Learning to be a Revolutionary

Experimental forage into mentally psyching oneself into the mindset of a bloodthirsty xenophobic and surviving the bloodshed long enough to pass down the lessons.
PS. Everything between the 'PS' is an introduction. This was written as part of my GP journal. It is a result of reading Dune, Hotel Rwanda, The Last Hero and Chapterhouse: Dune within a single week. It's quite a pessimistic text I wrote. PS

If history is any guide, there is always room in the human world for the violent. A human finds it impossible to be entirely pacifistic in their life, let alone an entire group where the mechanics of human nature subtly shift, resulting in the chaos such systems expectedly produce.

There is elbow space for the military revolutionary, the one with fire in their eyes, speeches in their mouths and a weapon always close to hand. The problem is, such revolutionaries quickly follow the paths of their oppressors, making the populace wonder why they bothered with all the troublesome war before starting another revolution just in case it turns out different.

The point here is for the revolutionary to stick around to make sure the revolutions are carried out right. For these uprisings are not just for the sake of making life better. The uprisings are dreams manifested in the world, dreams of a perfect world if only the king was no more. But dreams fade on waking, and there is little better stimulant than a revolutionary not sustaining dreams.

This guide is not for rulers. It is for the person who breathes jihad, the collective raging fervour that takes whole groups to horrific heights. Or depths.

Firstly, be a flexible dreamer. Whatever the vision of the revolting populace is, as long as they think they work towards that dream, they are content. For rulers, this is all very good to know, but hard to apply in the midst of intoxicating power. It is easier to lay low until the people are unhappy with their ruler’s lavish lifestyle and grumble for change. Get to know what they believe they want, and then inject absoluteness into it. Say God leads you; who knows, it may be true, and the people will not know the difference. But if saying ‘God’ causes looks of veiled despisal while ‘science’ brings awe, then the natural course is to become a scientist, one with fire in his eyes, of course. Knowledge does not work if not communicated.

Being able to converse with your group is vital, a pillar of your power. Humans are social creatures, holdover from the time when safety in numbers outweighed safety in isolation. It probably still does. Knowing they are in a group, that they are a group, the populace sees itself that more powerful, capable of making a mark on the world, if only they knew what to do. This is a mob when self-assembled and self-led. With competent and sufficient leadership, it becomes an army. Indeed, one person finds it hard to train an army. Better to train a core elite, loyal to you and receptive to your needs, who will be the extensions of your voice and authority (also good to know for rulers, except instead of paying in dreams of happiness you have to pay in happiness itself). Get to know this elite well; it would be a sad thing for them to turn on you because they see themselves the true leaders of the revolution.

Abstaining from greed aids in the relationship management. It is well known that revolutionaries all too often fall into the trap of abusing power. In this guide, we believe the abusing starts from the moment the revolutionary lets his army crown him. Nay, reject the authority. Let another wear it on his head. You’ll personally take it off his neck sooner or later. (That is, if he is not a great ruler. But in that case you may well be living happily, or fighting against him happily in an entirely legal way.) The important thing is that you survive to spread the doctrine of revolt when the people again have need of it. That is your duty. Stick to it, and you will save your nation the trouble of having to come up with new leaders every time. Note: To do this means you must craft a public persona, acting for your adoring audience. Wear a mask, distort your voice, change your sex, it all boils down to altering appearance. It makes it easier to come back next time.

Change, communicate, continue living. Had but a single one of our revolutionaries heeded these words, our revolutions would truly have been wonderful, clockwork happenings, with nary too many hiccups (no perfection; too much of a dream).

A Bit of Publicity

I was looking online as part of research on our beloved school leader because I was interested in his Five Year Plan for RV. Yes, hearing the name of the plan gave me bad vibes from the time of Chairman Mao and his Great Leap Forward. Anyway, I was quickly sidetracked to an even more important issue: Silviu Ionescu, the Romanian diplomat to Singapore, has predictably been found to be one behind the triple hit-and-run accident a month or two ago.
Yet no one talked about it.
That was the scary part.
Somehow, we let a pompous fat foreign cat take his car, knock three humans down and waltz out of the country. Now, to make sure I understood the politics of this, I went to look at Romania's and Singapore's international relations. The results are bad, politically, for Singapore. Romania is a member of NATO, an old organisation, older than APEC which Singapore has joined. Besides that, Romania is a player in the EU and many parts of Asia, while Singapore is not too well-known outside Asia. The best thing for political Singapore to do is lie low and soothe its (small minority of) outraged citizens until they forget about the matter.
There is too much for me to say. The tags will likely help in showing the topics.

