I was walking from my lab to RCH the other day, mentally reviewing my latest tutorial that I was about to deliver. Around campus, there's a bunch of "Is Jesus Relevant" posters for an event a while back, hosted by mCCF. On several of these posters in E2/E3, someone took a black Sharpie and wrote NO across the poster. I was shocked about the poster for a few reasons.
1) Walking around campus, I've rarely noticed poster defacement. I can probably count all the cases on my hand. I figure most people don't even pay attention to the posters (when I did NSR, only a tiny handful of people came due to poster advertisements). Even in terms of general grafftti, I don't notice that often (other than bathroom stalls, anyway). Either Plants Ops are very good at cleaning those up, or Waterloo students are generally well-behaving. Or maybe I'm not very attentive. Either works.
2) I was reading about how there are many Christian-based laws/events being repelled these days in the name of religious tolerance. I remember getting frustrated at that, since Canada was really originally found on Christian principles, by Christian settlers. You don't expect the Middle East or parts of southern Asia to suddenly repel their religious laws as well, do you? But okay. Democracy is built on freedom of speech (well. to a degree. hate propaganda will get you arrested pretty quickly).
I feel that society is more and more pendulum-like. A few decades ago, it was for women and minority rights and suffrage. Nowadays, I've had Caucasian male friends tell me that they're most marginalized. I noticed RIM job applications asks me if I was a visible minority (Are Chinese actually visible minority? Certainly not on Waterloo campus...). I've see other companies boast that they are equal opportunities employers and etc. But I'm not going to get into gener roles and if fair = equal here...
3) I'm don't think I'm being superly biased here. A few weeks back, a Florida pastor publically announced that his church was going to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11. He later canceled his plans. I've never read the Koran, but I'd be pretty unhappy if I found out some Muslim groups were out burning Bibles. Lets stick with the Golden rule here. If you don't want other people to tell you what to believe, don't tell them what to believe. I'm in the business of sharing my faith, thoughts and ideas, not shoving it down someone's throat.
It took a while for Joge and I to hammer out, but I'm happy with NNC/BBW/Apologetics' mandate. We research ideas and questions. Present the different point of views. We add a bit to what we believe in ourselves and why we do so. That's it. You decide what you want to believe in. If I just tell you what to believe, then your beliefs are mine, and that will crumble when push comes to shove. If you decide for it on your own, then your belief becomes yours, and you learn to take a stand, and that is much more important. Haha. Sounds like that Inception movie.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Intrinsic Motivation
I was poking around the Internet today, trying to find some information on Subversion, to sort out my MATLAB romping and version control. Some searching got me this site. Not feeling a strong particular urge to work at the moment, I started skimming the recent article in this blog. I came across this entry:
The Vast and Endless Sea by Jeff Atwood
Talks about why he enjoys working on StackOverflow, a programming advice forum board, and how he doesn't do it for the money, but because he wants to make the Internet a better place.
It was an amusing read, but wasn't really thinking about it, until I saw the TED talk. Now, watching TED talks is a relatively recent thing for me. First exposed to me from Joses and Jacky, the Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) is a series of seminars (short! The few I've seen are all under 20 minutes) that has all sorts of interesting ideas. (Or, if you don't want to watch the 20 min TED version, there's a 10 min "whiteboard sketch" version by the same presenter that is linked on the blog). I'll quickly summarize the blog entry, but I suggest you read/watch the entry yourself. It is an entry on intrinsic motivation.
What Science knows vs what Business is doing
The speaker, Dan Pink, point to the 'candle problem', where you are given a candle, a box of tacks and a box of matches, and you are to attach the candle to the wall in a way that the wax does not land on the table. The solution is literally outside-the-box. You empty out the box of tacks, put the candle in it, and tack the box to the wall.
Princeton scientist Sam Glucksberg performed a variant of this experiment. He offered people money to solve this problem. Surprisingly, the control group did better. Hmm...
MIT's Dan Ariely did this experiment as well, where they offered several types of experiment (cognitive and mechanical) with rewards. The findings here are the same as Glucksberg. They found that rewards boosted performance only if the actions are mechanical. This makes sense, because rewards focuses the mind on just the task and little else. The subjects performed much worse when cognitive activities are required. It's hard to think outside the box or creatively when your mind is so focused. And just in case there is a cultural influence, they repeated the experiment in a rural town in India. Same results.
This is totally opposite to what the business model suggests, where bonus and raises are given to those with innovation and breakthroughs. Perhaps...really...these innovations occur in spite of the money-based pressures presented by companies?
