Thought for the months to come:

It struck me to ask what is the meaning of meaning.

 
One will often face difficulties when speaking to a nihilist.

A lot of common definitions no longer work for the nihilist and they no longer hold any meaning. Good or bad, better or worse, right or wrong, no longer mean anything to the nihilist. It is a relative world that they live in, having no anchors, definitions or yardsticks for comparison or true objective appraisal of the world we live in.

Yea, once again, I am having problem talking to myself.

 
On the renovation:

My aunt told me that my parents chose to spend their CPF on renovating the flat and the changes made are likely to last for the next 20 years. I brushed the statement aside with a brief acknowledgement. I ignored it till I tried to paraphrase it.

I told a friend of mine that the renovation was my parents' way of spending their CPF and that they probably want the changes to last till they....

At this point, I kind of choked. We tend to mark the stages in our lives by lifecycles, each characterized by certain attributes or numerical value. There was a pause of a couple of seconds as I frantically search for a term that represents the lifecycle after retirement.

With my limited vocabulary, I was unable to find a linguistic equivalent.

And I wanted to tell my friend that the changes are meant to last my parents till their final days, till they pass away. But I held myself back before the words came forth. Pass away? Why was I hesitant when what I want to say is simple, straightforward and matter-of-fact that the changes are meant to last my parents till they die? Am I unable to face a simple truth that they are mortal? If not, why was I trying to find a dozen words to replace a monosyllabic, base word? And for whom am I trying to avoid confronting the issue? Not for my friend, I suppose.

I think we call euphemism in soliloquy self-denial.

I have been criticized for being critical and way too frank. But I am only harsh and unforgiving to no one but myself. And my only apology to those whose sensitivity I have offended is that honesty and truth is incompatible with building them a sugar-coated reality. It is in my opinion that without honesty and openness to opinions, sincere dialogue is impossible.

Goodness, that sounds terribly like my usual critique of the government. Perhaps the individual and the state are not that different after all, both in constant and unabashed self-denial.

I apologize for not allowing myself the indulgence of self-denial and excessive feelings, and as such am unable to relate to the many who often pours out their sorrows expecting not solutions but a compassionate ear.

But it may be due to my flawed understanding that fear and denial are the biggest obstacles aside pride and a lack of openness, to the Search.

I apologize for living my life a spectator, a witness to your pleasures and pains, your laughter and your tears. I apologize for living life away from life, for loving you from a distance. I apologize for not being you, thus am only able to talk of your problems as problems to be solved.

There is so much to apologize for being born without choosing to be.

 
On Power 98 today:

They did an interview with many who watched John Q, a literate one among them said, "It is a transcendent experience. It brought me to the depths of despair and to the pinnacles of happiness...."

It just makes me wonder what medication she took or what she was doing with her boyfriend in the theatre during the movie.

 
The renovation continues. While I cannot be said that I am enjoying every minute of it, it is an interesting way of living life. I am denied the luxury of a phoneline, internet, computer games and even my mobile. The reception in my room is so bad that I get cut off half way through conversations. I no longer have my table lamp, the lights in the attached toilet is not working, my television is left unplugged in a corner of the room, and I am dying from skin irritation due to the dust, not to mention the scraps and cuts I get when I bump into the hapzardly arranged furniture. I swear that I will bleed dry or from frustration.

I guess it is back to nature, or sort of.....

 
"It has been a tradition for humanism to assume that once someone gains power, he ceases to know. Power makes men mad, and those who govern are blind; only those who keep their distance from power, who are in no way implicated in tyranny, shut up in their Cartesian poele, their room, their meditations, only they can discover the truth."

~ Foucault, Michel

 
"At the end of eighteenth century, people dreamed of a society without crime. And then the dream evaporated. Crime was too useful for them to dream of anything as crazy - or ultimately as dangerous - as a society without crime. No crime means no police. What makes the presence and control of police tolerable for the population, if not fear of the criminal? The institution of the police, which is so recent and oppressive, is only justified by that fear. If we accept the presence in our midst of these uniformed men, who have the exclusive right to carry arms, who demand our papers, who come and prowl on our doorsteps, how would any of these be possible if there were no criminals?"

~ Foucault, Michel

 
I hate to move. My flat will be under renovation for the next three weeks, so we will be moving our stuff to our neighbour's place for a while. I do not think I know anyone who likes to move. The sense of dislocation can be rather unsettling for some. And moving will require me to dig up lots of my old stuff and to throw away some of them. Decision making is actually one of the most painful things in life. It is true at least for me, at least when deciding what to keep or what to throw.