Surrrender

I give up on keeping quiet.

Call it arrogance. Call it my nature. Call it my Asperger's. I have on the whole kept quiet about topics I have had thoughts about, which is all of life. Everything I've experienced, I've read in a book. Consequently, I thought it was best to distance myself from all the trouble that filled the pages of said book.

This led to boredom. Boredom in watching people flailing around in their lives, not knowing what they wanted or how to get it. Boredom in hearing people suggest how to solve their problems and getting it hopelessly wrong. The keyword is 'hopelessly'. There are sayings that say if one cannot deduce the whole of a problem from one small part, one is beyond effort. Notably, Confucius says, in total seriousness and absence of parody, 'I do not teach the uninterested; I do not help those who fail to try; if I mention one corner of a subject to a pupil and he does not therefrom deduce the other three, I drop him.'

The difference between my ancestor and myself is that on reflection, I don't mention the subject at all. For a stranger to even guess at what I'm thinking, it will take the skills of a prophet or the vagueness of a horoscope reading.

The solution is to speak out and be heard. This blog will become more active. But not just that. I've just bookmarked some of the most popular blogs online. I'm not sure just how I'm going to look at them, but tentatively I'll take a look at the commenters. This is because the only people likely to see this blog are RVians, part of the top 10% in SG, trapped in a school that has glued itself to tradition and basically citizens of a country where 'but' follows the freedom of speech.

Revamping

Perhaps I've said I wanted to create my own blogskin. I don't have concrete memories of typing it, nor do I remember telling anybody. This is then the first clearcut announcement that this blog will be changing looks soon. It won't be changing now; my HTML skills are pretty basic, not a bad point in itself. If not for CSS, I would have done it by now. CSS fills the source codes of all the blogs I've looked at and copied for reference. At the top of each one, there is the damning phrase |style type="text/css"| (I cannot use "<" or ">", so I replaced them). Below that, I understand nothing.

It took me time to realise this. The first thing I wanted for this blog were boxes. The visitor will first see a short message or image, the cover, you could say, of my blog. Then by clicking buttons at the top of the blog, the other sections such as profile and posts would appear in a central frame. This plain, simple thing was too much to ask for. Cannibalising the source code of one blog made them identical. Identically black in background, when I was looking for brown or some sandy colour. Taking out even one line messed up everything. I decided I should look elsewhere, only to run into the bigger problem of entirely losing my sense of direction in the shelves of code.

The solution is to go learn CSS from the ground up. It's slow. I do not think I can enjoy the luxury of slowness, though I believe the opposite. My plan is to do it in parallel with my revision, homework and hike report. Seeing how two of those are fast due, it's a bit tough.
School gets in the way of living once again.

Second Hiatus Breaker

I've been reading my previous posts. I'm tempted to say that they look dry, uninteresting and half-hearted, but it's been going like that for quite some time so long as I'm not writing a story. Also, hindsight combined with inherent cynicism means I tend to use a dirty pair of glasses to look at the past. As if that were not enough, I've changed plenty ever since I wrote those posts, and am aware of it. In all likelihood there will be a day in the future that I view this paragraph with vague disdain, though I'm hopefully still will not comment on it.
Another thing is the other person's blog, linked yesterday. I will name him. He is Junjie. His sentences read to mellow me like Cthulhu appears to mortal men, who soon find the 'mortal' in their physical and mental existences. But like the Cthulhu mythos, bits of it appeal to me. There is always something attractive about distant shores, no matter how inhospitable they look from your homeland. Such is the same about our two viewpoints.
A sad thing happened today. The AYKF RPG, which I mentioned yesterday, has its latest post in April this year. Another RPG, called the Dreamtime and populated by several of the same members, was updated yesterday. In fact, it began last week, so if anyone's starting a hiatus soon, I'll know about it. The point is that AYKF seems at least to be inactive, at worst dead. Not fun after all the hype and plot I waded through to find that out.
Regardless, I'm still going to try roleplaying my characters. First is the notorious Visser Three from K.A. Applegate's Animorphs, mentioned yesterday. With his additional handle 'The Abomination', he's not a amiable chap. Even by the standards of his own race the Yeerks, parasitic mind-controlling slugs that feed on radiation, he is pants-wetting scary. For other races, their shoes and the ground below get damp as well. He is vicious, cruel, power-hungry, arrogant and happy to be in a post where killing is the job description. Alternatively, he can be a deadly schemer or fall into simple mousetraps, replacing 'cheese' with 'suspiciously helpless alien freedom fighter'. Should be simple to write. The challenging part is with his host, another alien with the power of shapeshifting.
Second is Mr Teatime from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather. Teatime is a brilliant person; the insanity that comes along with it is practically accorded to him. To augment the fear factor, he is a childlike person, speaking in terms of children whose parents weren't around to discourage excessive revelling in killing smaller creatures such as ants, cats and other kids. His third danger is a drive to kill. Perhaps it could be attributed to the fact that he was adopted by the Assassins' Guild when young following the death of his parents. With a stronger 'perhaps', it is implied he was a self-made orphan. In later days, lying in bed during the festive season, he devised ways to successfully kill - if the term can be used - anthropomorphic personifications of said festivals. After that comes the usual deadliness of surviving a course where teachers set tests where the passing mark is whether you still breathe, and where schoolmates might be considered as the vehicles of said tests. More difficult than Visser Three, but overall easier without having to think about more than one personality in his warped mind.

