FB Group - Day 5 of experiment

Day 5 of experiment

There wasn't a Day 4, as I skipped writing yesterday. The official reason was that I was on a phone call with my relative, but the real reason was that laziness kicked in and I wanted to take a break.

However, I felt quite guilty for not writing anything despite still being quite enthusiastic, and so I ensures I would spend time today to write. With a rest day, I am more confident with what to write and more engaged when writing, and didn't mind putting the time in writing at all.

I still have enough content and topics to write about, so I wasn't being careful about today's topic and might have involved a few topics in one article - if I were a professional writer this might mean ruining my livelihood by amalgamating a few articles into one.

After writing about this, I feel like writing the next one, but of course I don't have time and also believe that I should keep to the habit of one a day instead of burning out all enthusiasm in a day.

Am I worried about not attracting my other friends? Only my wife has been reading, and I feel slightly disappinted. It's a good FB group topic and I kept the articles brief and also took care to include pictures, but no one read it! Why? Not really disappinted, but anxiety did kick in in hoping someone would at least take interest

FB Group - Day 3 of experiment

Day 3 of experiment

Despite yesterday's excitement and planning for today's article, there is a bit of writer's block and laziness also kicked in. The excitement wore off a bit and it just felt like a chore to start with, lifting my fingers to start typing was not that enjoyable. Of course, once I got into the flow, all the negative feeling went away, as I am still fresh with ideas and have a mine full of content to write about. It's not really a writer's block.

I decided to write about a more mundane topic of tea-brewing tools, as I didn't feel that motivated to choose a chatty and exciting topic like types of tea leaves. As I was writing, I noticed that the tone, vocabulary and style was quite similar to the previous two days', and I was longing to make some variations in style and wording but I struggled. It wasn't a comfortable feeling when re-using so much compared to the previous articles. I wish I could do more, have more variety, try out new things, but given that I have selected a theme and a path, making such a change is not easy.

I fear that as I walk along the path and make articles on similar themes, wording and styles, I will start to feel the repetition and lose interest. That's why I have to pre-empt tomorrow's topic at the end of this passage, just to give myself some continuity.

FB group - Day 2 of experiment

Day 2 of experiment

I already knew what to write about today since yesterday. I was excited about opening my FB group, and as soon as I had written the first article, the second one simply dropped out along the thought process. I am going to write an intro to different types of tea leaves based on their grain size, and after this I will start writing about the proportions of different tea leaves in a brew, and then write about the impact of brewing time of taste etc etc etc. The starting days are always easy - I decided on the project's purpose, of course I would have implicitly considered its viability in terms of the first few days' or weeks' content.

The writing was smooth as well. The topic was decided, then I was simply writing out my mind and my existing experience. Time was taken in typing out Chinese on Google Translate, nothing else. After posting this passage, I almost wanted to start writing the 3rd article and not wait till tomorrow. It's just so exciting and I already have the content in my mind! Why wait?

Apart from my wife, no one has read any of my articles, even though my personal posts would normally attract a few likes from distant friends. Am I bothered or concerned? Not really, I am in an excited state and the lack of audience and any positive feedback is very far down my list of priorities. I just want to write write and write, there are a lot of content to be shared with other people!

FB Group snippet - Day 1 of experiment

Day 1 of experiment

I decided to open a group on sharing my experiments in brewing Hong Kong Milk Tea. After much pondering, Facebook seems to be a better option than Meet-up or Blogs - I want my friends to see it and join, I want my activities on the group to be publicised and maybe more people outside of my friends' circle would join and read about it. More crucially, I want people to contribute, interact and help to widen and deepen each other's knowledge in milk tea-brewing.


This is the FB group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1467012226704058/

So far, so easy - deciding on the name was the hardest part, and whether to post in Chinese or English. I decided on Chinese to brush up my skills, and also to suit my audience. My first inclination is to find a place to write down the objective of why I decided to open the group, which hopefully will help to solicit more members!

I put up a FB page photo, and made a few standard posts - just to get myself into the mood of posting and interacting.

I don't know whether people will join, whether people will like the direction I am about to embark on, and whether my posts and photos will help to illustrate my idea (and vision) for the group and entice them to join. So far, I don't care - the greater urge is for me to express what I have always wanted to do (to share my experience in brewing so far), getting it in the right "commercial direction" so to speak and getting more people to join is low down the priorities. I just want to start, spit out my excitement, put something on to get myself into the momentum, and think about what I want to tell people next? Let's leave positioning to a later date.

I already have ideas on what to post/share, but I don't want to run dry, and so I will leave the posting to tomorrow. I am sure I am excited about creating new posts tomorrow. It's a new start after all!

Will more people join? Would be good to get people in, that would be satisfying.

Reading Snippet - Review of Cuisine and Empire by Rachel Laudan

Cuisine and Empire - neat high-level framework on world's culinary history, but full of glitches

I am an amateur cook and likes understanding the stories behind different cultures' and countries' food and culinary practices. One day, I came across this book on a Chinese book Facebook page, and decided to buy the original English edition. It is my first book on global culinary history, although I have read some books on gastronomy and dining practices in Chinese Song dynasty.

It didn't take long for me to finish reading this book, for three reasons - the length of this book was not excessively long, and there had been no junctures when I felt the author has dug too much into the details or dwelled on a topic for too long, but neither did I feel lacking upon conclusion of a section. The writing was designed to flow for a lay person instead of being semi-academic for trained historians or people starting on a culinary history course. Most importantly, the sectioning of chapters and topics within each chapter was highly logical and simply went from one period to another like TV drama episodes, giving me a sense of continuity as I progressed. I didn't feel that there were major gaps.

The basic framework adopted by this book was to put world history into approximate major periods similar to "renaissance", "nationalism" and "post-commuist era". It started with early human civilisation in which culinary was associated with cosmology and divinity through cooking's transformation of food; this then progressed to the "imperial era" sophisticated dynasties appeared and imperial high cuisines emerged together with the associated ceremonies & philosophies and counter-cuisines. It then devoted a number of chapters towards the "global religion era" during which the major religions went global and spread their culinary philosophies together with their religions, and that different geographies adapted the philosophies based on their own territories' capabilities and constraints. The final two chapters were devoted to the rise of modern cuisine especially the Anglo cuisine that went hand-in-hand with industrial revolution (modernity) and then the food debates and movements since 20th century when industrial food processing went in full swing.

As the author admitted at the start, this secondary-school-curriculum style synopsis and super-high-level framework is necessarily simplistic and may contain generalisation which some people will find uncomfortable. Nonetheless, just like a secondary-school curriculum, it helps novices in creating an overall picture that allows them to subsequently get deeper into the details, or simply stop at this level satisfied with the abstract truth. The queries and concerns that came with this approach didn't bother me. However, there are a number of points which prevented me from trusting the book fully or extracting the most from the book.

If you were a European or North American with little knowledge of other cultures and regional history, you wouldn't spot it. But as a Chinese, I realised that the Chinese name translations were non-uniform. There are places that adopted Cantonese translations, other places with the Communist pinyin translations, and yet some places with the Qing dynasty/republic era Latin translation. My guess is the author air-lifted the specific name translations from reference sources and inserted directly when creating the narration. It is simply uncomfortable reading that feels a hint of laziness lurking around, creating suspicion that some other laziness might have led into over-zealous generalisation or un-cross-checked facts or theories.

This is a culinary book, and given the huge differences between the medieval or even imperial cuisines and our current cuisines, it is very difficult to visualise her descriptions of the old food, old culinary styles and ingredients. She talked about "sauces" liberally throughout the book, but are these sauces people integrate into a dish (like sweet and sour sauce), act as an accompaniment (like gravy), provide complementary tastes for those who wish (like ketchups) or act as a stand-alone to be enjoyed (like jam)? Surely, sauces would serve different purposes for different cultures at different ages, yet it was generalised into one. She talked about the use of almonds in creating white sauces, and described chicken korma in Mughal era - it would be good to see actual recipes, photographic illustrations or rich paintings! I read through the descriptions sometimes unable to tell the difference from one to another, or to picture them in my head to my satisfaction. Especially given the proliferation of food programmes on TV and well-illustrated cookbooks, readers do expect illustrations that make them "get it".

Nonetheless it is a well-written book. More importantly, her ability to NOT put Europe and North America (and Roman & Greek history) at the centre of her framework or describe from European/North American pint-of-view should be commended. Too many world history books have simply ignored their non-European/American readership, practically lined historical theories with European examples (or are these theories set along the European contour alone?) or assume primacy of European history with "other world" history as secondary or a result of reactions to European events.

Good book, really worth reading, but could have been improved.

Politics Snippet - enable entrepreneurship, but not in an economic context

Enable entrepreneurship, but not in an economic context

Since the start of the economic crisis in 2007/08, governments in the developed world (and some developing countries) invariably started to promote entrepreneurship, especially amongst the young generation.