After a break-up, my friend decided to give or throw away everything that his girlfriend has given him, including all the branded ties. He said that he likes his life streamlined, without unnecessary or painful memories. Regarding the break-up, he said that, "She doesn't want it (the relationship) and neither do I, we were just waiting for the someone to broach the subject. It is my life, and I don't want anyone screwing it up." His ex-girlfriend told him that he was too business-like handling the break-up. And I kind of agree with her. Until I found out that both of them stopped putting effort into the relationship....

While I have always believed that one should be true to oneself, and I do not really believe in the value of history and the past, I am a sentimentalist. It is a curse, but hell, I am a philosopher, and therefore masochistic. It just does not seem right, should one just let go of someone you love with just a wave of hand, even if she's screwing up your life... It just does not. Do not ask me why, because I do not have the right to comment on that. I have been known to be detached or magnaminous enough to encourage my own girlfriend to leave me should she find someone better, which incidentally is what she did. Perhaps my obsession with freedom and self actualization has influenced my ideal of love. But love to me, is not about possessing a person, love at least to me, is about the other person, but simply wanting the best for the other. Just the knowledge that your friend is fine, can be truly satisfying in itself.

It is often with mixed feelings when you dig up a piece of your past, always bitter sweet. For it is either a piece of heartbreak, that is better gone. Or a remnant of a beautiful past that is no longer. But perhaps life is meant to be so, always bitter sweet, pain and pleasure interwined. Time obfuscates, and age blurs. Yet perhaps the only fact that it does not hide or confuse is that things are no longer. Their nature is in motion, our motion. We move from the Now to the To Be on a one way street. Constantly reminded, it is possible to forget anything, but the nature of time. It is built into us like a Kantian categorical imperative. Even individuals suffering from amnesia knows that they lost their past or memories, lost something that should be there but is no longer.

And as I piece together my life from the bits and pieces that I dug up from the depths of my abyssmal cupboards, I find myself wanting to smile, sob, laugh and cry all the same time. Pride and shame, joy and disappointment all descended on me in discordant pairs, like notes from a insane pianist. The fragments came in no chronological order, periodically surfacing with the recovery of a relic, and the pianist was joined by an unorchestrated symphony, throwing to its only audience deafening crescendos in a erratic and spontaneous fashion, pushing to the limits my tear glands.

I found myself laughing at the beauty of being human, smiling at the absurdity of the No Longer, living for the wonders of life and dying for my next breath.

 
Weeling told me that she caught a documentary on TV mobile today. It featured the laughter therapy given to Japanese working class. It aims at stress relief by teaching the patients how to laugh. Part of the therapy includes getting artists to do portraits of the patients, with an artist's impressions of each patient laughing. And the patients have to bring home a cassette tape of laughter and religiously listen to it.

I found it disturbing. Just as I found the report on adolescents in Hong Kong preferring money to parents, because they can have fun and buy computer games with money. They actually told the press that time with parents are unimportant, since they have nothing to say to them.

Yet, going back to the Japanese, the loss of spontaniety and the loss of humour are certainly reasons to mourn. Laughter is part of communication, an informal but indispensable component of social exchange. It signifies the ability of human beings to creatively express themselves and understand the world. If one loses one's ability to laugh, it is to lose the ability to creatively assess the world and to lose part of one's ability to communicate with and respond to the world. One becomes to a degree, sociopathic.

It seems that what we deemed as natural, uncontrollable, spontaneous can actually be suppressed, controlled and denied. I am not sure how relevant laughter and humour are to each of us, but personally I sure find laughter fun and enjoyable. I happen to like my own voice.

Without spontaniety and creativity, life for me, is unthinkable.

Weeling asked me to teach her to laugh should she forgot. How can I refuse?

 
Thought of the day: There is something to be said about the objections to the institutionalizing of suicide and the perverse attachment of the people to the value of life.

 
I am beginning to have this idea that we can based one's life philosophy on the study of cats alone. Quite often, at night, you can see a cat staring into the distance, at something that perhaps the human eye cannot see. It will sit motionlessly, staring intently into seemingly nothing, for a relative eternity. Sometimes the cat will be watching another cat in a distance, sometimes nothing. Once in a while, you catch people following the cat's gaze, trying to see what it sees, and you wonder if the cat is laughing in muted amusement at their frivolous curiosity. It may respond when you walk over to it, or else your presence will be conveniently ignored and excluded as it occupies itself with its own musings.

I have always loved and admired madness. It is a mental state that defies normal or general classification. The insane is the only one who has access to his own mental universe, retreating to his internal realms. And it may be of little relevance whether you exist or for that matter, if the rest of the physical world existed. They are spared social pressure and sanctions. It is a source of passion, fervour and energy. It is a source of freedom.