Back from Procrastination

At last, at long last, after many long weeks of living in general, I've gotten the chore of life out of the way to write again. The comments from fellow Ventures about this blog was surprising sneak feedback that may have contributed to my decision. I'm not sure about it, otherwise I would have clarified.
To fill in the reader, I've gone to a place or two, done a thing or two, come back and surfed a Webpage or two. Details will be added in at a leisurely pace below.
This is not precisely a deliberately long-winded post. It has been ages since I've last written a proper recount, narrative or essay. Here is my first attempt at solving the problem. It must be followed quickly by others, for my second CCA, Student Editorial, suggested we ought too. Also, in the time I've been away from a convenient keyboard, my mind has been throwing up interesting sentences for each of my encounters with life's hazards. Some of these sentences will be making an appearance, and will be highlighted for the reader's interest. If there is no interest, tough nuts.
Returning to Student Editorial, one of my responsibilities, together with the few other schoolmates from my level, is to start a blog. Judging by a total lack of contact with them, I assume they're not interested. I am, and the only thing blocking me is ignorance of HTML and a near-terminal reluctance to take up responsibility after three years of suffering in a uniformed group. The HTML should not be an issue, as I plan to revamp this blog and in the process of doing so will learn enough HTML to decorate websites in any funny way. Next is our schedule. The magazine we publish is either quarterly or every four months. Our school year does not have twelve months. It has ten, enough for three issues at best. Not encouraging for a magazine directed at quick-pulsed youths. Personally, my minimum expectation was an issue a month, but after speaking with seniors traumatised by excessive exposure to school bureaucrats i.e. from the first meeting onwards, the struggle will be uphill, and will demand responsiblity in shovelfuls. My studies, much as I find them distasteful in this school, will suffer, as will my participation in Ventures CCA. Well, these are tomorrow's problems, for about fifty-five more minutes.
Still, for my seniors' part, they encouraged myself and the other juniors to write more during the holidays to hone our skills. My immediate thought is that of one, an old acquaintance and probably a gender/psychological deviant who posted far more cheerless entries on his blog. For crying out loud - something I rarely do - he makes my stomach writhe with a single sentence. About Avatar, totally unrelated to its visual effects or plot and implications. Given that everyone one else my age in the CCA is in his class, I am understandably worried. Anyway, this post is immediately dedicated to them, meaning that during celebrations they get to come and make a 'short' speech and if this plain sucks go blame them.
Now, post number two for my seniors: a recount of one of my several skiing experiences.