As we all recall, the starting point was to digest the graduates who struggled to find decent work. The expansion of tertiary education allowed a higher proportion of students to attend university, and this initially meant more workers to fill the higher-paid jobs. But this virtuous chain started to dry out in early 2000s when the expansion of professional job fizzled out, and the economic crisis simply finished it off. Those who have a few years' work experience or graduated with professional qualifications (lawyers, accountants) could continue to find high-paid jobs, but those with arts degrees or niche degrees such as drama could not compete in a job market which preferred the already-skilled without additional training needs.

The luckier ones could study a top-up degree and get the required qualifications for specific industries, but those ladened with debt could only find low-paid jobs with a potential to transition into a professional career path, or simply settle with jobs that do not require university qualifications. To absorb youth unemployment and to preserve the incentive for students to pursue university education, start-ups were encouraged to get graduates into employment or activities.

Of course, by early 2010s, some start-ups have become hugely successful and this created another virtuous circle that encouraged young professionals already in good employment to try out their ideas. The success stories also made governments' promotion of entrepreneurship schemes easier, with young graduates readily considering this path and venture capitalists entering the fold by establishing incubator schemes. The start-up scene became well-developed and a viable career in its own right. Graduates would not be considered "failures" if they went into entrepreneurship, and corporate employers were very willing to employ people coming out of the scene with or without success stories.

By now, in 2016/17, while the entrepreneurship circle continued to flourish, governments continued to promote this as a way out for young people, and recruiters very willing to source ex-entrepreneurs or start-up employees, the reason for building up the circle has shifted again. In addition to the employment issue that continued to plague the nations, the longer term impacts of artificial intelligence, greater internet connectedness and robotics are now leading a major change in societies' formation. Traditional knowledge-intensive jobs which are also process or rule-based, such as accounting and legal services, are now facing direct threats from artificial intelligence, further eroding tertiary education's prospects. To the governments, you either become an early adopter to transform and replace traditional knowledge-based economic activities with new creativity-based economic activities, or your traditional jobs get replaced by foreign firms' services. It's a new space that require new companies to enter and experiment, hence the encouragement of entrepreneurship.

These are sensible policies, but are they enough? With the rise of greater role of internet and digital services, it is not just commercial services that need to change, but public service provision and democracy and community as well. Funding crisis looms large in UK's health service and education, there are open demands for more relevant curriculum and teaching methods but the schools dare not make a change for fear of compromised league table ranking or funding shortfall. Creativity with new technology or quicker circulation & utilisation of information to synergise new solution allow communities to bring constituents together or generate new communities to meet hidden needs.

The above examples highlight how entrepreneurship and the spirit of experimenting with new technologies, methods and mentalities could bring value to the society, but these activities do not directly lead to profitable start-ups that could scale rapidly. They may be projects that fulfils its purpose and spirit away, or non-profit-making operations that require participants' continuous efforts to keep it running. Their value is apparent, but the monetary gain is elusive. Under the current entrepreneurship atmosphere, you may just as well not bother, as success is measured by fundings raised or annual growth %.

If profitability is the only yardstick, these alternative methods of utilising technology and knowledge would not scale, and their benefits could not be reaped. Arguably, that also shrinks the market size of new technologies and development potentials through more use cases by a wider audience. Should this kind of entrepreneurship not be encouraged? It simply sounds unwise.

So the challenge comes down to - how can governments encourage non-economic entrepreneurship, so that people are motivated to use new technology for even more purposes to make their and other people's lives better, but not necessarily making lots of money out of it.

Society Snippet - What's the difference between training and education?

What's the difference between training and education?

This is an often-discussed topic, and I do not claim to have any new information. When I was studying economics in university, one of the lectures touched on this and gave an answer from economic's point of view. Training is specific and usually offers little direct value beyond the workplace, whereas education usually provides transferrable skills in other workplaces or in life, and so the employee should also contribute towards the cost.

It's not a bad answer but is too narrow and confined to the "who pays for it" aspect of the question. I want to re-think an answer based on the current education & training landscape and people's opinions.

10 years on since that economic answer was given, there are a lot more education & training channels online, including university-sponsored course portals such as Coursera, corporate-internal training portals for their employees, industry or field-specific for-fee training courses like Treehouse, gamified apps like Duolingo, and course listing platforms like Udemy or teachable. These channels are content-intensive, curating a lot of course materials to instruct, coach and test on specific skills. If you subscribe to an online software coding course, you will read lectures, followed by exercises which you may seek help from fellow students or tutors, and you may also be tested to ensure you have grasped the concepts and the associated practical skills.

Needless to say, the success of these content-intensive sites is due to users' desire to learn new skills directly relevant to their existing or new job roles, hobbies or concerns that would benefit from more rigorous information-intake than reading news articles or websites (such as nutrition), and general interest in their daily life (such as taking an intro course into machine learning after reading from newspaper). However, despite all these new channels, people are still complaining about the out-datedness of the mainstream education system - primary and secondary schools, universities, their selection & competition criteria, the curricula, teaching methods, and how they are funded. There seems to be a gap between the unregulated adult/leisure learning vs. the regulated industry which is fundamental to citizens' well being.

The current criticisms on mainstream education system is that the mentality is frozen in the late 19th century, with excessive focus on learning information, heavily partitioned subjects, competition through exams, and mass education provision that does not account for each person's capabilities and suitability. In some extreme cases, the narrow range of subjects and the primacy of exams mean that students are learning purely for the sake of getting to the top, the content of education has become mere "currency" that is dealt out in the great exam game.

However, would a typical parent drop out of mainstream education system? There is a rise in popularity of home schooling, but it is still a minority. Would top private schools spear-head an upside-down change in how they arrange subjects, how they teach, and how they value external exams and university competitions? Quite unlikely. Parents and private schools add value alike through providing more tutoring for students who need to catch up, adjust the method of instruction based on what their small class of students are suited to, and provide more extra-curricular learning (music, sports, literature) to enrich their education. But other than these supplementary measures, everyone toes the existing methods under the current macro setting.

Of course, the macro setting is for the education authorities and governments to set. But under the current (and prolonged) economic uncertainties and heightened competition among countries, the emphases on productivity-yielding subjects and assessment-centric education methods are on the rise, so as to generate young minds who can go into high-value employment and start working immediately. Gone are the days when people would study a history degree before taking a master in jurisprudence, and gone are the days when teachers have free time to teach topics not on the syllabus or spend more time to experiment with new teaching methods. When students are assessed every month and they are expected to attain a specific standard, all the freedom is squeezed out by time pressure and lack of imaginative space in schools.

So despite all these complaints and the macro setting becoming more skill-oriented, the general population would rather send themselves and their children to school, and the expensive part time and distance learning degree courses are as popular as ever. Does this hold the clue towards differentiating education training?

If so, my hypothesis would be that education provides an immersive environment that goes beyond the string of skills directly imparted to the student from the course materials. In a full time primary or secondary school, you are learning more than what the subject syllabus is designed to teach you - you get to make friends, discuss irrelevant affairs in between (or during) lessons, participate in after-school activities, and hang out together during holidays. But it's not just these human interactions that add flavour to the experience, the course structure itself also synergise for more value-add. There is a difference between studying an "Intro to Accounting" short course versus studying the same course in the context of an MBA degree, during which you would be studying "Intro to economics" and "Basic Management" and afterwards you would be expected to study "Operations Management". Even if you are studying a distance learning MBA, this kind of course management would have imposed a structure and immersive environment on you that distinguishes an MBA study from a loose set of short courses that you pick up over the same time period.

There is also another distinction. When you pick up online courses short courses, they are expected to be all inclusive, meaning that you go through the course material (video, presentation, notes etc) and you should have obtained the target content and be ready to try out the tasks. In a more formal university education, the prepared materials only form part of the course content - you are expected to go beyond the notes and read from the latest papers or chapters from textbooks. This gives you a variety of perspectives and narratives for the same topic, multiplying the dimensions of immersion. If you need to work on essay-type assignments or a thesis, then the need to read widely to distill some ideas is even more acute.

To summarise, despite the increasing emphasis on skills and training by the governments, the value of education in the form of immersive environment provided beyond the mandatory skills is treasured by parents and students, such that they remained popular and had been shielded from direct competition with online channels. It's not in an ideal situation, but it is still the most suitable amongst the options.

Here comes the question - can we start developing another way of delivering the immersive environment, so that students can get the best of both worlds, i.e. they learn from new methodologies that are more relevant to the current world, and yet benefit from this immersive environment?

Society Snippets - The Apple Tree Metaphor

The Apple Tree Metaphor

There are a lot of rich people in Hong Kong, people who own a number of apartments and can live off the rent with more to spare. Their children are never worried about going hungry of having to find a job with decent salaries, and some may even opt to use their parents' wealth to start lifestyle businesses like funky restaurants or wine trading (so that they and their chums could enjoy the services).