I had thought about the beauty of madness for quite a while, but right now, I am tired and I cannot seem to remember what I had to say....

 
I caught A Beautiful Mind about a fortnight ago, and I still have not gotten over it. The passion which was portrayed in John Nash is inspiring and infectious. The passion for knowledge and truth has driven me for all the years since my first junior college days, where my tutor asked us to define the word educated. He said that educated people made up less than 1% of the world. I would agree, but I could not help but feel that the statement carries an elitist tinge. The other 99% would include those who have no access to proper education, the poor and the underprivileged. Yet those few hours changed my life, I realized that there is so much to know, so much to learn and so much to understand. And it was then when I made knowledge, the means and the ends of my life. And thus the Search began...

It is no wonder then when I felt so strongly for the character in A Beautiful Mind. And yes, I do like the idea that reason can conquer madness. It carries the Enlightenment spirit, but I have always said that I am a leftover relic from the Age of Reason. And of course, personally, I like madness.

For all those who are still looking for a reason to live, for a reason to carry on living, for a reason what to live for, I have and I would advise patience. You only live once but life is long, so take your time to figure out what you really want. And no one else should tell you what you want or force you to want something.

 
I just got a mail from CPF. Enclosed is a Giro form, for the repayment of my school fees. It seems that I will have to pay my parents back for the school fees which they paid using their CPF. Well, it seems that the time that I get a full time job is here.

I have colleagues who are waiting entry to Polytechnics and universities. The people who just finished their "O"s are all pretty fun and friendly. But those who just finished their "A" levels, are terrible. I have never seen people who are so arrogant, so prone to stereotyping, so opinionated, closed to ideas and so ignorant. It amazes me as well as disgusts and disappoints me. I am at a loss to describe my feelings about them. I am not sure if I am too critical or expect too much out of them.

They seemed to think highly of themselves and their future university education. In front of everyone, they spoke of courses which are prestigious, recognized and economically relevant, talked about the campus life as if they were already, echoed the success stories which they heard, announced their values, flaunt their status symbols, state their idols without much of a thought. Knowing what I know of NUS and the world, I smiled and listened to them.

"It would be funny if it wasn't such a tragedy."

 
I have been reading Foucault, and I cannot seem to understand him when I can read Hegel, Heidegger and Sartre. The strange thing is that I have a feeling that he is not deep or profound, just writing as if he is. It is not difficult to believe that his arguments are commonsensical and easily understandable, and that his works are superficial. The hard thing to admit is that I spent close to 50 bucks buying that darn book.

My ego speaks...

The Ironie of It All...

I have no idea what the above word means, it is close to impossible to define. My literature classmate remarked that it is the biggest word in the language. A five letter word being the most difficult in the entire vocabulary.

 
It was a rather interesting bike trip to work today. I was on my mum's bike when it started pouring. Trapped on the CTE, we took refuge under an overhead bridge, together with many other motorists, who stopped to put on their raincoats. But the rain got much heavier, and when it became madness to continue with journey, all of us just stopped, looked at each other and smile, and laughed at our own helplessness, while all the time, passing traffic was splashing water on us...

For just a brief moment, all the weight of the world was lifted, and in time, as strangers we met, as strangers we parted.

 
My sis sent me a mail stating the differences of loneliness and solitude. And I asked if she is interested in two books which I happened to buy which never had the chance to read:

1. St. Nadine in Winter: Zen Encounters with Loneliness by Terrance Keenan
2. Solitude: A Philosophical Encounter by Philip Koch

I would think that the first book would not be a hard read. The second however promises to be a worthwhile struggle. The author explored both sides of the arguments, that we are our most natural when alone and that we find ourselves in encounters. When I bought the first book, a friend looked at me with a puzzled look on his face. Maybe he thought that I would never be lonely. Or maybe he thought that loneliness is a shameful affliction of sorts. And years ago, I would have agreed readily, now perhaps I have my reservations. God, I would have agreed to so many other things in the past. It may be an affliction, but no longer shameful.

On a philosophical level, I would agree. Without a doubt, each of us are alone. Having no access to the minds of others, the failure of language to represent reality, the emptiness of socially constructed meanings and languages all adds up to a very lonely world. In the huge sea of the Social, we are all trapped by the bubble of our own construction, one that we can call the inner reality of the mind, unable to breathe outside it, unable to live with it, unable to transcend it, unable to escape it. Human beings are wretched creatures indeed.

Try not to ask me ways we can access each other's worlds, if I can answer that for you, it would be in my Phd thesis.

