“When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of ‘gossip.’ She held a feather pillow and said, ‘If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back into the pillow. That is how it is when you say mean things about people.” - John Seigenthaler Sr.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E6DB1731F932A35756C0A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

An article by Fareed Zakaria, one of the most accessible political commentator alive at this given moment. He reflects on the book ‘The World is Flat’ and teases out some of the main themes here. I found this line thought-provoking - ‘The flat economic world has been created by an extremely unflat political world. ‘ Nevertheless, it is interesting to note how as the economic world is being levelled, the political field is likely to be levelled as well. And the sole champion of free trade and democracy, will soon be turned on its head.

Rather disquieting is how disconnected I actually am from the bustling technological advances. The only technological term that I fully understood in the whole book was Wikipedia - my essay saviour. His litany of other supposedly prosaic IT applications and functions were a first for me. Reading this book made me realised just what a pre-millenium old fogey I am. -_-” I’m beginning to understand how my parents could have been left behind by technology a decade earlier.

It is to Socrates and Plato that we owe the idea of “Platonic love” — that notion of a love that stares through and past its “object” into the eternity of Ideals and misses, therewith, both the erotic energy of the lover and the true ownership of beauty by the beloved.

Watched two great films - La Grand Voyage and Last King of Scotland. Highly recommended.

The first movie is about a religious Morrocan father and his secular French son who made the Hajj by car from France all the way to Mecca. It is a french film so you can expect the show to explore its subject can delicately. I think that it is a very moving movie that portrays Islam in a more positive light (besides its main theme about generational gap) and highlights the truer essence of Islam that is often being missed in the fundamentalist debates these days. The movie also contains  beautiful shots of Istanbul, Mecca and some other countries that I cannot recognise - they passed quite a few countries from France to Mecca. There is also this interesting juxtaposition of mainstream Muslim thinking and the Sufi’s way of looking at things towards the end of the show and a quote from the Quran about why the father chose to make the journey by car. It was produced just last year and it is quite unique because it is the first fictional piece that was permitted to be shot in Mecca, according to a website that I read. 

The second one was about Idi Amin, the Uganda dictator and his Scot physician. I like it because it demonstrates once again what politics can do to a country. It also made me realise that politicians can promise you the heavens and send you to hell.

I am surprised by the coincidence of finding Nietzsche amidst my current flow of thoughts about life. It was seredipitous. Wandering down the lanes of bookshelves in PageOne, and looking desperately for a copy of “The Book of Quietude” by my newfound favourite writer, I heard two friends coming across Nietzsche. The conversation went like this:

A: “Oh Nietzsche, him and his talk about how God is dead”

Laughter ensues.

B: “Well, maybe God is really dead, who knows?”

More laughter ensues.

On a normal day, I would probably dismiss it as a random comment and go about my own business, but that night I had this overflowing sense of academic righteousness that was bursting at my heart. And thus, I thought instead, “What do these people know about Nietzsche. I really hate people who just throw ideas around when they might not even have a basic understanding of these ideas. But oh well, what do I know about Nietzsche to even bother? Perhaps he was not even deserving of mention, controversial as he is with all his trouble-making aphorism.” To save me from my own critical scrutiny, I picked up a book on Nietzsche and packed it along with me. Better be educated now than never.

After poring through it, I realised that he was really mistaken. Just because he had a book titled ‘Gay Science’, people assumed that he was a homosexual. Just because he said God is dead, people assume him to be an atheist apologist (as a matter of fact he issued that statement because he could not accept the way that Christianity issues what he calls a ’slave morality’, a morality that values meekness, suffering, weakness, sacrifice and pain) People dismisses his work because he descended into madness in his later years, when his earlier works did exhibit exemplary lucidity, organisation and brilliance.

Nietzsche advocates denouncing religion or any so-called moral code that subjugates the individual. He believes that the individual has long been suppressed by the herd mentality and he should free himself to achieve the ideals of an uberman. He used a thought experiment to parallel the Christian version of afterlife - if you were to live through your life repeatedly, how would you choose to live your life. He challenges his readers to focus on finding out all about oneself and emphasise that this self-knowledge is much more important than any other knowledge. I thought that this was a pretty neat idea because sometimes, people think they understand a lot about the world, how it functions and how people think but eventually they are not too certain about who they are. It is a journey, knowing oneself.

