What can't one believe easily in this modern society?

In this new era of information age, we are constantly receiving information via many media from time to time whether we like it or not.  It becomes more and more difficult to fully duplicate, evaluate and judge every piece of information for its validity, credibility and workability to many of us especially they could be mixed with a lot of false or contradictory data; while honestly many people do not know how to study (even with good grades) to make it more complicated in effective learning and sound judgement.  It could explain the reason why some people may have established automatic blocking system to stop receiving any more information especially those requiring one’s own observation and evaluation so to prevent from falling into further confusion.

There’re a lot of chance for all walks of life of Hong Kong, especially students to be exposed to a lot of new knowledge, information and technology,  as witnessed from our high attendance of the recent Hong Kong Book Fair, Hong Kong Computer and Communication Festival, etc,  in the summer time.

I have also visited the recent book fair with over 900,000 visitors this year.  Many book distributors utilized this as a channel to unload their inventory to appeal those looking for bargain sales, and there’re many books sold as cheap as $10 or $20.  Indeed, there’re many book buyers. Yet,  I also observed that many simply walked around without really checking or buying any books as the book fair event could serve as a “cool holiday spot” while one can sweat a lot with the high temperature outside. One major book distributor told me that the real book buyers will not come to the book fair as they prefer to check and buy books directly from the book store.   In other words, it could refer to the fact that we don’t have a lot of people really “thinking”, or “looking” as the statistics of visitors indicated otherwise.

While it could be “study bug” to stop us from acquiring real knowledge, I noticed that it could be explained by a strange phenomenon in our modern society, that is “people simply don’t believe anything easily” to the extent that “they stop looking”.   If we want to trace it down further,  it could be possibly due to some kind of “failed help” or “having been betrayed” experience on oneself or and on others in the past to make one not believe in any possibility of “genuine help”.

Yet if one is really looking, one can still find some “genuine help” though not always from everyone to everyone in our society.  Finding some genuine help in our society will raise your confidence and belief in the possibility of help, though may not happen on oneself directly.

If one sees that help is possible, it will definitely help to open the door of real knowledge as one seeks the knowledge which can help!  If the knowledge is not for the use of help, what’s for?

How do we raise our next generation in Hong Kong? "To Believe" or "To Observe"

Future depends on what we are doing for ourselves and our next generation today. If we want to have a better future as a group, a race or mankind, it also depends on how we raise our next generation today.

Remember when you're a kid, you had a lot of imagination and enthusiasm of life but some of us may probably do not even have this little fortune. In time, something has changed. After you got older and have enough experience (good and bad) through our education system, relationship with others, work, etc, you developed a personality package solution including various kinds of indoctrination to handle your life that you believe that can help you survive well in this society. However life could always give us challenge to shake our stable data or doctrines or beliefs that we're indoctrinated or brainwashed to uphold for years to put us into confusion all of a sudden. Worse, for some instances, you might feel that you're betrayed because the reality or outcome was not something you had been told so that you had believed for many years. How could we come out of such confusion? It is common for many people to simply grab another “belief” from another source, or any other “seeming to look good solution” to help us at least to get out of fear and insecurity… as a solution to confusion. However, how long does it last before this stable datum was shaken again from life?

I remember what I enjoyed most in high school was the time I wrote my weekly journals (which was part of our regular school assignment) as the other time I was very much told to read and memorize the textbook so to have good grades in examination (which was not a difficult job to me at that time). I used to write down my thought and my dreams in my weekly journals. It's actually a very fulfilling experience to me as I could ask and look many things than what they looked on the surface. Unfortunately, when I looked up the sky, there’s not a lot to see as we’re surrounded by a lot of high-rise buildings in Hong Kong. Was there more than what I saw on the surface? Our school system did not really teach us how to study, how to observe, how to evaluate and how to be responsible for what we honestly observe and tell what it’s.

If we could observe what it’s there correctly, we could be able to be responsible for what we say it’s there. But to believe something that we have not observed ourselves in the first place, we can’t be responsible and therefore we felt betrayed when the reality did not come out what we believed. Worse, we could use it to blame others to tell us to believe them so. But look, feeling of betrayal came about only when you finally could observe what’s there no longer true. True belief is better come after our own observation and evaluation as it is more real and solid.

So you see the security to live better here is to know how to know and how to observe but not what one's told to believe. If what we had observed might not be right, we could admit our mistakes to find out what we have not observed correctly and so we could move on to find better truth to help ourselves and others.

The better way to move out from any confusion is first to find out where you are and to look what stable datum have been shaken to put you into confusion in the first place. The solution to any problem is the problem itself. Any solution adding more to the problem is not the solution.

We may better ask our kids what their purposes in study are. Do they want to improve their perception so they can observe better, evaluate better, decide and act better for better abilities to achieve their goals and purposes in life? Or do they simply believe our system that they need to have good grades in exam, so that they could go to better school, better university, better career and better life? If you had observed both ways, which way do you want to raise your kids? I hope you and your children can make the right choice.

P.S. Here is some more information that may help you. You may download the booklet and do an online course on raising children at http://www.volunteerministers.org/#/solution/raising-children.