I look down the white slope. Behind the shades, the slope is quite striking. Without those shades, it is blinding. The shades are part of my protection, alongside a scarf and a hood. The scarf has known better days, kept from reasonable distances from a human nose. I can't look forever; I came here to ski. No number of falls is going to stop me for now. For information, I have fallen down more than my entire family combined. My mother, who was worse, had the better sense of self-preservation to stop.
Never mind, I think once more, I get up quickly. I'll get up quickly again. Off I go.
The wind bites my face, tormenting my scarf by torturing my nose. My cheeks are doing little better, but at least they don't leak sticky fluids.
So far, so good. The descent is relatively slow, compared to other skiiers, though if I had any say there would have been no other skiiers to be compared to and thus no moving obstacles. As things went in my life, it was exactly this that caused my second really notable fall. The first fall was entirely my fault.
I was three-quarters down the slope. My siblings were somewhere behind me, and I knew they were there. I decided that, as a good brother, I ought to slow down and let them catch up. I angled my legs inwards as if I were some other weakling with a bloated bladder. In theory, I would slow down gently but shortly. In reality, I turned around, still sliding down, with my legs bent down and my fingers testing the durability of my gloves against artificial snow.
They zoomed past me, and I tried to regain my footing. Thankfully, I managed to re-orient my face to the gaping expanse of the valley. This was at the cost of heading towards the boundary rope fence at high speeds my braking failed to decrease.
Bam. There was a flash of white light, followed by a flash of pain. I lay on the snow in the bliss of being involved in an accident with zero casualties. Or so I believed. I checked my watch just in case I somehow fainted but didn't notice. Then I looked at my right hand for symmetry... And found my middle finger wasn't in my glove anymore. It was frightening on two levels. One, my finger was broken or dislocated. Two, I hadn't noticed it for whatever scarier reason.
A frenzied series of pats and pulls dispelled this. All that had happened was that my glove was pull out slightly, forcing my middle finger to take up house with my ring finger.
The outer snow gloves had disappeared. They were a few small metres behind me, not too far for walking, way too far for flying from a collision.
Other debris included: my skiis themselves, my ski poles and perhaps my hat, I don't recall. Miraculously, my glasses were intact, even though the right lens was loose. Even so, the whole event must have been like a meteor streaking down through the atmosphere, trailing discarded bits of itself as it went.
I picked up those errant bits and after much delay, made it back down to my patient but questioning family members, where it was agreed I was simply amazingly gifted at falling off my skiis.
The second time, no one saw, except some giggly little wench who fell down right in my face and directing the rope fence to come join her. It was the return of Comet Faller, with even more special effects brought about by a stopping distance of a few inches rather than a few metres, such as my ski poles lying inert with my snow gloves attached in death grips, my right lens nestled in a cushion of snow and my right ski a full ten cm outside the fence.

So that's my very long recount of about twenty minutes total of disarray and confusion.
Besides writing, I also draw. This is done in a hybrid of Western comic techniques, manga styles and realism. Until I master facial lines, it will probably have no redeeming features. Don't ask me to draw anything less than an ideal body. When I'm not trying to bully my hands and artistic side into drawing fast and well, I draw round animals and an angel. The world's animals, if circles were the primary body plan. An angel who is actually an AI and like many bad animations, has a cute form and a battle form.
I was supposed to do a 24-hour comic, but following the miscarriage of the first one in HK (nightmares were involved), I've set it for later.
Currently I'm observing the intrigues of a roleplaying adventure called 'An Adventure You'd Kill For'. It features fictional serial killers (mostly humans/humanoid), mostly alive on the whole, who are trapped in an interdimensional prison by an entity called... the Corporation, headed by... the CEO. It is better than it sounds, not hard given my puny summary, and like any conspiracy story, hints at puppeteers upon puppeteers in the background. Aside from that, there is plenty of action, positively pages of it. Indeed, even basic punctuation and grammar take a back seat although the moderator Varthonai is undertaking the hellish task of tidying up the archives and uploading them as complete story arcs.
Be warned: like action flicks, characterisation is secondary to many of the writers, whose have already delegated punctuation and grammar to their sorry posts. Not that it's impossible to have good characters. Just that the fact that a particularly endearing NPC might be killed off by Varthonai or the other moderators puts a dampener on this issue. A note: one character was defeated halfway through the story, only to get better, and another faked his own death to his own army and no other than the Joker.
Yes, and that's the main point of the story. Any-homicidal-one that has made an impact on you in your literary explorations can be brought to life by your hands in this forum.
I'm planning to take Visser Three from Animorphs. :)
Overall, it's very interesting and worth a long look.

PS - If my writing style seems weird, it's because I try not to start to many sentences with a noun. It's for the sake of variety, without which my life would be rather dull.