And so Dan Pink presented his most strongest evidence. Perhaps some of you are old enough to remember a Microsoft digital encyclopedia known as Encarta. I had a copy of Encarta 98. It was pretty good. I did a lot of readings there. Encarta had the input of numerous experts, and is filled with good, professional thoughts, that Microsoft hired. However, this eventually faded as Wikipedia came into the picture. Why would experts and common folks alike put so much time into a volunteer-based, thankless project like Wikipedia?
Because it made the Internet a better place.
Pink noted 3 major concepts that gives someone intrinsic motivation:
I could take this concept and apply it to a various different locations, things that I, or people around me struggle with. Studying for school. Making Bible studies interesting. Staying with new year resolutions. Self-control. The idea is not to appeal with extrinsic motivation. Even PSYCH101 teaches you enough that intrinsic motivation is much more powerful than extrinsic ones. No one can really tell you to study harder, or be more focused. You need to do that. And sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's really hard. Which is why we were given Help, to do things that we cannot do alone.
Related papers and other links
The Vast and Endless Sea by Jeff Atwood
Talks about why he enjoys working on StackOverflow, a programming advice forum board, and how he doesn't do it for the money, but because he wants to make the Internet a better place.
It was an amusing read, but wasn't really thinking about it, until I saw the TED talk. Now, watching TED talks is a relatively recent thing for me. First exposed to me from Joses and Jacky, the Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) is a series of seminars (short! The few I've seen are all under 20 minutes) that has all sorts of interesting ideas. (Or, if you don't want to watch the 20 min TED version, there's a 10 min "whiteboard sketch" version by the same presenter that is linked on the blog). I'll quickly summarize the blog entry, but I suggest you read/watch the entry yourself. It is an entry on intrinsic motivation.
What Science knows vs what Business is doing
The speaker, Dan Pink, point to the 'candle problem', where you are given a candle, a box of tacks and a box of matches, and you are to attach the candle to the wall in a way that the wax does not land on the table. The solution is literally outside-the-box. You empty out the box of tacks, put the candle in it, and tack the box to the wall.
Princeton scientist Sam Glucksberg performed a variant of this experiment. He offered people money to solve this problem. Surprisingly, the control group did better. Hmm...
MIT's Dan Ariely did this experiment as well, where they offered several types of experiment (cognitive and mechanical) with rewards. The findings here are the same as Glucksberg. They found that rewards boosted performance only if the actions are mechanical. This makes sense, because rewards focuses the mind on just the task and little else. The subjects performed much worse when cognitive activities are required. It's hard to think outside the box or creatively when your mind is so focused. And just in case there is a cultural influence, they repeated the experiment in a rural town in India. Same results.
This is totally opposite to what the business model suggests, where bonus and raises are given to those with innovation and breakthroughs. Perhaps...really...these innovations occur in spite of the money-based pressures presented by companies?
And so Dan Pink presented his most strongest evidence. Perhaps some of you are old enough to remember a Microsoft digital encyclopedia known as Encarta. I had a copy of Encarta 98. It was pretty good. I did a lot of readings there. Encarta had the input of numerous experts, and is filled with good, professional thoughts, that Microsoft hired. However, this eventually faded as Wikipedia came into the picture. Why would experts and common folks alike put so much time into a volunteer-based, thankless project like Wikipedia?
Because it made the Internet a better place.
Pink noted 3 major concepts that gives someone intrinsic motivation:
- Autonomy - The freedom to pursuit what you want. An example he cites for this is the Twenty Percent Time of Google, where 20% of the Google engineers' time are spent doing whatever they want, to produce whatever innovation they want
- Mastery - People want to be known that they're good at something. Really good at something. Bragging rights, perhaps? Or perhaps this feeds into the third point, which is...
- Purpose - Wanting to reform outdated systems. Make the Internet a better place. To help people. Materialistic comfort. Status and reputation.
I could take this concept and apply it to a various different locations, things that I, or people around me struggle with. Studying for school. Making Bible studies interesting. Staying with new year resolutions. Self-control. The idea is not to appeal with extrinsic motivation. Even PSYCH101 teaches you enough that intrinsic motivation is much more powerful than extrinsic ones. No one can really tell you to study harder, or be more focused. You need to do that. And sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's really hard. Which is why we were given Help, to do things that we cannot do alone.
Related papers and other links
- S. Glucksberg, The influence of strength of drive on functional fixedness and perceptual recognition (1962). Journal of Experimental Psychology.
