禮儀師之奏鳴曲 (Okuribito)

在回多倫多的飛機上找到這部己久聞的電影。本來在一般情況下都不會在長旅程中看這樣帶點藝術味道的影片，不過其他的Hollywood Movies 實在太爛，好像TROF，Night at the Museum 2 等等，都令我昏昏欲睡。最後唯有選了這片。

果然名不虛傳。整套電影圍繞著日本傳統喪禮禮儀，貫穿了主角的幾段友情和感情，包括一對童年時的鄰居母子，他的師傅老禮儀師，和最重要的父子情。雖然有一點瑕疵，例如他妻子好像一個樣板的日本賢妻良母，缺乏了內心的描述。又或者老禮儀師的女助手突然訴說她的往事，顕得有點突兀。不過這些都遮蓋不了此片的光芒。看完影片後我對一些以前會認為繁文縟節或多此一舉的禮儀有了一份敬重。

人生旅程的最後一站總會是死亡，本來沒有甚麼希奇。但我們一方面對未知的事情有著恐懼，另一方面人與人之間的感情叫我們抗拒死亡，總沒有一個人會樂意見到身旁所愛的人離去吧。久而久之從恐懼變成逃避，逃避再演變成禁忌，又或者難捨的感情令人有不切實際的幻想，甚至於迷信。這電影就巧妙地讓我們重新思考死亡的意義。也突顯了傳統喪禮儀式實在恰如其分地表達了遺屬對離世者的敬意和思念。

看此片時不禁想起剛離世不久的母親。母親永遠是毎一個人生命中最重要的人。對我們幾兄弟姊妹來說，她逝世的消息來得很突然，令我們傷心的感覺更強烈。為了表達和抒發這份情感，我們製作了幾份紀念品。包括一篇所有人都有份創作的生平紀略；一套搜集了母親從年輕到老年相片的幻燈片(在安息崇拜播放，也放在Youtube上讓海外親友觀看；最後還把整個安息崇拜的過程拍攝，製作成DVD，以作紀念。現在回想起來，跟這齣電影所描寫的儀式不謀而合。有人或許會問，人都走了，還搞這麼多幹什麼？對此我只能說，這一切都令我們覺得舒暢了，也適當的表達了我們幾兄弟姊妹對母親的敬意。

年紀愈大，愈明白傳統禮儀的意義。反而一些表面看來打破迷信，讓人可以從舊禮節中得釋放的新規定，却叫人愈覺反感。例子包括『不可跪拜死人』，或『不可在先人相片前擺放貢品』等。如果一些親友捨不得逝者，而在遺體前跪下表達他們的感情，這又有何不可。又或者中國人最基本表示對逝者尊重的禮儀『三躬身』，有些教徒也覺得違反了他們的信仰。這簡直是另一種迷信。

看著座位前小小的屏幕，心裡又不期然浮現母親的影像。感受己經在悼文寫過了，可以再說的，仍舊是那句話：『謝謝！』奧巴馬在他第一本書的序言最能代表我的心聲，他提到剛逝去的母親時說： “I won’t try to describe how deeply I mourn her passing still. I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.”

Man's Search for Meaning (Part 2)

It’s in this context that Man’s Search for Meaning offers a completely different perspective. When people are under adverse condition, their life under threat, their daily activities more as for sustaining than living out any meaning of existence, they persevere. They live on. Their will to survive flourishes. Yes it is difficult to understand. Born in each man is a will to survive and to live. It’s this will that keeps human beings as a group to continue their existence on earth.

Surely there still is the strong and the weak. Some are blessed with a stronger will to live, and they live on regardless of how unfavorable their surroundings are. How this will is sustained I’m not so sure. It can be just an animal instinct. Or more likely it’s love, legacy, and hope.

Love is well known to be a driving force for life. Viktor Frankl described his longing to see his wife made him want to stay alive. It is sad that while he was struggling to survive with the flimsy hope that he would live with his wife together one day, she was already dead. But reality does not matter. So long as a man’s love for someone stays afloat, he will strive to live on. “Nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved,” he said. We’ve heard stories like a prisoner serving long prison term not losing his resolve because there was a young family he hoped one day would reunite with. Or a person trapped in debris for several days after an earthquake, without food or water, not knowing her chance of survival, did not give up simply because of the thoughts of her family. Love provides a man’s life with meaning. “Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.” How beautiful!

Legacy is something one leave to this world. This is most of the time closely related to a person’s achievement. Viktor Frankl mentioned several times his desire to finish his academic writings in psychology and publish them as a book. Once he even risked his life hiding his work from SS guards. People may argue “if you can preserve your life, you can always finish your work later.” But this is actually easier said than done. When one is faced with a situation that what he sees as precious is going to be taken away, there is really an urge to protect it at the cost of his own well being or even his own life. This ”precious something” is not necessarily material thing. In our society a lot of people work extremely hard. Other people may comment that they work for money that they don’t really need (as they are already wealthy.) The truth is they work for their psychological need of leaving a legacy. This is similar to the phenomenon that many elder men take sex enhancement drugs, even at the risk of their life, not for sexual pleasure but to prove their potency. (I may be a bit off track here.) Legacy is the second component that fulfills life with meaning.