I would think that when I am alone, I am in my most natural state. In quantum physics, when a particle is not characterized or concretized by the intervention of the observer, it can exist in any state. Perhaps can be said of a human being as well, without the definition and crystallization by society, it is at its most free. Even if it is a lonely world, even if no one can enter my world, even if I am alone, solitude is still of vital importance to me. It allows me distance, not from myself or the external world, but my own interference and interaction with the external world. I cannot distance myself from myself for reflection and I refuse to use abstract and constructed definitions on myself and the external world will always at a distance.

But what happens when I am alone then? In Buddhism, the self and the ego has no permanence and in a sense does not truly exist. And will there exist a vacuum in the bubble? Or will the bubble disappear? Neither, for a vacuum does not truly exist. In quantum mechanics, a space totally devoid of of particles is impossible. In fact, a vacuum is a sea full of virtual particles, appearing and disappearing, taking energy and returning them back to the surrounding, all taking place in Planck time, the shortest possible unit of time.

Note: Virtual creation of particles has severe implication on the lifespans of blackholes, it was postulated by Stephen Hawkings. My favorite Casimir effect actually corroborate his hypothesis.

If I cannot exist, yet I cannot not exist, then what am I? Allow me then to be Buddha's silence.

 
My mum told me that it is dangerous to hang out at coffee shops till the wee hours, for you never know when gangfights will break out and you will be killed....

So today I took her advice and have my coffee cum chat session at the Ritz. I wonder if she rather kill me now or let the gangsters kill me.

In any case, I was discussing the concept and the social context of childhood with a friend whose honours thesis was on the portrayal of children in films. I have a number of friends who did honours, who have a wonderful range of topics. One of my friends in philosophy class did something on forgiveness and redemption, a friend in political science did her thesis on humour and my friend did the portrayal of children. I recommended my ex philosophy classmate to do her thesis on irony, a suggestion which she took into prolonged consideration, just like our suggestions to the government.

I would love to elaborate on what was transpired today, but I am really tired now, and it was information overload for the few hours which we talked. I think I will let all of it sink into my subconscious in my sleep....

The week has been long.

 


Looking at the lyrics to this song, I am more convinced that English in a certain way, lack the elegance and the poise that Chinese possess in describing the transience and the uncertainties in life. Taoism and Buddhism have certainly an impact on the language. It is a personal observation that the English language is rather life affirming, that it is very material in its contexts and usage, while the Chinese language is ethereal and malleable.

I like this song, it kind of talks about a search, for a companion, something I relate to as a search for meaning, truth and reason. It is uplifting in its simple, nonchalant way, where it says: "whether you find it or not, the journey will be a feast for the eyes, whether you are walking fast or slow, eternity can afford to wait".

There is a sentence that says: "you find a shoulder to lean on, but you lost your wings, who said that we will find the answer". I found it amazing as I reminded of a conversation I had with a friend of mine. I was talking to him about how we are dependent on our descriptions and definitions of ourselves and that we can never be independent unless we break out of it.

I think I lost him at the first half of that dialogue. But I thought it appropriate that we often find a shoulder or a fact or truth to rely on and we lose our freedom and independence of thought.....

 
After handing in her thesis, my friend told me that it was a terrible piece, something which she feels is a disgrace and a shame to be read by students to come. Well, she only started on her thesis a week before the due date, and her bibliography was only a page of 5 to 7 books.

The only thing that she was proud of in the entire thesis is her acknowledgement page.

She repeated that several times during our conversation as if she was not at ease with the entire issue of her underachieving and disappointing everyone who cared about her.

But I thought it fine, even if the acknowledgement is the only thing to be proud of in the entire thesis. In fact, that may be the only thing that I am proud of, because it is only part of the entire work that is deeply personal and profoundly original, unique to myself and no one else. It shows the path I took, it represents the way I relate to my work, it says the things which I may not have time to say, it is me.

Writing a thesis is very much like writing a resume. My notable achivements in 25 years of my existence on this blue lonely planet is typed and contained in 3 pages, presented in chronological order. I often look at it and laugh. Is that all to who I am? Does it matter to those who read that I can use a thousand adjectives to describe myself and still fail to be accurate and representative? Does it matter to them that I do not give a damn about any of my achievements in any of the 3 pages? Does it matter to them if my crowning moment was to stand up in a cafe thronging with a hungry crowd to thank my friends for celebrating my birthday? Does it matter to them that I was dying to put in my resume the age I picked up Nietzsche and the days I cried while reading him?

Do they want to know? Do they care?

Perhaps, perhaps not. All I know is that I am supposed to show them what they want to see.