Is MDA asking bloggers to declare their income? An interview with Missy Dotty

As some of you know our beloved MDA is planning to roll out a “new ruling” requiring bloggers to declare their income? Check these two essays out : MDA wants bloggers to declare their income  / MDA wants bloggers to declare sponsorship? How about making circulation audits compulsory first? Could they be right?

Well to be honest with you I don’t know – so recently, I caught up with Missy Dotty our resident legal advisor cum owner of this fabulous site to find out more about this new development.

Darkness Q: Dotty, as you know the MDA is planning to roll up a new guideline to regulate bloggers – there is a lot of rumors circulating in the internet concerning this development – some see it as the end of blogging as we know it; others on the other hand have even compared it as an underhanded method by our government to control blog-o-sphere. Can you give us more information about the origins of this initiative along with why this subject is currently being mooted?

Missy Dotty: What MDA may be doing is taking the cue from a recent guideline that has been issued by the F.T.C. (Federal Trade Commission) based in the US concerning certain revision of rules about endorsements and testimonials in advertising – you need to understand, the F.T.C last issued such guidelines nearly 30 years ago – so this is really a timely update to align many of their fair advertizing guidelines to address the rapidly shifting new-media world and how advertisers are using bloggers and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to market their products and services.

The general thrust of the F.T.C guideline is bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including the receipt of freebies and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers. So it is wrong to suggest this is guideline concerning declaration of income or even origin of income. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The goal of the F.T.C is to protect consumers by ensuring full disclosure – so for example if you happen to operate a prominent food blog and you write a favorable review about a restaurant – all the F.T.C is saying is if you received any freebies; then you should disclose to the reader.

Darkness Q: Is this unusual? I mean is “full disclosure” something that should be reasonably expected from reviews in the new media?

Dotty: It really depends Darkness. In some industries, the practice seems to be more apparent than others. One obvious industry where it is now common practice to provide full disclosure is the financial services and even in the pharmaceutical industry the idea is seen as “best practice”, where the subject matter expert is frequently required to declare whether he owns any stock or has any dealings with the pharmaceutical firm.

But where it continues to less clear Darkness is in general product reviews and this can range from anything from holidays to cosmetics. Its fair to say the F.T.C is looking to bring those others areas into line.

Q: How consistent is this legally?

Dotty: A beter way to structure the question is not to ask how consistent that approach is with the law, this isn’t a parking violation where the law may be expected to operate automatically, it really depends on a case by case basis;  because one can never really be consistent when it comes to product reviews and endorsements; as the line is not very clear. For instance:  not every reviewer writes favorable reviews just because they have been given freebies – many don’t and many even claim it doesnt affect their vocational judgement.

A better question would be to ask; where does the legitimacy or right to full disclosure derive from? – and I think it goes back to the principle of conflict of interest vis-à-vis a testimony can only be entrusted providing the decision maker doesn’t have a vested interest in the outcome – so for example, if I happen to be a judge who has considerable investments in a  firm that happens to be a plaintiff, then it will be a conflict of interest for me to even preside over the proceedings.

The case is very robust; but the question is whether it sits well with the whole idea of how things are transacted in the real world. By this I mean that even the law recognizes implicitly there is a need for some widget space, the idea of hype and spin or what you Darkness would term as the marketing manifesto – so the law will never hold a firm accountable if it decides to market a product under a caption, “red bull makes you a bull.” You can buy a bottle of red bull and drink it and if you don’t transform into a bull; that doesn’t automatically give you a right of claim against the firm as in law it known as an invitation to treat. In other words, it’s just marketing hype.

Darkness: Q How does this whole idea of invitation to treat color the whole question of full disclosure?

Dotty. Its really everything because the law doesn’t treat the average consumer like a baby – so when someone reads an advertisement about hair loss products and even sees a famous celebrity endorsing it; the law actually expects the average consumer to exercise a modicum of care in their assessment to ensure those claims are true – the $64 million question is whether when you read a review about a product in a blog; how reasonable is it to expect the average reader to winnow truth from lies? And this is really a subjective rather than an objective question – it’s also the key to understanding the scope of what the F.T.C is trying to accomplish.

From my understanding; the F.T.C  doesn’t expect that every blogger who gets a freebie meal once a year and writes a favorable review about a restaurant should even disclose anything; but lets say that you’re a renowned food critic who regularly writes reviews in your blog; then the F.T.C expects you to buy into the gold standard of full disclosure – so the skeleton key to understanding this whole idea of full disclosure really revolves around the question of credibility i.e do you hold yourself out as a subject matter expert? How much sway do you have over your audience? What is the size of your readership?

Ultimately, the question will be both a matter of qualitative and quantitative reasoning.

Since the government keeps claiming that there is only lies and disinformation in the internet; this should prompt us all to ask; then what’s the basis to even demand blogs to fully disclose their association with firms should they decide to write favorably or negatively about products or services? This doesn’t make any sense to me.

Darkness: let me get it clear; in you last statement – you said the law doesn’t expect ordinary bloggers to fully disclose – so what you seem to be saying is not even the F.T.C expects ordinary bloggers to fully disclose their association with firms?

Dotty: Yes. 99.9% of bloggers in the US will not be subject to this F.T.C guideline; I dont see MDA departing from this benchmark; if they do, it will be pretty hard to justify– and it’s very clear when one goes through the specific examples that is provided in the 81 page report that, that’s actually the case.

But Darkness you know and I know that people don’t process information in that manner. What they see is the big stick of the $11,000 fine and they draw the simple conclusion that if they cross the mythical line, it’s going to come down on them.

The law doesn’t work that way; you will be surprise; how precise it really is.

Q: When you say the F.T.C guideline is very precise on this point of full disclosure, can you give us an example.

A: I don’t have too. The F.T.C actually provides an example by way of a case study in this 81 page report where it defines the term “material connection.” This is important because if you are going to fine someone $11,000 you need to establish this burden of proof.

And here its stated very clearly: “The blogger has primary responsibility for disclosing that he received the video game system for free, the manufacturer has an obligation to advise the blogger at the time it provides the gaming system that he should make the disclosure in any positive reviews of the system.”

The key phrase here is “the manufacturer has an obligation to advise the blogger.”

The question here is if the onus is entirely on the blogger to disclose; then why should the manufacturer even need to advise the blogger to do so?

Unless of course the F.T.C places the onus of full disclosure on the manufacturer or service provider and not the blogger – and if that is really the case then how can the blogger even be held solely accountable for his actions?

They law is very clear here and the spirit and intendment is even clearer – as what the F.T.C is trying to do is to ensure firms and not bloggers don’t misuse the new media platform.

Q: How sure are you that the F.T.C guideline doesn’t target individual bloggers?

A: On the balance of probability; I would say 100%. Because if the F.T.C is going to direct the process to go after individual bloggers; first of all that would be very impractical.

Secondly, it will just takes them down a very nasty road that is bristling with broader issues concerning free speech, first amendment rights, right to privacy etc. And it’s even arguable whether that’s constitutionally kosher. I don’t see the F.T.C going down that road with individual bloggers – I don’t discount it may go after entities who may be using blogging as a medium to communicate with their target market and other firms who may fashion themselves under the broader umbrella of dot.com firms. But I am very confident that they will not go after individual bloggers who may not even see the need to register a company, as that will really complicate the proceedings considerably.

Whereas if the F.T.C  decides to hold firms responsible that simplifies proceedings immeasurably and side skirts many of the thorny issues – I think what you need to understand is not only does the law need to conform to certain structural norms imposed by legal text, precedent and doctrine; but more importantly, it also needs to be enforceable.

Q: You mentioned there are thorny issues that the F.T.C will have to contend with; can you share with us all what they may be?

A: Certainly – the world isn’t as gullible as it used to be – following 9/11 it was possible to rubber stamp all sorts of nonsense ranging from arrest without trial to unmitigated torture, all in the name of the war against terror. These days all those things which were once considered acceptable moral accommodations are now so abhorrent and reprehensible that they are being dismantled even as we speak – and the case for vigilance against encroachment of elemental rights is considerably sharpened by this new attitude – one not only sees this in law journals; but it has also come to color much of discourse in academia and in industry – and if you really take the trouble to look around a lot of noise isn’t emerging from the lunatic fringe; they are really coming out from very intelligent enclaves where people are demanding congruence and moral accountability – they don’t have anything against the idea of protecting consumers; but they certainly don’t wish to see the ambit of the law encroaching upon their rights to privacy and freedom of speech; neither is it reasonable not to expect people to wonder why if blogs should be subject to this guideline of full disclosure; then why aren’t other streams of media subjected to the same criteria of conformance? Maybe we should demand the same of political parties; governments; newspapers; television; radio and the entertainment industry etc.

From what I see this is really the fly in the ointment – many people dont understand why the F.T.C is picking on bloggers – t’s an area that is bristling with contrarian views and it’s fair to say; it may be some time before we can really see the final form of what the F.T.C can roll out?

Q: “The F.T.C can roll out?” You speak as if they don’t have the final say?

A: They dont. And they know it. Not when you consider how so much of trade and commerce has already migrated online – business realities will definitely weigh in to shape the final form of the guideline – its fair to say following the 1st December roll out of the guideline what we will see is something very close to the first run of electric cars and waterproof mascara’s – it’s very very early days - if the F.T.C was really that confident of enforceability - the words, “rarely” – “sparingly” – “case by case” – “in the event…”  would not have featured some 50 times in the 81 page report – instead it would have read like something straight out from the Magna Carta, where every passage would begin with the prefix “anno domini.”

In legal parlance, when a document provisions so much “if’s” and “maybe’s” that can only really mean one thing – the F.T.C are wary of painting themselves into a corner and one way of hedging against this possibility is by provisioning lotsa of discreationary powers.

Paradoxically, that may be why so many people find the F.T.C guidelines so intimidating - as it really covers a very big geography that touches of every aspect of life.

Q; Just a final question Dotty; you know the people in wayangparty are quite nervous by this development – do you think, the MDA ruling will work against them?

A: Really I don’t see why that should be Darkness. We’ve all being told time and again: there is nothing but lies and disinformation in the internet. Invoking the law may just break that magic spell – why should anyone do such a silly thing?

Really dont be so ridiculous.

Dedicated to you Darkness. You try too hard.

The Brotherhood Press 2009

This conversation between Missy Dotty (kind owner of this site who has kindly allowed us to invade her) and Darkness of the brotherhood / has been recorded by both JDAM and Y2K (director general of the Free Internet Library Board – FILB) – Please kindly transact  in Standard Imperium Only within the allocated free zone provided / all clearing houses in Singapore will shut down with immideate effect @ 1730 GMT – 29-10-09 /  Pls help us to relay this message to our allies and channel partners to do the same / we will be diverting traffic to facilitate communication – you may not be able to access the gaming network- as we have all been given strict instructions not to disclose anything here or elsewhere / published in Ekunaba / SLF 1 to 8 (our new Malaysian Portal) / Phi Beta Kappa / Strangelands / Ikiran / Just Stuff/  Siyuran (New Japanese Portal) / Confederation. – The Brotherhood Press 2009 – This interview carries a E-prom codex to facilitate your navigation – 982398- Doberman.

Will Singapore and Malaysia go to war in the name of chili crab? – A study in gastronomical intrigues

(This essay is dedicated to Missy Dotty, the kind owner of this site – Happy Birthday, my butterfly – yours always Darkness of the brotherhood ) The mood is taunt and hyper tense…no I am talking about my daily travails on the MRT like how long can one stare at a pretty girl in a short skirt without coming across as a crazed suicide bomber….I am talking about something far more serious…yes, food wars. To be precise the principle of food sovereignty – it would be hilarious, if only it wasn’t taken so seriously – tell me is chilli crab Malaysian or Singaporean? What about laksa, is it ours or theirs? Are we going to the Hague?

So what’s really going on here? Well, let’s see it’s certainly not didacticism, not directly per se at least, neither does it seem to be entirely xenophobic polemics either though I dont doubt, it’s often dressed up as such. If anything it’s a riff on the equivalent scale of bottled air i.e nothing. But having said the food war is a big nothing doesn’t mean that it’s not worth jumping up and down for.

