Second Wind...

... or it could be third. I don't know. These days, I realise that the older I get, the less I actually know about the world I live in. We grow up, thinking that the paths that have been laid before us are known paths. I think they are not. Everything around us is actually more fluid than we know

Today, an earthquake hit Sabah. When we learned Geography in school, one of the things our teachers used to tell us was Malaysia is a country spared of natural disasters like earthquakes. The one natural disaster which we experience regularly is probably just the floods. But things have been changing. We experienced a tsunami when an earthquake hit Acheh back in 2004. And now an earthquake has hit one of our states.

One of the things I sometimes show my students is the computer simulation of earth's transformation in 5 billion years... a ball of nothing, ice ages, emergence of landforms, Pangea and the breaking of the supercontinent into smaller continents.... It is always amazing (and educational for me) to see their faces when they see Earth like nothing they have known. You see, I learned one thing watching these young faces. They are a product of a learning environment which does not teach these young minds that things are never always quite the same... though the behaviour that governs our actions may sometimes have some similarities.

Even the institutions that exist in our society, they have never been there all the time. Like life, they experienced birth, growth and death. But because we have only one lifetime, most of us think that things will remain the same... and so we pass on what we know to our children... Yet nothing actually is what they seem to be. Things will continue to change and evolve.

Recently researchers say gender equality was actually the norm in Paleo cultures. It became unequal when we no longer need to forage for food. Technology actually brought about gender inequality, it was postulated. At the turn of century we began to see the struggle for the emancipation of women.

The role of religions... It is interesting to read how they have kept dynasties in power and lent authority to those who claimed they were anointed mouth pieces. Empires have been built around religions. Wars have been fought over them too.

Feels like I am living in the Matrix....

Ramblings after an earthquake in Sabah....