Hong’s Cave

The World According to Hong

On the Concept of “Human”

September 16th, 2001 · No Comments · Random Thoughts

Thinking about the recent tragedy and other violent incidents in the world, I came back once again to a previous subject.
The element of violence in human society (actually, any biological system) is inevitable. It is intrinsic to us, and the only difference is the varying degrees.
The real questions come up when it is of an [...]

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Communication

November 13th, 2000 · No Comments · Random Thoughts

This is also an old subject and it actually follows logically from this quip and related to this one.
I believe the communication between individuals is the most important thing for any society to function and survive (this “society” includes from a group of two (e.g., lovers) to a nation and more).
The main problem is that [...]

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Hong’s Theory of Social Bell Curves

March 16th, 1999 · No Comments · Random Thoughts

I guess I haven’t told you about this theory yet, have I? It recently came up again in a conversation, so I might as well write it down here.
As grand as it might sounds, it’s a very informal analogy of a distribution curve to characteristics of a society, mostly used to compare a homogeneous [...]

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While Reading Fromm’s Fear of Freedom

September 4th, 1998 · No Comments · Books

I started reading one of Fromm’s book, Fear of Freedom. I’ve only gone through the first chapter, but I realize again that he is one of the few “rational” thinkers (or very good observers of the human society) of our times. The book is on the “individuation” process of a human; how one emerges to [...]

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The Usefulness of Generalizations?

July 14th, 1998 · No Comments · Random Thoughts

It’s so hard to generalize about the world, especially the people. There is no doubt that a generalized view of something (a society, a human, or an American male, for example) is useful (this has somewhat related to the fact that our mental capacity is limited). However, there hardly is one instance in the surveyed [...]

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The Effect of the Limited Mental Capacity

July 8th, 1998 · No Comments · Random Thoughts

I came to think that “the limited mental capacity” plays a very, if not the most, significant role in human, both as an individual and also as a society. We cannot retain all the experiences we ourselves go through in our life-span, let alone the collective knowledge across the time. We forget. Our mental capacity [...]

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