Very much like the libertarian era in the UK during the Thatcher's and Major's reign, these people emphasised that they got rich purely because of their own efforts, enduring their humble childhood and unfavourable environment (compared to Europe and North America), and accumulated wealth bit by it with lots of dramas and ups-and-down along the way, finally amassing the wealth and so they deserve to squander and flaunt however they like. As for their less well-to-do contemporaries and the current young generation, well, they are simply not hard-working enough and so deserve no sympathy, or that they should be thankful for not having to live through the same harsh environment as they had to. This is known as the "Lion Rock Spirit", named after Lion Rock Hill which is at the heart (geographically and culturally) of Hong Kong. There is something not quite right about their attribution of success down to themselves entirely, but explaining is difficult, so I have opted for the "Apple Tree" metaphor.

Once upon a time, there was an apple tree at the top of a hill, which was very hard to reach owing to the steep slopes. The tree was particularly fertile and the crop wasn't particularly high in quality. But gradually, different people in the community started to build roads to reach the hilltop for the apple tree and other reasons, and some experts in agriculture started to experiment on the tree to raise productivity and quality, but again not purely just to reap benefits from this tree. Multiple generations of road builders and agricultural experts worked silently, and they came and went and remained nameless. Then one day, the road was complete and the apple tree bore a beautiful harvest. Some citizens used their own efforts, sweats and tears to race to the top, collect the apples and bring to the market for a bumper sale. Not all apples are equally good and not all apples are low-hanging, and people who had talent in identifying the better from the good and the skilful climbers who could reach for the top were able to get more out of the tree. People who were fast runner could get to the low hanging fruits and still make a fortune, albeit a smaller one as there was more fierce competition. The in-firmed, the road builders and the agricultural experts were too tired or busy and could not collect the apples despite their hard and foundational work. Every year as the apple tree bore fruits, the same ritual repeated itself. But progressively, the wealthier people started to buy tools to reach to the tree faster and climb higher, or developed proprietary knowledge to distinguish the best fruits from the rest. All along, the road builders and agricultural experts were the "silent ones" who were not given any credit or reward, and attempts to give them a share were thwarted with reasons such as "they did not put efforts into harvesting" or "they did not have to go through the same fierce competition and challenges as we had to" or "they had generated no progress in terms of tools, knowledge or practices that resulted in more economic reward". Eventually, the wealthiest even wanted to privatise the ring fence the tree for their own use.

Such is the situation faced by economies which have adopted libertarian mechanism, such as UK, US and Hong Kong. Back then, the societies' inefficiencies might genuinely laid in the harvesting of economic benefits - in the UK, it was the strong labour unions leading to backward practices and refusal to adopt greater automation; in Hong Kong, it might have been the omnipresent corruption and good-old colonial bureaucracy that aimed at taxing the locals out of any domestic and commercial activities. Opening up access and competition would have led to greater incentives to harvest and to build further capabilities to harvest even more.

However, by over-emphasising the inefficiencies at harvesting and over-praising the innovators and entrepreneurs who furthered harvesting techniques, we have given excessive power to the libertarian operators, encouraging them to disregard all others who have paved the way but could not participate in the direct benefit-reaping activities, and those who work silently behind to keep the grounds fertile and productive.

The evidence is not just in the aggressive and unsympathetic stance taken by those who "used their efforts" to build their wealth, and the associated social status and influence awarded to them by the media and the society - a successful venture founder would not just enjoy wealth, but his/her world view and comments would be widely shared and agreed. But more than that, the economies are increasingly tilted towards favouring the "productive" aspects that contribute towards the harvesting of the apple trees, and less and less towards the silent workers who maintain the system and access.

Let's take UK as an example. Over the past decade, social housing and the NHS are increasingly neglected in favour of private housing and healthcare; more and more social housing stocks are privatised without replacement. This is a good "harvesting" technique that translates implicit economic benefits into GDP (hence the harvest), but the social harm it brings are now starting to surface - key workers could not afford to live where they work, and the middle class is paying high taxes but have to endure poor health service as they couldn't afford to go private.

Another UK example is in education - since Blair's government, emphasis on languages, history and arts have been diminishing in favour of the "productive" skills such as mathematics, sciences, engineering and technology. A more assessment-centric and progress-monitoring approach is taken to ensure every schoolchild progresses in attaining those skills along a set path. Doubtless, these skills are important as they could be directly applied in workplaces for high productivity, but history/literature/arts/social studies are important in helping the society find out what's happening and what are the alternatives. They are the silent road builders and agricultural experts in the metaphor, yet they are being scalded and told to join the ranks of harvesters.

There is a second part to this metaphor. With road builders and agricultural experts being told to join the harvesters, the roads become under-repaired and start to crumble, while the tree is getting over-harvested without replenishment and so both quantity and quality start to dwindle. What did the people do? They harvest even more frequently to make up for the reduced stock, and there is now more competition for the harvesters to learn each other's unique techniques so as to out-compete each other. The town started to teach everyone the same skills so as to "upskill" the harvesters, and people who successfully learned the skills and made more wealth (at the expense of the others) were praised even more so that the rest could be motivated in the hope of pulling GDP up.

What does this translate to in the real world? More exploitation, more competition, more pressure at education level, more emphasis on getting "productive" skills, and more disregard towards capabilities that would benefit the society in a less apparent manner. Also, more power appropriated to those "who have made it".

What is the way out? The social trend must shift. When the UK government went into "nationalise" mode, the emphasis was less on wealth creation than on a fair society to shift away the managers vs. worker struggle (and exploitation). It harboured inefficiencies, but it also attempt to harbour the weak so that they could have a fulfilled life. When the UK government transitioned into "privatise and libertarian" mode, the society was encouraged to make and display wealth to spur their neighbours into doing the same. Inefficiencies are bad and if you spot one and correct it, you reap the benefits. If you could offshore some jobs overseas to save money, you take the loot. The poor and the weak need to get stronger so that they can make wealth, the jobs are not there to strangle the wealth-creating corporates and agents. This is the world we are in today.

After "nationalise" and "privatise", what is the next keyword? My current proposition is "mutualise" - the harvesters must become the road builder and the agricultural expert, so that they cannot just take the best and leave the junk to the rest, and that they cannot feel that their aggressive position is justified simply because "they have put in effort to make the wealth". Let road builders become harvester and agricultural experts, let agricultural experts become harvesters and road builders, so that each person is more complete, fulfilled and understand the situation. Otherwise, we will be willing to focus on earning money, getting our children into good schools, but not caring about our lives at a whole, or our children's well being. We are too narrowly focused on a small part, but the wider perspective has come back to haunt us.

Can we materialise this "mutualise" proposition? Not 10 years ago, but maybe yes by now - technology is emerging to allow artificial intelligence to do more on our behalf, there is social media that encourage people to be connected, ways to learn about new skills and knowledge. Why can't we mutualise?

Life snippet - what is a hobby or pastime?

What is a hobby or pastime?

Ever since completing the distance learning MBA last October, voids suddenly opened in my after-work hours and weekend. It's the free time I have always longed for for the 3.5 years while studying, and now I finally get it.

It was great to start with. I could read the books I enjoyed, watch TV without taking note of the clock, and not having to feel stressed over upcoming exams or assignments or study progress. But after around one month, my body started to itch - I need something more than reading books and watching TV or playing video games to fill the void. People usually call these endeavours pastimes or hobbies, but what are they exactly and how do they differ from the other activities?

It's no good thinking in an abstract manner, as I am not trained in that way. So, I have scoped out two other activities to compare against hobbies - namely work and flow. If my hobby is assembling model planes, then a similar work would be assembling toy planes in a factory and a 'flow' is watching a TV programme on model planes or lawn-mowing (something irrelevant to my hobby, something I won't do necessarily). If my hobby is cooking and writing/discovering/comparing blogs and watching food programmes, then work would be cooking in a restaurant or cooking for my in-laws, and 'flow' would be watching other TV programmes or cleaning the bathroom. What makes hobby a hobby, such that I would take up and enjoy, compared to work and flow?

First of all and most importantly, you have the freedom - you can choose to change hobby, add a hobby, or exit a hobby. People get warmer or cooler towards a hobby. But this freedom also applies to altering the scope of your hobby. I have expanded from savoury cooking into desserts and cakes, and at the same time switched from grilled foods towards bean and low/no-meat recipes. When it comes to work or flow, you usually have no choice and the scope is very much scope - you can change jobs, but once entered into a contract you have to do based on the company's needs, not yours.

This leads to the second difference, which is that it matches your capabilities (and corresponding capability gapes) and some of your non-financial-gain desires/goals. Simply having the freedom is insufficient, you must have some interest in it. Personally, I am not a dexter person or someone endowed with artistic skills or creativity, and so I wouldn't have chosen creative writing or drawing as hobbies. However I like trying out new food (and get bored by repeated food) and have quite a sensitive & analytical tastebud, and so I prefer cooking my own food to being simply served food and told to eat up. I am dexter enough to chop, slice and cook, and I also see some capability gaps in terms of types of cooking I can do, and so I am utilising my capabilities to extract fulfilment and at the same time keep me along the path of identifying & filling gaps. On contrary, work and flow doesn't have that freedom to let me match my capabilities and gaps - I may be forced to produce outputs from both my strengths and shortcomings, and the multitude of gaps I am not given an incentive to bridge from my existing capabilities. This exercising of capabilities and gap-bridging do not make me wealthier or help me earn money in spare time, it just makes me better at the hobby over time. Once it is about money (work) or avoiding having to pay (flow), I have little incentive to become better or it has to be a big change in goals to motivate me to edge forward.

