20 posts tagged “philosophy”

 

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The rocker’s subconscious appreciation of society, if verbalised, can be summed up in the words, ‘there is more to that which you take to be true.’ - as opposed to the yuppie, ‘let’s make the best out of that which we have been taught to take to as true’.  In essence, the former is the foundational basis of all sciences and progressive movements.  It is the pioneering view mate.

 

 

Said V to me once, “you must never meet people who read your site.  Once they see you, they will just disregard what you have to say and all that you have said… People here are stupid, if you don’t dress or look like an academic, or you’re not successful, they will use that to ignore what you have to say.”

 

Well, to date, that has proven to be true.  I’ve gone through my ‘long hair’ days when my hair curled half way down my back; to my skinhead-side burned present.  In between, I had a short stint in ‘respectable’ mode with short back-combed hair, minus the earrings, and was ‘respectably’ shirted and appropriately lynched with an overpriced noose (‘tie’, in case you didn’t get it) during my brief sojourn in the civil service – though, like the probationers under my care, I would always stop at the gents to put my earring back on before leaving work.  Well, the treatment definitely varied as I passed through these different phases.  More attention, less interruptions, more appreciation of my points, more pauses for thought after I’d spoken my mind, etc, etc, were features that added the flourish to my ‘respectable’ days.  The inverse, however, has always been true when I finally relieved myself, with a sigh of relief, of all semblance of respectability thereafter and sat with one naked foot on my chair and my tattered shoe sunning itself by the side of my other foot at the neighbourhood coffeeshop.

 

I told V that if people needed me to be ‘appropriately’ attired, credentialed and pockmarked with the fanfare and fairy lights of prominence, power and position to appreciate my points, they would probably be too dumb to appreciate it anyway.  When I met academics or so-called activists in the past, and other locals in the past to the present, the response is always the same.  I can out-argue them between sips of my cheap teh siew tai (‘tea with less sugar’ in one Chinese dialect) whilst massaging my exposed toes of one foot to the point that they can only respond with a speechless look, and they’d still refuse to acknowledge it, ask any questions or even challenge me.  They usually hide behind pathetic statements such as, ‘well, that’s just your opinion’, or ‘that’s just a grand theory’, or ‘that’s just a theory’, without a single statement made to prove why it is flawed or irrelevant.  But these are the same people who, wide-eyed, quote this or that renown thinker or leader whilst looking at me with disdain if I can prove why they are talking rubbish.  And their response is nothing more than the said look of disdain.  I’m not incensed by this anymore.  Rather, such experience simply goes to validating the perspective contained within this article.

 

My experience in the UK, however, was the inverse.  My ‘white’ friends would always become quite enlivened when I start any topic and they would afford it the respect of intelligent challenge, consideration, thought, questions, clarification, etc.  I suppose that is one of the reasons why I was frequently invited by them to their rooms in the ‘halls of residence’ for all night chats that would last till the break of day.  Let’s just say that the amount of this that I experienced in the UK in a week is far more than I experienced here in a decade.  That, I suppose, is why I view my experience in singapore as an intellectually ‘flatline’ experience. 

 

Anyway, I told V and another Chinese acquaintance that delinquents, rockers, punks, amongst others, are actually people who began to think out of the proverbial box before they’ve fully appreciated what’s in it.  The ‘good’ little boys and girls who just abide by the norm in thought and fashion are those who are interned and learn from within the ‘box’, go through the normal education system, get straight ‘A’s’ for having a good memory that is unobstructed by independent thought, and generally abide by all those mores required to make the most of what they learnt within the ‘box’ to ‘make it’ within its societal extension.  The rockers, on the other hand, do not have the kind of socio-economic-intellectual system to support their perspectival ‘idiosyncrasies’ and hence are unable to bring their raw and primitive form of intellectual individualism to maturity and fruition.  Upon being constantly told to ‘be like everyone else’, they either retreat to their own little enclaves, or join in the flow and become coolies under their direction of their conformists.  What do you think their sense of self-efficacy is going to be like if they are constantly ostracized for being different, or being stopped by the police for not dressing like everyone else eh?  And with the ‘good little boys and girls’ running society, you can be sure that they aren’t going to value a rocker as much as themselves given that in conforming to the customs and conventions of ‘normal’ society, and learning to associate power, prominence, and position with those whom are regimented in their ‘sensible’ shirts and ties, they will inevitably tend to ‘look down’ on those who aren’t.  The avowed rockers or delinquents themselves, deeming education, yuppie-ism, and all its other ostentatious and trendy trimmings as the pastimes of the mindless, paint themselves into a corner and become less than what they ought to be – the leaders of global society.

