Paradox

Reflectia: Isn't it funny how we aspire to the character of someone like Jean or the grace of Cosette, but in truth are more like Javert in his moral struggle or even Thenardier in his personal desires? It is sobering and somewhat...depressing to think of it that way or even know that we will never achieve 'goodness', free of sin. For in believing that we are free from sin, we immediately lapse into pride, that demon that existed before Lucifer. Thus it is that the righteous cannot know of their righteousness. Are they doomed to torture themselves eternally by holding themselves to a fundamentally unattainable standard?

Sophia: Isn't the same true of wisdom? Are the wise by the same principle compelled to think of themselves as fools even though they among all people least deserve the title?

Reflectia: I thought I was alone, but then are we are not siblings inseparable? It seems to me that it is not so for the wise. They seem to be and since they need to hide nothing pettily, therefore must be in perfect equilibrium, being in a position and having spiritual authority to judge. Yet they do not 'judge' as lesser men do, but induce those lesser men to judge themselves. But how does one achieve such a state?

Sophia: There's little one can do about lesser men. Leave them to their own karma and yours to yourself.

Reflectia: *sighs* I keep telling myself that. But it's at those times that I consider all the failures of self-discipline. The consequence of imperfect self-control is despair, but perhaps it is an ironic thing to 'desire' self-control, for it will not be found that way.

Righteous Indignation?

Adamantia: An annoying number of people seem to believe that the spirit of more liberal social practices is a 'loosening up' not just of the body but also of the mind. Yet the willingness to do anything does not necessarily equate to the willingness to think anything. The body runs free while the mind remains caged, locked into a singular worldview. The way these people behave reeks of conformity. What liberalism is this that sees no other mindset than its own? It seeks to oppress, not challenge opposing thought and in doing so acts against the principles it preaches.

Reflectia: But they think and promote this in good faith, to varying degrees of consciousness. Does that not mitigate? Or perhaps 'mitigate' is the wrong word - it implies they commit a crime, albeit informed by good intent. But perhaps that disqualifies it from being a true crime altogether. Whereupon we lose the jurisdiction to judge it.

Adamantia: But perhaps we assume a simplicity of mind on their part. Can we accuse other minds, nay souls, of failing to consider what we consider even now? What then is the rationale for this hubris? Regardless, do they think that we will so easily bend against principle or 'natural inclination' to peer pressure? Us, steel tested in fire is not easily intimidated and we should take pride in this brand of stubbornness born from courage not foolhardiness. One may drink or dance to relax - we have no objection to people seeking pleasure or solace from life in their own ways - but I take issue with juvenile exercise of social impetus hoping to bind all in a way which serves only to make oneself feel good about the unity of the community in a single set of social norms and nothing more. In the same vein I look down on those who, in a naked hunger for approval, bend willingly to the crowd.

Reflectia: It is true that we may not assume a simplicity of mind among all men. That would be deepest hubris. And speaking of hubris, it may be too prideful to think of ourselves as steel. We have been tested, but perhaps not by the hottest flames. Yet it is right that steel not yield to lesser fires than had forged it - we can allow ourselves that much pride. It is interesting that we mention social impetus. At the risk of recognizing ourselves as hypocrites, do we not deploy the same sort of social compulsion to achieve our own short-term ends? We act this way toward people we swore to die for, no less.

Adamantia: A fair point. Let us dwell on that hypocrisy-induced shame, lest we commit it once again. I admit, the mere thought of this dishonor makes me lose stomach for righteous anger. Perhaps no indignation can be righteous.

Reflectia: But are we still to have an opinion on social pressure? How do we make a stand against this conformity we are perhaps rightly opposed to without making a judgment against the unwitting oppressors? Maybe it is better and more courageous to judge oneself and others harshly and equally. But can we expect either ourselves or others to be able to live up to such standards? Are such unenforceable standards worth pursuing? Yet if the alternative is to stand-by and let the oppression roll over others and oneself, how can that be just?  

Adamantia: We know not!

Ponding

Peering down, Kok Soon watched the waves beat against the parapet 8 levels below. Soon the entire 6th floor would be completely submerged, the resident mussels feeding happily, growing nice and fat for the human beings living on the levels above them.

The rhythm was almost soothing.

For now, only the occasional splash propelled itself over the wall and into the mussel pens. But the waves grew. However imperceptibly, the ocean would creep in and swallow the mussels’ lair, nourishing their tenants with rich aquatic dust. The harvest was good, and by the next low tide, the men would go down to pick from the plenty. And so it went. The sea would come, feed the shellfish, the shellfish would grow and the men would cook and consume them, retreating to their concrete eyries before the sea swallowed them up in turn. Kok Soon couldn’t help but remember a song about ‘the circle of life’, from one of those old movies, made before the earth was reclaimed by the ocean.