This again leads to the third difference, which is that I can control the pace and path. If I tried to bake a cake but failed quite a few times, I can go and find out on forums or new recipes, enrol in a course or simply give up and challenge something else. If I give up now, I can come back later. If I can bake a cake but not that well, I can practise over and over again until I am happy with my capabilities, or sign off that "it's good enough" and move on. For work, there is not such luxury as what you do or learn next is based on what the company needs; for flow, there isn't a pace or path, you simply do and leave.

With the above three differences, the fourth difference is that you want to spend time to perform that hobby, savour the output of that hobby, and take effort in finding out how to better the hobby. For cooking, this means taking the time to cook (and not mind washing up afterwards), trying it out after and sharing it with friends & family, and then evaluating the outcome/going to courses/browsing cookware that may improve performance/watch food programme to find out what to do next. A lot of time and efforts will be expended, but you don't feel it's time and sweat down the drain - the reward in terms of becoming a more confident/richer self and having the output is evident and the driving force. For sports such as rambling, this can mean scaling a harder route in a difficult season; in video games, this is levelling up or being faster in clearing a level or winning in duels. If you land yourself on a nice job, it either means it matches your hobby (partially) or it's a strict 9-to-5 with good remuneration and benefits. For flow, you are required to put some time into it, but you don't really want to do that.

These four differences masks a fifth difference, namely that of having an implicit development path. You may not be aware of it in the form of completing a course and getting a certificate, or getting promoted; instead, you can look back and see the time you put in, the activities you conducted (in performing the hobby or performing the associated activities), what you have outputted and in what way you have become better. Work and flow can provide something similar as you get promoted and become faster at what you have to do, but the path is more externally driven than set by yourself with your own decision points at each critical juncture/turning point.

To summarise as the sixth difference, hobby is all about your own self and being, your inner needs. Through hobbies, you progressively become a more complete & richer person (not in terms of worldly wealth or external accreditation) filled with capabilities, memories and recognitions and that you allow your time to be spent in a worthwhile way that performs this enrichment or fulfilment. Pure work or flow focuses on the tasks and external commitment in exchange for external wealth (or avoid losing external wealth), and minimising time spent on it for the same result is the goal. If you decide to invest extra time in it, it's driven by the external wealth (promotion or getting a better-paid job or avoid having to pay a gardener).

This leads to the seventh differences, which is you control hobby and through that you control your as your self over time. You shape your hobby which then engages you in decisions and actions over time and these shape you as a virtuous (or vicious, if your hobbies are vices) circle. Work and flow can have the same, but it's much harder for you to actively shape - you can change jobs based on your needs, but that is very much dependent on what is on offer in the market, what the new employer agrees to provide (and what they expect from you) and how frequently you can make those life-impacting changes.

Why am I taking time to discuss what hobbies are exactly? Apart from being interested in the topic, I also want to find ways to make work more enjoyable - not becoming hobbies per se (for this may give hobbies a bad name and turn people away from their existing hobbies once they are married with money-earning work) but incorporating elements of hobbies into it as an integral part of work life (not in a specific job or employment environment, but over a person's work life).

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (7)

Can we trust the history we are reading?

After establishing the validity of historical hypotheses and the range of histories now available to read or study into, the logical next step for the author is whether we can trust the historical studies presented by historians.

We now know that for the same history topic, it could be studied in multiple angles and with different target purposes, and so there isn't the "one definitive narrative" for a historical event or topic. However, is it possible to have a timeless conclusion for a specific purpose & angle for a topic? What the author argues, is "no" - when historians look into history, they are bringing their contemporary concerns and questions into the process and thought logics. If there is racial tension in the current world being unfolded in a specific way, these provocations will influence the researcher's angle and analysis, in the hope that historical events could elucidate the path. This is inevitable, and so for the same topic and set of sources, different researchers along the timeline will look at it in different ways and come up with varied conclusions. It doesn't matter how impartial the researchers try to be, it's in the DNA of historical studies.

Having established the inevitable human factor in historical studies, the next logical question is that will the researchers' background affect the macro scope of study? For example, researchers are intellects and middle class, and as such would they be tempted to investigate history to justify their social status and economic benefits such as professors' pay? In theory this is of course possible, but from practical observations the researchers do not appear to be doing that. Despite being middle class, a lot of them championed for the ethnic minority and labour class, and go on to criticise the establishment. This is the result of universities being deliberately maintained crucibles of provocative thoughts, and the dedication of researchers in to finding the impartial truth.

However, this does not mean that the human factors is not affecting the health or dependability of historical studies. Postmodernism grew out of the diminished status of history in the society (although less of a case in academia and universities). They called for history as evidence-based literature and simultaneous validity of a multitude of theories, such that there is no "orthodox narrative" and that readers are free (or forced) to seek professional interpretation of historical events, putting historians back in the centre of historical studies which is required for any interpretation to take place (a bit like dieting). This has damaged the reputation of history as people started to question whether finding the truth about the past was ever possible, and whether the learnings could be genuinely trusted and be significant to our lives today.

Human factor is inevitable and not necessarily skewing history, but how does the identity of the researcher affect the history topic being studied? A school of thought is that a history topic the most valid when studied by someone with direct relationship or experience to it, such as a woman researching on women's history, or an ethnic minority studying into ethnic minority's history. For ancient military history, then they are best studied by retired general who have been through wars. This is an appealing theory and would pass thought experiments, but it's again not true in practice. A lot of middle class white male researchers write far better history on ethnic minority or the working class, defeating the theory comprehensively. Furthermore, the idea of history is that the past events' contexts may be very different from the current events' contexts, e.g. the ethnic minorities' pressure in the past may be different from the current ones, such that the direct experience is more of a constraint or provides false hints. Outsiders studying into a history topic could also bring in fresh thoughts, dimensions and rigour not possible by those bound by their own experience.

What these theories and real experience suggest the need for an all-inclusive society where opportunities thrive - it is one thing to come up with thoughts and reasoning to limit people, and quite another to let experiments take place, let real data gather and then make a conclusion.

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (6)

What history should we study?

After defending the importance of historical studies as a whole and the validity of historical theories based on sources, the question now comes to - what facets of history has been studied?

Traditionally, history was about the study of key figures such as kings, nobles and generals. They alone would make history and studying their events alone would be able to map out the historical progress. However, historians increasingly realised that this history contour is effectively political history and should not be confused with the full history - these people might have been a key input in how the society evolved, but there are a lot other human and non-human factors involved in shaping the society. In other words, studying the political history alone is too narrow.

A spin-off of studying key figures is that of national-state-focused history, where the emphasis is on the evolution of a nation state or a group of nation states alone (e.g. Europe). While some arrogant historians dismissed non-Europe or American history as peripheral to the world's progress or that little learning would be obtained, the mainstream historians no longer see it that way, and are ready to seek learning from other countries' history. When studying other countries' history, there is also greater consciousness in not studying from a European or American standpoint, but from the target countries' standpoint, so as to avoid a reincarnation of the arrogance.

But if not political or nation-state history, then what history? Quite a lot to choose from, actually. Social history in studying the masses has become popular, but so has the study of economic history and histories into particular genres such as racial history or gender history. The problem now is that the profession is spoilt for choice, with different angles of study for the same topic with similar source materials.

This flourishing of history means that defining a "snap history" for a particular time period of nation state becomes difficult owing to the multiple angles, and there were attempts to co-ordinate these dimensions through tomes that provide a backbone narrative. They were initially useful, but eventually editing them became time-consuming while they invariably contained lots of personal preferences by the authors - these tomes were not impartial narratives but the authors' own view of the nation state or period, decimating their usefulness as a definitive guide. Renewed attempts were to include various perspectives to provoke readers' thoughts, but a more popular alternative is simply for the readers to select a range of text to form their view of the "real narrative".

As the new angles developed, and married with the post modernist view that history are literary stories based on hypotheses about the past, there is a new trend for historians to mix & match different angles to synthesise new angles. This means more variety and complexity, but should be welcomed.

It is by now very difficult for a generalist historian to emerge, as the angles call for specialisation and different angles may not fit with each other for a person to master both. More collaboration is called for, but that also means a more dynamic environment for history to flourish.

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (5)

What should historical studies focus on?

This is an important question, for historians are keen to distance themselves from chroniclers, whose core role is to note down what has happened in each year or month, allowing future studies to be possible. If historians are not chroniclers, then what exactly should historians study?

To the author, the answer is "causes" - what other events or root causes resulted in a historical event taking place. While chroniclers focus on ensuring an event is recorded, historians goes beyond the event and ensure the events are understood. However, this distinguishing feature leads to a number of questions and considerations.