The final piece of the puzzle is hope. Hope of something better to come in the future strengthen one’s will to survive. How hope stays with a person under a difficult situation yet leaves another person under a similar situation is anybody’s guess. No one knows the answer for sure. Is it something to do with a person’s personality and character traits? Or is it due to a person’s experience during his growing up? Or is it more to do with a person’s mental strength coming from his ancestors’ genes, or religious belief, or encouragement from friends? Viktor Frankl had not explicitly mentioned hope as a key factor of his survival through the concentration camp. Nevertheless he hinted in different occasions the importance of focusing on the positive side of this ordeal. The prisoners’ thankfulness for the smallest of mercies, the image of his wife, their ability to look at life in a humorous way - all are evidence of hope at work here.

Love, legacy and hope – these are the three cornerstones of man’s meaning of existence!

Man's Search for Meaning (Part 1)

This is the second time I tried to write some of my thoughts inspired by this very good book. The first time I stopped after five minutes. Apart from the usual excuse of too busy with work, there is also a feeling that I don’t know where to start. In fact I find myself too irrelevant compared to what this book’s author had experienced.

This is a classic book, aka very old book. Its first edition came out in 1959, before I was even born. There is a reason why this book still captures the attention of many readers after many decades. It is simply good. It is also heavy. So be warned - it will destroy your good mood if you try to do some pool-side reading during a vacation.

It’s about a Jewish scholar’s unique experience of surviving Nazi death camps during the Second World War. I say unique because not many Jewish could survive death camps – they either were executed or died of hard labor and malnutrition, or sometimes just lacked the will to live on. Even for those who survived, they might not be able to describe people’s inner feelings under extremely adverse conditions in such details – fear, hope, compassion, and love, at times with deep psychological analysis.

Again I have to emphasize that I’m not qualified to comment anything on Victor Frankl’s theories or views. I’ll just share a few insights or probably personal feelings gained from this book. What’s the meaning of a man’s life? I’ve been asking this question since I entered adolescence (and now I am in my mid life). There are many ready-made answers to suit your appetite. In fact the answer changes with your age. For a teenager or young adult, a simple answer from what most religions offer, like “living for God” or “be a good son/daughter of the Lord”, will do. For adults from mid-twenties to late-thirties, it is difficult not to focus on their needs (or desires) to establish a family, to earn a stable income, and to improve their material life. So life’s meaning to them is just to make more money. Money also contributes to their having a sense of security, and self-esteem as well – belonging to a class of the society that ‘has’. People of all ages look for a kind of inner fulfillment or satisfaction that often results in them feeling ‘happy’. For the first half of a man’s life - from childhood to early mid-life, it’s a sense of CERTAINTY and SECURITY that contribute to this inner fulfillment.

Entering mid-life, however, a man’s landscape changes. There is less urge to accumulate more stuff and things (well… it depends). There is a sense of stability because you already own a house with mortgage almost paid off. Your kids are in high school and your job seems safe. If you lose your job, your investment is probably enough for your family to live a comfortable life for the next 5 years. Well, a few of their friends and peers already died, perhaps prematurely. So some people even think they have lived long enough, seen enough, and if their lives end suddenly it would be acceptable. The need for security and certainty diminishes. Here comes their mid-life crisis. You start wondering why you live and what this fuss is all about. What have you accomplished in the first 40 years? Is there any strong reason to live on? Does one carry on living just because one hasn’t died?

Outliers – The Story of Success

This is Malcolm Gladwell’s new book after his immense hits ‘The Tipping Pont’ and ‘Blink’. Both books were a joy to read. For a non-fiction what you look for is insight, and both books provide plenty. I must say I was a bit skeptical before opening his latest work. Can someone really keep pounding out great ideas? That’s three in a row in less than 10 year. For the first fifty pages I even thought I was right – They are all banal observations which border on common senses. After I finished the last page, however, I had to admit this guy is a real genius. He can pull many small seemingly unrelated anecdotes together and verge onto a very convincing conclusion. The fact that he is a good story teller makes the whole book journey really enjoyable.

In typical Gladwell style, the book starts with some interesting statistics about successful baseball players in Canada. It is trying to identify patterns associated with outliers – individuals or groups who stand out from the main stream. The first attribute is opportunity. One has to be given opportunity to succeed. In the case of junior baseball players in Canada, some of them were not given an equal opportunity because of their birthday. (I do not want to spoil your reading interest. You have to find out exactly what happen in the book.)