****

‘Oy, what’s that?’
Kok Soon could hear a light splash. But this one was quick, unlike the sound of the sea beating lazily against the walls. It was followed by a second, almost a crash. A dissonance in the waves' metronomic symphony. He swiveled the accumulator light’s powerful beam toward the general direction of the noise, its gaze melted away the darkness, but there was nothing.

The intervening moment was spent in silence. Badawi absentmindedly moved the light from side to side, in a probably futile attempt to see something he wasn’t particularly anxious to see. The beam combed over the ocean, revealing a piece of wood floating by. Kok Soon clutched his SAR. The two of them were up on the roof, at the absolute second highest point of the flat - the highest was reserved for the lightning conductor. No monster from the dark ocean could possibly touch them here. Yet, a sensation of unease continued to gnaw at Kok Soon’s soul. Badawi put down his weapon and lit a cigarette. He didn’t - couldn’t tear his eyes off the waters.

‘Just a sotong la. Maybe it want some night snack.’ Badawi let out a cackle. Kok Soon hoped the old man was right, but deep down he knew better.

Insanity

The more I learn about the state of nuclear current affairs, the faster I want to grow up and die.

The Rosetta Stone

The more Japanese lessons I take, the more amazed I am at what must have been the first linguistic bumblings between the Sengoku-era Japanese people and Portuguese traders who maybe missed China by a little bit. Maybe we would still be completely clueless about Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics had the Rosetta Stone not been found.

But when American, Singaporean and other journalists, students, academics and average private citizens set foot in each others' worlds, we don't have the benefit of a single Rosetta Stone pointing us toward a better understanding of the perspectives, intentions and meanings of our exchanged words. By no means are the two peoples meeting physically for the first time, instead, our worlds are colliding in a way which has never been done before - and this is a process which many people feel invested into, myself included.

It's an unholy swirl of identity issues, moral ideas, as well as hopes and ambitions common to many young people who believe in earning a good degree and enriching their human spirit intellectually and morally at the same time. It is natural to feel strongly about an institution which has been a key part of one's past journey through young adulthood, or an institution that promises to be a key part of one's individual and societal future. Clearly a fair number of Yalies, past and present, and Singaporeans, students or not, are invested in that. I know there are others still itching to enter the dialogue, be it on a public platform, between groups of friends or within the expanse of their own minds.

It can be frustrating to see the dialogue stagnate with a line drawn dangerously often at national boundaries between two adversaries duking it out. Keeping in mind that my previous post on this subject was/is meant as a private rage outlet, what I find actually, truly annoying, is the seeming lack of advancement of the conversation.

We seem to be stuck on asking おまえはだれ?
Trying to explain that my mates and I came from Portugal. Accidentally.
What do you mean by a 'free society'?
What does it mean to hold fast to the liberty I cherish?
What is that freedom anyway?

I think that rather than attempting, with good intent, to turn completely to convincing the other party with reason alone, we must acknowledge that feeling various emotions well up from within ourselves is a very human phenomenon - one that isn't just a vestige of our baser self, but is instead a clue to understanding our individual and societal psyche. As well as our own mental health. Arguments can carry on till the proverbial cows come home, but constant attacks are more likely to harden the mind as a bunker than open them enough for cultures and consciousness to flow out of it and touch another mind. I'm sure some Christians can understand when I say that the mind is never converted to understanding ('belief' is not the right word here), only the soul. And just as God can reach past the walls of Man's heart and touch his spirit, so too should we endeavour (in a secular context, but no less 'spiritually') to share the essence of what it means to be us with them - and for us to coax ourselves into allowing them to share what it means to be them with us.

I know of people who see what appears as HATEEEE and who lament, "if only they knew us". And they have a point, if only they knew us. But is that not an exciting challenge? To move quietly amongst fellow students to share about our differences and discover our similarities. We might never become close enough to be 'one people', but that should not be our aim in the first place. There is no room for missionaries or ambassadors, only people in constant Brownian motion.

Perhaps we may discover that it isn't fear of an authoritarian government that limits our freedom of speech, but cultural values rooted in events recent to a half century back or ancient as a couple of millennia.

Perhaps we may discover that keeping one's mouth shut sometimes is not an unenlightened, backward thing, but a grace.

Whether you are a first-generation student of YNC or an individual invested in another way, it may be healthy to be mentally prepared for a process that probably will take years, lack a grand finale/happy ending, and likely piss off lots of people along the way. Everyone has a piece of this Rosetta Stone, and the more pieces we elephantglue together, the closer we come to understanding hieroglyphs. Whether one views this as an exercise in society-transformation or a step in the journey of personal betterment or has some other motivation, it is humbling to think of this as a little school embedded on a small island in a big world in a bigger universe at one point in the expanse of time and history.

