Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Architecture

THINKING │ARCHITECTURE (ARC60603/ARC2323/ARC2312)

Personal Values StatementName: Phua Jing Sern

ID: 0314572

Death was not a real subject when I was young, I really believed that it was just another phase of growing older. I never felt remorse and I never understood why my parents and relatives cried mournfully during the day my grandparents died. To the extent that recently I found out I even embarrassingly smiled gleefully during our funeral group photo. Oh, I was extremely naïve. My parents did not really bring up the topic regarding about death, and I was not too keen on that subject either. What they mentioned only was that the deceased are going to a special place called ‘heaven’, and we should feel happy for them. I accepted that explanation without any doubts, but there was a noteworthy time in my naïve life where I found out the true meaning of existence.

I remembered it like it was yesterday. I was only twelve at Rawang’s Jing Loong Shan temple paying respect to my late grandmother. Being easily bored, I wandered around the temple alone to kill time as there not much a twelve year old child can keep up with his older relatives’ topic. I came across this ant hill off road, filled with fast moving worker ants like soldiers marching in and out from their base. The ants move around systematically without obstructing each other, truly mesmerizing to watch. But frankly speaking, I have no idea what came into my mind during that time, but my twelve year old self instinct made me did something out of no reason – stomping the ant hill out of pure enthusiasm.

The ants then flee in dismay as they crashed into each other while a few were left behind; crippled and presumably dead. I squashed, slapped and stomped many inserts in my life before without any afterthoughts, but this particular moment got me thinking in a very theoretical way. If humans go to heaven, do ants go to heaven as well? I questioned my parents numerous times regarding about this topic, and numerous times they just shrug it off as if it was just a cute innocent thinking. From then on, I slowly develop the motive of questioning and studying the explanation of God through books and articles of many other different religions. And as I slowly understand the broad ranges of religious teachings and ideas, I slowly realize how contradicting their motives were to control the masses.

Fast forward a few years, I was then fifteen years old and much depended on scientific reasoning rather than religious explanations. Many debates were made and many points were taken and shot back. I was determined to win, high in ego; always labeled myself as a strong atheist. But also during this time, I was very fascinated in cosmology and the observation of celestial bodies, as this subject amplifies my beliefs of a world without a creator. Some of my favorite key icons that help contribute the explanation of the universe to me was Bill Nye the Science Guy, Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku. But one man stood out among all of them, not only he persuasively educates celestial understanding to the masses, but reminds us to act kindly with each other unconditionally. That man is Neil DeGrasse Tyson; astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and of course, science communicator. Besides him answering my long time question regarding about Heaven and Earth, he brought up a more humane approach on explaining his point of view regarding the meaning of life as a whole.

Most of us already know that there is no given purpose for our existence in this vast universe, that may seem grim and demotivated for some, but by looking through another perspective, the truth may serve as a blessing in disguise. Think about it, we are not bound to fulfil prewritten prophecies– all of us are free; free to choose, free to serve, free to commit, and free to make our life beautiful and meaningful in our own desirable way before the arrival of our time. But it does not stop here. Even if we were to die today under any religion, we probably would not be consciously arrive at the gates of heaven, but something much grander. The universe is in constant motion, as atoms migrate continuously from matter to matter. From neutron stars millions of miles away, to the dirt below our feet; we all share the atoms that shaped the universe way back to the beginning of time and space. “We are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us.” Tyson said, “When I reflect on that fact, I look up – many people feel small because they are small and the universe is big – but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.” Even after death, the atoms that formed us will go on to form others things – trees and birds, flowers and butterflies and so on. As to quote from Tyson again “I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime.”

The knowledge of our position in this cosmic universe can bring up the best enlightening attitude in all of us. Even through knowledge of our existence is merely just a moment in time, we should willingly contribute and serve as much as possible to the people around us through mediums we are best at. As with understanding, although we may have different ethics and cultures to live by, all of us still share the same sky. And under my major which is architecture, I can aid the masses with experiences that help explore and connect the people through humanistic design. Hopefully after my own death, my architectural contribution to society may endure and continue to serve many generations to come.

I want to conclude my narrative essay with a famous quote from astronomer and author Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s mentor, about the ‘Pale Blue Dot’. Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977 as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System. Before leaving our Solar System, Voyager 1 turned its camera around and take one last photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of Carl Sagan.

“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits that this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994