Dunbar's Number

Well if the pageviews were anything, lots of you are still entering a state of confusion (or as I like to see it: 'WTF???') about the whole setting up of this blog so I might as well start with something personal yet not so personal. Yes I'm contradictory like that.

Here is Dunbar's number. For those of you who couldn't spare the time (or give a crap) about reading the article, let me try to sum it up for you:

We're only going to give a crap for a finite number of people.
And it's NOT a number that's the total number of people in the world

Basically, no matter how 'altruistic' or 'nice' we might really want to be, we honestly couldn't give a crap about certain people. More importnatly, we can't exactly form stable relationships with them.

I'm not saying that being nice is a weakness, I just feel you can't be nice to everybody. It kinda first hit my mind when one of my fellow Boys' Brigade friends (oh yes, I'm a Christian, though a bit agnostic at that, more on that some other time), when he related a story of being unable to help a little child in some country that's not Singapore that made him feel truly helpless. The fact I can't even remember what the hell the country's name was already shows how apathetic and jaded I am to the whole situation.

It's the feeling that's probably making you feel a lot of y'all depressed so here's a video that explains it with humour, which I'm not good at. (In the meantime distract yourself with some K-Pop songs if you get really depressed)

It kinda extends to my personal life as well, I admit, I have a tendency to categorize anybody I think comes from a mental institution as a 'weirdo' (don't worry, only 2 people fit the bill so far and one of them is actually my friend). And for anybody who claims to be non-discriminatory, please spare me the crap and consider this hypothetical situation:

"I am such a nice guy, I don't think anybody in this world truly means any harm"
*reads newspaper*
"Oh look, a pedophile, I wish he'd go f*** off and die."

Eh, so much for Good Samaritans.

Of course, this doesn't mean I get a free license to act like a d**k, the poor child can't get all my love and attention (or all my money either, I wanna reserve that for One Piece manga volumes dammit) but a donation of even $10 can probably go a long way. What I'm trying to say is, maybe we should all stop short and realise our weaknesses in this planet of 6,900,000+ individuals. We can't really want to know EVERY single person, but we can cherish the friends we make.

I'm guessing this is the reason why we Singaporeans are a bit of a moody or apathetic bunch, we wonder in this country if we're ever going to do stuff like help reduce our country's Income Inequality to really make EVERYBODY happy but you just can't. Happiness for people, and Singaporeans of course (not those bloody foreigners/PRs, they don't get to feel happy, coming here and stealing our jobs and distancing themselves from their loved ones in their home country), won't be solved by trying to make them appeasable from YOUR standards of happiness. Happiness, I believe, differs for many people. Maybe it's you practising your religion, talking smack about superficial celebrities with your friends, just trying your darndest to be good or even just playing Neopets that gives us all that warm fuzzy feeling.

And now I feel good about myself writing this. I wish I'd go f*** off and die.