- J. Heyman, D. Ariely, Effort for Payment (2004). Psychological Science.
- D. Ariely, A. Bracha, S. Meier. Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially (2007). Social Science Research Network
- Dan Pink on the Surprising Science of Motivation (TEDGlobal 2009): found here
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Nostalgia
I think I've came a long way since Calgary, 2005. The people that I knew way back in first year could attest to that. I sometimes think back to my old WatCard picture (which, unfortunately, got shredded when I got my grad student version) and my attitude when I first came in. Just another frosh, far away from home, and hating every moment of it. Today, Waterloo doesn't seem that bad.
I don't think it really was Calgary. I have several high school friends that continuously tell me how sucky Calgary is. One is in LA now. The other in Belgium. I think back to our struggles in jr high and high school and realize it really wasn't that bad. All the "end-of-the-world" events is just another memory. Vanessa was in Calgary for a month and was telling me about how people are (Dang. Matt's taller than us now?). Who's married to who (What?! TD got married?!). Who's working where (Wow, how did Noel end up in HK?). News of people that I once stood, walked with and was challenged by, but now just an acquaintance due to time and distance.
I resonate strongly with Jo Wong's post, of how "I don't hang out enough with them" anymore. With time a (slightly) more flexible commodity, I spent some time reading people's thoughts, flipping through Facebook, just to see where that entire crowd is. What people are doing. My CCAC friends. My IB friends. My family friends (actually, I can guess what they're doing...StarCraft II -_-). I think it's easy to be surprised and shocked at where people at home is. But those of us who left Calgary, we've made a few steps forward too. A bunch of us are doing grad school, in Ontario and Quebec. Kevin ended up in NYC. I constantly forget that Jon and Mel Lau are in North York. A few went all the way back to Taiwan/China/HK.
Whenever people ask of my past, I always complain about Calgary. I complain about it being spiritually dead, and that I instantly feel "more spiritual" when I step onto Waterloo soil. I point out that I've grown more in the first 2 years of UW than I have all my life in Calgary. I lament about the lack of community that I've come to know as fellowship. What I don't talk about is those late night MSN chats with Sr Rock upperyears. Or the counselors that tried. The running around with the elementary kids. The joking around in choir practices. The bags of wet grass. The hours in the Industrial Arts shop. The talks in the parks and the malls. Scoffing down the noodles when no one is around to tell us to slow down while eating. Assaulted by mosquitoes at Edworthy park. Tripping on rollerblades at Edworthy park. Spraying water into wound at Edworthy park. Sharing my testimony at Edworthy park.
Calgary was just a set up for the foundations. It felt like an uphill battle, where I was young and foolish (now, just foolish). Where I often wonder "if only I knew what I knew now...". Where I remind myself that's what the upperyears tried to tell me. Calgary, with its environment and people, set the basis for later growth. I am no longer like them, eager for the next Halo night or bowling event, but I would not have grown without them. It was rather interesting then, when my family came over for my Convocation. A bit of a collision of worlds. A slight reminder that I can't maintain contact with everyone. That the stories goes on, with or without us. Waterloo has it's difficulties too. It's just easier to complain about Calgary.
Haha. I wonder how much Calgary people would see this. Funny how one can still get homesick once in a while, after 5 years. Thinking back, but always still looking forward.
I don't think it really was Calgary. I have several high school friends that continuously tell me how sucky Calgary is. One is in LA now. The other in Belgium. I think back to our struggles in jr high and high school and realize it really wasn't that bad. All the "end-of-the-world" events is just another memory. Vanessa was in Calgary for a month and was telling me about how people are (Dang. Matt's taller than us now?). Who's married to who (What?! TD got married?!). Who's working where (Wow, how did Noel end up in HK?). News of people that I once stood, walked with and was challenged by, but now just an acquaintance due to time and distance.
I resonate strongly with Jo Wong's post, of how "I don't hang out enough with them" anymore. With time a (slightly) more flexible commodity, I spent some time reading people's thoughts, flipping through Facebook, just to see where that entire crowd is. What people are doing. My CCAC friends. My IB friends. My family friends (actually, I can guess what they're doing...StarCraft II -_-). I think it's easy to be surprised and shocked at where people at home is. But those of us who left Calgary, we've made a few steps forward too. A bunch of us are doing grad school, in Ontario and Quebec. Kevin ended up in NYC. I constantly forget that Jon and Mel Lau are in North York. A few went all the way back to Taiwan/China/HK.
