" Have u ever gone into the toilet for the opposite sex?

to which i have to admit that i did...and on a few occasions in the past. (Well they were all unintentional anyways) I remembered this once when i was in K2. My mum had gone to China with my relatives...and i recalled crying really badly - inpacifiable. Which kid wouldn't? So after that my Dad brought me to the shopping centre (i forgot where) to cheer me up. Heehee...can't rmb the details, but i enjoyed myself i believe. Then oops! Pee pee time! I wasn't ready to go toilet by myself at tt time, yet. So cld i go to the ladies? -Apparently not. Keke...remembered very vividly my father brought me into this blue room, and (no offense) i was so fascinated by the white-coloured, hollowed-out 'boxes'. Then there was this man standing at one of them. Heehee...i swear upon seeing me tt guy immediately turned back, go ramrod straight and stuck himself closely against the 'box'.(Being a clever 5-yr-old, i knew what was happening:p But well i had to go, so i cldn't care less.)

Looking back, it must have been so awkward for my Dad to have brought me in. I bet that guy(and the others whom i didnt see) must have given him the dirty looks. Wld have felt embarrassed if i were him. Come to think of it, he did do quite abit for me in the past, showed concern for me. Times when i was stressed out and crying all over my books, my mum always cldnt bear to come see me. Instead my Dad would come into my room, and give me little massages which always made me feel better. Everytime i stayed up late to study, he'd come into my room before he sleeps to check on me and tell me to slp early. Times when i fell aslp at my desk, he wld give a gentle squeeze on my shoulder to wake me up, and tell me to go to bed. Even now he does this. Just that he wakes me up at my computer desk instead these days.( heehee...I sleep EVERYWHERE.) Perhaps i shldnt be so resistant to him all the time eh? Perhaps i shld have been more patient towards him. Hopefully there'd be a day when my folks will chance upon this blog, and get to know really what i've been thinking and feeling during the times they feel that i've been distant from them.

In Plato’s Meno, Socrates tries to convince Meno to believe that learning is in fact recollection, and there is nothing that the human soul does not already know. He begins by quoting the sayings of wise men and women, as follows:

As the soul is immortal – as it has been reborn, time and again, and has seen both the things of this world and those of the underworld, and all matters – there is nothing it has not learned. So it is in no way surprising that it can recollect that which it knew before, about virtue and other things. ( Plato’s Meno, p. 13)

Evidently, he himself believes that the people do not learn; they already know all that there is to know in their previous lives. With the reborn of the soul, all that they have experienced in their previous lives would then be brought forward to their present lives, and all they have to do is to remember what they have already learnt, from their previous lives.

In order to prove this idea of recollection, Socrates asks Meno’s slave boy a series of geometry questions. The boy appears to be able to answer Socrates’ questions correctly as he had predicted, thereby validating Socrates’ claim, and leaves Meno in awe of this newfound knowledge.

However, is what Socrates says really true? It is undeniable that Socrates has managed to show that knowledge is not learnt, by virtue of the slave boy’s demonstration; but it does not seem the case for Meno. Suppose we follow through Socrates’ claim that there is nothing people have not learnt from their previous lives, then how did Meno manage to recall this idea that learning is recollection? Did he even recall knowing such a thing from his previous life? Apparently not. All Meno did was to listen to what Socrates had been saying about recollection, observe the demonstration, and ultimately accept his claim - not to mention learning something new, from who else but Socrates himself. By telling Meno about it and trying to convince him to accept it, he was already indirectly teaching Meno without realizing it.

Furthermore, by saying that everyone has learnt all that there could be learnt in their previous lives, I feel that Socrates has indirectly implied that everyone would have learnt the same knowledge as everyone else. In that case, since everyone has already known everything from their past lives, why would we even need teachers? After all, we would have been able to recall what we have already known in our previous lives in the matter of time. Even the term ‘professionals’ would be questioned; for anyone would be as highly skilled as the other person in any art if anyone and everyone would have known exactly the same things already. And for that matter an adult would be no different from a baby if both possess the same knowledge from their respective previous lives. A newborn would then be able to speak words of wisdom from the very moment he is delivered into this world, which we know that is impossible; or rather, is a feat that no babies have done before since the beginning of time. Also, his parents would then have no need to educate him, for their knowledge is on par; they could even engage in intellectual debates as soon as he learns to speak, or rather, recalls how to speak. For that matter, I would like to question how then, a baby can remember how to speak if his parents do not teach him to recall how to do so. On that note, I would like to point out that for the above argument that I have made, I am assuming that the recollection of knowledge that Socrates is referring to starts from the very moment that a person is born; and the soul, reborn.

Perhaps some might say that this would then be the point where teachers would come into the picture – to aid others in unlocking the knowledge that they have accumulated from their past lives. Then I would ask when then, would anyone in particular have accumulated enough memories of their past knowledge to be rendered qualified enough to help others? This would probably spark off yet another debate, but it would be too long and complicated to discuss the details within the scope of this paper. Another question that would arise out of Socrates’ claim, if we were to believe that everything has been learnt in the previous life, is when would all the learning start? If we were to follow through Socrates’ argument, then what we would be saying is that a person who has learnt everything in his past life, would have learnt everything in the life before his past life, which would in turn have been learnt in the life before that. This is essentially a paradox which would endlessly run in circles.

Also, it seems to me that even the experiment that Socrates had with the slave boy to demonstrate that learning is only recollection is slightly flawed, in the way that the boy did not really recall; he was merely following the promptings that Socrates had been giving to guide the boy along his own line of thoughts. The boy might have only said what he thought was correct, or even worse, guessed the answers without actually knowing the correct answers to Socrates’ questions. As such, this would not have been counted as true knowledge on the boy’s part; it can only be regarded as an opinion which happened to be true.

Moreover, Socrates’ experiment seems to only prove that factual knowledge such as geometry is recollected, not learnt. It does not show, however, that the knowledge we gain from day-to-day experiences and unexpected circumstances is also through recollection. For instance, imagine a kettle of hot water on the stove. An unknowing young child who touches the kettle would never have known, prior to touching it, that it is hot until he really does so and burns himself as a result. It is only after the painful experience that he would learn to be more cautious towards handling kettles – especially when they are filled with hot, boiling water.

Following the above arguments that I have made, I conclude that learning is not recollection, as opposed to what Socrates suggests. Although the notion he proposes seems plausible, I find that it only churned out a lot more questions rather than to offer some light about how knowledge is obtained. Socrates’ argument might be ‘repaired’ if he fine-tuned the areas of discussion.

However I personally think that in reality, every argument of this sort would have faced dilemmas, in one way or another, when different people argue about a topic as they examine it from different angles. Therefore I feel that there can be no way that we can definitely determine that another person’s viewpoint is flawed, because everyone has his own unique way of thinking, and we would not be able to see things exactly the way another person does.