Fresh Wind & Green Grass

It takes 1950 years to consider Colosseum in Rome as 'ancient'

When cases of COVID-19 continued to arise in Indonesia, but people started to talk less about it, medical professionals and netizens raged on social media. People also included a chart that they referred to as “illogical” because cases were still on the rise, but people were already outside of their homes. This, actually, is a simple question with an easy answer: it’s a matter of time. What time is capable of? Oh, so many.

In the case of COVID-19 apathy, I hypothesize that people are becoming familiar with the disease, having their acquaintances get infected - and some of them get cured, getting more knowledge on the prevention and the death rate is touching the point of 3%, and also accessibility to cheaper preventive measures - face mask and alcohol. All those factors make the increase in less wary of COVID-19 the most sense. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that everyone really abandons the fact that the pandemic is still there. It's just that they are becoming more familiar with the pandemic situation.

When we talk about the bigger picture in science, such as evolution, space, and galaxy, or volcanology, time is a big factor to consider. In every second, something happens. That “something” then will accumulate and sometimes only take effect after a thousand or million years. Human lifespan is around 60-100 years; imagine how short it is for massive changes such as glacier formation, a new planet found, or a new species appearing. It’s still fresh in mind that Mt. Sinabung was only active in 2010 after 400-ish years of dormancy. Different laws apply, though, for example, the quick evolution of moon butterflies in Savai'i Island, which I have written about in another blog post.

The same case happens in the technology industry. The new generation - we call them the “Digital Native”, was born in a world full of technology. This new tech makes our life efficient and easier than ever. If you were born in the 90s, have you ever imagined in your childhood that you could call your grandparents a hundred miles away and see their live faces while you are talking to them? Amazing, right? Someone told me in the past that the aim of technology is to raise the quality of human lives, to free them from doing small things, and focus on what matters the most. I see it now, as we no longer need to remind ourselves to send an email with an automatic sender feature or even to lock our door with the help of smart house technology. Why does time matter? Because somewhere out there, people are making batteries to be less expensive and more sustainable, and other people are making smarter and less energy-consuming smart chips for our devices. There are people who are developing more efficient online storage and listing, making your video calls run smoothly and enabling you to learn online during a pandemic. The collective actions through time make technology lighter and cheaper than ever. If this massive pandemic happened 10 years ago, I couldn’t imagine how difficult our society would cope. 

In our short species’ lifespan, imagine how our perception of time has been shaped. If we live for 60 years, loving and committing to a single person for 20 years would take one-third of our lifetime. If you are married in 25, you would need 35 years to love this person - more than 50% of your lifetime. An increase in the economy in one decade would only take one-sixth of your lifetime, and I consider it as quick progress. In some episodes of I am a Killer on Netflix portraying people who deal with lifetime or death sentences, lots of people choose to forgive over time rather than just keep the anger to their family member’s killers. In social psychology, we have a term called temporal distance, or a time that separates us from target events. One experiment study showed that we tend to forgive something that occurred in the distant past, and we have the power to manipulate our brain to see something as happened in a very distant past to seek less revenge or avoid the transgressors (Wohl & McGrath, 2007). This finding is quite consistent with other research about forgiveness and temporal distance - though the trauma effect of the event would vary depending on the event itself and other factors.

Does time heal all wounds? I would say yes. The universe is changing, people change, and we change. But often, we don’t notice that we change, the opposite of how much we notice how other people change. When things go in a direction that we’ve never expected before, I think it’s fine. What we need to do is to reflect and adapt. If we can’t argue with it, or deal with it, we just leave it for a while to absorb all the emotions by ourselves. Then come back there. All the emotions in the past; rage or anger - you’ll see that it has changed. It's just a matter of time.

Garden of One Thousand Buddhas

I have been fed up with social media recently.

I know that out there, a strong social movement is growing due to a disappointing act by the two powers (I already got a bad feeling knowing that the winning president and political party ruled by the same power). I did what I could and took a break from my personal accounts.

Taking a break from social media gives me time to read. At the moment, I am finishing one of Sagan's books: The Demon-Haunted World. I have mixed feelings about this book; in some parts, he turned into a fanatic like Richard Dawkins, and in others, he wrote like the person I knew from his other books and lectures. However, this book introduced me to James Randi, one of the greatest anti-science debunkers of all time. But just a few days I knew him, he passed away - just two days ago.

James Randi was an interesting person. I just watched his lectures from his channel, James Randi Foundation (which he dedicated to supporting science), and I think he was a person with a very strong personality. When I learned from Sagan's book that he was a magician, I was excited. I think being a magician is a very interesting job, as I grew up with Kindaichi's manga, in which the lead character had a genius magician opponent - and Now You See Me, a movie that blew my mind away. A magician would be a perfect fit character to debunk the anti-science movement, and his words were very strong when he said that he tricked people, and he blatantly said he did, and he disliked people who tricked people and said that was the truth.

Update: Indonesia now has its own 'James Randi': Pesulap Merah! I am super excited.

Now when we think about it, the community that holds the responsibility to debunk anti-science is the scientific community, the scientists. But James Randi proved that magicians could be the greatest science communicators of all time. I always favor this premise: you don't have to come from a specific background to excel in things. You need hard work for it. Just like Wallace, who didn't come from a wealthy family like Darwin did; or Goodall, who didn't have any academic degree in Biology to get a groundbreaking primate research finding; or Carl Sagan, whose parents were immigrants but did an excellent job on storytelling for communicating the works of NASA.

From James Randi I also learn one important thing. Maybe it's okay if it's not a scientist who is able to speak humanly to people about anti-science. Maybe it's okay to not take part in something that society told you to, or you are demanded to do so. Maybe it's okay to be someone that doesn't fit somebody's expectations, no matter how important this person is to us. Maybe it's okay to be someone who is quietly listening and giving others a chance to get the spotlight when this world demands you to be 'on the show' more. There are billions of people on this planet - a hundred thousand millions of stars in this galaxy, and you are a non-unique tiny little piece, and that's okay. 

Maybe it's not you, and that is okay.