How to kill idealism

June 4th has been a remarkable date of China since 1989.

During the past two decades, in China we have witnessed the death of idealism nationwide among more than a billion people. The substitution is the extreme materialism. One must not have genuine thoughts other than making money. Even the idealistic communism is dead. The remaining is the materialistic communism, which is closer to capitalism than the idealistic communism. The value of many idealistic accomplishments such as morality and self-discipline thus decreases rapidly. A representative example is the rapid prevalence of the cat theory by Deng Xiaoping (the primary architect of China's economic reform) that declares "do not care if the cat is black or white, what matters is it catches mice". In the other words, the only factor that matters in our life is which brings the material outcome.

The people of a nation needs to be materialistic in order to execute the daily business. The people of a nation, however, must also have be idealistic so that they know the real value for which they work. Someone says that nobody eats morality. Without the value of morality, however, there is no healthy human society. Idealism is mankind's self-motivation to foster the glue of healthy human society. While it is materialism that motivates people higher rate of production, it is idealism that keeps humans be a coherent society rather than many self-interest groups.

In 1989, Chinese people promoted a greater demand of idealism that threatened the leadership of the mean-time government. In order to get rid of this threat, the Chinese leadership board took the worst action by unlimited exaggerating the value of material in every aspect of human society. Therefore, the correctness of any action becomes no longer judged by the truth (which is an idealistic concept) but by the its material consequence (which is a materialistic concept). We have to say that the Chinese leadership board were very smart because they immediately figured out the best way of solving the problem. Such a knowledge is probably the worst heritage in China's multi-thousand-year history. But it works. It killed, again, the idealism in China among at least a generation of people.

After twenty years, it is hard to blame too much on either the students' or the government's decisions in the spring of 1989 in China. Both sides have their arguments and both sides had made a few bad decisions. The worst of all, however, is the government's promotion of the extreme materialism after the tragedy because it hurts and will continue hurt China for many generations. Probably in the sense of truth, June 4th, 1989 was indeed a battle between the idealism and the materialism more than any other contrasts.

Something ended in June 4th, 1989. Something began in June 4th, 1989. I felt sad about all people who were killed or suffered by that tragedy, no matter they belonged to the side of students or the side of government. They should not die for just few person's ambition.

Schema.org and some of my take

A recent initiation by the three leading search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo) made people excited, especially to the Semantic Web community. The initiation, Schema.org, is a loose standard that declares supporting a common vocabulary for structhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifured data markup on web pages. I simply type some of my take on this announcement.

First, it reveals the difficulty faced by the traditional search engines to further improve the quality of Web search. With the advance of the Web technology, webmasters inject richer content and more variety in data layout structure. It significantly increases the difficulty of the high-quality web crawling and thus the efficiency of Web search. The apply of the various SEO tricks increases not only the load of the webmasters but also the load of Web sense disambiguation. This new announcement simply shows that such a problem has been so severe that these major Web search players have to sit together and figure out a common platform to solve it for the sake of everybody.

Second, it is unusual for us seeing the three rivals sitting together so peacefully, especially between Google and Microsoft in the field of Web search, in the recent few years. If I use the eye as a historian to look at this unusual case, I would make a brutal claim that it is the sign that the peak of the glory of the traditional Web search engines (certainly including Google) has been passed. From now on, they can only walk downhill. Typically, the reach of a critical standard in a field represents the complete mature of the field. After the complete mature, the only thing left is decaying gradually.

Third, this method is not the ultimate solution. Certainly, however, the adoption of Schema.org may ease the problem at some level. But it will not hold for long time. The real problem beneath is the debate whether machines can truly replace humans in answering genuine questions. Most of the regular questions, such as what will be the weather in Philadelphia next Wednesday, are certainly answerable through the optimization of the automated Web search methods. The others, such as what should I do when visiting Philadelphia, are essentially not answerable by machines because the understanding of "I" is so profound that even humans may not really know each other. To this type of questions, social search is not the solution either. We need some totally new invention to address them. The traditional search engines can only help us to the certain point and such a point has already been very close to us. The initiation of Schema.org may lay that landmark 1000 miles further. But that is all about it.