Arranged Attraction

The day was but a day until the high heels clacked on the asphalt. Brad turned around, and did his best not to turn anymore. The sun became a halo surrounding her, obliviating all but her slender waist. Then she stepped beneath the trees and her soft eyes glowed green like the leaves above.
Brad stepped forward, averting his eyes from her charming hairclip the way all men grew skilled at lest they alienate half the human race. ‘You captivate me,’ he said.
She jerked in surprise, retrieved an errant strand from her face. ‘Excuse me?’ Drenched in sunlight, his eager face shaped itself to propel his words. ‘No, say nothing. That was a stupidity.’
‘I could scarcely care less for the minor mistake,’ he said. He stepped forward with arms outstretched, escorting her further into the shade where they might see one another better.
‘I guess you wouldn’t,’ she replied. ‘Actually, you appeal to me as well.’
‘Great. Shall we have a relationship?’ he asked.
‘Become a couple? What are the terms?’ she asked.
'That we be open with one another, in mind, body and soul. The romantic adventures of man and woman are often fraught with pitfalls. Granted the human race numbers billions of individuals and the potential for variation is enormous, so two partners are probabilistically never precisely compatible with one another,’ he said.
‘True,’ she agreed. ‘Even if they are, my scone, constant exposure to each other’s differences over the years wears down their patience. Quarrels erupt faster than volcanoes four point six billion years ago.’
‘We have chosen well, for we are as reflections in an imperfect mirror. I enjoy being called “scone”, though I wonder why not “sugar” or similar terms,’ he added.
'Individuality. I happen to savour scones, the puffy crumbly feeling as you eat them,’ she said.
‘How about it? I confess my faults and shortcomings to you for forgiveness, and you to me. Like a pregnant mother aspiring for aptitude at meditation, shall we also practice these communication methods to ease the birth of our time together.’
‘You tease me. The mother is always the female. Do I take on the bulk of the responsibility?’ she asked, her lip glinting under a sunbeam penetrating through the canopy.
'Tell me what you desire, in accordance with the conditions,’ he said. ‘Myself, I currently find completion holding your body against mine own.’ Her head swirled as the heady odours of his maleness and crisp leaves of the leaf litter made their way up her nose.
‘No complaints, scone,’ she replied, and they fell to a crackling.