Whenever people ask of my past, I always complain about Calgary. I complain about it being spiritually dead, and that I instantly feel "more spiritual" when I step onto Waterloo soil. I point out that I've grown more in the first 2 years of UW than I have all my life in Calgary. I lament about the lack of community that I've come to know as fellowship. What I don't talk about is those late night MSN chats with Sr Rock upperyears. Or the counselors that tried. The running around with the elementary kids. The joking around in choir practices. The bags of wet grass. The hours in the Industrial Arts shop. The talks in the parks and the malls. Scoffing down the noodles when no one is around to tell us to slow down while eating. Assaulted by mosquitoes at Edworthy park. Tripping on rollerblades at Edworthy park. Spraying water into wound at Edworthy park. Sharing my testimony at Edworthy park.
Calgary was just a set up for the foundations. It felt like an uphill battle, where I was young and foolish (now, just foolish). Where I often wonder "if only I knew what I knew now...". Where I remind myself that's what the upperyears tried to tell me. Calgary, with its environment and people, set the basis for later growth. I am no longer like them, eager for the next Halo night or bowling event, but I would not have grown without them. It was rather interesting then, when my family came over for my Convocation. A bit of a collision of worlds. A slight reminder that I can't maintain contact with everyone. That the stories goes on, with or without us. Waterloo has it's difficulties too. It's just easier to complain about Calgary.
Haha. I wonder how much Calgary people would see this. Funny how one can still get homesick once in a while, after 5 years. Thinking back, but always still looking forward.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Doing not-so-grand things
Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.
Now bands from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy."
Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. "By all means, go," the king of Aram replied. "I will send a letter to the king of Israel." So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: "With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy."
As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, "Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!"
When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: "Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel." So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha's house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, "Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed."
But Naaman went away angry and said, "I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed?" So he turned and went off in a rage.
Naaman's servants went to him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed'!" So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.
- 2 Kings 5.1-14
Interesting passage. Commentators note that...
- Naaman was only awesome cuz God made him so
- The girl in v2 was a captive Jewish slave, but still advertised for the benefit of her master, thus is an example of outreach
- The king can't do anything. Haha.
- Elisha didn't feel like coming out to meet the general
Naaman's servants went to him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed'!"
- 2 Kings 5.13
If the prophet had told you to do some great thing...
I feel that we're constantly expecting to be handed some great thing to do. Somewhere between exposed too much science fiction and action anime/movies/books/games, and all the epic stories we read in the Bible, one might come to the conclusion that we're all called to do "great things." In fact, it might even be easier to do great things. To have something worthwhile under your belt. Just so I can say "yeah, I did this."
Last weekend, I assembled my first CV (I'm totally sold on LaTeX now. No more Microsoft Word spacing ugliness). CV, short for curriculum vitae, loosely translates to "the course of my life," and essentially is a resume without page limits. It was a mildly entertaining 3 hours while I thought about random things I can stick here (to make up for my lack of publication count). At the end, I had 2 pages worth of volunteering experience. Quite proud of myself...until I started removing all the irrelavent ones. -_-
We live in a society of accomplishments. When I meet someone new, "what do you do as a living?" is a typical first question. "So...what exactly are you researching?" is probably the question I get the most often. We're constantly doing things...and all the better if they happen to be great things. Nothing like a good ego/pride boosting to get one going.
But more often than not, the stuff we do arin't all that great. Especially so in research. In fact, one of the early papers I read was about the importance of stupidity in research (no worries, there's no math or proofs...I'm extremely amused that someone cited it). In real life, great things arin't that easy to come by, because they tend to be hard to pull off, and sometimes you just gotta be at the right place at the right time.
In God's kingdom, great things don't come that often either. Paul sheds some light on why:
Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say.
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
- 2 Corinthians 12.6-10
It's more about God then it is about us. And so when we're sent to do the littlest of tasks, the great things that are achieved are not by our hands, but by God's.
Random conclusion note
Ungrateful people. Aram attacks Israel in chapter 6. -_-
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Roles of political leadership
A law...
I found it interesting that the provisions for a king was already outlined when Israel was still in the desert. I tuned in on this part as I was reading a friend's blog earlier, where he is talking about early Chinese emperors and how the early kings avoided extravagance and instead opted for a simple life style. A life of servitude. The modern government is also designed to do that; centralizing power and serving the people. Although I'm, in general, tempted to bash our governments for endless bickering and finger pointing (as oppose to actually solving problems), I will refrain. Having been in leadership roles, I recognize that it's hard to draw a compromise and meet everyone's ideas. It leads to a greater question of...should a governmental leader let his own beliefs and biases colour his political decisions?
