On The Side of Laughter

The Cognitive Neurosceinence class actually is funner than it sounds. I have one friend in England who still believes that I study Psychology. I reckon that it is probably because Philosophy and Psychology, these two do not sound so different in terms of boredom and impracticalness. Even though I have to correct him everytime, I have no desire to blame it on him. Not that I admit that they are impractical and boring, but it is true that they put things in knotty and unconscious words and force us to understand them, or compel us to accept the ambiguous conclusions. However, we should not overlook their innocent initial purpose. They, anyway, all started from human beings, us. They desperately meet our needs, our aspirations to attain the truth about ourselves. They all talk about us, human beings. In this sense, you can equate Psychology with Philosophy.

Speaking of our lives in Psychology and Philosophy, I recall this Psychology professor's belief about 'Smile and Laughter': your smile and laughter make yourself smile and laugh because they make yourself believe that you are happy- the process of our cognition is quite interesting. Smile a lot for your own sake. If you want to make yourself a happy person, make yourself believe that you are a happy one first, then you will be acting as a happy one. It may sound cliched to some, however, all those cocky words are not all about Psychology and Philosophy. Back to life; I do not believe that it is simply a trendy slogan of the world of thoughts. From Plato through Christianity, the idealism may have had believed in the binary understanding of the world, until Nietzsche provoked the whole traditional metaphysical world. Nietzsche's or, Schopenhauer's 'back to life', to me seems like a natural dialectic consequence: if I am not too far from the sincere understanding of Hegel's 'dialetik'. Their names may threat us but they also were human beings seeking the 'truth' as we in 'this' world do.

He jokingly told me one day that maybe for me it is not too good to see him, because I am not too sad and I still have to study Philosophy. We laughed. I laugh loads, and I smile to the world's end. It seems true that my smiles and laughters make myself believe that I am the happy one. What a pleasant deception though - if I have to take some sort of philosophical criticism about this 'light' statement. This is what has changed me since I met this one person; 'back to life' interprets me, my life, all over again, in the whole new way. The agony of 學[hak:xue:learning] does not drag me down to the shaow of 'life'. What a grateful burden for us to 'philo' 'sophia'.



Angel Hye-young Kim