Chapter 2 and 5 are the ‘banal’ stuff which every curious person should have noticed in the real world. What Gladwell does is to use more examples to illustrate the point that both ‘luck’ and ‘hard work’ plays an important part in a person’s success. They are not very convincing. Nevertheless they form part of the entire thesis Gladwell is trying to build up. The discussions in Chapter 3 and 4 about studies of geniuses are interesting. Most people would probably bask in a sense of ‘justice’ when they finally learn that high IQ does not necessarily lead to a brilliant career or a life of achievement. In fact according to the study Gladwell quotes; your IQ is only one half of the equation. The other half is your family background and whatever that comes with it. Up to this moment the book can keep my interest but the insights I have been expecting from a Gladwell’s book are still missing.

Part 2 of the book makes the read all worthwhile. All chapters focus on the effect of culture, that is, the society where one grew up, on one’s behavior or even capability. As a person coming from the Delta Pearl River region, I’d gladly accept that Rice Paddies where my ancestors come from do improve my mathematical ability. Such is the talent of Gladwell. He is a journalist by training. But his observations and researches and subsequent formulation into some theories make you think. His theories may not be entirely true, and they are not established and verified by commonly accepted research methodology. Nevertheless they are convincing enough to the extent that even government administrators would have an urge to apply them immediately. In Part 2 it’s the KIPP program that is enticing. It’s basically a reinforcement of his theories that hard work is an important element of building up one’s mathematical capability. A person with a more disciplined lifestyle and academic achievement, especially in mathematics, has a better chance of going to college and improve his or her life. If anything, this is common belief all across Asia. The genius of Gladwell is he seems to have ‘proved’ it.

The entire book focuses on disapproving the commonly accepted concept that success in life comes from individual talents and efforts. Gladwell methodically demonstrates evidences including stories of individuals, research papers, and even his own life events to argue that success comes from a few common elements – opportunity given, culture, environment, hard work and talent. Just like the old saying goes, ‘Right time, right place, and right person’. This is reminiscent of what my parents used to tell me: Success only has two components – luck and hard work.

The Logic of Life

I finished this book by Tim Harford over Christmas holidays. Harford has another successful book a few years ago called “The Undercover Economist” which I’ve not read. From the style of “The Logic of Life”, I’d guess his early book would also be interesting. The theme is to discover a general pattern from small things, and to give them an overall explanation based on human rationality. This approach is very similar to the two other successful books “Blink” or “The Tipping Point”, both written by another famous author Malcolm Gladwell.

Overall speaking I still enjoy this book, though not as much as the other two books by Malcolm Gladwell. There are still insights from some of the author’s observations and explanations of human behavior through the microscope of rational thinking, particularly in the first half of the book. The chapter on game theory is enjoyable, providing in layman’s term an overview of the theories of game ranging from playing poker to war games between superpowers. The discussion of “focal point” in negotiation scenario, as proposed by Thomas Schelling is insightful. At least I will try to use it in future negotiation. The chapters on dating and marriage, and the one on the economics of discrimination are also good. The reasoning of how the balance of supply and demand affects the eventual selection of a dating partner borders on common sense. But the subsequent extrapolation to explaining the phenomenon why there are always more females in big cities more than compensates its earlier banality. (Having said that, the statement that females now are doing better than males academically because they need to improve their chance of finding a better mate is rather unconvincing.) There’s been mention of many economic theories and experiments, and I find all of them very interesting. The laboratory experiment by Roland Fryer at the University of Virginia provides very good insight into how discrimination can start somehow randomly. The tournament theory stipulating why bosses are always overpaid, not based on their own merit, but rather as a prize incentive for those who work under them is really funny. And I have to say it carries some truth.

However the book suddenly turns into a downward spiral in the second half. I just managed to scramble through the last three chapters without really trying to understand what the author tries to say. It’s quite boring and one-sided, very much like a lecture or monologue from the author. There is a little bit of reasoning but the overall logic is rather weak. Maybe he was under a publishing deadline or something, but the last three chapters turn the book from Grade A to B.

So overall I enjoy the book. It is for the inquisitive minds who want to understand more about life. And the ability of the author to pull out so many little theories and experiments from the body of economic research to explain phenomena in life is admirable.

There are a few final comments though. First, I never understand why these life observations and reasoning process are the job of an economist. To me some of these subjects should come under the realm of sociology and other social science subjects instead of economics. (Were I to know economics cover that many areas I might have chosen it as my subject of study for my first degree! Now it’s too late.) Second, just like any other economic or financial theories, the assumption that human being is a rational entity is dubious. As so many recent incidents in the world economy and financial markets show, people are not just rational beings. At best it is a combination of logical reasoning and human psychology that drives their behaviors and decisions. At worst they might just follow their instincts or demonstrate herd behavior. Therefore the effort to explain a trend in human history based purely on logical reasoning is doomed to fail. The rise of status of women around the world over the past 50 years certainly is not due just to the invention of more effective and convenient birth control tools such as pills or condom. And that leads to my third comments: When two events have correlation, they don’t necessarily have a causal relationship, i.e. one thing may not lead to another. That’s something you should keep in mind when reading this book.