The first question is whether "finding out causes" is really the core role of historians. What's the point of finding out what led to a historical event which is buried in the past? It sounds like a futile, time-wasting activity that would not benefit the present time when making decisions that impacts the future. A modern or postmodernist recommendation would be to focus on "explanations" and "implications", more like the contextual learnings or the results of the events on how the future unfolded. A more social science-focused recommendation is to turn the "cause finding" upside down, from finding out the cause surrounding a historical event to finding out common rules that are validated by a string of historical events, so as to identify theories for immediate use by the present time.

These alternatives are all appealing and worth pursuing, but the value of finding the causes should not be sidelined - to the author, understanding the past would explain the present and enable us to see how the future may unfold. The causes behind key events is a constituent part of out understanding of the past, and therefore justifies efforts being poured in.

Another consideration is that of the variety of narratives (or explanation of causes). A lot of historians are weary of the dominant "master narratives" which were prevalent back in the nationalistic and communist days to drum up patriotism, and are still popular in certain post-colonial countries to maintain national myths for support of present regimes. The favouring of official causes and attempts to eliminate alternative narratives or angles of analysis was harming the reputation of historical studies, and gave ammunition to postmodernists who argued against studying of causes.

The author agreed to the negative impact of "master narratives", but was keen to point out that the masses of modern historians put their efforts into finding out alternative narratives, especially given the current atmosphere of "finding exceptions from the mainstream" as studies deepen. This means that the "master narrative" are constantly being challenges for modifications or re-evaluations by the academic community. Furthermore, alternative or local narratives have long been in existence as fringe movements to counter master narratives, e.g. women and black history amid a male-dominated and white narrative in Europe and North America. As time progressed, these local narratives have stayed strong and form a main branch of historical studies. Contrary to postmodernists' fear, "master narratives" have not crushed the alternatives which are just as important in helping us understand the past.

If we go back to comparing a historian with a chronicler, a postmodernist would usually argue that both are not that different from each other, in that both utilise time periods heavily in their narratives. In the case of chroniclers, all events are recorded against a flowing timeline, while historians would identify events and causes which unfolded before the event, then described the progress of the event, and the post-event impact as time moved away from the event itself.

The author's argument is that while both utilise time periods heavily, the ways in which time was utilised are different. Chroniclers are controlled by the flow of time which occurs at a steady pace, whereas historians control the flow - they could collapse long periods of stable development into a few paragraphs, but then expend vast spaces to explain a very short but critical time period with series of events occurring. Within the same time periods, the level of details could also differ, such as researching into fine details for the key decisions makers, expressing the progress of science and technology in an abstract manner, and portraying the peasants' lives as almost static and unchanged. Same ingredients, different outcomes - chroniclers and historians are not the same.

What makes a cause the true cause? A postmodernist's favourite argument is that the author's context cannot be retrieved from the text, and so all analysis would be futile. This also means there are infinite context in a text rendering analysis meaningless - you can't analyse them all. Also, if there are a few items that could be the causes, which ones would you list as cause and some others as irrelevant? It is a deeply philosophical question, but the implication is that all causal analysis are practically fabrication and forced justification of the historians' personal perception with a veneer of evidence.

This is a complicated argument, but the counter-argument is simpler, as it comes from practical operation of historical studies rather than the philosophical thought experiments. In real life experience, authors' contexts could be inferred from the text and from comparing between texts. It is true that there are multiple contexts from each source and lots of sources need to be studied, but once a research direction has been decided the number of contexts to be considered per source would drastically diminish. This begs the question of the historian's pre-conception having excessive influence, but in the discovery process the sources may suggest that the preconceived direction is poorly supported, prompting a revision of the direction to make the contexts fit. Whether a cause is a cause depends on how much learning or impact it could bring - causes that bring little value to future scenarios of a similar nature or could be validated by similar scenarios in the past are less likely to be a valuable cause than otherwise.

It is easy to argue and come up with counter thought experiments, but it's the practical implementation that busts the myths.

Politics Snippet - granting of happiness to citizens by the state

The granting of happiness to citizens by the state

When washing up the dishes after our Sunday brunch, I suddenly recalled a movie we saw almost 10 years ago - The Pursuit of Happyness. Back then, as a recent university graduate embarking on an exciting career, there were a lot of reminiscence, not least in my pursuit of a decent graduate job offer during my final year in university, and the bright future open to me after securing one. The right to pursue happyness, back then, was a good philosophy and a right to be advocated.

Ten years on, both my wife and I were subjects to a whole host of wide-ranging events, from redundancy through to entrepreneurship and political deterioration in our birthplace. As we experienced these upheavals, our world views matured, and became more sympathetic. Our "middle class upbringing" might have enabled us to access good education followed by a good start in career, but such good lives were far from guaranteed; we are as vulnerable to hard times as much as anyone else. And for people who have landed in hard times or had been born into hard times, why should they be condemned instead of being given resources and opportunities to rise up again? Having the right to pursuit happiness, it now appears, is too simple, sometimes naive.

A compassionate and fair society is insufficient in not stopping people from pursuing opportunities which would give them happiness, satisfaction and fulfilment. It could be argued that for people without access to such opportunities or resources (or means of acquiring resources) to pursue opportunities in front of them, the other side of the coin would be to open up access and equip them with resources. There is nothing wrong with this more encompassing view, but arguably it is still incomplete - this solution still demands citizens to actively (or be forced to) look out for opportunities and capture. For some citizens and for some aspects of life, this is simply not practical.

Let's take two simple examples, namely education and medical care. The right to pursuit happiness would be a free market approach in which the rich people would have access to quality private education, whereas the rest are left with bog-standard or no care. If these situations were to be improved by opening access or equipping people with resources, the government might subsidise bright students from modest background to attend the privileged private schools, or in the case of medical care promoting self-care knowledge or courses to substitute assisted care.

As you can feel, in the first example, the private education community (the schools and the privately-educated families) gains collectively, as they poach the best talents in the state education community, thereby enhancing the results of the private schools and introduces a more synergetic education environment for the fee-paying students. On contrary, the gain of the modest community is individual, as only the lucky few could benefit from quality education and rise through the ranks, while the rest stay in their original modest positions. The state education community would collectively suffer, as the brightest students were lost leading to negative synergies, while the schools become even less appealing as they constantly lose out on league tables and comparison charts.

In the second example, the modest families benefit from more knowledge for better self-care, but medical care is an inherently complex and self-care is only a partial solution. When a young and healthy person falls ill, seeking consultation is not just a technical requirement but also an emotional requirement to be re-assured that nothing serious is lurking behind the milld symptoms. Turning young patients away or giving them appointments that are 3 days later are not just frustrating, but also puts the whole public system to question. How many severe illness cases have missed early diagnosis opportunities? How many people have been forced to take private medical care out of their tight household budgets? You can have as much self-care training as you like, but unless you train everyone to a doctor's or senior nurse's standard, the remaining gap will still be too wide to bridge.

The pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human right, but so is a basic level of happiness - good & comprehensive education, medical care that helps citizen to stay healthy and avert long-term ailments (e.g. through healthy eating), just to name a few. The more modest a household is, the fewer automatically opened opportunities and skills are available to their members, and the more efforts they have to put in just to get to the starting point of an opportunity (equipping with resources) and then to cultivate in a number of opportunities to yield some success. Below a certain level of modesty, we may argue that so much efforts would be required for them to pursue the opened opportunities that it ceased to make sense to pursue. The distance between their current position and the access point would take all their remaining energy and financial resources to cover. Why bother?

This is the main difference between the Anglo-Saxon libertarian capitalism and the European social capitalism. In libertarian capitalism, all emphasis is on the availability of opportunities, and people who have "made it" are the role models who should be praised and encouraged to flaunt their wealth as a symbol of success. For the rest who have not "made it", the deal is to open up access to opportunities and resources so that they could also participate in the game. But opportunities are more often than not plentiful, meaning that it's the same set of opportunities and rewards, but many more people competing and losing out. For those who have lost in the pursuit or not joined in the first place, they were deemed "lazy" and not worth any support. A portion of the society gets very happy, another portion is quite happy, the rest unhappy but it's their own fault and not the society's.

The European model of social capitalism, on the other hand, provides not just an opportunity to pursue happiness, but also an opportunity to happiness itself. Education is regarded as a means of generating genuine equality and as such private education is a fringe provision and state education made to be all inclusive and of good quality; the idea of "living wages" also offers citizens who are at a loss some form of happiness before they are clear about what type of happiness they should pursue. People who have pursued happiness are reminded that not everyone is able to make a successful pursuit, whether due to lack of opportunities, lack of availability to start pursuing an open opportunity, or lack of luck in succeeding in the pursuit. As such, the successful people are not encouraged to display their success by showing off, but by caring about those who have not pursued.

Which model is better? Judging by economic success and current source of global growth or advancement, the libertarian model keeps people hungry for success (for the alternative can be quite scary and tragic) which creates multiple "stars" that contribute towards collective success. It is also "cheaper" for the government to run this model as the need to consider what constitutes principle happiness is divested to the individuals and the market and the cost is fully borne by the requestor of service.

