Celebrating 50 years of PAP rule - What makes opposition poli-ticks?

.

What I find amongst many local oppositional voices and potential do-gooders is the desire for instant gratification.  They see something that is not right, and they want to do something about it.  They identify the source of the problem as the government, and up come the (blog) posts, placards, posters, and protests.  Whilst the critical eye is cast outwards, that which is without, continues its perspectival hold within.

If I ask, ‘How many years of oppositional experience have you had?’, you might say, ‘oh, I’ve been doing it for about a 10 years.’

If I ask, ‘How many years of propositional experience have you had?’, you might say, ‘no, I’ve never supported the government.  I’ve always supported the opposition!’

Well, I suppose that is an appropriate answer for the question, at face value.

But the value of experience does not only lie in the number of years you have spent acquiring the relevant oppositional perspectives and information, but the number of years that it took to disable you from recognising the relevant means and methods that would enable you to acquire the relevant perspectives and information.

That, madam & sir, comprises a significant portion of ‘your experience’.

Every single oppositional mind, whatever your chronological age, is, politically, 50 years of age.  And when you add on the predominant ‘asian democratic’ culture, you’re close to 2230 years of age.

Now the question you have to ask yourself is, what is you minuscule ’10 years of experience’ compared to your subconscious experience of 2230 - 10?  It doesn’t matter what ‘race’ you are.  Everyone is a practitioner by perspectival proximity.  In that, ‘race’ means nothing.  And how would that disable or aid you in the allegedly ‘empathetic’ efforts you make after ’10 years of experience?

It’s best to err on the side of caution and assume that you have been disabled lest in your intoxication via the aftereffects of playing ‘political noty grl n boi’, you allow its continued covert and subconscious influence on your activistic perspectives, i.e. singaporedaily.net’s overtly sexist and racist ‘daily chiobu’ section which its editors, 'oppositional' readers and writers seems to have no problem with; tank man tango’s regimented answer to a tragedy of regimentation delivered on the platter of Tiananmen Square; a 1000 attending the gay rights event at Hong Lim whilst only 70 attended the human rights ‘abolish ISA’ event; authoritarianism in both propositional and oppositional camps; significance being given to racial numbers as opposed to nationality by the SDP, WP, ETC in terms of the presented order of the various languages (Freudian slip?); or even the Arts Centre, Substation, whose signboard does not reflect Singapore's cultural diversity but goes with the 'significance by racial numbers' rule ….and the list goes on and on and on.  If you have evicted the '50 years of PAP rule' from within yourself and thus acquired the ability to see more than you have been taught not to see and feel, you would have seen these, amongst a myriad of others.  This makes me wonder why the oppositional big wigs never took issue with these, especially since these, amongst a whole slew of other instances, serve to corrupt, ground-up, the otherwise laudable efforts of local activists.  Some say that the PAP can only rule this country because the people are ‘sooo dumb’.  Ask yourselves if your revered 'oppositional' icons and your good ‘oppositional’ selves do not also mirror this thus symbiotic relationship.  Assume this to be true.  Then you are empowered to do something about it. 

What is required is a dual-pincer oppositional attack – I hope nobody turns this into a dance – firstly, one pincer is aimed at your heart, and the second, at the government – I hope no idiot interprets this as a call to violence.  Assume that the weight of your oppositional perspective is weighted down by the subconscious influence of the PTBs by way of the overarching culture and perspectival infrastructure that is far older than you.  The longer a perspectival infrastructure or culture is in the making, the more years it takes off your experience.  Assume that.  Then look elsewhere - by going beyond your time, space, culture, history, nation, region, interests, using your left hand once in a while instead of your right, placing your television remote on the right instead of the left, etc, to undo it - for a remedy to a malady you are most certainly afflicted with. 

LET ME SEE YOU STRIPPED !

A wise Chinese philosopher once said, ‘it takes 3 years to learn to be good, and 3 days to learn to be bad.’, or something to that effect.  When you apply this to cognitive cultural analyses, you will realise that the significance of the ‘3 days’ can be translated to the number of years you did not have control over the perspectival and cultural infrastructure that has already, in significant part, predestined you to be undone, before you were born, at a far quicker rate than it takes you to spell d-e-m-o-c-r-a-c-y, and which thus renders the ‘3 years’ relatively insignificant.  S/he who enters opposition politics, and prior to which was apolitical, is logically, first, a socialised subconscious victim, practitioner and supporter of propositional politics.  It is the conscious experience, filtered through, not despite, the subconscious, that might lead you to join the opposition later.  But the preceding socialised self will still generally rule via the throne of the subconscious.  In that you become, unwittingly, a double-agent with your subconscious propositional self sabotaging your every conscious oppositional move.

Being cognizant of that is your only hope.

Till then, I wish the PAP a happy 50th Birthday,

...along with the rest of you, unwitting subconscientious servants of thine masters.

Ed

[above photograph by ed, shot with Nikon D700, Nikkor 70-200mm]