the system is sick

I am becoming increasingly aware of the fact that we live within a broken system; a system paralysed by selfishness - the dominance of the consumer that surely is the result of the insidious spread of the market economy to all aspects of society; any reform pegged back by a disgusting onion of corruption all the way down. They say it is a swamp with many alligators; I say let us slaughter the alligators, drain the swamp, spread sand and become as gladiators, and battle for our interests.

Why should I hold my tongue on an issue, merely because it has come to pass that to criticise those who supposedly possess 'power' provokes a childish snatching and gathering of sovereignty in order to preserve some sort of internal face; how dare someone make a suggestion! This system is trapped in a terrible equilibrium; so long as people are too afraid of the repercussions of their actions to act, then the repercussions will hold the power, will remain terrible.

I intend to dig, and dig, and dig into the onion; surely there is a point at which one can turn the corruption in on itself, destroy it, improve the system if only in part.

motivation and the brick oven

Is lack of motivation a symptom of the lack of a significantly motivatory goal? Are people lazy, unmotivated, or blind; I believe that people are scared, scared of the vast blank space opening up before them which is fogged by uncertainty, an uncertainty of fixed goals, fixed objectives, resting points on the road. Or is it a road? Perhaps if there were a road it would be so much easier; is this why people subscribe to the notion of a 'career'? The illusion that their experiences can be grouped within a field known as 'work', and organised logically, chronologically, and segmented according to whose bitch you were at the time. Why is it that we organise and categorise our lives around who we are subservient to? Childhood, to our parents; education, to the whims of our professors; working life, to a stream of managers; old age and senility, to the limits of our own faculties.

Consider the stone, the brick; a stone hewn out of the rough rock around it; rough tools attempt to shape it but they must work within the natural properties of the stone - this argument has been made many times; the brick may serve many purposes - an antiquated building destroyed in wartime, then picked from the rubble to rebuild again and again; does this stone consider its career? Does it plan which building it would like to be involved in next ? - 'Ah yes, observe that grand facade across the street, how I'd long to be a part of that - and at the top! Oh, if only to see further that I might find a yet higher and grander building on whose pinnacle I can rest myself'. How sad!

back at last

Scopenhagen was briefly denounced as a spam blog by a Google robot, but is now back to life. Hooray.

tis party season

Political parties seem (to me) to be to politics what the concept of 'ideologies' is to political theory. They hem people in, associate certain views on economics with certain views on social liberties, on foreign policy. Societal pressure forces people to self-identify with one party or another - are you red or blue? The use of such contrasting colours in all manner of discourses is worrying. Surely people should be able to choose on each issue for themselves? I suppose this is a recipe for anarchy - a million voters and a million candidates - but is that not a better road to compromise than two entrenched parties populated by unwilling soldiers who don't believe in either cause? At least the million candidates would be passionate! The political party as an institution of convenience must be destroyed (perhaps this is a little too melodramatic). Transcendental political individualism is paradoxically the road to unity.

big trouble in catholic malaysia

In the wake of a series of recent rows in Malaysia over religion and diversity ( [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] ), there has been uproar after the government recently decreed that the word 'Allah' - the word for God in the Malay language - can only be used by Muslims [6]. Apparently oblivious to the fact that Christian use of the Arabic word predates the birth of Islam, senior official Che Din Yusoff of the Malaysian government defended its actions: "Christians cannot use the word Allah. It is only applicable to Muslims. Allah is only for the Muslim god. This is a design to confuse the Muslim people," [7]. He instructed non-Muslims to use the word 'tuhan', which is a more general term for god. What right does the Malaysian government have to seize a word of foreign origin and make it their own, especially in such a diverse nation? Why is it such an important issue - to both sides?

frustrations - episode i

Just yesterday I found myself immensely frustrated. I was engaged in a discussion with a small number of others, covering two broad topics. I shall cover only the first in this writing.

It was a short debate about atheism, with my anonymous nemesis claiming that atheists are unfairly persecuted in politics (allegedly they are widely accused of being amoral), despite the fact that they are not bound by the prejudices they believe religion advocates. I replied to the effect that I would not vote for an atheist candidate as I believe that someone who has once-and-for-all walled off all possibility of an instance, in this case the existence of a higher being, is a fool. If a man has rejected all possibility of the existence of God, then in what other areas has he dug his trenches? It is not so much a head-in-the-sand mentality as a line-in-the-sand mentality, a line that has been smugly drawn by a mortal being who believes he has accumulated enough wisdom to flatly deny the fantastic. This, for me, raises grave concerns over that man's inductional ability. I was swiftly rebuked, told that atheists do not outright reject the existence of God (forgive me for taking the word at its most vulgar!) and merely consider it unlikely. I was scolded for believing the hateful propaganda peddled by the anti-atheist lobby, who dare suggest that atheists reject the existence of a supreme being!

At this point I politely removed myself from the subject, keeping my worries to myself. If these individuals are so splutteringly indignant at the terms today's society has so cruelly attached to their chosen signifier, then why do they choose to associate themselves with it? Their beliefs seem to have crept away from what the apparent face-value definition of 'atheism' would be, and what our language has generally taken atheism to mean - a rejection of the existence of a god or other supernatural being. Why, then, do they stick with it before inevitably complaining about the stigma with which they are associated? Is it a matter of pride, a bitter and familiar pleasure in being able to call oneself an atheist, that makes them so unwilling to abandon the term in favour of something more refined?

I abandoned the conversation out of frustration, frustration at debating with an opponent who cannot see that language is a societal construct, that - whether he likes it or not - a word may take on an infinite number of meanings, so long as those meanings are accepted and used in general discourse. Instead of abandoning his sinking ship, dragged under by that darkest Charybdis of public opinion, he attempts to repaint it as it disappears below the waves.

the hypocrisy of informed leadership in the modern age

The leaders of the great nations of the world carry out their duty to their millions of subjects by way of scores of statistics, compiled by aides of every colour and flavour, grouped into studies so that he might know what is best for his people.

Is it not hypocritical for the leader of a nation to justify his decisions on studies of a sociological nature, when he more than anyone should be acutely aware of the power of an individual to change the world?