July 2002 Archives

On a message board I frequent, someone mentioned about "loneliness" and how to deal with it. Here is something I wrote in response although it seems a bit too obvious...

It's a feeling that you get when you have nothing to occupy your mind and realized that there is no one, physically or emotionally, next to you to share the moment with.

So, there are several ways to resolve this. I don't think any one would be enough or complete. One is to occupy oneself, which definitely works and a lot of contemporaries seem to follow it (I think Internet contributed significantly to this), but one has to rest eventually.

Another is to have a support group of friends and families. This also works, and most people would see it as the best and "right" way. However, they may not be there all the time, physically and emotionally.

This brings to another (but always in an assisting role) way... One can also learn to have confidence in and be content with oneself. I don't think this will never work by itself, but I think this is generally a good idea as an individual and will help with relationships with others.

Well, Mr. Nye's book presented a somewhat obvious (at least to everyone other than the U.S. policy makers) idea on the American foreign policies. The book went on, somewhat repeatedly, about the maintenance of the great soft power (i.e., cultural and ideological influences) potentials for the U.S. along with effective applications of the U.S.'s uncontested hard power (i.e., military and economic influences).

Anyway, Mr. Nye's proposals seem quite reasonable, but I am not sure if any of the U.S.'s current policy makers will actually listen to him. It's not just the U.S., but I feel like the whole World is turning into right-wing, and extreme at that.

Is it because of the beginning of a new century? Are we going to run into another catastrophic conflict because the involved parties had no flexibility? I hope not.