However, the flip side is the human cost - for every poor student who was promoted to private schools, there are at least ten who had similar capabilities but simply lost out due to limited availability. And the degree of hostile competition which yielded not collective improvement (vs. healthy competition) means efforts are devoted to zero-sum games instead of mutually beneficial scenarios. The masses who could not weather any failure due to limited resources also lost their social mobility and opportunities to fulfil their ambitions or inherent capabilities, and are forced to sell their labour to the highest bidders instead of having the freedom to pursue genuine happiness.

It's a philosophical question, but personally both of us prefer the social capitalist model. It's more expensive and more complicated to execute, but more people ACTUALLY get to pursue happiness in the end.

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (4)

Formulating historical theories from sources

When discussing the considerations regarding sources, it's not the sources' nature that was the focus; the process of utilising sources to create theories was also under scrutiny.

A key distinction the author was keen to make was sources and evidence. While evidence arise from sources, sources do not automatically become evidence. Instead, when a hypothesis is formulated, it needs to be supported by evidence, and sources would then be trawled through to identify the relevant ones that prove or disprove the hypothesis. This gives rise to another question to sources - when do sources become sources rather than staying as snippets of information?

There are historians who argue that all snippets are historical sources waiting to be mentioned. However, another more discerning view is that snippets are abundant, but they do not become sources until they have been identified, discussed and promoted by historians. So snippets would reside in newspapers and archives with no significance or contribution, but once a historian has seen it, decided to consider it and taken efforts in writing it out, then it has formally entered the historical studies arena for future candidacy as evidence or subject of debates.

In the process of using evidence to generate a new historical theory, how true is the post modernist argument of "there is no truth" and "there are multitude styles of creating varying theories from the same evidence, and they can all be valid"? If these arguments are true, then practically all theories are as good as historical literature that carry limited value, and efforts to extract "the right conclusion" are futile.

The authors' counter-argument is the "puzzle theory", in which when a variety sources are used to construct the web of evidence, a picture would emerge which has a limited set of interpretations. The most extreme example would be the Holocaust, which in no way could be argued to be an exaggeration or that it has never existed (as a prolonged massacre). It is possible to extract different theories regarding the rise, the evolution and the driving forces behind the Holocaust based on a similar set of evidence, but they would broadly lie in the same band.

This argument has forced the post-modernist to retreat and claim the "there is no truth" lies in the final interpretation by the readers of the theories presented. When sources are considered and web of evidence has been constructed, the historians are in the process of piecing together valid historical theories and it is OK to be bound by the web of evidence into a band of possible theories. However, as soon as the process of penning down the theories has completed, the process of creating historical studies outcome ceases and the resulting literature becomes open to readers' own interpretation, and in this sense the truth can never be perfectly & comprehensively presented to the readers, and is therefore a literature to the readers in this sense.

The combination of this revised post-modernist view of "historical truth and readers' interpretation" and web of evidence raises a critical question about any arising theory - how can we ensure that they are valid & supported by evidence and could be reasonably challenged? After all, the risk is that the web of evidence is poorly constructed and counter-evidence are omitted by mistake or intentionally, or that the band of possible theories is wrongly attributed and that inherently erroneous theories slipped through the web.

A conventional answer to this is that the academic circle develops and evolves a consensus and act as the gatekeeper against wrong theories or poorly argued theses. But these is not infallible, as demonstrated by the German academia during the Nazi period whose gatekeeping allowed pro-Nazi theories to pass. The scope for collective human error was great.

From the "Abraham case", the author evaluated such a risk from three angles. The first is the challenge from an opposite "meta camp", as a band of possible theories still has 2 or more extremes, and theories raised towards one end would attract criticisms and attempted discreditation from the other ends, but the to-and-fro could help flag up flaws in arguments or evidence gaps, and help to deepen & widen the inspection into the validity of theories. Gatekeeping does not come from consensual view, but opposing views putting a sceptical spin on each others' studies.

Another angle is the strength of the web of evidence - it is inevitable for evidence to carry mistakes & gaps arising from typos, translation differences or missed counter-evidence. It is possible for these mistakes & gaps not to affect the overall validity of the theory, but the more mistakes and gaps found through inspection, the more suspicious the theory becomes. Even if the theory is ultimately valid, the paper should be deemed weak and be rejected.

The third angle is identification of patterns of mistakes at a macro level - analysis logics, data collection methodologies and calculations & attribution. If a researcher deliberately missed out a vast repository of evidence known to be unfavourable to his/her theory, or assumptions behind calculations are too simplistic or plain wrong, or that exceptions are not considered at all, then the theories should again be deemed weak and be rejected.

The process of turning sources into evidence then to validated theories is complex, and further complicated by the risk of mis-interpretation by the reader. However, what becomes clear is the need for rigour at every stage of the process, and subjecting the process and outcomes to hostile inspection at micro and macro levels, instead of having a simple "consensus test". The arguments and challenges should not be feared - they help to force a deep re-think on the linkage between sources, evidence and the theory, and offered an opportunity for theories to be refined into a more robust state. In the same vein, the post-modernist interpretation of history was challenged, and refined into something far more defendable, acceptable and thought-provoking to the overall research community.

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (3)

The craft of constructing history from base materials

After a discussion of the fads in and the exact nature (science vs. art) of historical studies, the author then turned his attention to how history was constructed from base materials - the sources. This topic spanned across two chapters demonstrating its criticality, and has a hidden agenda as a counter-attack against postmodernist view of history.

History sources are considered from a number of angles. A starting angle is how source data should be viewed - in its purest form as a historical artefact to be judged with its contemporary mindsets and conditions, or with present-day understanding? Both views were presented, but the author favoured the infusion of modern theories and frameworks when utilising sources. After all, this enables historical knowledge and understanding to be built, with sources interacting with latest understanding to create new understanding. In some extreme cases, such as understanding the culture of witches in medieval Europe, the initial framework-setting could be turbo-charged by grafting it on anthropological studies in African religions and cultures, allowing historians to advance rapidly.

Another angle is the possible multitude interpretations regarding each source. Given that the sources were written in the past, there would be words and sentences no longer in circulation, and even those similar to modern-day texts may carry very different meanings. An argument that arises from this is that a modern historian would struggle to decipher the exact meaning of any historical text and construct an "accurate" view from sources, owing to this type of inaccuracy (or inability to assert confidence on any interpretation). The author's counter-argument is that within the same period the words and sentences would carry specific pattern, and a learned historian could start to acquaint with the exact meanings, thereby interpreting with confidence.

The author also revealed the trade of historical sources - contrary to conventional beliefs that the sources are necessarily texts or written accounts, but can be anything left from that period - inscriptions, graffiti, parish records etc. This means even if few texts remained, it is possible to obtain a wealth of sources to developing a historical narration from. Furthermore, there is traditional a distinction between primary sources such as witness' accounts, and secondary sources which are collated texts such as a historian's book. The primary sources carry immense value, but as do the secondary sources which should be studied and subjected to the same type of scrutiny when deriving historical conclusions from primary sources.

After all these considerations regarding sources, here comes the post modernist challenge - there are a lots of snippets and even more that are lost or not present, and the snippets were created in the past with their own initial interpretation, such that the real meanings can never be deciphered correctly. Furthermore, texts are produced with the authors' hidden agenda and consciousness which are never revealed, and once written they are then read in the future without the authors' presence, such that all these contextual information could not be revealed. The argument brought forward by the postmodernist is thus these sources could be combined & interpreted in however many "styles" possible in the absence of such contextual revelations, all of which could make sense and be logical, and it is not possible to distill or argue for the "truth". Even though the historical event has taken place, there would never be enough information to dig it out and all historians' attempts are analogous to historical literature - they are stories based on historical sources, but by no means historical reconstructions. This also implies that no distinction needs to be made between primary and secondary sources - the primacy of primary sources breaks down as truthful interpretation is not possible but only the readers' own indirect interpretation.

To this, the author countered that despite the absence of contextual information of the authors or artefacts creators, the sources could in fact come together to triangulate against each other, from which the sets of theories could be narrowed into a number of feasible sets - the more sources and types of sources, the better the triangulation would work. In regards to the inability to 'read' historical sources, the fact that rules and common meanings could be derived through comparing grammar and conventions across and within periods would break down some of the issues of cross-period interpretation issues. The context of texts is also not completely hidden, as some of those contexts (such as diplomatic documents) are known and a set of valid context would emerge.

In regards to primary sources, it is simply that when a new piece of work is written based on other sources, the sources become important in verifying any claim or analysis made. From this, the distinction between primary and secondary sources become apparent and undeniable.

In a world of rampant with "post truth" and conflicting views (such as investing in countries with known child labour abuse), a post modernist view of "there is no truth" or "no truth could ever be argued or supported" becomes appealing is discrediting any claim of truth or principles which should be abided by (such as human rights). But from this short illustration, it is easy to see that there is really something called "truth" which should be protected and promoted.