 

I said to V and Sim, what rockers and punks, amongst others have which precious few appropriately-tied and shirted yuppie or professional have is the propensity to look at society from an out-of-the-box critical point of view as opposed to that of a newt surviving on the produce of its bowels.  The rocker’s subconscious appreciation of society, if verbalised, can be summed up in the words, ‘there is more to that which you take to be true.’ - as opposed to the yuppie, ‘let’s make the best out of that which we take to be true’.  In essence, the former is the foundational basis of all sciences.  It is the pioneering view mate.  But to make the most of it, the rocker has to recognise the potential of this perspective to add value in anything s/he does in the aesthetic, spiritual and intellectual realm.  Unfortunately, for die-hard rockers, music becomes their only solace in a world run by mindless yuppies and professionals, and singers their only guides.  Thus, their propensity to become pioneers in all fields is stunted in a cradle walled by a modernity of the making of the mindless conformist professionals and academics vomited out to comprise the immune system of any status quo.   And whilst interned in such a scheme of things, they can do nothing but take comfort in the crooning of overpaid pseudo-philosopher/intellectuals that are most popular musicians.  And in that, they are underdeveloped.  They can’t appreciate that rock bands are nothing more than the elementary level of thought and insight, or ought to serve as nothing more than primitive fuel for greater endeavours.

 

I said, when a rocker/punk/goth/bluesperson decides to go intellectual and aesthetic, they can’t be beat by any nobel prize thinker or whatever.  How much do you think you can expect from one who has conformed from the word ‘go’ eh - as opposed to one whose response to a directive and direction is ‘why?!’

 

When V advised me to change my dressing some years ago so that people might take me seriously, I said, ‘if I do that, I’m reinforcing the false notion that all that is true and insightful comes from the tied-and-shirted ‘good girls and boys’.  In that, I’m also reinforcing the false notion amongst young rockers that their rightful place is at the foot of some rock band instead of they themselves serving as the foot of God on earth that is appropriately Cuban-heeled in, amongst others, boots and bronze toe and heel caps.’  When I was a probation officer, I would purposely put pictures of myself in my rock styles on my cubicle wall to let probationers know that they can ‘rock the casbah’ and the professional/intellectual world as well.  Not despite being delinquents or rockers, but because of it.  My mom deserves much credit for this.  Whilst sponsoring the piercing of one ear when I turned 21, she would say that I could dress any way I liked, but I should study as well.  In that, the spirit of the rocker in me was allowed to flow into other fields.  I have never doubted that my performance in other arenas would have been severely compromised to the point of social acceptance if I had taken off my earrings prior to my aesthetic/intellectual endeavours.  I’m not saying that I’m the greatest intellectual/artist/etc amongst most.  What I am saying is that without the nourishment and transmutation of the rocker in me, I would not have been able to do as much as I’ve done and yet to do.

 

So, it was quite the trip, I must say.  From Prince to Led Zeppellin, the Doors to Pink Floyd, The Who to Jesus, Jesus to Classical philosophers, breakdance to sociology, Sex Pistols to psychology, Jimi Hendrix to Rousseau/Marx/Bakunin/JSMill/Paine/etc/etc/etc; Dylan to Gandhi/Malcolm X/Martin Luther King…….and etc to beyond.  Hence, the spirit of the Rocker could learn to observe, with the aid of its incredulous and intellectually individualistic spirit, further from vantages generally accessed by the conformists and made less of because of their tendency to be a part of as opposed to being despite the whole.