Sensible Spirituality

I just listed six different takes on the afterlife, although my primary concern was for the first, specifically the Chinese view. I don’t regret writing them, and am glad I did. However, I still haven’t written my feelings on how Chinese, and later most cultures, see spirits.
Until the 20th Century, nobody pretended that folk beliefs and spirits were anything truly defendable against. After all, if you can’t see an invisible troublemaker, you can’t tell if you’re seeing him making mischief or not, or if he’s walked away from you or not, or even if he’s cleaning up his messs. Or not. Also, most people hadn’t heard of the scientific method, and had no idea how to go about testing the validity of folk beliefs. If they did try, they didn’t know how to keep constants and a single independent variable, nor more importantly the bias they themselves held while conducting the trial. Thus, once they did learn such things, it wasn’t long before they stopped marvelling at the glittering towers of science and decided to dig up the earthy stories they grew up on.
Many superstitions were discredited. Others were convincingly proved false by the confirmation or rejection of others. There are still plenty to be tested. Regardless, people hold onto their beliefs in the face of hard, tangible proof. For example, people trust that pyramids were built by aliens, rather than thinking that Egyptians might have also had geniuses like Newton or Galileo or Einstein to direct such endeavours.1 Or far closer to home are horoscopes. Supposedly the motion of the heavenly bodies affects our lives and thus the combination of natural events, other persons and personal experiences which together is luck. So if we know how to read those bodies, we can predict and anticipate booms and slumps in our lives and take advantage of them accordingly. However, few people know (or care, even sadder) that if you cover the signs and read the advice in a horoscope, most people can’t tell the difference, even if the advice contradict. This is a particular technique of speaking. The writer lists circumstances almost any human being should be going through or feels they are going through and then gives the sensible2 solution to dealing with it.
And besides, we have discovered flocks of galaxies in the gaps between adjacent stars, but no one has said how they determine when I will next nearly-faint when I see the girl of my (one-sided) affection.
The point is, humans believe what they will, no matter what other people say, if they truly, honestly want to.
Which brings me to spirits. Humans believe they are not alone. In a world where at least ten billion people have lived their lives, this shouldn’t be an object of dispute. But then humanity would prefer to think that there are other collective entities that exist in the universe. Namely, aliens and spirits. Aliens come later. Spirits come now.
Spirits can take charge of a specific landmark. A stone, a brook, a pile of dirt, any of these are viable dwelling places. Alternatively, they can be part of an organism, anything from a redwood to a mayfly. Disregarding the actual abilities of their hosts, spirits of the world can interact with humans, often manipulating the physical to bring across surprisingly human desires. A tree may demand a dish of cooked rice every day, though it lacks jaws and may indeed be touted as a form of cannibal for doing so. Failure to comply, however, leads to misfortune that the immobile tree has caused whilst hard at work smashing water and carbon dioxide molecules into their atoms and subsequently reforming them into sugar as it then takes the energy released by the reaction.
The spirits may in fact take human form at times, though it is clear that they are not human themselves. So say the many fae who have been taken by men and birthed halfling children. Supposedly being foreign entities with different origins as ourselves, they should also have few similarities in our ways of thinking. But they can fight wars with as much vigour as ourselves at times.
This view might be false. Maybe all spirits are human, simply at one time or another, but we can all be labelled as a member of spiritkind. The pontianak is a famous one in Southeast Asia. The ghost of a newly-wedded bride, if I remember correctly, it resides in banana trees.3 Any disturbance made to the banana tree is asking for trouble, for the pontianak will then harass you in your daily life, preferably at nighttime, when you are more vulnerable. The only way to sate it is to undergo a complex ritual filled with delightful ceremonies (also preferably at nighttime), at which the pontianak returns to its tree, waiting for the next hapless victim to offend it.
Here is my point of contest. If all spirits might be considered human in a human body, and that many feared spirits were in fact humans when alive, why should we be afraid of them? We can be afraid of people, but if we learn of their lives and the many facets of the singular human gestalt, our fear may lessen or be accompanied by feelings of empathy, pity or maybe even admiration. There is no such thing in spirits. Spirits are filled with one thing, and that is an emotion. Be it anger, hatred, fear, longing or love, that is their only manifestation and they fulfil it in all their sightings.
I put this down to public relations. Frankly, hearing a ghost speaking of the old days when people made their own chaptehs, not like now where they’re all assembled in a factory by a few bored workers, is not a ghost who is likely to be remembered. But a ghost who goes on and on and on about the wrongs done to it in its life seems a tad more intriguing, even if a moment’s thought reveals that the average human life is filled with wrongs anyway and contains pleasures if only a moment’s thought is spared.
Humans are not people of one emotion. That is one-dimensional. All people display at least three dimensions of thought in their lives, for the sake of analogy. Heart, mind and soul, which only by coincidence number three, are the minimum that make up a person. Surely those pontianaks have sly thoughts that ambush them in the middle of an outrage of security that remind them that their victim is someone’s child, someone’s friend and maybe someone’s parent. Maybe they too wonder what happens to bad pontianaks who don’t lash out at every person who touches their banana leaves properly. Perhaps they mourn for their grooms who moved on without them or effectively died on their deathdays. In short, if you talk of a human spirit, that spirit will appear a human under a sufficiently long period of scrutiny.
I am aware our so-called ways of such scrutiny are little more than mumbo-jumbo at worst and near-actual experiences that straddle the line between imagination and reality at best. I am also aware that most conveniently, spirits are said to shy away from humans and thus would not savour an interview.
In group dynamics, there are a majority of people who nod and mumble when a leader or makeshift one goes and lead them, a minority who join that leader to rise to positions of power and another minority who reject that leadership and gambol off to do things their own way. I like to think I’m the third. I assume that most spirits fall in the first category, and possibly the second as well. So in our entire span of existence, I don’t see why it’s unreasonable that humanity should have spiritual encounters of the third kind.
Sadly, knowing people, they probably thought such encounters weren’t good tales. We, after all, are never as sensible as we’d like to be, whether in confirmed life or unproved death.