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (2)

The debate over whether history is science

The author has devoted one whole chapter purely on the topic of "is history a science?" without first explaining why this is such an important topic. It was hinted in the previous chapter on a walkthrough of history of historical studies, in that a "scientific" approach to history has never escaped practitioners' purview.

The author raised a number of common reasons that suggested historical studies is not science, and then countered these reasons. The first reason is that science demands a build up of theories and knowledge that are enriched from generation to generation and proceeds towards the "ultimate truth" of the natural world. Conventional observation suggests that historical studies is about new theories replacing older ones, and any claim of "building on top" amounts to suggesting the proposer is arrogantly standing "at the end of history" and provides a definitive breath-down of his/her past and present colleagues.

The author simply suggest that historical theories and understanding improve from generation to generation, and the previous generations' contributions are definitely picked up and utilised in creating new theories or enhancing the narration. In this way, the reason doesn't stand.

Another reason raised is that scientific observations are impartial within strict confines of laboratories without human emotions' contamination (or bias), whereas historical studies are necessarily observations on human conducted by humans in which personal judgements would be inevitably infused into any conclusion.

The author suggested that a historical study in which the researcher's human emotions and perceptions are manifestly infused would have little academic value and make a bad read for the audience. Impartiality and evidence-based conclusions are just as important in historical studies, and forcibly including present-day moral values in the historical evaluation would only render the study ridiculous as soon as the moral values have shifted.

To the author, the strongest reason for "history is not science" lies in the inability in generating "universal laws" from historical findings. Science could - laws of gravity, laws of thermodynamics etc are repeatable and exceptions could be explained. On contrary, historical findings could at best be generalised to describe approximately accurate observations, but is full of exceptions.

To this, the author's suggestion is that human beings are likely to study history and implement their learnings, such that sequence of events are altered and the conditions for the generalised observations to play out are deconstructed. In this way, an exception is created, but it would otherwise have been repeated if history had not been looked into. A bit of a time machine situation.

The purpose of this chapter seems to become clearer as the discussion continued beyond these arguments & counter-arguments, for he went on to discuss how much literary efforts should be expected from historical studies' writings. Should it make beautiful reads like poems and literature, or focus on "getting the facts accurate and right" and becomes science-journal like documentation?

The author's discussion indicated that there's too much emphasis on scientific training to compile evidence and put forward new hypotheses, with insufficient efforts in presenting history as a reader-friendly piece-of-work. There are writers who attempted to insert metaphors and analogies to liven it up, but they were so deliberate that the meanings were lost and the literature value was negative. To the author, this is definitely a deficiency that needs to be addressed.

To this end, is historical studies a history or an art? It's a craft - to become a good historian, the scientific training to ensure accuracy and robustness of theories & understanding is important, as the myths of "historical studies is not science" has been repelled by the author. However, it is not a pure science given the differences identified, and given the importance of having literary value in the piece so as to be approachable. These characteristics give rise to need for a historical studies apprentice to learn through practicing, and not just absorption of theories and skills as in science - they need to absorb through osmosis on playing it out in a PhD programme and observing how the grand masters (the professors and great historians) practise their trade. Then they can become a good decision-maker when answer on "what approach to take and skills are utilised" is called for in their next piece of study.

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History

The never-ending fad of "The True View of History"

The author spent the introduction and Chapter I giving a view on how historians see history in term of its function and best practice approach. It makes fun reading, as it gives the reader a sense of the variation in how history as a subject defines itself.

Starting from the middle ages in Western civilisation, history was seen as a chronicle to document God's deeds on Earth, and how those deeds illustrated God's power; by Age of Enlightenment, religious thoughts have given way to philosophy & moral, and history are real-life stories that illustrate the good and the bad, and the desirable traits. When revolutions broke out in Age of Reason, history becomes nostalgic episodes to look back at times when the world was stable and rosy for the well-to-do, contrasting with the contemporary world which was uncertain, brutal and upside-down.

Throughout these three early stages, history is more proverbial and sub-ordinated to other subjects - be it Divinity, Political Theories or Philosophy, and facts only have to be right-ish to be sufficient indicative. However, as natural sciences developed, there was a greater call for history to "get the facts right" in the same way that natural science gradually improved in its accuracy in quantifying and de-mystifying the world. This called for efforts in poring through primary documents and critiquing sources or previous writings to identify the sole truth and write it out. This is a strenuous task and could not be conducted as part of another subject - history earned its place as an independent subject requiring its own skills and expertise.

This 'scientific view' of history evolved with time from 18th century onwards, alongside shifts in scientific philosophy. When raw materials were abundant but under-utilised back in the 18/19th century, the emphasis was on combing through the sources and write definitive tomes; when relativity emerged and everything was 'relative' to the perspective of the researcher, the scientific view adopted relativity and emphasised on relativistic interpretation of historical events. When computers emerged and quantitative data became easily analysable, researchers shunned relative views in favour of 'big data analysis' to derive historical conclusions - let the algorithms and formulae tell the truth, and stop individual researchers' preferences from muddling with the truth.

Apart from the fact-centric evolution of history, the implications of historical studies (and ultimately its purpose) also developed, as people started to get the historical facts "right" and more value could be derived from the more solid base. Moving away from the religious/moral/nostalgic purposes, the rise of nationalism in late 19th and early 20th century organised history along national boundaries and used it to stir patriotism and justify the borders. In between the two world wars, history was used to reflect on victories and defeats and use history to justify their victories or explain why the lands loss through defeats should be recovered; where this went to the extreme in Nazi Germany, historical views were heavily doctored to justify the regime.

After the second world war, the credibilities of history as discoverer and impartial evaluator of past events was shattered. There were calls for it to be once again sub-ordinated to social science subjects, or to focus on "laying out the impartial and correct facts" avoiding judgements or advocacy of excessive interpretations.

In recent times after the fall of Communism, history became challenged by post modernism in whether there could be anything as an impartial history, as any theory or events would be subject to the authors' own preferences and values.

What has been presented by the author and summarised above is not the only interpretation of how historical studies have shifted in the past 3-4 centuries. Different authors would surely place the trends differently or raise other angles of observing such paradigm shifts. One thing that came out of this history of history is how fads came and went.

At every stage and every age, there would be some theories or paradigms that became fashionable, and any doubter would be shot down by its numerous supporters. These paradigms would be heralded as the "one and only correct way" to do things, and the future could only be bright through its hegemony; all the previous paradigms or alternative paradigms are utterly wrong and should be discarded. There would be people raising questions, but they would be ignored; cracks or mis-fits would appear, but people were happy to overlook or whitewash; addendum and modifications were regarded as corruption to this way and would be defended against. When the fad shifts, all of a sudden the paradigm would look silly, and abandoned.

What this episode reminds us is that at any time, there would be countries, cultures, theories, political views that look invincible, the "true way forward", and weak points would be hard to observe and opponents are all "backward and stupid". But we should keep challenging, be sceptical, and do not stop suggesting alternatives or modifications. Otherwise, we will be trapped by endless fads.

Life snippet - of "sanctuary" and concept of "co"

Two recent thoughts - "sanctuary" and "co"

Two thoughts have popped up in my mind quite a few times over the past week.

The first is "sanctuary", which is almost in response to the huge amount of noise generated by Prime Minster May's Hard Brexit declaration, the run-up to the inauguration of President Trump, and the farcical election campaign for the chief executive position of Hong Kong.

As these controversial events become common occurrence globally, mainly driven by the previous decades' development of libertarian politics and economics and the associated complacency towards addressing the "less prosperous half" in society, lots of commentaries, alternative views, analyses into their root causes, 'magic bullet' solutions etc will emerge and fill up our social media pages. Some may even become inputs in formulating next-generation political and economic theories and frameworks, by virtue of mass-propagation through various platforms leading to popular adoption that cannot be ignored or corrected.

Lots of social media, lots of voices on each one, we are overwhelmed by information, snippets and opinions. We have to be selective and to 'subscribe' (filter) to channels that are similar to our prevalent world view and mindset, deliberating ignoring ideas counter to our preferences. We spend a lot of time updating ourselves with information and patching up our existing view, but what about the enlightening act of being challenged with new frameworks, world views, mindsets and subject areas?

The social media environment enables us to get broader and deeper within fixed dimensions, but doesn't really allow us to open up new dimensions. It also encourages us to satisfy ourselves with frequent but short feeds of easy-to-understand information packets, instead of less frequent but prolonged sessions of self-challenging narrations. Information packets are important and their value should surely be recognised, but perhaps not to the detriment of prolonged narrations? We all enjoy Youtube short videos, but a good movie or TV drama series has its placed as well?

If we have created digital outlets which enables creation & disbursement of information packets, should there also be a balancing act for creation & disbursement of long narrations? Electronic books have opened the way for digital narration materials, but there should be a 'sanctuary-like' digital space for us to take a break from ceaseless info packets and instead interact with narrations and work on them? If we treat the digital books as the ingredients, and a certain 'sanctuary' as a kitchen, then can there be digital tools to work on the ingredients and create outputs as satisfying as writing a Tweet or sharing an article and getting numerous likes and comments? Can this be a digital space that encourages us to take our time to exercise our mind without much noise, but one that also encourages us to 'take', 'give', 'build (own capabilities and profile)' and 'contribute (to the wider community)' just like the prevailing social media?  Just a thought.