In fact food has always been a contentious subject. And one reason for that is because it’s always been more than just food and carries with it a whole spectrum of motifs, symbolisms and identity. That could well be the reason why at every WTO summit, it’s almost de riguer for anti-globalization militants to smash the windows of McDonalds and Starbucks – they’re often seen (real or imagined) as the icons of American capitalist hegemony.

It would seem what’s happening these days is a new phenomenon, but its really an ongoing melee that’s as old as the hills – even today the ubiquitous croissant is still frowned upon in the muslim world as many consider it a culinary barbed repartee;  since its unique crescent shape symbolizes the defeat of the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683 – as the French would literally say when they munch on their fav staple, we had them (the muslim invaders)  for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The Jews are no different; they dip their bread in salt to symbolize the beginning and end of the sab-bath; as salt has always been the symbol of the great perserver Hark-mathi-ter (that’s why your pay is called salary and not chili padi); it speaks of permanence and eternity - with the Jews, it speaks of Gods unchanging covenant with his chosen people – I will always love you like no other!

My point is when we speak about food; we aren’t just talking about food…….as it’s often steeped in tradition, history and heritage.

My personal experience of food wars goes all the way back to the period just before America invaded Iraq during a business trip; when a culinary fatwah was issued against “French fries” which was surreptitiously renamed “American” fries and even came with a mini sized star and stripes flag, presumably to warn diners if they ever dared to order French fries, then they’re likely to be served a tablespoon of rat poison to go with it – it was ridiculous but understandable considering how so many ordinary Americans considered the French denouncation of the Iraqi invasion a downright love America spoiler.

But this isn’t just a celluloid version of pulp fiction with lashings of French dressing and a side dish of chutney, it’s very real and it carries with it serious undertones about nationhood, identity, heritage etc – which is increasingly politicized and even seen as something worth protecting at every cost and opportunity – the whole idea may have something to do with how so many people through out the world succumb to the charms of a bygone age when food was really a mirror of their cultural heritage. Sounds valedictory, but nonetheless it doesn’t discount the fact many may even identify themselves with food to such an extent, it may even be the only way of linking us to our ancestors, binding us together and thereby giving us all a sense of belonging – that’s why it’s so important.

Only to me I can’t but help feel, it’s like two ticks arguing who owns the dog. As these days the whole idea of food is increasingly so open minded that it’s brains are even spilling out – don’t believe me; when was the last time you held a tomato the size of a football in a hypermarket? How did it get so big? I rest my case.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for the whole idea of getting more for less with the aid of bio-science – only it would make me immeasurably happier if the genetically modified food movement didn’t read like some Sci-Fi Mangellian horror story – where different genes ranging from hardy cannabis weed to the DNA of tadpoles are all good to go in the name of mass producing food of mass destruction – cross broccoli with strawberries and you get crunchy purple broccoli that taste a lot like high end Brussel sprouts. Cross a chicken with a tadpole and you get poultry with only the cuts you like to eat: legs that run forever, big breast and no brains (not a bad commercial idea for selling an extreme make over to the fairer sex in Singapore) – cross a gorilla with a mango and what do you get? Well, whatever it is, I’ve probably wouldn’t stand around and argue with it – you get my drift nothing these days is kosher any longer. Prognosis: the age of real food has gone the way of silicone tits, fake eyelashes and veneer porcelian implants - it died a long time ago, all we really have is one big rojak minus the geylang serai dead rat.

To add fuel to the already impassionate food wars; we also need to square off the food accounts with that other Slobodan Milosevic cum Adolf Hitler of the culinary world. Yes, fusion food which just happens to be equivalent of the assasin creed to everything that was once original, pure and unalloyed– here the mantra is everything is good to go, no such thing East or West here. Everything just goes into one big United Nations wok where the whole world is mixed in a heady mix of condiments and given a good stir and voila you have something that is completely inedible – that probably also causes you cancer of the wallet.

Food I am reminded is hardly food – Recently LKY even took a swipe at the golden arches, where we warned Obama & Co about how the world is increasingly associating the American persona with the evils of artery clogging inducing hamburgers and whole idea of chain stores that paradoxically strip national identity like paint stripper.

Yes, it’s all terribly confusing – how something that is so innocuous, benign and everyday can even find itself suddenly embroiled in power & politics. And that’s really the cue for me to take a break as all this talk about food is really making me very hungry. But before I adjourn for chow: who will prevail? Will our Laksa be invaded by the Malaysian version? What about our Lontong’s can they hold out against the peanut brigade of the Javanese…..who knows, nonetheless one thing is for certain; things are likely to get hotter and spicier with the stirring and if there’s going to be any resolution to the makansutra impasse, expect it not to settled in either Singapore or Malaysia, but rather a distant faraway land called Absurdistan.

Bon Appetite

Darkness 2009

The Brotherhood Press 2009 – this tribute has been posted in SLF 1 to 7 (our new gaming portal based in Malaysia) / Phi Beta Kappa / Ikiran / The Strangelands / Just Stuff.

This  is something that I’ve been toying with for a new book…….maybe……..perhaps…only a few problems here; don’t really like the set pieces; the characters seem card boardish; plot seems a tad petulant and self-indulgent.  To cap it off, everyone is either dying or trying to end their life – apart from that, I think it’s a great template for a block buster – Darkness 2009

Singanews, the theory and reality – A study in internet stupidity

Did you miss out on this? Will Singapore and Malaysia go to war in the name of chili crab? – A study in gastronomical intrigues September 18, 2009

The “war” between bloggers and mainstreamers is notable for the amount of civil disobedience on both sides. But even this pales in comparisons with wars between bloggers and bloggers.

Who is Singanews? What is their agenda? Do they have a right to project into blogosphere? You know what? To me those questions only really make sense if you believe in some claptrap about what constitutes acceptable blogging – that’s a bit like talking about spitting cobra’s in Scotland – the thing doesn’t exist!

That’s one reason why I am choosing to sit this one out. Whether out of a live-and-let-live philosophy, or a heartfelt indifference to the question is something that I shall leave for a future date – I am not even going to broach those issues; not yet, at least.

My reason for deferring judgment is very simple; no Da Vinci code to it. I haven’t seen what Singanews has to offer yet; as far as I am concerned that’s the long and short of it – let me share one thing with all of you; you don’t need 10 bullet points to bring down an elephant; you just need one decent shot right between the eyes and there you have it. kaboom! The rest is mere commentary.

If you’ve already made up your mind about Singanews; then you’re either a complete idiot or a reincarnation of Nostradamus. Because I cannot possibly see how you can even draw a definitive conclusion about a thing in the absence of information – that’s not how intelligent folk go about the business of appraising stuff – they go with the flow and if it rubs the wrong way; they step aside and watch it go over a cliff – but they never ever form judgments before they’ve chewed on the cake. Never!

The way I see it; any social initiative has a right to project online providing they aren’t in the business of spreading hate, disharmony and discord; matters little to me whether it’s political, technological, religious or even the lunatic fringe; providing they’re not playing with matches or fabricating nuclear weapons in some garden shed – they all have the right to decent starting blocks and the benefit of good light.

You chew on that! Because I am dishing out wisdom here; the stakes are higher than you think! – as the danger of narrowing our focus on what constitutes acceptable blogging is it’s bound to drive out the thinking quotient in the internet in the long run –  and that’s really the mother of wrong turns; as that’s the cue for someone to come around and tell you what is good and bad, right and wrong etc – next thing you know, you’re putting up your hands for urination breaks – so one day if you end up fat, lonely, poor and find yourself having to snuggle up to a Taiwanese silicone sex doll because no one wants to fuck you - you have no one to blame, but yourself – because you never ever once bothered to use your brain; you never ever once insisted on the right to work it through by saying, “shut the fuck up and let me work it through at my own time and space…I’ve get back to you in good time”; you just surrendered your most precious asset; your right to think to some gay galdaff (whose only claim to fame incidentally, is to blog for ten years and show us all how, it’s possible to still end up in square one and still prove there is such a thing called perpetual motion) or some supremo legend-in-my-own-mind site called theonlinecitizen who told you all to jump up and down like a jack rabbit and off you go like a buy one, get one free wind up mouse! – you deserve your miserable lot as you just bought lock, stock and barrel into the seven habits of highly ineffective folk – the way I see it, you deserve to run out of petrol, keel over and die! I ain’t even going to move one millimeter to save you as you may after all be doing the human race a favor!

Call it tough love, but that’s the low down – it doesn’t get better than that; if this isn’t a nice message; you roll with it as best you can.  I’ve make it up to you and be nice to you in my next post. But as it stands; this is as good as it gets; you better get with it! Wisdom that is.  

 Darkness 2009

A New Space Station will be in the neighborhood – KDD Tamally Maak

All gamers please be informed. A new space station bearing the Free Neutral Royal Persian flag will be comissioned @ sector 850.390.771 @ Primus time: 09587301 to coordinate the growing space traffic and interplanetary com-sat in this new space trade route - this new space station is our latest Dimitri class platform with geo-orbital capabilities - over 300 Dimitri class space stations currently serve throughout the known universe with unparalleled success and reliability.  

We will be naming this exceptional gift the KDD Tamally Maak; our hope is it will bring peace, prosperity and ever lasting friendship throughout the known universe.

KOHO

A complete lock down of the network will be enabled at 13-09-09 @ 1630 GMT (Primus time: 0956391) / all channels  from Single line feed (SLF’s) No.1 to No.7 will stand down for a period of 30 minutes when the space station is comissioned - please do not be alarmed; gamers in this sector are likely to experience possible lost of com-sat, this is normal  - we bear letters directly from her royal highness Princess Sorhyana of the Imperial Persian court and throughout the comissioning of this space station. As always we come in the name of Peace, we will also be flying the flags of the free legation – please help us to circulate this message to all known channels. We are also requesting for volunteers who are proficient in written Arabic; some of us know how to speak it, but very few us can write well; please report to bay 7 in Project Entropia @ 12-09-09 / 1300 hr GMT  - KOHO.

Why District 9 Teaches You About Humanity – A Study in the Power to Disturb

Did you miss out on this? Get it here! The Words We Regularly Use To Say Nothing Is Something – A Study in the travesty of reason

It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it just hits the spot – no I am not talking about my Friday night binges with the local Bangla’s troupe in the void deck. I am referring to the deeply satisfying experience of watching a well crafted sci-fi film that goes beyond your average two in one; let-me waste-your-time-and-insult-your-intelligence flick.

The story is set in Johannesburg South Africa, the first thing that comes thick in the first half of the movie is the narrative has a reality based documentary feel about it.

The plot goes like this: 25 years ago an alien spaceship roughly the size of Sengkang suddenly appears over a city.

When men with no necks armed with assault rifles decide to check the distressed alien ship, they discover loads of aliens who are basically the equivalent of starving Ethiopians; the long and short is we are told the aliens took a wrong turn and can never return back home so we humans dump in a refugee camp called District 9.

What fascinates me about this movie was how the script turns many of our assumptions about alien movies upside down – in District 9, the aliens aren’t depicted as the take me to your leader master of the universe typecast – they come across as inter-galactic karung guni dispossessed nohopers all rolled up into one flea bag – no alien power there.

In the sardonic words of their human overseers: “they’re nothing more than prawns” – your gold fish probably has more rights than them. As they’re subjected to all sorts of inhuman treatment (now you know why inalienable rights count for squat), everyone it seems to want a piece of them.

Arms manufacturers go ga-ga over alien weapons technology. Electronic chip makers are enamored by their cybernetics based control systems. Politicians use the alien as a way of sowing discord to get their grubby hands on the levers of power. Businessmen see the settlement of aliens very much in the way prison services these days are outsourced to private firms – even your friendly Nigerian scam artist who used to trawl the internet are doing brisk business with aliens peddling expired cat food for alien trinkets.

The long and short of it is everyone wants a piece of the alien action. The story in the first half basically unfolds at roughly the speed of a motorized wheel chair – the main protagonist is a company man who goes by the name of Wikus – he’s basically the equivalent of your friendly HDB officer, dengue inspector and local PAP kommissar who keeps knocking on your door because his job is to remind you doors are made to be knocked on.