Deader than Dead

On the average, I tend to assume most people are too busy being alive to bother about abstract notions like ghosts and the spiritual world. However, it seems as if the exact opposite is true, and what I once heard from our Pastor Jeremy was also true: That people are very concerned about spirituality, but not about God.
This being the seventh month of the Chinese calendar, it is plausible that have given in to the crowd for once in my way of thinking. However, I don’t feel that has happened. Anyway, they’ve gone and made a detour somewhere else so we now have two differing views on the same subject.
Like today. Chee Siong was sharing a recount by a schoolmate who could supposedly see ghosts. During CID lesson she saw1 a ghost following one of the teachers, and began talking to it. Apparently, it was doing ghostly deeds, looking for someone it knew when it was supposedly alive. Since she was on the topic, the schoolmate then asked the ghost please not to haunt anyone, and the spectral fellow agreed. She apparently also has a reputation for her third eye.
About three weeks before that, Kelvin and Yuejun also got on the topic while eating at McDonald’s. They went through basic stuff, like how spirits live in a world practically invisible to our eyes, except for the select few who could be seen who also happened to be the select few who had major communication problems. Communication with people, that is, and not other spirits. I can only speculate about how they joke, scold, tease, cry and jolly one another.
And now the background information is past, and I can begin the real thing.
People have a few beliefs of life after death, healthy in that it shows how varied we are, unhealthy in that they are not necessarily inclusive of one another.
The first is the afterlife, where based on our deeds on earth2 we are judged and then sorted into differing afterlives to spend, suffer or enjoy indefinite eternity. The Greeks have these three together, named Hades, Tartarus and the Plains of Elysium respectively. Alternatively, there is reincarnation, but that’s for later. The Chinese afterlife also has this, people are transformed into fairies and are from thereon part of the celestial hierarchy until they commit some minor error and are flung back to earth for punishment. The Catholics have this in the form of Purgatory, Hell and Heaven. Purgatory is where all souls must suffer for their sins by going through a limbo. Sounds like a boring sitting session magnified a few thousand times. Once they have paid their toll, may they then ascend to heaven, or descend to hell if I’m right. Catholics may lessen or even redeem their dead by praying for their sins and beseeching the Mother Mary to forgive them because of her authority over Jesus.
The thing is, most of these belief systems deal primarily with afterlife forever. From living a life where we at best expect to live to a hundred to a life where a millennium and a day make little difference does not sound right. Even assuming that the afterlife is just like normal life and that we can pursue our interests just like before, and then keeping in mind Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem which proves that no matter what systems of knowledge we build, there will always be an area of unprovability, it sounds rather grating after the first few eons or so.
Christianity is a special case because the one criterion is acceptance of Jesus Christ as the global Redeemer of humanity’s inherent sin. All other ways go to hell, a cheerful evangelical message that has brought crowds flocking to churches over the years, mostly with sledgehammers. The Christian Heaven is a place where humanity shall be fulfilled by becoming one with Jesus by being part of the church while the church is wedded to Him, from henceforth we spend eternity praising Him in life. The Christian Hell is a place devoid of God’s love, filled with suffering and denoted as “eternal death” although the soul is obviously conscious enough to suffer.
The second is reincarnation. Though usually characterized by a succession of the soul through tiers of organisms, there have also been systems where inorganic matter joins the cycle. Everybody starts from dirt. However, if one pile of dust leads an especially puritan existence spent in devout worship of the Great Vague Oneness, in its next life3 it may then upgrade to a higher level of inorganicness or finally become alive. Presumably, they start at the bottom of the evolutionary tree/shrub/forest. But people had other systems then, always with mammals just below man, who topped the construction. Within humanity, one would then ascend society, rising from beggar to worker to official to ruler.4 Despite all this, the ultimate aim is not for a grain to one day become a president, but to escape the cycle altogether, and then entering a good old afterlife where we then spend eternity being One with everything else. We might try being Another, but then that might have been what caused the appearance of a divine Adversary in the first place.
The third is that we live on only one plane out of myriads, greatly extending our universe beyond physical boundaries and parallel universes to spiritual realms as well.5 When we die, we merely discard our physical shell for freedom of movement as a spirit. This spirit then ascends to the next plane, either physical as well or spiritual, to live another life followed by another death followed by another transmigration and so on. Whether there is any choice in the matter is unknown, but there has been no real limit set on the number of planes that exist. In other words, one leads an existence6 of lives and deaths and transmigrations that lasts forever. There are books that are found on this. They read like game manuals,.
The fourth is that there is no afterlife. When we die, it’s all over.
The fifth, subset of the fourth, is that we live on in our descendants’ genes, and later recognized, memes. By spreading our genetic code far throughout the gene pool, we can ensure effective immortality by having bits and pieces of ourselves live on in other people. It may not be all of us, and probably won’t offer decent after-dinner conversation, but it part of us, and that makes it us. The concept of memes follows this, except that the unit in question is an idea and not a gene. As V famously said, “Ideas are bulletproof.” But then, they’re just as prone being left behind as genes are. From another view, if we divide ourselves into pieces, and somehow ensure those pieces are put back together at later dates, by which we can further extend our lifespan, that is also called living forever. However, this heavily demands an understanding of the theory of emergence, which is nowhere as simple as it appears.
The final theory, the most speculative of all, the one that demands evidence but cannot receive it, is that our lives are only the cores of our existences, and that our existence lasts as long as the universe. Take it like this: We are made of atoms, or quarks, or some other arbitrary indivisible unit of matter. Although there are a great many atoms in our body, there is a far larger number of atoms in all the universe, compared to which we make up essentially zero. This is not a worry. In fact, it means when we die, we can rest knowing that one day, there will be one of our atoms floating around in a supernova, flying on the solar wind, locked up in frozen helium, sitting in a cube of sugar or slushing in an ocean. That, in itself, is a form of existing. And if you consider that the soul cannot be explained by the physical workings of the body, the soul is although linked to the body does not originate from the body itself, then it can be said that the being, while not experiencing sensation after death, nonetheless endures as long as its atoms still exist. And since matter equals energy based on E=mc2, then somewhere in the future, we will power our children’s engines.
Theories 1-3 require the existence of a Deity or a pantheon of them. Theory 4 is both a reason to shoot yourself now and not to, remaining equally bleak in both prospects. Theories 5 and 6 are similar but not precisely identical views on this, but imply that we ourselves can create something approaching that if we went about things the right way.
By right, each theory deserves a full shelf in a philosophy library to itself. But then, I don’t have the time or the philosophical stamina to carry on such theories and ensure their integrity at the same time. Even if I threw integrity into a lake7 I would still lack enough time.
But they are interesting introductions, and if I find someone to dispute any of them with, I can honestly say that will be the first intellectually stimulating exchange I’ve ever had.

