Age in Asia

While walking through Chinatown yesterday, I noticed something that I had observed in the past but not truly thought about. It was the number of elderly people walking in the streets and sitting in the dessert cafes. There was something about them that struck me – some were walking slowly with a younger person holding their arm; others were chatting and laughing with other individuals in the cafes sipping warm tea. Even though many of them seemed physically frail, they seemed to glow with a sense of serenity.

That is when I thought about elderly individuals in general. I don’t always see the same kind of glow among the other ‘senior citizens’ in the city. When I visited a regular nursing home, the looks on those individuals’ faces were not the same. It didn’t reflect peace or serenity, but rather a sense of slow and unwanted suffering. I realized that the difference is cultural, and as many of us are already aware, the West doesn’t treat and regard the elderly in the same way that Asian or Eastern cultures do. Instead of learning from their wisdom and taking care of them, some are treated as worthless. Many eastern countries are starting to follow the same pattern. In countries such as India, where parents and elderly were revered, I am starting to see the same pattern emerging.

For many of us living in the West, it is not too long from now that we could be at that age where we may not be able to take care of ourselves. I hope we won’t be discarded or forgotten by the capitalist youth obsessed society but rather valued for our knowledge, experience, and wisdom.

Social Media Narcissist

The term "Narcissism" originates from a legend in Greek mythology of Narcissus, a handsome greek man. He rejected a nymph called Echo and refused to accept her love. A goddess, angry at Narcissus, cast a spell on him to fall in love with himself. He saw a reflection of himself in a pond one day and fell in love and never left that pond. He died there and turned into a flower.

What does Narcissus have to do with social media? Social media is increasingly becoming a haven for narcissists. It is becoming so rampant that even people who are not narcissists in real life are turning into them. What is it about social media that feeds narcissism? The idea of profiles and photographs of individuals to be cast as a display for the whole world to see did not exist many years ago. The idea of any of the 100-1000 'friends' to be able to post comments to photos and posts did not exist either.

Narcissists are normally harmless but the question arises about whether it affects their real-life relationships. Instead of spending time with family, for example, a narcissist may spend time checking who commented on their photo or who is checking their profile.

Twitter and Facebook are the main players in this phenomenon. Micro-blogging about your daily life can be exciting for you but may not always be exciting to the reader who will be getting updates every two minutes on what you ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner or what subway line you take home. Even I am guilty of it occasionally. There are a few obsessive micro-bloggers and facebookers: the ones who post a new tweet or facebook update every five minutes, usually about their daily life. They are what I define as 'narcissistic'

In the new world of web 2.0 we are all players in an increasingly narcissistic but exciting world; it is a world in which we are inundated with micro-information, updates, photos, and events, all of which are still - fun.