 

 

according2,

 

Ed

 

 

“Says Pip in Great Expectations, "there is nothing so finely perceived, and finely felt, as injustice." In fact, the strong perception of manifest injustice applies to adult human beings as well. What moves us is not the realisation that the world falls short of being completely just, which few of us expect, but that there are clearly remediable injustices around us which we want to eliminate.  The idea of justice demands comparisons of actual lives that people can lead, rather than a remote search for ideal institutions. That is what makes the idea of justice relevant as well as exciting in practical reasoning.” – Amartya Sen  The Guardian

 

Nonsense.

 

It would be more true to say that, ‘there is nothing so finely perceived, and finely felt, as the desire for instant gratification.’

 

It seems that Amartya Sen, in this context, illustrates ‘philosophy’ taking an untoward ‘modern’ turn that seeks to justify the current global foundational scheme of things as the best that it can be.  I really am irked by such ecclesiastics which every epoch of history, at its peak, seems to vomit out. 

 

This nonsense is, at its core, a populist philosophy.  It tells you that, after you’ve been reared on a diet of ‘justice league’, ‘everybody loves raymond’, ‘michael jackson’ ‘celebrity worship’, ‘the consumerist ethos’, ‘nationalist perspectives’, ‘competition’, ‘buffy the vampire slayer’, ‘halloween trick & treating’, ‘spiderman’, ‘harry potter’, ‘fads and fashions’, ‘pursuing education for economic utility’, ‘cultural pride’, amongst a myriad and multitude of others, you are actually going to be able to ‘finely perceive’, and, ‘finely feel’ the phenomenon of ‘injustice’.

 

The ‘strong perception of manifest injustice’ that Amartya credits you with must indeed validate the significance of your sense of justice, empathetic level, intelligence, and adulthood, and lead you to think it enough to continue acting, with immediacy, for the realisation of justice – with ‘immediacy’ being of greater significance here.  It seems that the ability to act with immediacy significantly founds the basis upon which the adult thinks her/imself as one simply because what is immediately acted out as an adult is different from what is immediately acted out as a child. In that, the ‘adult’ is detracted from the fact that ‘immediacy’ is that which renders her/im a child. 

 

Amartya moves on to further credit you with enough sense to not expect that the world ought to be completely just; and that you ought to just focus on ‘clearly remediable injustices’ that ought to be eliminated.  And finally, he tops this nonsense with defining the idea of justice as that of a ‘comparison of actual lives that people can lead’ and not the quest for ‘ideal institutions’ that, implicitly, ought to rightly be ‘remote’ in our intellectual wonderings.  According to Amartya, this makes ‘justice relevant’ and ‘practical’.  All else, in other words, is whimsical.

 

Did you know that this nonsense would be exactly what the elite and their congregation of peasants would have thought in the run-up toward the peak period of all epochs of history?  Did you know that this founds the basis upon which the Inquisition; the Salem witch-hunts, McCarthyism; the appreciation and application of the law during the days of Black slavery; American embargoes that led to close to half a million child deaths in Iraq were applied; the self-absorbed lobbying by interest groups in ‘Asian democracies’; the improvement of the condition of women being take to mean replacing their brooms with a vacuum cleaner; etc, etc, etc?  Such perspectives do not seek to improve the foundation upon which the superstructure of reality is founded, but seeks to incorporate and circumscribe the imagination of the masses within the superstructure as superstructural tweakers and denizens. 

 

When we simply descend to the ‘comparison of actual lives that people can lead’, what we are actually doing is confining the human imagination to that which serves the profit and power motive of the few or a particular group; that which produces props for ‘sci-fi’ shows that simply depict life as it is here with an extra-terrestrial backdrop; and, in essence, doing nothing more than using the ‘first world’ as a standard by which we ought to value our condition – whilst eradicating those other aspects and potentials of the human persona that is not lauded in ‘first world’ states. 