One day Wikus stumbles on the equivalent of an alien A*Star bio tech experiment – he accidentally maces himself and his DNA goes all wonky and he becomes one of the hunted prawns.

And this is really the point when the plot begins to take off in earnest – as not only do we see a dramatic change in the supremely indifferent Wikus who till then basically considered all aliens as chattels, but we even get to see a sort of metamorphosis going on where Wikus even ends up identifying with the plight of the aliens he once terrified.

When that happens, a shift occurs; not a big one, but enough to remind us how we humans may not be so different from even aliens.

District 9 is really the quintessential tabula rasa – just as some people may consider Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine chapel as nothing more than a colorful comic; others may see it in even profound terms and regard it even as a tour de force of the human creative spirit.

For me what you make of a film is really what you choose to add to it and never what you may take from it – District 9 is one of those movies that borders on the noir; there is loads of room for improvisation and whatever you decide to take from the power to trouble.

As the set pieces that make up the human versus alien conflict can just as well be replaced by how we typically see ourselves in relation to society at large – here I am referring to our beliefs and values which differentiate us from those who may not have the same mindscape – it could well be how we choose to regard those who hold different religious beliefs or even something as trite as many of our assumptions about Bangladeshi expatriates or the seemingly ubiquitous house maid – stretch it further and you could perhaps even juxtapose it to draw out a whole lot of disturbing metaphors, motifs and montages: the foreign talents versus home grown debate, Singaporean Malays and Malaysian Malays, us versus them, internet versus officialdom. The set pieces may be different, but they all belong to the same stripe and would undoubtedly find themselves right at home in the human versus alien genre – You think, you have a God given right to take away my rights in the name of X,Y and Z? District 9 punctuates that belief with a disturbing coda: You better think again! Lest you find yourself getting fucked when it all comes full circle  The list of comparatives are really only limited by ones imagination – only lets be perfectly clear about what the plot is really all about from start to end: it’s an engagement in one of man’s oldest hobbies in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness at the expense of others.

A recurrent theme plays out in District 9; one that bears striking resemblance to the theme Joseph Conrad wrote about in “the heart of darkness.” Where he mentioned, in the age of empire how it is well known that curious men go prying into all sorts of places and come out of them with all sorts of spoils.

As we watch the horror unfolding before Wikus eyes as he tries to slalom safely through the labyrinth of business, politics and power – one is left with the indelible belief what Conrad once shared remains true even to this day and I suspect the future: he warns us not only of the evils of false pride, but also of the spoils that will come back and bite us if we fail to square off the accounts with humanity; along with how crumbly our whole notion of “civilization” and “superiority” really is. As when we boil even the best argument down to crud, the real justification that empowers one person to disrespect another is simply predicated on one timeless piece of desiccated cow dung.

“The conquest of the earth, which most means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter nose than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.”

No District 9 is definitely not “war and peace.” But it’s not an irreverent goody good versus evil take, like “Star Wars” either – it’s definitely none of these things – the only unifying force I would claim for it’s place in the Sci-Fi flick hall of fame is it’s remarkably true to itself even in the classical tradition of story telling; it’s doesn’t try too hard; it even lacks the essential quality of keenness – like that other book that takes one down a narrow sliver of water somewhere in Congo called the heart of Darkness; all it really does is allow us to discover the limits of what it means to remain gainfully human, for that reason alone – District 9 abides.

Darkness 2009 – The brotherhood press 2009 / This essay has been published in SLF 1 to 7 / Ekunaba / Phi Beta Kappa / Just Stuff / Strangelanders / Ikaran.

The Words We Regularly Use To Say Nothing Is Something – A Study in the travesty of reason

Get the latest Sci-Fi Movie Review from the Brotherhood Why District 9 Teaches You About Humanity – A Study in the Power to Disturb

 

I am writing this on the train – so let’s dive straight into the deep end. Agree or disagree? The English language could do with a spot of spring cleaning, where it may even benefit from doing away with certain phrases that have become so confusing and denuded with multiple meanings – as some words can no longer convey meaning coherently without confusing all of us.

 What you say to that? One more time please. Agree or not? What are we talking about exactly?

Well to be precise, its double speak, that pelt rack where words basically get stretch till they die only to be reincarnated into something that is closer to the living dead – George Orwell once wrote about it his narcomantic novel 1984, where along with apocalyptic warnings about pineapple eyed machines that are no larger than houseflies scurrying around spying on every word and deeds; he mentioned how if we continue to remain bovine about how words are used: eventually language will become so encrusted with hidden meanings their real meaning can only fritter away – or, worse, they get dragooned only to be “rehashed to make lies sound truthful to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. He advised: “If one gets rid of these bad habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards rebirth.”

I’m talking about the general clichés that are bandied around with impunity that we may already be marinating in for so long that we may not even be conscious of this corrosive process of chelating, leaching or scouring – unless we really take the effort to say to ourselves, “Hey! What does this mean?” – I am talking about phrases that you and I come across on a daily basis – phrases posing as objective descriptions of events and how they may even have a hidden agenda that subconsciously shape the way we regularly make sense of our world.

An obvious example is the phrase “nation building” – sounds benign enough – after all who could possibly deny every nation needs to be shored up with the odd beam and pillar – only as far as euphemism go who would have ever imagined what it actually means is a card blanche to gut out real narratives for doggy bites for the sole purpose of keeping the status quo ante – where I suspect the operating logic takes it cue from bikini management 101; the vital parts have to be always covered up; as for the rest, its really what we all expect to see.

Another phrase is “strategic,” that’s basically the quintessential crowbar to circumvent any need for “accountability” and “transparency.” Like a magic incantation once something is stamped with the word, “strategic”; what invariably happens is it disappears into a black hole and we are all left making teeth sucking sounds wondering what’s going to happen next – usually nothing happens and we all pack our bags and go back home. To paraphrase: for “strategic” reasons we have every right to give you the mushroom treatment – keep you in the dark and feed you shit. You can’t complain, because its “strategic.” The classical circular argument.

Even the seemingly plain and straightforward isn’t spared from run around treatment – take the case of “equality?” What does it actually mean, well as I recently discovered, it belongs to the same league as unicorns, leprechauns and tooth fairies – and since mother nature remains supremely indifferent to the whole idea of equality, then it doesn’t really exist except perhaps when it comes to premature aging, hair loss and bad teeth. The long and short of it is there is no such thing as equality, don’t get worked up, take a stress pill it’s all in your mind; a figment of your imagination.

What about the much bandied around term “constructive engagement?” What does that really mean? Surely even that phrase hasn’t been given the spring cleaning treatment? Au Contraire, as we can see it can mean anything from condoning genocide to even naming Orchids after Burmese mass murderers and from what little I have been able to gather from the “new improved” P-65 blog (I much prefer those talking heads reminds me of my hunting trophies that hangs in my toilet), even such a benign phrase is capable of evoking sinister images – as what it really means is, if you cant accept what I have say, then you are either immature, unconstructive or some bent on a spot of mayhem. Prognosis: What I have to say is important; what you have to say counts for squat. You need to grow a brain. It’s not my fault if you can’t see my logic; you are the problem, not the solution. Do come back and try again.

My point this afternoon is to emphasize how real meaning can suddenly run away from a word or phrase and replaced by something completely different to reframe our cognitive blue print that we may not even be aware of it: my personal favorite is “life time employment.” Again it evokes that all familiar balm of cosy insiderism where we may perhaps conjure up chicken soup images of stress free senior citizens ambling along to turn the wheel of life in their golden years; only if you really want to catch the latest horror flick of glorious life of battery chicken starring Ah Kong and Ah Mah – do check it out in your nearest golden arches and just watch for yourself how demeaning “life time employment” can actually be when the elderly have to work in conditions designed by time and motion experts.

What about “streaming.” – sounds like some exotic urination technique to avoid prostate complications right – who really feels moved when they hear it? – No one but what we are in fact talking about is good olde fashion zoo keeping – where someone tags and proceeds to pigeon holes some poor sod and issues them a laminated card with the words, “from today onwards, this is your lot, don’t turn left or right, just keep to the road and try to make the best of it.” Never mind that they could be late bloomers like Albert Einstein; never mind that both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates suffered from averagely abysmal academic careers – I am sure all these are just minor kinks in the greater scheme of things – in short, it’s all grist to the mill.

The one phrase that riles me no end has to be “out of context.” This one really takes the cake as the five chili mother of nothingness. I swear, if I should hear it one more time, I will promptly puke up on my cat. Usually it’s framed along the lines of sobriety – “you have taken my words out of context.” I would allow this phrase the benefit of good light if only it wasn’t used and abused so often as some get-out-of-jail free card on the cheap for anybody who is caught back pedaling on what they once said, wrote or did. As we all witnessed recently in the curious case of Sadavisan when he was inexplicably seized by some morbid fear to grab for dear life in the name of “self preservation” and pull a write up from the theonlinecitizen.

Yes, I agree sometimes, a quote can be taken out of context, only my point is if you are to lay claim to such defense, the onus should be on you to furnish the original context and explain why the quote couldn’t possibly apply. Instead, what invariably happens is the default, where the person invoking “out of context” imputes that everyone accusing him for trying to pull off the caper of the century is a contender for the Nostradamus ESP of the year prize – to be perfectly honest with all of you; no phrase has ever harried me to the point of terminal dejection – I even once had a pretty girl in a short dainty skirt SMS me, “care to check out my box tonight? I’ve make it worth your while” Only to be told latter when I appeared in her flat with a bottle of buy one get one free wine that what she really meant was I should help her wire up her xbox – and when I accused her of misleading me, she said, “you took my words out of context” and that was the cue for her brothers with no necks to put my body “out of context” – after that I spent two weeks “out of context” from my self, as I lost all sensation of my lower jaw; as for that femme fatale she eventually became so “out of context” from my idea of what a level headed girl should be, I just ejected her  “out of context” from my mind and relegated her stripe of level headedness to a far more pragmatic purpose (that by the way is another grand nonsense of  a word – pragmatic –  that has lost all it’s meaning like reusable teabags)  good for putting tiger and peanuts on whenever I watched football on telly – out of context my foot lah! Go and die lah!

There you have it, the sum of all my trails and tribulations with words, vocabulary and phrases that get defaced just as a coin loses it’s engraving after it has been in circulation for too long – there are many more mouthfuls of diatribe I could offer along with battleships of stories of how they have been either erased and denuded of their true meaning; that do very little to further our understanding – the politics of envy – responsible blogging – constructive criticism – the list is endless, but really, its too depressing.

If only they can all learn to call a spade a spade – if only they can all say, we don’t want you to know because if you know how badly we all fucked up then we all look terribly silly – if only, they could just say what they really mean and be true to themselves and others; then perhaps we can begin to sit down, talk and find a country within a country by the name of common ground.

Darkness 2009 – The Brotherhood Press 2009

Kick back and relax. This is as smooth as amber on slope. The way I see it,  when the shit piles up real high, there is no better way to deal with than to sit it out somewhere down wind as it goes right by. No need to fight it – no need to even make things right – no need!

Just let nature run it’s course. Everything is cool – somethings in life, you make it happen – somethings, you just have to allow it to happen – I reckon when it comes to this sort of stuff, it has to be the latter.

I never ever sweat the small stuff!

 

The Day The House Came Down On A Souffle – Part 1

Good. Now that the dust has finally settled, lets dive into the juicy bits of the Lee vs Sadasivan saga – tell me, was Sadasivan woefully idealistic when he suggested revisiting of the tenets in our National Pledge as a prescriptive cure for the “lamentable” signs of our times? Did Lee senior overact when he dismissed Sadasivan’s speech as a soufflé that cannot be meaningfully weaved into policy-making machinery to yield anything of value?

One clue to unravel this delightful mystery may lie in why Lee senior labeled Sadasivan’s speech as “dangerous.”  Seems odd to me, don’t you think so – mmmmmh….as “dangerous” is a term that’s closer to the stuff that I regularly do these days on the train – like how long can one stare at a pretty girl without coming across as a crazed suicide bomber?