 He also broached the topic of knowledge and I like the way he de-emphasised science and advocates a more well-balanced approach. He also warns of science becoming the new religion and that scientist using their much lauded ‘objectivity and empirism’ will hoodwink the masses and make believe that science was a really objective way of measuring Truth. I love this paragraph of his from ‘The Gay Science’ where he points out that although scientists can better describe things, they cannot really explain things better.

‘Assuming that one estimated the value of a piece of music according to how much of it could be counted, calculated, and expressed in formulas: how absurd would such a ’scientific’ estimation of music be! What would one have comprehended, understood, grasped of it? Nothing, really nothing of what is ‘music’. He asks, ‘ Do we really want to permit existence to be degrade to this - reduced to a mere exercise for a calculator and an indoor diversion for mathematics? This knowledge is ‘human, all too human”

Way cool. =)

There is a sweet whiff of vanilla in the air and the wind caresses playfully. It smells like many yesterdays ago when we were young and when we were running around the reservoir, in high spirits.  The vanilla from the Gardenia factory and the wind from just above the waters. A time when everything was simple and life wore a gentle blush. Now, the sun is setting and nostalgia envelopes like the incipient night.

I’m still writing for the therapeutic effects of words pouring out of me. It’s been about a day since I found out about his new life, and new girlfriend. In all these years, I thought I would really take it in my stride and be truly happy for him. When this day finally arrives, I found out that I was half-right. I am truly happy and truly miserable too. I honestly did not know that I still can feel this degree of sadness, such loss. So I’m quite caught unaware and ill-prepared. A lot of things run through my mind in the past hours. Trying to make comparisons with the girlfriend that I know should not be made, running through a gazillion of what-ifs, prep talks, consolations and reframing. It is all quite futile because I just feel really helpless. I don’t know how to leave the onionhead when he has offered nothing but his heart, sometimes even when it’s bleeding. I wish I could be alone to prove certain things to myself, that I was not being a liar when I keep telling myself that I really do care for even though I keep getting into relationships. I wish I was stronger and could tide through the depressive episodes even when I’m alone. Most importantly, I wish that I am so happy for him that I don’t even have to think about myself.

Peiting has converted me to her favourite song now. Now it’s mine too.

<最浪漫的事>
背靠着背坐在地毯上
听听音乐聊聊愿望
你希望我越来越温柔
我希望你放我在心上
你说想送我个浪漫的梦想
谢谢我带你找到天堂
哪怕用一辈子才能完成
只要我讲你就记住不忘
我能想到最浪漫的事
就是和你一起慢慢变老
一路上收藏点点滴滴的欢笑
留到以后坐着摇椅慢慢聊
我能想到最浪漫的事
就是和你一起慢慢变老
直到我们老的哪儿也去不了
你还依然把我当成手心里的宝 

As Andrew C. Janos put it, social scientists go on creating generalisations because:

 This is the only way to create some order in disorder and to discern pattern, without denying the ultimate uncertainty that makes the study of human affairs so exasperating yet so tantalising.

A sobering fact:

The richest 20% of the world’s population receives 82.7% of the total world income while the poorest 20% receives only 1.4%. (1992, UN Development Program)

I should really be doing my journal but I cannot withstand the allure of idling on wordpress. Religion would aptly be the theme of last week’s life. Ever since I knew Immanuel, there has been more and more discussions surrounding Christianity. Sometimes I really dread these debates because I think that they cannot be systemised or fully explored. All the evidences thrown from both sides are rather useless because there is not a significant clash. Nowadays, I’m more receptive to one good point kind of presentation e.g. a new refreshing perspective at this age-old question. I realised that I might die an agnostic at the rate of my questioning and believing. The Pascal’s Wager, inverted, could be interpreted as such - I would rather not believe, so that if there’s is no God I will not feel stupid but if there was I knew that I couldn’t have chosen him due to the imperfect information.

Listening to Fann Wong’s ‘Stay’ has the strangest effect on me. Especially on rainy nights like this. The chilly air and the orange skies. So very pretty. My favourite part of life. I would die on a night like that.

There is one more day before the exams will be over. Everyone’s talking about the emptiness felt at the end of that long struggle.. I am not sure if I would really know how that feels like cos I’m not sure whether melancholy will take charge. Or maybe it’s just like what Shuohan says, it’s coding specificity so it would be over once the circumstances end.

As the days roll by I’m getting more and more confused about who I am and why I am even doing what I am doing. When I sit down and look at myself in the mirror, the feeling is almost surreal. It’s like if I try saying ‘hello’ to myself, the sound would not even be formed.