FADE IN.
Act 1
INT. STUDY - DAY
PETER is watching YouTube on his flat-screen TV set.
PETER (V.O.): I don't know there're so many short and crisp video clips on Philosophy and Literature.
Peter watches one after another.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Learning through audio-visuals is so effective and efficient. I know how philosophers and authors look like, their quotes or soundbites.
Reading.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): It was so dry and so hard to remember them from just a visual text medium when I studied them decades ago.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): While I'm still keeping the books in bookshelves, I seldom re-read them. I go on-line all the time.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): It's really a privilege that I could have a second bite on the cherry in a high-tech information and communication environment.
Peter presses the TV remote control again.
Act 2
INT. STUDY - CONTINUOUS
The TV is showing animations and we hear the paradoxes of Zeno.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): It's amazing that Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise can be condensed into a 60-second animated adventure in thought. And another elaborated one is under 15 minutes.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): When I first learned about the paradox in the 1970s, I couldn't understand it in less than an hour.
We hear: The world's first true and greatest philosopher Plato; and then we see beautifully-crafted scripts.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Oh, the first time I see an extract of Plato's dialogues.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Plato focuses on only one philosophical goal: to help people live a fulfilled life.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): I was too concerned about Plato's philosophical structure and the particulars of his dialogues that I didn't get his key message so succinctly.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Not only that I've relearned better, I can also share the learning with my children. It isn't easy to share such thought adventures.
Having copied the links, Peter forwards them.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Let me see what video clips are on Literature.
Peter presses the remote control again.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Here's George Orwell who tries to change the world through Literature. He understands the impact of mass communication.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.): He thinks that it's every author's role to make their works popular. He turns his serious political writing into an art so that readers will get connected with him.
Thinking.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): An art can be a communicable sensuous representation of ideas. Literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works are different art forms.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): So, instead of writing about how revolutionary ideas are betrayed in revolutions and counter-revolutions, George Orwell uses the fable of his Animal Farm to do his knowledge transfer.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): His Animal Farm was published in 1945. I read it in 1967. Animals in a farm rebel against their human farmer, wanting to create an equal, free and happy society, but ending up as bad as before.
Peter watches an animated version of Animal Farm on TV.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Via the animals, he tells a timeless story that humans, originally guided by high ideals, will betray them all.
Peter is in deep thoughts.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Yes, time and again. All human beings should be morally and politically decent.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): George Orwell's Animal Farm was published in 1945, and he died in 1950 at the age of 46.
Act 3
INT. STUDY - CONTINUOUS
Thinking.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): But he did leave a legacy, just 4 short years before he passed away.
Reflecting.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): It's great that now I can exercise my skill and judgment to do whatever I enjoy doing as an ordinary and old intellectual.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): And I can publish my works to the world on a daily basis.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): Let me make the most of my remaining years by keeping up with my thought adventures and articulating them in my art forms.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): I help myself and others to live fulfilling lives, now and in the future.
Peter begins to type on his computer.
FADE OUT.
THE END
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