Let’s dive in. The long and short of why what was recently served up in Parliament was none other than puffer fish may have something to do with the relationship between history and power. A seemingly compelling argument goes as follows. History if you didn’t know it has always played a preponderant role in shaping collective consciousness – the adage coined by William Lund underscores the importance of history on society.

“We study the past to understand the present; we understand the present to guide the future.”

To put it crudely: if you want to control the present and future, then you need to make sure you have the past (history) in your back pocket – here the assumption is it’s not nearly enough to be just part of history; one needs to be able to be able to make it – do that and what you do is set the house rules and we all know the house always wins.

Now you understand the role of history and how it features so prominently in shaping the present – if you need further confirmation on why history is so crucial in the scheme of power & politics; then just look at what happens when history takes a wrong turn – take for example, the US misadventure in Iraq – how true is when Bush junior proclaimed to the UN general assembly circa Feb 2003 that all men aspire towards freedom?

Indeed no one denies that’s palpably true, only had Mr plank head Bush hit the history books instead of just running with the Simple Simon CIA factbook account on Iraq – what he and his motley crew would have realized Iraq is a country in which ethnicity plays a crucial role in politics and had he drilled deeper, he would have certainly realized the stripe of freedom coveted by the average Iraqi has very little to do with the American or EU variant and everything to do with the sum of all the fears of every US planner, as it’s closer to self styled Shiite Iranian theocracy. Prognosis: Bush & Co fucked up big time.

You could just as well use this template of how history takes a wrong turn to explain everything from why despite nearly 5 decades of unrelenting efforts to promote the Malays through the National Economic Policy, the BN has repeatedly failed to realize even a fraction of their goals in distributing wealth. And perhaps even why Adolf Hitler’s invasion of the USSR in the 1940’s was doomed from the word go – here, the operating logic seems to be: get your history wrong and you’re in deep shit; get it right and you come out the other side smelling of roses.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

This could account for why history or rather historical fidelity i.e keeping to the historical accounts has always been contentious and emotive- today, it’s even de riguer for  society to publicly repudiate historical appropriation – I felt this acutely, when the old red brick Library was torn down and replaced by another glass and steel structure that exuded all the charms of a Soviet warehouse – somewhere deep down in my psyche a collie was yelping, ” No! This should not be allowed to happen…they’re scrubing out my history”  That same sensation of loss if you juxtapose it on the broader canvas of life may account for why Chinese and Korean diplomats regularly protest every September when the Japanese historical instute rolls out a new edition of history books – it could also explain why when the Pendet dance was featured recently in a visit Malaysia ad, so many Indonesians felt aggrieved.  The objection appears to be a genuine collective concern - history should be kept unadulterated, to paraphrase, no one has a right to appropriate anothers history – it’s dangerous – as it belongs to us, not you!

To me, the crux of the problem isn’t so much the learning part as Santayana lamented, rather  a large chunk of the problem has to do with really dumb people who believe they have a God given right to surreptitiously embellish, bent and confect facts  in order to justify a set of actions which would otherwise have been impossible to pull off, that to me is the real problem– again it matters little whether what that ideal happens to be, could well be something trivial like the history of your averagely miserable childhood spent on some padang that is now another food court – or even something jugular like imperialism, land grabs, unmitigated censorship or even the non productive stance taken by Tan Tarn How on how and why online credibility can only be attained by stepping out from the anonymous tag – neither does it require extraordinary métier to accomplish this perceptive shift either; all that is required is to promote the ideal into the upper reaches of mythology, once it’s up there, the whole idea takes it’s cue from the tao of the Jumbo jet where it just cruises along happily with minimum resistance as it begins to acquires the appellation of the sacred. As I said, it matters little what the ideal is – it could well be leveraging on something frivolous like a dream Idi Amin once had that justified the mass expulsion of Asians from Uganda – to the rants of Nazi’s who once coined the term lebensraum to justify land grabs and beach head landings or even something as venerated as our pledge.

That has to be “dangerous.” As once the set pieces that make up history are successfully coupled with mythology, the truth as we know it can only only be expected to peel off from what once transpired and die – and since the sacred cannot be defiled, then its futile to insist that it should be testable or scrupolously keep to the truth. Since bias is very point of mythmaking the tenets and raison that makes up this fairytale has to be closer to a fait accompli than something that emerged from a reasoned and exhaustive discourse. (if you’re wondering why this sounds like a circular argument that the Bush administration once used to sell recreation caravans as mobile weapons lab; wonder no more, as that’s what happens when fact acquires a sacred status; they have the power to silence the contrarian view faster than an elephant gun)  

The question, is do we really want that corrosive type (correction, allow me to paraphrase) of political narrative that’s closer to mythology than fact?  How wise can it be to fuse the whole idea of the good life with the whole idea of the pledge? Does that bracket or extend the field of discussion? Does it open or narrow the social narrative? Can we even afford it? How do we even begin to square off the accounts between fact and myth when all kinds of stuff which have nothing to do with each other are stacked up to form an argument?  How might that proposition even serve the imperative of driving out the bad to produce the good?

I really have no idea – what I do know is in the context of the question posed: how wise is it to couple the whole idea of the good life with something as mythical as the pledge is the issue raised have to be very close to the classical hubris that has always vexed every society – clarity.

Here I don’t doubt for one moment, the human condition may even militate against our sense and sensibilities by buying hook, line and sinker into the claptrap by somehow invoking the magical properties in our pledge, we can somehow make right all the ills of our times. Tragic realism even suggest the whole idea of marinating ourselves in endless spandrels of truths may even slake our yearning (real or imagined, though the latter is likely the case)  to return to some by gone age of innocence – when everything was once white, cotton wooly and happiest – the paradox of our age is as we progress;  many of us may actually find reality less appealing.  That could account for why so many people these days seem to be turning their backs on reality – but just because something is striven for doesn’t necessary make it real or even worthy – it just means we are jumping from one hot pot to another.

If you’re in doubt, as to how powerful an astringent the combination of myth and history can be – then just visit the Louvre in Paris and try to figure out how well-to-do and moderately educated Americans frequently complain how despite their countless attempts; they cant seem to find Mrs Jesus resting place – that’s should serve to underscore why it doesn’t pay for anyone to confect their spandrels of truths by piggy bagging on historical facts! It leads us astray – we end up in the hall of mirrors.  

My feel is doesn’t pay for us to harbor false hope and it pays even less to put the likes of Sadanvisan on the pedestal – if we do that, we’re just setting ourselves up for a fall and as for soufflés, no one denies they bring comfort and joy along with tooth decay to the masses; only lets be perfectly realistic they dont have the power to effect real and meaningful change by themselves – real change can never be had on the cheapy cheap – if history teaches us anything that can only come from reasoned, exhaustive and factual discourse - there are no short cuts.

Tragic realism only serves to confirm homily sugary narratives that hold out the promise of solving all the ills of our society in one swipe don’t exist except in the realm of the fantasy– again, it matters little whether the solution is to be found in religion, the directors cut of the latest Korean love serial, or even something as venerated as our pledge – as much as we wish to delude ourselves real progress is to be found in sweet rhetoric, metaphors, images and motifs they cant for one moment be a substitute for reasoned discourse predicated on hard nosed fact approach. The low down is it cannot – my feel is a good start point may to render clear and unambigious the line between history and myth. As for the pledge, it should remain the pledge; no one should be allowed to gloss over it or use it as a basis for effecting change.

If change should come, then it should be able to stand on the merit of its two feet;  it should be testable, reasoned, open to inquiry and above all spandrel free so that anyone can give it a decent punch and kick without having to hold back and feel guilty that they may be taking on something that is venerated or holy – IMHO that’s the only way to reliably produce the good life, anything short of that has to be as the Americans say just history.

Here one may very easily draw the straight line  conclusion; Lee senior won the fight hands down; from where I am standing no doubt about it; only let’s be clear, it’s hardly the clean classical one thrust kill that I would have much preferred – this one is messy as it raises a host of disturbing questions that even threatens to undermine Lee seniors authority and argument and there in the seemingly benign and safe, lies the powder, ball and flint that awaits the explosion – that unfortunately, we shall leave for part 2.

 Darkness 2009

Is the Internet turning us all into natural born disagreeable people? A study in the age known as the brave new world.

Seems to be the case – when one peruses through the online reaction of LKY’s recent riposte to Sadavisan speech here. only to be sharpened by Miss Chua admonishment of the online community Shame on you, young bloggers – it’s hard to deny these days the word that may comfortably unite proponents and detractors on their various objects of interest these days has very little to do with content or even generation gap and everything to do with the medium.

This should prompt us to consider whether the internet like some brain altering drug has somehow managed to change the way we think? Or maybe it’s detractors like steam engine cognoscenti’s haven’t figured out: how to get onboard the maglev train?

What really accounts for the ongoing divide between netizens and those who may regard blogosphere as nothing more than a brutish and feral haven? Why are these two groups always at each other throats? Why can’t they just sit down and see eye to eye and even agree to disagree amicably?

Most people may not realize this; but as I mentioned earlier, the root cause accounting for the odium may have everything to do with the medium rather than content; the internet, if u didn’t know like the telegraph, radio and TV imposes a new way of making sense of the known world – this is not merely a hypothesis; the process is already under way in earnest. In fact, it’s happening all around us even as I am writing this, altering the full spectrum of our thought processes and coloring how we would normally make sense of stuff.

It’s conceivable, when we talk of common ground these days; the entire question hinges on whether we have such a thing as a common vantage point? My gut feel tells me, the outcome may have everything to do with whether you happen to be a netizen or not.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say; this form of change is closer to the revisit of the invasion of the body snatchers – only it would not be an exaggeration to say the internet may have already altered our traditional cognitive DNA to such an extent; it may not even be possible for many of us to agree on the whole idea of what constitutes; collective consciousness – like the quirky idea of parallel universe and dual economies - we may have to content with the new idea of a dichotomy.

In this parallel universe, it’s conceivable  netizens may even see events unfolding in an altogehter different scale, speed and perspective from those who may choose to deride this medium no end – to paraphrase, we may have lost all hope of crafting such a happy thing as common ground.

This would seem like a novel dystopian theory; if only you didn’t realize cognitive change has always featured along side human history – when we first developed language, we significantly increased our ability to share insights and knowledge across time and space. And as language assumed text; it further compresses meaning into multiple layers of nuances, till of course, for every thesis there is an anti- thesis.

Unfortunately, with every cognitive shift, be it the printing press or telephone – it spawns the same dooms day dystopian warnings, we are all going to drown in a cesspit of electronic cacophony. In its wake the whole gamut of anxieties are dragged into the ark light about the possibility that the advent of the digital age may even do irreparable damage to our natural ability to think sensibly.

That’s basically the nub of such essays prosaically entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Which highlights how interconnectivity encourages dyslexia. Here the arguments suggest the spontaneity of medium is effectively rewiring our brains as we melt happily away oblivious to how our grey matter is frittering away – till it’s impossible for us to bear out the beauty of the written text without skipping the rest of the pages and fast forwarding to the last chapter (not a bad idea when you’re reading a novel like the Da Vinci code).

How true is this dystopian cyber take? Is our attention span giving way to the tao of the house fly? Are we becoming so accustomed to on the click information on our finger tips that we’re starting to find focusing and thinking hard?

There’s just one problem with that theory – for one it presupposes the human condition resides in a state that must be bubble wrapped as consciousness is so crumbly and fragile that we cannot be sensibly be counted to winnow the voices for more noise. In reality, Google may not be perdition, but rather salvation -as with each successive medium, our overall ability to make sense of stuff may actually make us smarter, rather than dumber, by exposing our minds to a form of cognitive obstacle course.

Even the once base and vapid, such as role playing games have become extraordinarily dense with detail, filled with countless references to broader subjects, and more open to interactive engagement. They reward the capacity to connect the dots and to seek out patterns—precisely the kinds of skills we need for managing in the age of information overload.