 

But, I suppose, the time is indeed ripe for the likes of modernist ecclesiastics like Amartya, Fukuyama, Mahbubhani and other ‘modern’ ‘philosophers’ to ascend as the greatest thinkers of these times as they cater to the much-incorporated imagination of the masses whom love to think themselves as generically capable purely on the basis of their ability to, as stated in a previous essay, ‘feed and f**k themselves into the next generation.’  I suppose, Amartya is in the west what Kishore Mahbubhani and Lee Kuan Yew are in the East – with both seeking to circumscribe the human imagination and human development to fit well with existing systems of thought and thoughtlessness that render both western and Asian democracies simultaneously identical but different.  Both, in other words, seek to maintain the perspectival and foundational status quo so that an otherwise perspectivally progressive incline of a human development might be replaced with a plateau. 

 

As I had stated above, every epoch in history produces such ‘philosophers’ during the ascent to, and whilst at the peak period, of their civilisation.  This is when imagination is incorporated and stifled in some parts whilst other parts are amplified so as to maintain the civilisation as is.  That is when a goodness-of-fit is created between the system and the peasant so that the former can be developed along with the underdevelopment of the latter to the point a self-sustaining and symbiotic equilibrium is formed.  At most times throughout history, civilisations collapsed, either due to some natural catastrophe, or because the masses had yet to be incorporated as equals.  These times, however, unlike all previous epochs, sees the paradoxical inclusion-cum-exclusion of the global mass as equals within a political democracy paired with intellectual inferiority delivered, amongst others, via the professionalisation of the global citizenry.  It is a sleight of hand effectuated by inclusion-cum-lobotomy-cum-the accordance of prominence to the juvenile and juvenilised masses. 

 

Thus, with mass ignorance and blinkered education, modernist apologists like Amartya, like all modernist apologists in previous historical epochs, can be easily believed when they attempt to detract the masses from the fact that the ‘modernity’ of today could not logically be if the people of the past thought to only remedy evils that were rendered blatant because they were reared within a perspectival status quo to identify evils accordingly.  Such ‘thinkers’ are the antithesis of ‘the thinker’ as they seek to stifle it and encourage acceptance of the present foundational status quo whilst calling for an inquisition of the elements logically thrown up within the superstructure emerging from it.  If we had abided by such nonsense logic in the past, we’d still be living within the histories of times past.  And I suspect, in essence, we still are, given that we are still throwing up perspectival fascists as we did in the past.

 

 

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Every day spent practicing the Culture of Confrontation is a week gained in the formulation of a Culture of Circumvention.  And it is the latter that comprises the culture of the morrow that enables the refinement, not of your childish sense of justice, but the iniquities of yesterday.  In this, the Culture of Confrontation, that is appealed to by the most blatant of evils, is unwittingly employed as the process by which evil is refined. - ed

 

 

Ed

 

 

 

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The function of the luminary lies not only in that part of the darkness of ignorance that s/he illuminates, but in directing our attention to the contrasting darkness of that part of ignorance that s/he shines not upon.

Those who recognise not this dual function of the luminary, will be condemned to languish in the latter whilst fixated on the former.

In this, they serve as the chasm between knowledge and ignorance, and allow the light to descend to being nothing more than an appendage of the dark which they perpetuate by way of serving as the latter's acolytes.

Ed

 

 

 

'Totalitarian' is a function of your impending degeneration, or regeneration,

Not its conclusion,

Which is called 'Democracy'.

Betwixt, you will find the midwife, The Coping Mechanism.

The question humanity will have to ask is,

would it have Coped itself into corner,

or out of it.

To Question Laws renders us a part of the movement that displaced the governments and iniquities of the past with the governments and virtues of the present.