Who do we elect?
The current Canadian Prime Minister, Steven Harper, is a Christian (denominational Alliance, actually. I was a bit surprised. I thought Alliance people were all Chinese, haha). We've already established that the government's job is to serve the people. Do we elect governments that will listen to the public and implement changes are appropriate? Or do we elect a person because we want certain agendas to be met in the country?
Most people would probably reply the latter, but with expectations that the former would happen (especially if your particular needs are not being met by the existing platforms). Are these two ideals not contradicting?
Political leader of another kind
It is expected that Harper would behave "Christianity" while he's in office, and table bills and appoint others with Christian ideals. People rant when that does not happen. So what if we ended up with another type of leader? What if we had a pro-communist leader that was elected in because not enough people voted? Or a fifth column effect occured? Surely, we would protest and break windows and firebomb police cars (you knew a G20 reference was coming) and complain that democracy is being destroyed.
So now...you WOULDN'T want the political leaders to implement their beliefs. So then...what should these people do? As a leader, you're often stuck with trying to set up the system so that it meets the needs of the maximum amount of people. If the people are unhappy, you're simply removed from power, and can't influence the system anymore. A very real case of how you can't please everyone.
Okay. So what?
Not really trying to advance any agenda. Part of this post came from the amusing Bible passages, where God laid down the rules before a king came into the picture, as if He already knew it'll happen. Part of this post came up from the annoyance at the knee-jerk reaction commentaries (and the knee-jerk reaction to these reactions) I tend to find on CBC when the government does something stupid. Part of this post comes from lack of voter turnout and how many people choose not make informed votes. Another part came from the frustration at the G20 protests. As another friend noted, I'm a loss to where these anarchists came from. Sigh...
When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us," be sure to appoint over you the king the LORD your God chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, "You are not to go back that way again." He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.And a warning...
When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.
- Deuteronomy 17.14-20
...they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do."
Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."
But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."
When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. The LORD answered, "Listen to them and give them a king."
Then Samuel said to the men of Israel, "Everyone go back to his town."
- 1 Samuel 8.6-22
I found it interesting that the provisions for a king was already outlined when Israel was still in the desert. I tuned in on this part as I was reading a friend's blog earlier, where he is talking about early Chinese emperors and how the early kings avoided extravagance and instead opted for a simple life style. A life of servitude. The modern government is also designed to do that; centralizing power and serving the people. Although I'm, in general, tempted to bash our governments for endless bickering and finger pointing (as oppose to actually solving problems), I will refrain. Having been in leadership roles, I recognize that it's hard to draw a compromise and meet everyone's ideas. It leads to a greater question of...should a governmental leader let his own beliefs and biases colour his political decisions?
Who do we elect?
The current Canadian Prime Minister, Steven Harper, is a Christian (denominational Alliance, actually. I was a bit surprised. I thought Alliance people were all Chinese, haha). We've already established that the government's job is to serve the people. Do we elect governments that will listen to the public and implement changes are appropriate? Or do we elect a person because we want certain agendas to be met in the country?
Most people would probably reply the latter, but with expectations that the former would happen (especially if your particular needs are not being met by the existing platforms). Are these two ideals not contradicting?
Political leader of another kind
It is expected that Harper would behave "Christianity" while he's in office, and table bills and appoint others with Christian ideals. People rant when that does not happen. So what if we ended up with another type of leader? What if we had a pro-communist leader that was elected in because not enough people voted? Or a fifth column effect occured? Surely, we would protest and break windows and firebomb police cars (you knew a G20 reference was coming) and complain that democracy is being destroyed.
So now...you WOULDN'T want the political leaders to implement their beliefs. So then...what should these people do? As a leader, you're often stuck with trying to set up the system so that it meets the needs of the maximum amount of people. If the people are unhappy, you're simply removed from power, and can't influence the system anymore. A very real case of how you can't please everyone.
Okay. So what?
Not really trying to advance any agenda. Part of this post came from the amusing Bible passages, where God laid down the rules before a king came into the picture, as if He already knew it'll happen. Part of this post came up from the annoyance at the knee-jerk reaction commentaries (and the knee-jerk reaction to these reactions) I tend to find on CBC when the government does something stupid. Part of this post comes from lack of voter turnout and how many people choose not make informed votes. Another part came from the frustration at the G20 protests. As another friend noted, I'm a loss to where these anarchists came from. Sigh...
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