Besides too much has been made of “information overload.” For one the idea predates the advent the internet. My point is the conditions may be different, but the context remains one of the same reality – this is not “new” as much as old dressed and marketed as “new improved.”

If that last example sounds prosaic, it may simply reflect a brand new reality: the future may not bear any resemblance to the narcomantic nightmares to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; we need not fear the idea of a population being dumbed down into automatons any more than we should live in fear of an alien invasion, as what’s likely to pan out may be a reverseal: a populace stuck permanently in hyper drive mode, searching out endlessly 24/7 for the last bits of competitive advantage – in points of views relating to politics, business and social insights – a sort of post modernist smartocracy.

For many barreling into this new electronic cacophony it can certainly be a jarring experience;  policy makers rue no end how their reasoned discourses no longer have the power to assert their cultural authority on the collective consciousness. Journalist write, only they do so with the knowledge while what they may have to say will certainly appeal to one segment of society; it’s also likely to alienate another and even the lowest of the low hacks such as myself have no immunity against this condition.

As I rudely discovered recently when a few disgruntled readers hijacked one of my online novels – dissatisfied with the abrupt ending (which they perceived to be a copt out when I did in the heroine a la Anna Karerina style), they proceeded to resurrect her from the grave by rewriting an addendum to the ending (that only confirmed my belief R.I.P really stood for Rise if Possible) – watching this green shoot take root, germinate and overreach to even garner a sizeable readership my initial glee gradually waned only to be replaced with a feeling that what I was witnessing could only be described as the signs of new times – that we may already be living in an age when everything can be replicated with remarkable ease and that no one person can possibly be the sole purveyor of truth, reason or even story. Matters little how well crafted one’s argument is – against this new calculus, even the humblest cyber sleuths can decoct an entire point of view from a droplet of inconsistency with the brain muscle of the internet – it may also imply netizens may have already grown so accustomed to variety and diversity; we may no longer settle for Simple Simon explanations; the spell it seems is broken forever; and with it, the whole idea of “good” be it in the form of good governance and good homemaking may already be commonplace; so passe that no netizen in their right frame of mind might even considers it extraordinary anymore, very much in the way serious gamers these days rely on military grade simulation software to plan their campaigns without even having boasting rights.

The amount of data we’ll have at our fingertips may well be staggering, but we may have finally gotten over the ga-ga effect that information alone is a hallmark of power.

That doesn’t mean we’ll all come to the same conclusions – it just means, increasingly “the truth” will become more elastic, malleable and open to infinite interpretations - as with each successive cognitive change the internet brings about; it opens up a new vantage point to view the same problem making all attempts to seek common ground impossible.

Like my book that suddenly came to an end only to pick up and run like that ghost ship the Mary Celeste for another season powered by a group of breakaway readers. Living in a world of information guarantees only one thing; we will clash more often’ the melee’s will be bloodier – and expect no quarter as the traditional set pieces that has always conferred a competitive advantage to those who may have been the custodians of power will not by themselves guarantee success - your opinions count for nothing online. If anything living in the information guarantees arguments emerging from the digital wilderness are likely be sharper and buttressed not just by strongly held opinions but by intricate reasoning that may even roll over and flatten what’s already on the table.

Against this dizzy backdrop; when we look back at who we are and where we are going as a people and nation; don’t be surprised if most netizens may not wish to review it with the sweet feeling of remembrance of things past; but rather an aghast at how ridiculously shambolic the disputes of our present age were squared off in the public sphere, just as we might snigger at full frontal tobacco advertisements from some by gone age with that all too familiar condescending – they didn’t know better chuckle – as for my online book that suddenly put on gym shoes and ran away; the main protagonist and heroine have migrated to the US, they’ve taken to a microbiotics diet to improve the heroines sleep apnea and Hatha Yoga to show off to their new age neighbors, we’re very much in the groove (the main protagonist these days even ambles around in hemp slippers and wears only osho designed clothes); their only splurge seems to be an expensive apartment in Manhattan over looking central park; they haven’t got around to furniture yet and by the looks of it will never; the only thing that really stands out in this love nest is a bio degradable handmade mat from Sri Lanka that simply sums up the sign of our times – welcome to our brave new world.

Darkness 2009

This essay carries a code marker: 0977059 Doberman – this essay has also been published in Ekunaba 1 & 2 / The Strangelanders / SLF 1 to 7 (Malaysian Network) / Phi Beta Kappa / Just Stuff / Ikiran / – The Brotherhood Press 2009

SPECIAL MESSAGE THE SIGLAP READ CLUB

As some of you fine ladies may already know;  I;ve received unconditional assurances from the others that they will not proceed with a legal case against moir – I just need to get the same assurances from the SRC, what do you all say? Live and let live…huh?

I personally feel, it will do wonders to relieve my writers block – Darkness 2009

Let’s switch off the lights together – somewhere over the rainbow

By the way – those rumors that happen be circulating in the grapevine, that we have pulled out, they’re all true – yes, you’ve got it straight from the horses mouth– I just came here to personally switch off the lights and tie off some loose ends.

As some of you may already know we were recently in KL to resite our brand new gaming hub and relocate many of our hard assets.

During that period, we had plenty of time to catch up with our Malaysian friends – one of them even invited us to join a group called Go Local Lah, which is a facebook group that aims to support made in Malaysia products.

I mean the whole deal sounds sensible enough; the economy is bad, so the whole idea of buying Malaysian is presumably to shore up the local economy by giving it a regimen of steroids – nothing wrong with that, till you need to vote for the idea with your wallet.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for patriotism, nationalism etc – but I am also mindful as an idea it can also be taken too far; and pushed what’s good can even be squeezed out leaving nothing except narrow mindedness and possibly xenophobia along with all the bad things that I rather not mention.

My take is simple Simon some decisions should have absolutely nothing to do with nationalism, state or even the whole idea of citizenry and everything to do with hardnosed business sense.

I shared this tit bit with my Malaysian host, she retorted; so you’re telling me, I shouldn’t be driving a Proton Darkness. I retorted curtly, well tell me, why do you drive a Proton? To which she proudly replied because it’s made in Malaysia for Malaysians and if we don’t support it, then we may not be able to continue to enjoy the fruits of industrialization – I really wanted to keep it nice, so I just left it there – but on my scorecard, I marked her down severely for her lack of business IQ, to me a car is a big ticket purchase and if you end up driving a coffin on 4 wheels no amount of patriotic fervor is going to change those lousy conditions. I am not saying Proton is a lousy car; I happen to know for a fact: it’s a lousy car and that started me thinking am I willing to support a product or service just because it originated from my country? The answer has to be a simple: no. However, ask me again: Am I willing to support that same product or service if it’s comparable in terms of value and quality to other products?

Yes. Call me self centered, but my point is simply this; I am not willing to make a blind sacrifice on the altar of nationalism, like this dumb woman who bought a Proton just because someone on TV told her if she did just that, she would be helping the local economy; the way I see if manufacturers, service providers and even the tea lady don’t even bother to accord me the respect that I rightly deserve as a consumer by trying their level best to met my needs – then why in the hell should I even bother to support them?

That’s not how intelligent folk regularly make good decisions – they don’t pile different things that have nothing to do with each other and attempt to square off the accounts – only seriously confused people do that -  apart from the issue of cool runs; there is also the moral delimma; I work hard for my right to spend my money, so why in the world should I compromise on the whole idea of less is more simply because it was produced in my country? Again it makes absolutely no sense to me; unless I happen to be into self flagellation.

The way I see it, the whole idea of supporting the local economy has to first make sound business sense before it can even take off as an idea; as, if let’s say I decide to buy a local product just because its produced by a Singaporean firm – then I should really ask myself: am I endorsing excellence or am I just condoning a way of doing business that I may not completely agree with? Am I actually doing that firm and those who may depend on it a favor? Or am I just keeping the status quo ante in place so that those firms remain so bovine and flabby that they will have absolutely no motivation to improve their business processes to deliver greater value and accountability to those who may have a stake in it? That just goes to show you how nationalism for nationalism sake by it’self so often leads to a hall of mirrors.

Some people may say, well it’s a chicken and egg situation Darkness – if you don’t support them when they’re lousy, then how do you expect them to improve? I’m sorry, but I don’t see endorsing lousy products and services as a intelligent starting line. Neither do I buy into the whole claptrap, it all begins with an act of good faith. Let’s get real, no one in their right frame of mind starts buying lousy products in the hope that manufacturers and service providers will eventually wake up and  see the light and start producing world class products and services. To me that’s akin to putting the horse before the cart.

The way I see it, the power to buy, elect, select and exercise your prerogative to say – yes, no or give me some time to think about it -  just happens to be your elemental right; it’s also your ace card (and just in case, you didn’t know it; no one can ever take that from you) - that means whatever decision you make should never be premised on hope or faith, if anything, it has to be evidenced based – if faith alone really had the power to turn the wheels of trade and commerce, then the whole idea of capitalism would haved cease to exist as an economic theory a long time ago –fact remains, people will always try to get away by trying to peddle off less is more given half the chance – matters little whether it’s a second hand car dealer, bent pastor or crooked politician whose out to cream the long run by selling you the short end of the stick.

I am a good businessman. So I know when it’s time to cut my losses /  one reason why remain good is because I enjoy giving others a good deal – for one I find it immensely satisfying and through the years; I haven’t yet found a better way to ensure they will always come back for more of the good stuff.

Only I like to receive a good deal as well from time to time - and if it’s short I’ve insist on the quantifiable good to drive out the measurable bad; if the accounts don’t square, bye -bye, nothing personal, it’s just business.

You have to be an excellent service provider,  if you want our patronage. It’s a buyer’s market, so get with it, don’t fight it, otherwise it’s going to be uphill all the way.

You might think I’m harsh. So what if I am? Call it tough love. I love my country, but I won’t support lousy business conditions that do very little to create the right conditions for e-business to take off. The way I see it, it’s very simple, if you say to yourself, you’re not going to settle for anything but the best – don’t be surprise, if you get what you wish for and vice versa – that’s how life has always worked –  we may or may not return, it really depends – or maybe we will just go on permafrost mode- but that’s another story I rather discuss when and if we decide to power up again.

For the time being,  we may have already passed the point of no return – sometimes, when a decision is made, for better or worse you just need to go with the flow - so lets just blow out the candle together and quietly say to ourselves, we had a good run for what it’s worth.

Someday. You will all see, we will make it over the brow of that rainbow – like I always said we will….someday, it will just all come together beautifully.  Brotherhood Press powering off now – see you all, you know where.

Darkness 2009

Is LKY’s foreign talent policy perdition or salvation?

Did you miss out on this essay? Get it here when the “best” may not be the best – a study in the search for excellence

Written by Darkness of the brotherhood – If you are wondering why the word “Urban” doesn’t sound English, it’s because it has it’s roots in Akkadian, an ancient language that originated from the first city called Ur. Located in Southern Mesopotamia, present day Iraq – at its zenith 4,000 years ago, over 30,000 people clumped together to work, live and play in Ur-land.

Today prototypal Ur is universally recognized as the first experiment in city living. Ever since then, our species has continually defined cultural, economic, political and technology progress through their cities. City living is a linchpin – a peg – a capstone of how we as humans can best make sense of who we are and where we’ve heading in an ever changing world.

Cities have always been the center of cultural authority coloring the arts and sciences – a veritable lightning rod attracting – traders, scientist, play rights, philosophers, savants etc. Even these days in major metropolis like London, New York and Paris – one sees the same heady intellectual mix where Urdu mingles seamlessly with Yiddish and quantum physics sits alongside the same bench as the hatha yoga – that to me is not unusual: as cities remain for lack of a better word the clearest example of experiment with human material– that could account for why cities have always been the bed rock of cosmopolitanism, intellectualism, liberalism and pluralism.

As you can all see, I am not a great fan of keeping Singapore for only Singaporeans – that’s because that attitude smacks of small town mentality – which invariably breeds cosy insiderism, intolerance, secularism, fanaticism, parochialism, prudishness, false pride and stasis – in short, it’s good for nothing.

