy" made me think about the virtues that we used to talk about when I am younger and idealist. The tragedy started on a local man named Charles Roberts who did a spree of killings and ended up committed suicide after the shooting spree. It is often hard to comprehend this kind of insanity. What this men left behind, was a family who have lived with the consequences of his sins, possibly blame and hate from the community who lost their loved ones in the process. Instead, the Amish responded not with hate but with mercy. The Amish community have said they forgive him and have helped set up a fund for the Roberts family at a local bank.
I often place myself in the position where I might be one of those family who lost my children to a murderer and think about what I do. No matter how hard I try, I am always stuck with the argument of justice in the notion of an eye for an eye. Yet, something seem to struck me today that mercy and compassion are higher virtues that we aspire to transcend as human beings. Is it because in the process of growing up and enduring the pain when people disappoint you that made us forget about such virtues? It is often hard to forgive people who betrayed you or let you down. Is there something beyond that difficulty of dealing with pain and depression?
When we are younger, our teachers preach to us on the values of compassion and mercy and we believe that these virtues exist. Yet, the harsh reality of life slowly erodes that idealism from us such that we become bitter, angry and vengeful in times of tragedy. Maybe this article does offer some hope to the idealist, because it provides us the perspective that there is something beyond the mundane that we seek to be enlightened in the journey of life. I realize that my quest is not merely in just the search for knowledge, but the transcendence of virtues beyond our fragile mortality.
While meeting a few entrepreneurs in a cosy cafe located somewhere in town last Saturday, my friend, James Seng, showed a few of us some videos from TED.com that showcased the latest innovations in the world. TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) started out as a conference in 1984 to bring people from these three spheres and share their latest ideas. Now it brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers (Al Gore, Steven Levitt, Steven Pinker, Bill Clinton, and other interesting characters) and they are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. I started downloading videocasts through iTunes (do a search on Ted Talks), and started listening to a few of them, and I was truly inspired by the people in the conference, who demonstrated cool innovative desktops (better than what I have used in Mac OSX), philosophical thoughts on different subjects with very simple analogies and explanation. Here is one example which I particularly like.
Recently, because of the Kathy Sierra death threat incident, Tim O'Reilly, the man who coined the famous term "Web 2.0" decided to suggest 