The last but not the least, it is not such an exciting news to the Semantic Web community. By Schema.org, the big three formally claims the support to microdata instead of RDF/RDFa. To the non-technicians, they may not feel much about the difference. To the Semantic Web technicians, however, it is a major loss because from now on more swing players are going to leave the more complicated RDF behind their back and embrace the simpler (of course less powerful, however) microdata. It is a major loss for competing into the field of real economy. Maybe eventually RDF may still win the battle. But it will take more years. And, everybody knows, timing to a Web technology is very critical!

The image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream

Daniel (2:31-33)

"Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.

In Chinese translation (但以理书 2)

31 “王啊，你梦见一个大像，这像甚高，极其光耀，站在你面前，形状甚是可怕。
32 这像的头是精金的，胸膛和膀臂是银的，肚腹和腰是铜的，
33 腿是铁的，脚是半铁半泥的。

This is a well-known prophecy in Bible. In general, it tells the four nations that must rise in the history since the time of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. There is, however, a question. If the purpose of the dream is only to foresee the coming of the four nations that were going to rule the world, there are many other ways God can illustrate it. Instead, however, God had used such an image (or statue) for the illustration. Because of the greatness of HIS wisdom, it is fair for us to guess that the image as total must also contain some message that God wants us to know.

I compare the image to the image in Genesis 1 in which it tells that mankind was made according to the image of God. Thus we get a few interesting and illuminating contrasts between the two images. To make the presentation simpler, we call mankind the God's image and the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream devil's image.

God's image is made by clay and clay only. Clay is the cheapest material in the world. Due to the breath of life, however, the creatures in this image are able to be the master of the world and be loved by all the other creatures of God.

Devil's image, on the other hand, is made by all kinds of precious materials such as gold and silver. Despite of these more "valuable" building materials, the image is terrifying. It stands by cruel power (iron leg), is strengthened by weapons (bronze belly), manages the behaviors using money (silver arms), and eventually intends to grasp all the honors to itself (gold head).

The ultimate goal of God's image is to glorify God. The ultimate goal of devil's image is to glorify Satan.

We can only choose one of the two images to follow. All of us are born in God's image. Before we may follow Jesus Christ, however, all of us live in devil's image. Without power, we feel belonging to the low class and thus are shy to even stand in front of people. Without weapon, we feel no strength to fight. Without money, we do not know how to do a thing. And ultimately, we are eager to holding any pieces of little glory to ourselves. The statue in Nebuchadnezzar's dream exactly reveals the real image of people who do not live in Jesus Christ.

LORD Jesus, may I be blessed not following the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. I was made in clay and you are the potter. I am not made by gold, silver, bronze, or iron. Without you, I have no value. With you, however, I become invaluable.

May this blessing be with all the other people who follows you, my LORD!

The end of the world?

Matthew 24:35-36

Earth and sky will be destroyed, but the words I have said will never be destroyed. No one knows when that day or time will be, not the angels in heaven, not even the Son. Only the Father knows.

In Chinese translation (马太福音 24)

35 天地要废去，我的话却不能废去。
36 那日子，那时辰，没有人知道，连天上的使者也不知道，子也不知道，惟独父知道。

There are many man-made predictions about the date when the world will be end. The most recent date is yesterday, May 21, 2011. Obviously it has been proved false. Two thousands years ago, our LORD Jesus Christ had already told that no humans, even including the only son of God when he was in the human body, would know the date. Therefore, it is unsurprising at all that we may laugh at whoever makes such kind of claims.

But ... Why would it have happened again and again when we know the predictions must be wrong?