But it shouldn't stop one from dreaming big.

COH 2 WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

http://www.gamereplays.org/companyofheroes/portals.php?show=news&news_id=897250

Haters gonna haaaaateee

Edit: At the risk of people taking me too seriously (through no fault of their own), I must qualify: The mind is like a zoo. There are many kinds of thoughts in it, big and small, herbivorous, carnivorous or omnomnomivorous. This one's going for a walk tonight:

With reference to recent articles concerning Yale-NUS College:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/sep/03/yale-nus-detractors-paper-campus-fliers/?cross-campus
http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/jul/20/unease-grows-over-freedoms-yale-nus/
http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/mar/23/fischer-yale-nus-is-not-yale/

The Yale Daily News is by and large reporting objectively events which happen on campus, with the obvious exception of guest Op-ed articles. For this we should grateful, for in that respect at least does Yale stay representative of the America I know and love. However, the quality of the dialogue of what I understand to be a vocal minority is disappointing, but perhaps not unexpected - and with poetic license can be seen as a microcosm of the rhetoric which tends to be flung around in the larger States during this election year.

Complaining is part of Singapore's national identity - we sometimes get the general sense that we are prone and good at it even though we arguably complain as much as the peoples of any other First-World nation, with our First-World problems. I am recently compelled to claim this part of our popular identity, as my rage burns against the following sin:

#1 Ignorance

'Autocratic', 'do not support freedom of expression' and other phrases and words like them are hardly explored rigorously within the context. Some parties in the conversation are demonstrating logical immaturity, lack of nuance or just not giving a flying fuck about what Singapore actually looks like in real life. Last some people looked in the direction of Singapore, they saw the Chinese Cultural Revolution complete with dictator, red stars and police state. Which is understandable because everyone knows Singapore is in China. Many great American masters of rhetoric and public figures did effectively deploy hyperbole in order to satiricize something that wasn't right about their country. Now that lots of them are dead (and thereby worthy of monuments and meeting room names), their nation's children have learnt to equate hyperbolic language with literal truth. These children of this great nation are in grave danger - of becoming ignorant retards.

To be fair, age 18 to 22 is a forgivable time to be an ignorant retard. But as the Bible tells us that God will judge teachers of the Word twice as strictly, I take issue with ignorant retards who spread their contagion.

Lots of us agree that Singapore is not a perfect place. But it sure doesn't look like the run-of-the-mill police state where the cops are coiled up like a crouching tiger ready to pounce on any hint of dissent. I know because we young men of Singapore are the Police, and the Army and the Civil Defense. Our average oppressor-of-the-people sits in a guardhouse munching on a small palm-sized green spongecake thinking of the next fever or shoulder dislocation he can get or going home to slaughter demons made by American game companies. And earning real USD from the lucky drop from a blue mob which will never come. Far be it from him that he would have to do the paperwork associated with shooting, gassing or beating the shit out of 19-year-old protesters running around on their own neatly-trimmed school lawn. He probably doesn't even understand what they're so agitated about.

"Once freedom of expression is compromised at Yale-NUS, how comfortable can anyone feel that it will continue to be strenuously defended on the New Haven campus? Will Yale faculty feel uncomfortable about expressing views critical of the Singaporean government, perhaps out of fear of damage to our so-called colleagues at our satellite campus in Singapore, or perhaps out of fear of retribution from the Yale administration that has as-yet-undisclosed financial ties with the Singaporean government? Ethical standards cannot be compromised a little bit at a time and retain any force."

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/mar/23/fischer-yale-nus-is-not-yale/

Academic research is a lot of theorycraft. But those tend to be thesis-length, that is many many tens of pages worth of content. Real content.

I cannot respect a theorycraft composed of mainly a bucket of bullshit with tiny grains of truth of 1-2 pages long. I urge the wider public to recognize that there are easier ways of obtaining those tiny grains of truth than sticking one's hand into the bucket of brownshit to look for it. Yale has been and probably is still full of smart people who know better than to odyssey through that bucket. To Singaporean counter-ragers, let me point out that the Internet is a big place, and that probably less than 50 people out of the entire Yale or wider American community have been high profiler bloggers, journalists or commenters on Yale-NUS issues. That means a lot of people not feeling the need to talk for whatever reason. Most probably aren't bothered enough, and that's fine, especially if they're busy contributing academically, creatively or otherwise to the body of American higher education. I appeal to these people to be proud of the decent things they do in their own world some seas away from here, to be proud that they are decent American students and intelligentsia. Not self-righteous, intellectually irresponsible wankers who are more interested in stirring up insecurity.

/rant

Be careful what animals get let into the conversation.