To refrain from doing so in the present is to displace the governments and virtues of the present with the governments and iniquities of the past.

That, in my opinion, would be treasonous.

The difference between the Left and the Right is determined by the Left or Right location of the Centre.

 

 

Ed

 

 

For the next week, following May 1st, only articles with regards to my personal 'reflections' on the meaning of Socialism will be published.  These will be iconically permanently linked in the sidebar.

When I was studying Marx as part of a sociology major in the UK in my first year (1995), I felt that Marx made a little bit of an error in assuming that when economic conditions were ripe, the proletariat will automatically displace the bourgeoisie, as the bourgeoisie had displaced their feudal predecessors.  Whilst Marx disputed with Hegel’s dialecticism and counterposed it with Historical Materialism – putting it simply, that economic conditions determined consciousness, ideas, economic evolution, etc – I felt that Hegel was not entirely wrong, but that his perspectives could be said to describe particular stages of socio-psychological development in the course of socio-economic evolution.

 

Marx assumed, a little too much, that the evolution of economic conditions was sufficient for the gradual emergence of true people power and Democracy.  He had discounted the psychological factor.  That is, the propensity of humans to cope with seemingly unassailable conditions.  This is where I deem Hegel to be relevant.  In his version of dialecticism, a ‘thesis’ (i.e. one viewpoint or phenomena) is fused with an ‘antithesis’ (i.e. an opposing viewpoint or phenomena) to create a synthesis (fusion of the thesis and antithesis).  Marx disagreed with this, and with his Historical Materialism, presented the thesis as being displaced by the antithesis within the context of socio-economic change, i.e. feudalism being displaced by capitalism and capitalism being displaced by socialism.

 

Now, as I mentioned above, and perhaps others might have thought of this, that the human ability to cope with situations cannot be understated.  If humanity is interned within a capitalist state of affairs long enough (I would put it at 3 generations); have access to what I term 'compensatory 'and 'recuperative' mechanisms; if the state of affairs have enough redressive (from the word ‘redress’) institutions that seek to resolve crises that threatens the continued hegemony of the ruling class (charity, communal self-help, savings, welfare, insurance, etc);, if the people are generally professionalised enough to become generically ignorant and analytically-challenged whilst being specifically skilled; and if the people are led to believe through their associating intelligent individualism with being able to keep financially afloat; then the coping mechanism could plausibly ensure the perpetuation of the system.  In other words, Marx’s belief that the system will necessarily be displaced when the time is right is quite flawed.  With the passage of time, the right time will not have a goodness-of-fit with the right attitude.  I term this propensity to get used to things given the right conditions, psychological dialecticism – which I believe unites the Marxians and Hegelians.  In a Hegelian sense, and putting it simply, the thesis (capitalism) is fused with the antithesis (people’s resistance) and produces a fusion (people getting used to it by their being reduced to view as natural the socio-economic and hierarchical status quo - by way of their successful, albeit unwitting, efforts to cope with it by taking on a new human identity.

 

That is when class consciousness is incorporated.  That is when the ‘achievements of the working class’ is viewed, not in terms of how much they have gained in wresting power from the elite, but in terms of the affluence they have managed to gain whilst accepting their ‘rightful’ place within a ‘natural’ status quo.  One of the clearest evidence of this is in May Day, or International Workers Day, being perceived as a holiday as opposed to what was supposed to be a day of enhancing class consciousness and keeping alive the struggle against elitism and a class-based system.