Fact remains nothing good and worthy of emulation has ever emerged from small town mentality – don’t believe me? Where did fascism take root? In a tiny hamlet called Bavaria where the movie the Sound of music was filmed starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer – only what Hollywood conveniently omitted was the hills were not filled with the sounds of music as much as yelping Jews as they were herded off to cattle wagons destined for death camps – as for Julie Andrews CEO ( who incidentally also came from a small town somewhere in forgettable Sicily), he was busy trying to earn his innings as Hitler’s pope – you could just as well juxtapose the same for the Klu Klax Klan a movement that originated from an obscure moonshine producing state in Alabama – my point is nothing good has ever emerged from the small, that’s because small is not beautiful; small just means what it means: small and probably good for nothing.

That’s one reason why I think the idea of keeping Singapore for only Singaporean is at best a lousy idea as what it’s likely to inspire may be closer to what we currently see in Pyongyang where everyone is smiling even when they’re tucking into tree bark congee and munching on mud pies; and when the pineapple eyed state in not snooping the hot topic on the table is hot air ballooning and tunneling – in short, the whole idea of small town, let’s keep it to ourselves and keep out the riff raff is predicated on a sobriquet dreamscape that holds out false hope – that great things can emerge from encasing ourselves in some memory of the past.

Here, I don’t doubt the converse of opening up may even mean Singapore may one day lose it’s appelation as an antiseptic wire brush state where everything can be counted to be straight laced;  we may even be fingered and resented as the enfant terrible of civilized living like NYC, Paris or Tokyo – notorious for their rudeness, brashness, crowds and moral turpitude. But what needs to emphasized is this doesn’t detract from the fact that may still be the best possible way for mankind to assert their cultural and technological primacy – to paraphrase, it’s not realistic to believe we can cherry pick only the good without having to take in the bad and ugly as well.

This only serves to highlight the complexity of opening up, or what I term the great human experiment. As it presents real challenges not only to policy makers but also many us who have to rub shoulders against strangers who may carry with them a completely different set of values and ideals. It doesn’t take a whole lot of brain juice to figure out what happens when you take people from all over the world – Kalimantan brides, Nigerian scam artists, British lager louts, American red necks, Bangladeshi expatriates, Mainland Chinese lamian cooks – and cram them all into a small place bordered by the ECP, PIE and SLE. How will they interact with each other? What are the possible outcomes?

I really don’t know. The stakes have to be high – where globalization is made flesh and we really are the whole world in one city!

And yes, we should admit this may also mean many of the problems of the world will probably wash up like flotsams on our shores. People after all carry their cultures, histories, religion and sense of being with them. And its not realistic to expect them to jettison all these baggages;  to exacerbate the complexity, they may even possess multiple identities – that an immigrant may not just be a knowledge worker but he may also a liberal, who likes to make chutney on his off days (that makes the whole void deck reek of curry powder) to send back to mummy & co somewhere back in India, Manchester United supporters and stir his coffee anti clockwise  – what no one can really predict is how one of those identities swallows up the rest to finally settle happily into what one ultimately refers to as “character” to complement the whole idea of nationhood.

My feel remains people will always be complex, and against this polyglot called the urban experiment it’s pointless to invest time and energy nitpicking on differences, you might as well go and plough the sea – makes far more sense in the long run to focus on the commonalities and what I term the calculus of reality i.e the decision to shift gears out smallville mentality may not even be a matter of choice. As this corrosive mentality not only promotes social isolation, it’s nothing short of burying out heads in the sand – as it nurtures the false belief we can take on the whole world with our limited human resources –we cannot.

That sobriquet dream would only command currency if you didn’t know every country in on this planet except North Korea and Burma is pursuing the same strategy of recruiting knowledge workers globally. Not even the US with its technological primacy would have been able to send a man to the moon without having to accommodate ex-nazi’s what more of a little island state in the tip of the peninsula called Singapore?

You’ve got to be kidding me right?

Written by Darkness 2009 of the brotherhood / Going where no mind dares to go / Brotherhood Press / Part of this essay has been extracted from “The Great Experiment Called City Living” / By Harphoon – Trajan/ The Brotherhood / Politics / Sociology / Econs / 23992/2007

(Extract from the Great hall sitting 903  / Presidium ref: 70392/ the age of steel – chapter 169 – the book of ages – the bible of the brotherhood – recorded by the chronicler.

His Excellency the centurion of the Presidium (Kadjal):

Gentlemen, this is not the first time the brotherhood has come before the Imperium to demand for money to prosecute on what I call madness of a kind that we have never seen before in our brief history; please allow me to recount the cost to the exchequer to date; 2 million Imperiums; seven of our best legions to finance the siege machine of this mad man and what is all for what gentlemen? – a tiny unknown port in the Andromena system that goes by the name of Prima Maritima. Gentlemen, allow me to quote what our pro-consul reported recently about Prima Maritima:

 “It is a black hole where they may even be only cut throats, liars and cheats of every variety known and unknown to mankind to be in this one place; and it is no exaggeration to say even the mercantile guild has given up all hope of conducting business with these knaves as all they seem to do is cheat and lie no end. I suspect their main preoccupation is piracy and trying to confect ever more innovative ways to evade tax – I can see no reason why we should even consider maintaining a garrison or even an administrative presence here – I respectfully request the council of the wise to consider this a black region in the virtual and to write off all our investments here with immediate effect.”

 So may I respectfully ask the right honorable gentlemen who represents the brotherhood why would we, the confederation even want to finance a war of attrition against the damned?

 Senator of the order of purple: Darkness:

Senators allow me to be candid, it is precisely because Prima Maritima happens to be a black hole where they may even be cut throats, liars and cheats of every variety; and it is even conceivable that the mercantile fleet may be entirely accurate in their assessment that we need to seize it as a strategic asset before anyone does – for it is well known in the universe no one except these people can escape the clutches of our tax laws with such impunity and even have temerity to hijack our mineral cruisers with such ease – on that score gentlemen, I am the first to salute them as they are worthy of our respect; but I do not wholly believe we may be dealing with a backward people here; backward people cannot out run our best ion powered cruisers; backward people cannot regularly smuggle elephant sized cargo without even leaving the slightest residue of electronic signature; backward people would not have been able to hold out against one of the well organized blockades for over 5 years without despite our repeated attempts to seek resolution through politics - I therefore implore the Presidium to reconsider the theoretical possibility – we may after all be dealing with a civilization that may even be ahead of us politically, economically, technologically and socially - against this theoretical backdrop this does not diminish my case as much as it lends it increased support as to why we must press on to seize this enclave as we may argue over many things that has been brought forth by his  Excellency who represents the Presidium of the confederation, but one thing remains patently clear: every single one in this sitting knows those who we cannot defeat, we must embrace. That has always been our way from time in immemorial then to now and I see no compelling reason why we should alter our ways: as there remains the possibility we may yet learn something valuable that we may not quiet understand from the likes of  even cut throats, liars and cheats.

Tell me gentlemen would the exchequer be able to levy taxes on the rest of our colonies and our protectorates if these knaves taught the rest of them, their weirding ways – my feel is we must the first the pen a dicta to ensure that they are with us or against us.

 This is how politics is conducted when in comes to trade in the virtual. Consider this carefully gentlemen what if Prima Maritima falls into the wrong hands – where will we be? The question therefore is not whether we should prosecute on this battle, but can we afford not too?

Some 4 months later, the recalcitrant port of Maritima capitulated and the keys of the city was reluctantly surrendered over to the forces of the confederation – by special dispensation from the council of wise. An emissary was sent to return the keys to Princess Soryanha with the words,

 “This is not an invasion. You misunderstand us. We come in the name of peace.”

On the fifth lunar year of when the penumbra passes over the Carpthanian plains transforming the sky blood red – a lone knight on horseback attired in the uniform of the order of purple appeared before the city gates; bearing letters representing the four houses of the guilds he could not be denied a royal audience with the keepers of the keys in Maritima who was then the Princess Soryanha IV of the Royal Persian Creche.

Though he was only one, the identity of this knight was well known to all and so feared was he, during the royal audience two rows of archers in full armor formed a ring steel around her royal highness – when the keys of the city was presented to her royal highness, she spat at it and asked for it to be returned to the lone invader who had once cruelly blockaded the port city of Maritima to which this envoy replied,

“You misunderstand us. We come in the name peace.”

This scene would be replayed for some 40 times with similar results – one day, this stranger did something unexpected when presenting the keys of the city this time it was tied with a flower – this was no ordinary flower, it was known as the Sintara Vitae, “the flower of life.” One of the seven wonders of the universe. One of the prized treasures of the brotherhood – this time, when the keys of city was presented to her royal highness Princess Soryanha, she took the flower and delicately placed it on her hair piece ever so carefully from that day onwards, the keys of the port city of Maritima remained with the royal crèche, its original caretakers – to which her royal highness Princess Soryanha, replied:

“Yes, we may have been too presumptuous. As this certainly doesn’t feel like an invasion. You may be right after all stranger…come sit with us and tell us more about your world.”

End extracted from pg 2,491 & 2,492 - The Book of Ages – recorded by the chronicler of the brotherhood – Sarhabath

when the “best” may not be the best – a study in the search for excellence

Singapore has a strong claim as the world’s greatest collector of accolades – we are one of the most competitive nations in the world for this or that; our gait has even been registered by time and motion experts to be one of the fastest – yet I find myself asking these days what do all these trinkets amount too; to paraphrase how is any reasonable person supposed to make sense of all these trophies?

 To be perfectly honest with you; I don’t know but what I do know is when it comes to surveys – they’re all pretty flakey – I remember a few years ago Geneva was voted as one of the best cities in the world for business; when I stepped off the plane, I thought the bubonic plague had struck Geneva; as every shop was closed and the streets were deserted as I found myself walking aimlessly around like Will Smith in I am Legend – the same goes for Paris; last time I visited that romantic spot – I found myself dodging molotov cocktails and side skirting flaming cars as youths ran amok – certainly gives a whole new meaning to the city of lights – so forgive me, if I look on surveys with a tad of askance.

My point is to be the best one needs to look deeper beyond the dictionary meaning of the term best; if possible beyond the mere chimera of the numbers and key performance indicators; this may include questioning the cost of what it takes to get to the top of the hill – for instance no one denies China is growing exponentially like one of Jack’s magic beans stalks, but look deeper at the cost to people and planet; for starters they pay scathe regard to the environment and the social cost that makes possible this form of growth has not only exacerbated the divide between the have’s and have’s not, but is causing inequalities at every level – here we need to ask is growth without social justice arcane? And this should prompt us all to ask whether it would be far better to consider “best” by combining humanism with the whole idea of economic growth.

These days with the meltdown of the global economy and dodgy businessmen; “best” is hardly a becoming appellation – it doesn’t command the same level of veneration and respect it once commanded over our consciousness; gone are the days when we can even expect the “best” to deliver the gold standard or even make good their contractual promises – my point is if there’s any lessons to be gleaned from this economic meltdown – its simply this, nothing can ever be taken at face value any longer – no one is infallible; and the whole idea of “best” can at best be described as a crumbly idea – matters little whether it’s banks, corporate honcho’s, politicians or someone who is trying to sell you something on TV. In my book they all deserve a good looking over with a magnifying glass.

I am not saying we should all suddenly be paranoid and start looking beneath our beds for hidden cameras or think that we have been secretly invaded by aliens.

But you get my drift – it doesn’t pay to be too trusting. Or even take anyone or anything at face value any more – not with everything from banks and investments plans going down the chute – until very recently (unless you happen you be a minister or a reporter in SPH), if you worked for a blue chip company, you could assume that your job had no expiry date. But when you consider companies can no longer sustain themselves for any guaranteed period, how can they possibly guarantee you a life time job?

Fact remains firms these days are struggling against other firms to compete for a diminishing market pie so the whole idea of life time employment is fast going the way of the dinosaurs. Companies that have had generations of employees working under no-layoff policies are now dumping people like an airship jettisoning ballast just to keep from crashing and burning up.

When you boil all down to crud – you owed it to yourself to be mindful of the term “best” and what it really means and that simply means only the paranoid will survive.