Another interesting thought came from an article in BBC - they reported that given the double-act of an ageing society and expensive housing in France, some people have paired old people with the young, such that the young rents from the old at a much reduced rate, but in turn provides 'assisted care' to the old by keeping a watch eye and performing simple tasks (without becoming a de-facto carer even in a part-time capacity).

For a long time, the market economy serves as an efficient clearing house between different demands and supplies, allowing sought-after goods & services to demand a high price and stimulate supply; entrepreneurs and corporates are encouraged through the lure of profits to identify goods & services that could fetch a high price and/or high volume. A good mechanism that brings benefits to both the customers and suppliers.

But like all good mechanisms, when we rely on it more and more to solve the world's problems, somehow it doesn't deliver the benefits we intended. A lot of non-market solutions such as housewife (or househusband) services have given way to both parents working to generate income/GDP, then pouring the incomes back to the economy to procure childcare or domestic services. The national income has increased as services are now routed through the market, but are the parents really better off? And as this market mindset prevails, other services are facing similar market-going pressure.

The result is that the society puts greater emphasis on the market, prices and wealth. In the past, with a range of non-market solutions available such as a community helping each other, wealth and income is not the be-all-and-end-all. You don't need a high income to live a meaningful life. But as non-market solutions disappear and everything costs money, people providing services through the non-market route becomes negatively deemed - not generating income, not able to bring a wider range of goods & services to their homes (you can't bring beef to the table unless you are in a farming household), not saving up to extend goods & services from now to the future, and there is no one to exchange non-market services with (apart from you, few people in the community are still offering non-market services to trade with).

We end up giving more power to wealth and income, and we start to chase income and wealth by putting a price tag on everything - which subject you should study in university has less to do with your interest and capability as the job prospect; where to buy your house has less to do the comfort than ability to sell at a higher profit in the future; people with a bit more income becomes the absolute 'elite' and income & wealth is the only measurement of a person's worth in society. Our human nature is second to money-making nature, and that seems wrong.

Going back to the non-market economy may not be the best solution at this point in time, as its benefits should not be overlooked - earning now for the future is very attractive, as is the ability to attract provision of goods & services which is not produceable in a local community, not to mention the freeing up of certain community constituents (e.g. wives) from almost-mandatory provision of non-market service.

The non-market solutions emphasis a balance within a local community, while the market-based solutions emphasises a 'global solution' which in theory uses money for goods & services to be cleared regardless of geographical distances - if the price is high, the goods & services would be provided. The market solution therefore discourages the formation of a community that has meaning with each other beyond pure demand & supply of a particular good or service (or a range of goods and services). You are either a provider in search of profit, or a customer ready to pay.

This latest BBC article, and indeed some social enterprises that try to get old or disabled people into employment, are refreshing not least because despite adopting a market-based solution in principle, it has included the non-market of "co" concept into the deal. The supplier of housing is also demander of assisted living services and vice versa. It is clear that the housing supplier has the upper hand and could therefore charge money, but it is equally clear regarding the distinctive value introduced by this mode of market-based solution - without this deal, the housing supplier (and assisted living customer) may have to contract service from yet another party who has a very foreign & singular relationship, which would be expensive (need to familiarise with the customer out of any other context and need to carve out time to provide potential out-of-hours services) and not have as high a satisfaction. This market-based solution clears two deals in one go, and this associated nature of the two deals mean this solution not replaceable with a pure market solution.

This associated nature, i.e. the "co" concept, creates a super-local community relationship between two parties with the benefit of a global-based market solution which brings suppliers and customers from afar.

Could this type of modified market-based solution be expanded, so that we are less money-centric amid a market-dominated society? Just a thought.

Reading Snippet - Art History - a Very Short Introduction (3)

How to read into art - the concept of iconography

In the previous chapters, the author has introduced us to a range of schools of thought that derived cultural-society observations, psychological status of artist and concepts of beauty from artwork. In some way, these thoughts may be over-complicating the appreciation of history of art, and have distracted us from the primary focus - to appreciate a piece of artwork in its own right.

The pure aesthetics of the artwork is as important as the 'beyond-the-artwork' learnings which could be uncovered. It contains messages which the artist wished to visualise, and it required the viewers to see symbols and signals which would allow such messages to be identified, unpicked and understood without the artist's written or spoken annotation. This is where "iconography" joins in the fold.

We could appreciate the aesthetics or historical contexts of an artwork without any knowledge of iconography, and that is how most of us appreciate the 'popular' or unfamiliar artwork - who drew it, the style/school, when it was drawn, why it was historically significant (commissioned by someone famous or for a specific occasion/famous artist/high price etc). But if we start looking deeper into the artwork, we will need to start thinking about why certain items were drawn into the picture, some were omitted, some were given distinctive colouring etc. This kind of analysis in order to reverse engineer why an artist formulated the scene and drew it out in a particular way, and what messages was he trying to input.

A very simple example would be a Greek sculpture of a naked man with a diadem - the diadem itself signalled that the man being carved out was Apollo. Another example was the Dutch paining "Maid with a Milk Jug", which revealed that there were graffiti painted into the back wall and a stove heater was also painted in which was not in the draft sketch - through these items, the artist wanted convey a message of love and warmth, maybe the maid was somehow in love?

By putting on this "iconography" hat when appreciating artwork, we can immediately add new dimensions to art appreciation, and also start describing the artwork beyond who/when/what/how. This act connects our visual observation with art history (what signals and ways of presenting were prevalent during the artist's time?), social history (why are those signals used to denote those meanings? what kinds of issues were top of people's mind that required signalling?) and artist's biography (what affected his choice of signals and the distribution of signals). This is a skill that adds lots of fun and experience into a simple exercise of art appreciation.

Art appreciation can be very simple, but by understanding history of art and utilising those knowledge and skills, we can get a lot more out of it, for both leisure and professional purposes

Reading Snippet - Art History - a Very Short Introduction (2)

The historiography of history of art

This book has expended page after page not just on the different schools of thoughts in history of art, but also how museums' settings and positioning contributed towards the expression of history of art.

A museum typically organises exhibits by period or style, which helps to reinforce the orthodox model of history of art - the demarcation from period to period, and the boundaries between styles. However, increasingly museums are arranging exhibitions around specific themes, to help with exploring certain topics in depth, e.g. the role of women in art (patrons, subject, nudity, feminism etc). In some cases, by having carefully set exhibitions, new art periods may emerge - an example is at the turn of the 20th century when a number of different art styles were exhibited under the theme of 'post-impressionism' and they all became known by that umbrella term, despite having vastly varying methodologies and philosophies.

Furthermore, museums help to update the orthodox model through its curation. When major museums purchase new artworks, it sends a signal on what new styles may be viewed as classics and become part of their collections. In this way, a very public adjustment is made to the model - such adjustments can be in terms of new styles, new artists, new themes, or even new ways of appreciating and thinking about art that bring certain artworks into prominence.

A very ancient school of thoughts in art history is to seek rational thinking and wisdom through artwork, meaning that work that displays intelligence through its topic and skills are superior. This subsumes artistry below thinking, and 'beautiful' artwork per se would not be appreciated as much as a 'thoughtful' artwork. However, towards modernity, two opposite schools of thoughts challenges this view. The first is Kant's view that art itself merits its own set of theories and methods of appreciation, without any need for thoughts and rationality to be expressed. This places emphasis on studying what makes an artwork 'beautiful', putting artistry on par with intelligence. Another school of thought is the Hegel school of Zeitgeist, which emphasises the artwork as a manifest of the age's spirit, as such the works should be studied to understand the spirit and the cultures and society associated with that spirit. A typical example is the Marxist argument of different social classes preferring differing art styles and themes depicted by the artworks.

These opposing schools are not static but have evolved with time to create new generations of critical theories, such as incorporating Freudian views on psychoanalysis. This allows artwork to be analysed in association with its author, understanding the artists' subconscious motivations and mentality through the works' subtle symbols. Another advance is that an artwork could be classified into 'inside' and 'outside' elements such as the frame, artist's fame and its price, but the 'outside' elements would come back to affect how its 'inside' is evaluated.

There are many ways through which history of art could be presented, expressed and displayed. However, it is important to bear in mind that 'history' as a subject has two sides - the historical events that have taken place, and how we as the present-day people look at what has happened in the past. This is why different schools of thought emerge, to respond to the present age's needs, anxieties and curiosities; this is why the museums have changed their display method from time or style based to theme based, as some themes such as feminism needs to be explored given today's political atmosphere; this is why new periods, styles and artwork preferences emerge, as they enable the narration of history of art to be smoother in the eyes of the modern patrons or that gaps could be filled.

History is therefore a living subject - not just that forgotten events are re-discovered and new events emerge, but how the events should be studied and aligned also shift as the world moves forward. History, in other words, change with the current world.