One consequence is that many people start to not believe the coming of the end of the world at all. When we say that nobody can predict the exact date when the world is end, it is not equivalent to that the world will not end at one day. The trick Satan plays here is to repeat an obvious lie so that people may be tired of the truth beneath the lie. Sure, when someone says that the world will end at any particular day, it must be a lie. But, when it says that the world will end soon though nobody knows the exact date, it is a truth! Satan does not want people to know such a truth. So he twisted it a little bit and made an obvious lie. Then he repeatedly allows people revealing the lie in order to make us question the truth.

In recent days, I saw so many programs that make joke of the end of the world due to the obvious incorrectly predicted date. I feel sad of these people because they do not know what they were saying. May God be merciful to them and allow them seeing the truth that was hidden to them by Satan.

LORD Jesus, however, I wish you come soon!

Stranger

Psalm 39:12

Hear my prayer, Lord,
listen to my cry for help;
do not be deaf to my weeping.
I dwell with you as a foreigner,
a stranger, as all my ancestors were.

In Chinese Translation (诗篇 39:12)

12 耶和华啊，求你听我的祷告，留心听我的呼求！我流泪，求你不要静默无声！因为我在你面前是客旅，是寄居的，像我列祖一般。

Somebody said before. To a Christian, if the world does not feel strange about you, you must have been strange because you are supposed to be a stranger.

It is, however, tough to be a stranger in any circumstance. By being a stranger, you have few friends. You feel lonely. And often you lose the energy on going forward.

But we have God. This is the fundamental difference between us and the strangers the world usually think. Because of our LORD, we have hope, since HE always listen to our beg and answer our appealing.

Therefore, I am proud being a stranger because of my God, my savior, my best friend, and my true love. May all the strangers of the world because of Jesus Christ be comfort! As we always have been.

Ruth

Ruth (1:16-18)

But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me." When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

In Chinese Translation(路得记 1)

16 路得说：不要催我回去不跟随你。你往哪里去，我也往那里去；你在哪里住宿，我也在那里住宿；你的国就是我的国，你的　神就是我的　神。
17 你在哪里死，我也在那里死，也葬在那里。除非死能使你我相离！不然，愿耶和华重重地降罚与我。
18 拿俄米见路得定意要跟随自己去，就不再劝他了。

Today is Mother's Day. One of the greatest woman and mother Bible recorded is Ruth the Moabite, the grand grandmother of King David. She was not a born Israelite. To the end, however, she was remembered by God as an ancestor of Jesus Christ (Matthew 1:5).

You do not need to be born great. You do not need to be born right. You even do not need to be born blessed.

The only thing that you must do is to pursue the great, the right, and the blessed after you were born.

Ruth was born as a Moabite. When she passed away, however, she had been one of the true Israelite among all the Israelite. There were no secrets. "Your people will be my people and your God my God." There are no other prays greater than this one.

It is simple. It is straightforward. In thousands of years of human history, however, there is only one Ruth.

May all of our sisters be the daughters of Ruth!

Abundance of possessions

Luke (12:15)

Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions."

In Chinese Translation (路加福音 12)

15 于是对众人说：你们要谨慎自守，免去一切的贪心，因为人的生命不在乎家道丰富。

There are three types of people who seek God.

The first type are who look for the abundance of possessions. They heard that God blessed whoever follow HIM. Therefore, they expect the same abundance of possessions by self-claiming themselves being the God-followers. If, however, they do not get what they expect, very easily they quit the "faith" because to the end what they look for is the abundance of possessions in this world.

Look out! Many self-claimed Christians are in this category.

The second type are who look for the eternal life and wish to bring the wealth they earn in this world to the eternity. Many of these people are really good persons. They are hard working persons. They may live with high standard morality every day. They are the models many of us used to ask our kids to follow. But ... they do not really know God because what they truly value is still the things except God himself. What they really appreciate is to forever hold the things they own now by their "hard work". To them, believe in God is only a way to reach such a goal rather than truly eager to being with God.

The last type of the people are who truly look for God beyond anything else. It is God that we seek. Except God, nothing may satisfy my heart. And I wish such a eagerness also be your priority!