As believe it or not you are literally your own corporation. And just in case you didn’t know it; you’re in direct competition with millions of similar businesses: that simply means you need to accept ownership of your career, your skills sets along with when and how to push, pull to max your opportunities.

Nobody else can do that for you. Not even God can help you and least of all the government – all they can do is give you platitudes and false hope – and that’s no good.

And that’s as real as it gets – it doesn’t get better than that – the truth that is. Now if you excuse me, I need to check up on my recent investment plan: I’m slightly paranoid that friendly Nigerian I met in a forum who claimed to be the long lost relative of Idi Amin is not going to come through with the money for the “best” investment plan of the century – I am kidding, really I am or am I?

Darkness 2009

 The Brotherhood Press 2009 – Going where no mind dares to go.

Special message to all the read clubs of the brotherhood press love story division.

I know many of you ladies want your money back. But please let me explain. There is really only one person writing these sappy love stories in the brotherhood press love story division – that’s me.

The rest of the boys find it a toe curling experience so they don’t really want to get involved that means: I am the editor; proof reader, distributor and everything that goes to make this package possible.

I have been very busy in Malaysia (this is not an excuse; it is fact: you can go and verify this with the read clubs in KL) trying my level my best to sell my inventions and trying to turn the wheel of life as times are really hard and difficult in Singapore – but I am sure most of you aren’t interested to know how or why we were all suffering there 24/7 and surviving on instant noodles; besides I don’t want to be a bore and dump on all of you or be accused of tugging on your heart strings for sympathy sake – but understanding is not too much to ask, I think – what’s important is when I was there; I worked every evening to complete the final installment of the on-going love story series that many of you ladies subscribed too last February, only this time – I chosen to rename it, “lover’s tale.” As the ending has been extended by another some 14 chapters (this comes free with no extra charge) – I wrote most of it during the evenings after work.

You can all call me a scoundrel; that I may be, but thief, I am certainly not – I never skipped town as some of you claimed and ran away with the dosh; I have always delivered on my promises. So there you have it.

The final part of the lover’s tale is now available; all you have to do is log in and read it – I hope this makes up for all the misunderstanding, lapses etc. There, there…everything is as it should be.

Meanwhile I remain yours always – Darkness 2009

P.S: Somethings will always remain timeless to me and one of them is the relationship between writer and reader – my hope is some of you will reconsider suing my pants off – as it would be a great disappointment in more ways than I can possibly elaborate. My feel is somethings are best left to the imagination – don’t you all think so.

Before we conclude this misunderstanding, allow me to leave you with a brief extract from Chapter 271 – “Only the fishes know.” Taken from the Lover’s tale – author Darkness of the brotherhood.

 Huang (main protagonist)“Every time when we talk about us – you seem to bring up fate and destiny…you speak as if its already written in stone and nothing we do can ever change it.”

 Soong “that’s how the world is from the beginning of time every woman knows that…”

 Huang “Alright if that’s what your mother says, here it is – a coin….if its heads, then we will just go different directions right here now…then we will take it from here and see where it leads too…..”

 Huang flips the coin – it twirls catching the last light of the waning sun. Soong lunges forward and tries to grabs it – the coin slips and falls into the lake – the couple come alongside the railing transfixed at the sliver of light as it dances into darkness – their eyes meet.

 Soong “I want to believe.”

 Huang “So do I…………Its best if we leave it to the fishes to know what may or may not come from all this.”

When all fails, just blame it on the devil – the art of the mufflement of the truth.

 

Check out this article from the Brotherhood Press: How to win in Aware? Forget Sun Tzu, just order one Masala Dosai!

 

Written by Darkness of the brotherhood / Lately, there is a wave of irrationality weaving its way through Singapore. No I am not referring to the dreaded pig flu. This is far more insidious and pervasive. I had a brush with it recently when I my secretary barged into my room and said she wanted me to pray with her; I asked her why? She said, the Devil has been stalking her. I asked, in what way? She said, he’s forcing her to eat all the time and all she can think of all day and night is food – well to cut a long story short, I told her we’ve continue the conversation on another day as I was in the middle of a conference call. Actually, I was just pretending to work and finalizing the last segment of a new game.

 

Sitting back I began to wonder why is it, when humans are stressed; they invariably surrender their senses to something as irrational as – the devil or some other mumbo jumbo belief? Coming to think of it why would the devil even want my secretary? She weights 2 metric tons; doesn’t even know how to make coffee and half the time, she cant even keep time without tripping up – why would the devil even want to run the risk of high blood pressure? I mean, he’s not dumb right so maybe you could go figure that out.

 

I have this theory – this whole psychology that accounts for the blame game must be operating at a primal level – if you think about it the whole idea of pining the blame on the devil has been around for a very long time; and one reason why it continues to persist is because it’s such an elastic idea; it can be used to explain everything ranging from erectile dysfunction to bad breath.

 

The other reason why the devil is to blame argument is so powerful, its grounded largely on our fears that we may already be living in a world where the only thing certain these days is uncertainty – in other words, it plays on our morbid fear for the randomness of life.

 

These days practically anything can do you in: a benign lunch with your friendly investment consultant can set off a financial Chernobyl – standing too close to someone who coughed in the MRT, may land you in the ICU in hospital, and so on and so forth.

 

Misfortune it seems lurks everywhere. There is no where to hide – and the condition is exacerbated further by the mind boggling times brought forth by the dire economic climate – these days nothing is ever what it seems – no one can be trusted and danger lurks in every nook and corner; gays who are spreading deadly viruses with their moral turpitude; pedophiles roaming around snatching the innocent and the devil these days has even got an island wide broad band connection – all these manias play on our fears.

 

Against this dizzy dystopian backdrop when the centers seems to be giving way, it makes perfect sense for many; even the intelligent to buy into the idea there is an evil malevolent force furiously at work to undo our lives – giving our fears a name and a face by fingering the devil goes a long way to acknowledge our homily sugary belief, life is after all one grand tour de force where if good wins over the forces of evil, then its because we waged a righteous war against the forces of darkness – that idea of getting a handle on our fears may seem modern, but its actually quite old when you consider how hysteria and paranoia was used to fuel everything from crusades to justifying wars.

 

The process, then and now, follows a strikingly similar arc; you could even say it’s a recurring theme in the history of man – the irony here is instead of expunging the real source of our fears, all we may be doing when we seek out simple Simon explanations as to why things screw up in our lives is deflecting the problem and projecting it on the innocent – in other words unknowingly, we become perpetrators of evil ourselves.

 

The cost for pinning the blame on the wrong party has to be costly, but what’s even costlier is how it often produces a justifiable reason to believe we can interfere with the lives of others whilst completely disregarding their rights for no other reason than to propagate the belief the devil may somehow be behind it all – could well be imposing our ideal on a bunch of gays who we all feel need to be straightened in the fuzzy name of the common good; or even confecting the belief all anonymous bloggers suffer from some character flaw that prevents them from stepping out into the open; or even blaming foreigners for our diminishing job opportunities to even believing we have a right to expose a philanderer based on skimpy evidence.

 

The antidote to the hysteria of our age may require all of us to carry something like donor cards in our wallets where we would all have to declare whether we believe in the devil – that way, if you find one of those mumbo jumbo adherents slumped in the MRT coughing his lungs out due to pig virus – we could just as well deny them Tamiflu and put a few colorful Reiki crystals on their tummies and try to summon up invisible forces to heal them – or better still contact us directly and for the right fee we will even arrange for a Nigerian foreign talent who works as a deejay but also moonlights as a part time African witch doctor (you know the type that even Africans shoo away once they get their hands on real medicine) to attend to him. I am sure with the help of a dried up chicken feet, drums and a few shrunken heads from the P-65 blog – we could all watch these mumbo jumbo adherent melt happily away while we all dance around and wail our best to drive out the devil – still believe in the devil now?

 

My point is simply this; for too long, we have allowed these mumbo jumbo adherents to assert their reality on society without ever once insisting on the burden of proof. Result: whenever, its expedient they just explain everything away by referencing the devil – as a consequence, we buy into their nonsense of the devil and leprechauns accounting for everything from slipped disk to our kids not being able to do well in school; it’s time to insist on evidenced based reasoning. Whenever there are charges against a person or group, we must demand for proof – the higher the burden the better. The converse of remaining bovine is we may run the risk of surrendering our brains to only the designs of a few who may decide to use us it to fulfill their nefarious ends – again it matters little whether it’s some bent pastor who keeps begging for money to build another shopping mall in the name of Jesus Christ – or even someone who you once decided to buy an investment plan based on trust, instead of going through the fine print with the tooth comb.

 

My point is when the shit hits the fan – the psychology of blaming others instead of ourselves kicks in too readily – and all too often it becomes a playground for hucksters, charlatans and religious fanatics – all these point to our potted history of how vulnerable we really are when we work ourselves up into a state of hysteria and paranoid – all because we never once bothered to sit down and think it through calmly and quietly.

As for my two metric ton secretary who thinks the devil is out to spoil her new weight management program – the last time I saw her, she was tearing away at a jumbo sized packet of crisps. I tried to tell her softly that’s simply not good enough, it’s never going to come around – it’s no good. When she came up with her devil nonsense again – I shot it dead with a slam of my fist on the table. This time telling her, that if she didn’t stop eating, she would end up fat, poor and lonely because no self respecting man in his right mind would ever want to fuck her (I am sorry, there is no way to be nice about it, that’s the truth and nothing but the truth) - she stared at me for a while, put away her chips and her eyes welled up with tears.

 

I know it comes across as heartless, but my feel is that’s the only way to get on top of the “devils” of our lives - matters little to me whether it is the idea of brushing byzantine failures as only ‘paper losses’, when we all know, if that’s really the case, then shouldn’t we consider our gains as, ‘paper profits’ as well? 

 

To why did Tan Tarn How of the IPS only invite a few bloggers he considered to be ’kosher’ to his seminar about the internet? Do we really want to buy into his conception of “worth engaging?” Or maybe it’s best to fuck him and IPS off in one straight line like we did by imposing a 5 year boycott?

 

Or even how The Online Citizen keeps on talking about credibility, when we all know it’s fighting so hard to establish it, it probably never had any in the first place, otherwise why fight so hard for it by trying to vilify other sites?

 

Yes, we can all fashion our devils and it can take all forms to even account for everything that’s uphill in our life - but the truth believe or not is all you really need; as it will always set you free – don’t leave home without it, the rest you could just as well throw out of the window – its mere commentary.

 

Darkness 2009

 

The Brotherhood Press 2009

 

Side reads: Find out who is Oh Tham Eng! Find out what is his real mission in the internet? Scroll down the thread and read for yourself, pay special attention to what the internet liaison officer has to say about the subject - learn how to defend yourself online: http://wayangparty.com/?p=8002

 

 

Why the AWARE cat fight is so important to Singaporean civil society?

Written by Darkness of the brotherhood – It hardly requires any elaboration; people should try to resolve their differences peacefully.

 

Only one problem; I don’t agree completely with what I have just wrote above.

 

The way I see it some disputes could well do with a no holds bar slug out; the bloodier the better; as its conceivable one reason why events took such a sinister turn with AWARE – when a group of unknowns suddenly came in from the sun and swapped out the old could well be a by product of what usually happens when contentious subjects are usually swept underneath the rug instead of being argued out thoroughly in the cut light of the open – that’s what usually happens when people shy away from conflict – they go behind, scheme and plan the pay back - no da Vinci code there, no mystery even, that’s what happened in AWARE.

 

You could even say it stands the test of reason; when contentious issues such as Christian versus liberal gay rights are treated as sensitive and out of bounds; people don’t just make teeth sucking sounds pack their bags and go back home to their board games – these points of contention don’t just go into some dark corner, fall silent and die – usually they find alternative means of expressions which are closer to the cloak and dagger genre – that’s the problem when we fear conflict to such an extent everyone is so busy pretending to play happy families instead of trying to hammer out their differences in a robust and spirited manner – politics is pushed into the preamble of darkness.