Touched on: Religion, afterlife, Godel, spiritual succession, life, death, deconstructionism, emergence

1Believed she saw. I’m not inclined to believe that.
2Not the planet Earth, but some entire plane we dwell in for now
3That is, wind disturbs and destroys the pattern the components creat, collapsing a mound of soil in a thin film of dust, for instance
4That isn’t to say parallel universes and spiritual realms aren’t combined sometimes though.
5This just may explain the divine right of kings, but I leave that to a terrible tendency of people to follow someone who uses a chunk of metal to raise his height by a foot.
6For life loses its connotations and meanings under such heavy philosophical barrage
7Most likely losing stamina at the same time because I know that what I’m writing may be rubbish due to faulty reasoning.

On Two Letters

XY: My one. The one that as I've seen is the more difficult to possess and master at the same time. Males are generally expected to adhere to an abstract concept called 'masculinity'. I have no idea what it is, since many so-called 'macho' traits are in fact present in females as well as males, and vice versa. However, failure to do so, which is easier to attain, results in severe reproach by society. And while some men are rightly accused of being effeminate, others are simply called 'unmanly'. There appears to be a middle ground that is an undesirable place to be.
Another problem is the biological role of men. Men are singularly programmed: Get to a female and impregnate her. Hopefully, this simple line may be repeated continuously for the whole of his fertility. Of course, it is implied he will have to do some choosing, since randomly bonking any woman may result in undesirable offspring ie ones with bad genes. That's why men also have a mental augmentation to judge their mates fairly. Hair that is kept long and glossy implies the owner is so healthy she can keep a beautiful crown of hair WHILE muddling through the challenges of life, and can certainly be expected to have the capacity to support a child or two. Breast-waist-hip ratio by right should have large breasts for ample nursing and large hips for ample space for an enormously large head such that the waist is perceived as small in comparison. We know how that went in fashion... The supposedly ideal girl should have a fleshy figure. Seriously. The other extremes, skinny and fat, respectively show too little bodily substance and too large an appetite for substance. I don't dare tread into faces. Too much trouble lies there.
Now, understanding the concept of beauty from the male point of view may be all good and well, but then we realise that those delicate pictures of beauty are actually human beings just like us. Around like us. Maybe we actually have opposing personalities, but disregarding their life experiences and ways of action and reaction they're just like us. Still, it's probably not clear to think of a girl talking. To be accurate, it's more like finding out an intriguing, teasing and enchanting artwork can and will talk enough to hold conversation. A conversation that may be the more enjoyable for the artwork's nature, but if you listen to the words you realise they're what people talk about every day.
Come on. Every time, every single time I see a girl or lady in a group of guys I think, 'What a beautiful flower. So fragile, so soft, so gentle on the eyes'. I get the impression it's not a healthy way of thinking, since I haven't ever seen it mentioned. Moreover, flowers ARE organs for purely sexual purposes.

Anyway, men by nature ought to chase and gank their dream set of women, whichever of them is available at the time. But some are too shy, and hang around wishing those girls would just be receptive long enough for them to sink their hooks in. Others are too enthusiastic about them, mingling with the long-haired crowd and chattering away joyously. The bastards. The rest are somewhere in between. These are the sad ones. Society will bash people like the latter for taking advantage of females. Society will also bash people with no initiative to be men. I just hope society will suddenly wake up and see its own male components. Then it can bash itself for closure.


Note: This is more akin to a rant than an actaul dissertation on the male gender and views on females. The logic here is the rare refined type unendingly distilled to produce some basic element of human nature that is shiny, but if hooked it up to your thinking, stores mostly shocks.
Note on note: That isn't to say it doesn't WORK.