 

I suppose, in essence, Hegel was right, even though he might not have meant it the way I see it.  I view the transition of society from feudalism to capitalism, not as a displacement of one system by another, but as a fusion.  That is, capitalism as a refinement of the perception of class hierarchy as natural.  The economic infrastructure might have changed, but the spirit remains.  In other words, the division between classes is blurred, not in reality, but in the eyes of the professionalised masses.  In such a state of affairs, the ‘petty bourgeois’ is not the corner-shop owner or a member of the lower middle class, but a prole who aspires to be in counterpositon to others along the same lines as s/he has been counterposed.  That is, s/he aspires to be bourgeois herself.  And if not, at least an affluent prole who gets much comfort and lives life vicariously from being a ‘fan’, a ‘celebrity-worshipper’, a consumer, and next in line for a wage increase or promotion or a new parent, husband, wife, etc.  In other words, economic conditions determines the consciousness of wo/man, and the consciousness of wo/man perpetuates its by way of the midwife that is the coping mechanism.  It is in this psychologically dialectical process that Marx’s historical materialism is, in a slight way, undone by Hegel’s synthetic dialecticism.  And, it is through this psychologically dialectical process that the proletarian consciousness is redefined and undoes their historical quest for equality.

 

 

Ed

 

 

 

 

If you have to do the same thing, try doing it in differing environments to reduce the impact of doing it in the same environment.

 

One ought to be cognizant of the fact that being tired after a day of work may be due not only to work-induced tedium, but to doing so in an unchanging environment.  Hence, I would recommend that half a workday be undertaken within the work environment, and the other half in another – perhaps home, a café, under a tree, etc – in order to capitalize on the tedium-relieving effects of a change of environment.

 

Put together the negative psychological impact of work tedium and the monotony of working in the same environment, and the negative impact of both doubles the negative view of both. 

 

ed

26th March 2009

 

A lesbian is a heterosexual without a penis

A heterosexual is a lesbian with one

~ ed

 

 

 

 

note:  ‘heterosexual’ above refers to the male heterosexual

What is a bourgeoiscracy? – in brief

 

 

Why I term the so-called ‘democracy’ of today a ‘bourgeoiscracy’ is that it is still a socio-economically gradational society; and the current form places the ‘bourgeois’ at the helm.  

 

If anything, a bourgeoiscracy is aristocracy-refined.  Nothing more.  (I’ve sometimes been inclined to think that history has fundamentally been a movement toward the refinement of the class system to the point that the plebeians might blame themselves for their class-locality.)  The fluidity of movement from one class to another does not free us from the fact that there are still classes.  Our right to become bourgeois does not render us all a member of the bourgeoisie – that might in turn enable us to avail ourselves of those psychological and financial resources that might enable us to make the most of our potentials.  If society moves forward, it does so pyramidally.  Not horizontally without gradation.  And with socio-economic gradation comes psychological and motivational gradation.  And it is exactly this that compromises what I would term, ‘democratic depth’ – the symbiotic counterpart of technical democracy that renders democracy a reality.

 

If we are insistent on calling this civilisation a democracy, then let us call all civilisations-past, democracies.  For in all civilisations of the past, the right to self-determination always existed, except that it was exercised within certain sectors of society.  In other words, ‘technical democracy’ was limited in its application.  In the present, this still continues.  Whilst in the past the masses were disabled technically, in their being deprived of the right to self-determination through political and social democracy, in the present, they are deprived perspectivally of the right to self-determination through professional idiocy, motivational debility brought about by class-locality, and a competitive and mutually antagonistic society that keeps the peasantry of these allegedly ‘modern’ times preoccupied with perspectivally debilitating self-interest.  We may have relatively broadened technical democracy to include more people than in the past, but the existence of classes and nation-states, and the variable experiences of each economically to psychologically, compromises the democratic depth of those who enjoy technical democracy.  We are, unfortunately, not just technical creatures who do not require financial, experiential and motivational resources to function optimally for the purpose of maximally developing our potentials and vice versa. 

 

In a true democracy, not only is there technical, political and social democracy, but motivational and perspectival democracy(democratic depth) as well.  The function of the human being cannot be circumscribed to its technical freedom to do such and such, but her/is motivational and perspectival ability, enhanced by the maximal development of all by all and for all, to exercise the said technical freedom to its maximal degree.

 

 

ed

25^th march, 2009

 

 

Note:  this is not a statement ‘for’ or ‘against’ bourgeoiscracy.