Category: Politics & government

Damn the snow. I was planning to go for a walk at the Arboretum today but God changed His mind. Behold, it must snow today. Sigh…

Anyway, I spent my whole evening at Ypsilanti, trying to help the race crew building the car. One thing worth noting; yesterday session was tense. Never in my life as a Solar Car member have I experienced what I had last night.

At first, the Power Electrical team had wanted to install the wiring on the car but the mechanical team needed to do something first. So, we disappointedly gave up our plan and instead, rescheduled our timetable and went out to Ypsilanti in order to help out the mech team. Once there, Mirai and Ivan needed to test the battery so they left me with our rival, which is the Mech team. While I had nothing to do for the Power Electrical team at that time, I decided to help out Mech. After all, although we’re rivals, our goal is still the car.

The rush of adrenaline started around 2100 hours, I at first stage was given the task of preparing some glue. Later, I had to go into the car to install some carbon stuffs on the car. The interesting thing was that the team had the operation timed. I, well we were racing against time and the Engineering Director even raised his voice, trying to keep people on track. At one time, we screwed up something and he was looking really mad
Nevertheless, we did finish up the work sometimes around midnight.

After the work session, I have decided to hate two thing, fiber glass and ethanol. Fiber glass makes the hand itchy while ethanol burns the hand. Therefore, the moral of the story is not to join the Mech team. Power Electrical rules.

Honesty is not necessarily the best policy and nothing is the best when it comes to ways of behaving. However, hypocrisy is better than honesty. That is for sure. First of all, I define hypocrisy as displaying two kind of behavior in two different situations. I see hypocrisy as a superset of honesty. In fact, the people whom first used the phrase “honesty is the best policy” are hypocrites themselves. Honesty on the other hand is simply the notion of being true to oneself i.e. following rigidly the principles (ideal, rules etc) that one has set on oneself.

The world around us constantly changing and this need us to adapt. Hypocrisy is a way to adapt to the ever changing world. One proof is China before the age of pre-pax Americana and during pax Americana. They were somewhat against the capitalist system and closed their system from world scrutiny. But now, we found that China is even in the WTO, the organization that they once looked in disgust. They only did this after they saw that it will benefit them to join the organization despite the fact that this is against their ideal.

Sometimes, two similar cases need us to deal with them differently. One case is the United States’ stance on North Korea and Iraq. They are applying double standard on those so-called members of Axis of Evil simply because it benefits them to do it. Surely, to fight on two fronts separated by the mountainous Asian terrain is folly. Also, using the same threat on North Korea will be a grave mistake since China is certainly more interested in the Korean Peninsula scenario than the Iraqis’ problem.

The affirmative action movement is classic case of hypocrisy. Yes a long time ago, there was discrimination of certain group of people against others. Discrimination no doubt is bad and the affirmative action was born from the notion that discrimination must be cleaned out from society’s mind. And now, the movement itself is discriminating certain sorts in favor of a few particular groups. Isn’t this hypocrisy?

But of course, when one reads this, one will wonder what the connection between hypocrisy and honesty is. The relationship is, as I said before, honesty is a subset of hypocrisy.

If you don’t agree with me then consider the following situation. You have an ability to do something that nobody else possesses. A friend of yours knows this and asked you to use your expertise to do something for him or her as a favor. His or her request was against your principle and thus, you presented your friend with a monotonous no as an answer. Later, a stranger approached you and asked you to do the same thing that your friend had asked you. As a return, the stranger promise to reward you with something that you need but can’t afford to buy it. So, will you be honest and fair towards your friend by saying no to the stranger or will you obey the stranger’s request and get the thing that you really want?

If you think the last scenario is not strong enough, then imagine that the reward was your life and the request was to murder someone else. Will you be true to yourself and your friend or will you be a hypocrite?