Universal Natural
Universal Natural
Do you agree with me that feeling is natural and universal?
FEELING, this word can’t be measured concretely, but according to my experience, it’s universal. For example, when 100 people are asked what language a typical HKer can speak more fluently, Cantonese or English. I bet that 100% answer CANTONESE although they can speak English at conversational level too. Why? Although there’s no concrete measure such as measuring the speed of words in the unit of words per second or measuring the numbers of vocabulary. it think it’s RIDICULOUS to make a concrete criteria for language fluency. The language fluency is totally judged by FEELING. There’re still many cases that can’t be judged with concrete criteria but judged totally by FEELING. For example, 100% people(have no mental illness) agree that violence or rape is immoral. There’s no concrete critiria to measure morality but most people can answer this question unhesitantly. I think what is GOOD or BAD is judged totally by feeling. Do you agree with me that feeling is natural and universal?
Be careful. Good and bad is also judged by culture. Live in another culture for a while, and you’ll be confronted with things that you have learned are bad, and considered good there. And if you’re open-minded you’ll learn that ‘yes, the way they do things there, is good for them’.
It’s always good to study things carefully, although our feelings say that it cannot be true. I remember that in Holland (I’m Dutch), for a long time nobody ever thought about researching the percentage of different ethnic groups in crime. Nobody even thought about it, because they had a deep feeling that it was wrong to make such connections and start generalizing as a result. But I do admire the first researcher who came up with the idea to study these things carefully. Nowadays, everybody in Holland admits that we should have known before so we could have had different policies, specifically for some groups.
I think even the way people judge violence can be cultural. It’s sad but true; not everybody is pacifist. Today I had a conversation with a Chinese person from China, telling me that sometimes it’s very necessary for a good leader of a big country that he kills his citizens. I was shocked, but I got the impression that it’s normal (or at least safe) to think that way in China. Death penalty (also a way of violence) is considered very normal in some countries.
But some things stretch too far for everybody. There is one case in Germany where a terrorist woman (RAF) never felt remorse doing anything, not even when it came to harming her own family. It was found that the part of her brain with ‘consience’ was damaged when she was young.