 

My feel is, instead of avoiding conflict; we should actually learn how to manage it and if possible even use it as a basis to move ahead.

 

One reason why I dont like avoiding conflict is the latent fault lines shows up in the practice it inspires. For one the arguments each side holds have to be crumbly at best - as they have never been forcefully dragged out and given a thorough and robust examination by their detractors.

 

A politics that brackets (excludes from discussion) morality and religion too completely soon generates its own disenchantment – as not only does it produce a type of discourse that is shallow but it also lacks moral resonance and frequently creates missing blanks in the narrative. Result: they find undesirable and even sneaky outlets for expression – or worst still hucksters, charlatans and fanatics step in where angels fear to thread.

 

Anyone who is concerned over the fate of civil society and where it’s heading in Singapore should take a closer look at the AWARE saga – as what’s panning out isn’t nearly the polished sheen of civil society that we usually associate with the Western model – where it could be said, the system can reliably be entrusted to contain under conditions of peace if not civility, a remarkable range of moral, ideological, and religious conflicts and yet still manage to sort it’self out without imperiling the system.

 

What we have instead in the guise of the AWARE impasse is something closer to a Darwinian primordial soup version of civil society; part of that stems from our crippled social heritage in never having to manage conflict and that corrosive culture takes it’s cue from officialdom where the mantra has traditional been, “if it’s sensitive, don’t go there!” - the trouble is the AWARE impasse is the point when the karmic wheel closes and it all comes back to bite us - so its fair to say without the benefit of experiential knowledge many of the stakeholders in AWARE will struggle to find their footing to successfully articulate how they should deal with many of these contentious topics without running the real risk of imploding into a thousand pieces.

 

What’s at stake isn’t just the question of how some of these conflicts should be pursued; as sooner or latter both factions will have to fashion a happy middle ground to set aside what radically divides them -  if they are serious about making headway - hanging on the balance is not only women’s welfare, the role of religion versus secularism but the broader question of how Singaporean civil society is going to pursue their competing ends without having to threaten the means by imperiling stability and legitimacy?

 

In this respect the AWARE impasse represents a very significant milestone in setting the tone and cadence of how civil society will evolve in Singapore. As not only do the actors have to deal with a host emerging challenges which have never been broached before ie religion vs liberalism. But its conceivable each faction would also have to step out from their respective comfort zones and even try to seek to understand new ideas that contravenes their own value system - if they fail, then it’s fair to say, these conceptual divides i.e faith vs liberalism will remain forever conceptual islands, as each side would probably revert to their traditional defensive lines – should that happen, then it’s game over – as I really cannot see any way for AWARE to make headway in wordsmithing something close to a set of ”community values.” That’s just not possible.

 

Here the mental shift from “old” to “new” requires a transformational change on how business used to be transacted by both the progressives and Christian movement. As the mere fact that certain practices are sanctioned by a social group are not by themselves enough to make the “new” system work like it probably used too with the AWARE  and Christian movement of past years. Neither does the traditional Christian right method of moralizing as they often do from the apparent safety of the five foot way and sometimes Parliament offer anything in the way of a cogent solution - The sum of all these rumminations be it Alex Au’s and Thio Li Ann’s lamentations will amount to what our Northern cousin prosaically describe as “tak boleh pakai lah” material. The are worthless! As what is urgently required here is not merely commentary about what’s just or right; but rather something mechanically practical that allows both sides to move forward despite their glaring differences, which in my opinion cannot be reconciled.

 

The enormity of the challenge to pass from the realm of theory to reality has to be daunting as whatever answers emerges will have to depend on a certain understanding of the complexity of moral theory – the question: do all moral standards derive from a single universally accepted principle? That just goes to scale the enormity of the divide. As it suggest the search for pure principles (be they from the liberal movement or Christian right) may essentially be self defeating – as no one answer can possibly bridge the divide.

 

The real challenge for AWARE would be to find a ”new” way to accomodate these differences by craving out a completely different public square from what is currently on offer which I like to term as the Singaporean black and white public square, where life is increasingly assuming a binary form - here one is either anonymous or credible; worth reading or simply not worth engaging; functional or dysfunctional; straight or gay; moral or immoral; with or against us - the formation of this ”new” public square is imperative, as at the crux of the divide that threatens to riven AWARE further is not a conceptual or even a philosophical divide which may lead us all to believe this is simply a faith versus liberalism tussle – rather the nub is whether those “grey” areas which the binary world has conveniently elided can be managed effectively? Here, its important to emphasize, we are not just talking about what rights may be just or should be promoted, but whether even something as basic as ”rights” within the “grey” domain can be identified, justified and agreed upon by both factions in a way that does not presuppose any particular conception of good that effectively marginalize any one segment of society?

 

That in a nutshell is how I see the new AWARE challenge – as a new way of doing business where the goal is not to seek agreement on every object of interest which each faction subscribes too; but rather as a new way of agreeing to disagree on even key points, yet being able to move forward as one entity - you could just as well throw everything else out of the window and it wouldn’t do the slightest violence to your understanding of the issues.

 

To paraphrase stakeholders have to craft a “new” public square with others (and maybe even have enough space to accommodate the lunatic fringe) whose views they may even openly disagree and despise – it remains to be seen whether this tabula rasa can be fashioned – I for one harbor reservations given the enormity of the task and the deep divisions.

 

Nonetheless, if AWARE can crave out that mythical new public square (then I would also probably have to issue out a public apology for terming it a ”cat fight.”) – they will certainly emerge as a stronger and leaner outfit – as not only will this case study represent a reliable model on how to “agree to disagree” and yet move on to foreclose on common objects of interest on the behalf of community which others may choose to emulate – but it will also stand as a worthy testament to lay one of the most important cap stone on how civil society in Singapore is able to successful manage conflict, mitigate the risk diversity and even turn it to its advantage thus fulfilling the broader ethos of what civil socieities have traditionally done so well in the West – proving time and again – despite our many differences, some which may even be irreconciliable; be it religion, race or sexual orientation - the cohesion of our society can still be stronger than its divisions to keep us as one people.

 

I wish AWARE the very best of luck and god speed. Now please carry on and hantam away!

 

Darkness 2009

Why not being able to blog about religions means we probably have to settle for crooked pastors, dodgy monks, witch doctors and UFO crackpots!

“Never talk about religion, race or politics! Never.”

 

If you are wondering whether this time honored warning sounds reminiscent of how our government expects all bloggers to conduct themselves in the internet – well spotted old chap! And there are compelling reasons to suggest, why adhering to such guidelines would even serve us well. After all it doesn’t take the lateral to see how raising up contentious issues such as religion, race and politics often brings out the multi headed hydra of resentment, prejudice along with fanning hatred for the “other side” (besides its lousy for your personal insurance premium). It’s a scene that only gets played out too often these days. In denigrating cartoons which poke fun at Prophet Mohammed to even podcast making fun of Moslems by asking them whether they serve pork in a halal eatery (that just proves conclusively those racist who did it have an IQ of 5 index points below idiot!). Or when authors stray as they often do into religion, race and politics as Salman Rusdhie discovered when he publish his controversial tome, the satanic verses which earned him in a posthumous fatwah and a one way ticket to Tehran.

 

What’s vexes me no end is; where does the line between religion, race and politics really start and where does it end? If it were simply a longitudinal truism that should do very nicely (thank you very much) to tell us what we can and cannot discuss. Others may claim, its common sense. The only problem is, there is nothing common about religion, race and politics and it makes even less sense. That’s only true if you believe ordinary objects, words and even a something as simple as name are divorced from all notions of religion, race or politics. The fact remains a whole world resides in the seemingly benign and ordinary. Even the ubiquitous French fries aren’t immune from being a cipher of the fractional minutiae. I remember they were re-baptized as “freedom fries” by American eateries 7 years ago to protest against the French stance against the Iraqi war. What’s even more extraordinary is this semantic fatwah lasted for nearly three years! No folks, it’s not easy to stay well clear away from religion, race or even politics not even when you are minding your own business munching quietly away on artery clogging hamburgers and French fries (sorry freedom fries, I mean).

Nor does sticking to the staid and trite offer any security either: I am of course talking about literature that oasis of reason where even fellow detractors have a modicum of decorum to agree to disagree. Eventually every discussion about literature leads invariably to the proverbial, “what’s behind the brick wall?” Existentialism which questions personal freedom against the oligarchies: how personal freedom can be reconciled with notions of command and control? Somewhere along this discussion that pesky gay Alan Turing is bound to crop up along with fatwah leaden Salman Rushdie clutching a tome of “satanic verses.” That’s the cue for the Ayatollah brigade to start chanting, “death to the great satan! death to the great satan!”

 

Yes, it’s dangerous to talk about books. We should be more specific and stick to only children’s books. They are safer, less likely to stray into the taboo domain of religion, race and politics. Anything unhinged from reality would be better than the serious enterprise of literature. Fairly tales are good, science fiction and fantasia would take us even further away from the feral world we live in to other planets. Surely no chance of religion, race or politics cropping up like demented Jack in the boxes in lalaland is there? But wait, errh wasn’t RR.Tolkien a fascist? A racist? In the “Lord of the Rings,” the evil Orcs are, in Tolkien’s words, are “squat, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant-eyes” (that just about describes everyone in my household except me along with 99.9% Asians living in the Greater Pacific). The enemy is the Dark Lord and he lives in the Black Land. The heroic protagonist and elves are, by contrast, undoubtedly blond, blue eyed and uncircumcised Aryans. Ideals of ‘blood’ and racial purity are always sloshing around Tolkein’s seemingly innocent narrative. For example, the Men of Gondor – “the high men” – are descendants of the Numenoriuns, the greatest of all warriors. Over the centuries, they have become ‘degraded’ because of breeding with inferior races. No Tolkien wasn’t a closet Nazi, he was simply lamenting the disappearance of racial “purity.” After all we all have a right to voice our anxiety about being swamped by non-Europeans, don’t we? Like poor misunderstood Hitler, Stalin and Idi Amin, Tolkein there were really just being true to themselves by being real traditionalist. Along the way of course they just bumped off a few million “inferior races,” build death camps and persecuted anyone that was remotely different from them! Yes folks see what I mean even keeping to trite fairytales doesn’t guarantee one the prospects not straying into religion, race and politics!

Lament I do but wait……do I see a light? An oncoming freight train? No a beacon – I am saved! Yes, movies will do very nicely, why didn’t I think of that earlier? After all they are all “make belief” right? So divorced from reality, we have even coined the phrase, “like real?” Obviously a reference to the reality of reality and the illusion of reality, one which I am sure you would agree movies embodies the latter. Not only are we just going to keep the discussion to movies, but we are going to gut the religion, politics and race out of it all as well. That means no “babel” or Oliver Stone’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” too incendiary (it will just bring down the building!). Besides the former has peek-a-boh reference played by a mute confused girl which are clearly suggestive of metaphor to describe the silent suffering of comfort women controversy. Though how it’s precisely related to that concept I am not quite sure, but you get what I mean anything to do with a mysterious black box has negative connotations. Besides it’s too dark there and after all we may all be lost in the forest only to fall into a hole. So out goes “Babel,” and in comes antiseptic controversy free: “The sounds of Music.”

 

Can’t go wrong with squeaky wire brush clean Julie Andrews and “Doe Rah Mi” yodeling midgets can we? No chance of controversy here, after all she plays a catholic nun. You can’t get safer than that can you? No chance of religion, politics or race entering into the storyline either – it’s a wholesome family yarn about the benefits of yodeling, starch collars and why nuns choose to wear curtains instead of real clothes.

 

Wait a second the sounds of music. Eerh wasn’t that set in Nazi Germany? In a little in breeding enclave somewhere in the Bavarian Alps, none other than the spiritual locus of the Nazi creed, where Adolf Hitler even built an Alpine retreat called the Berghof. And near by the Untersberg, a peak said to contain the immortal soul of the King Charlemagne, who had conquered most of Christian Europe in the ninth century—a role model of Hitler’s and one for whom he felt a mystical attachment too.

 

In reality, the hills were certainly alive with the sounds of music along with of the yelps and screams of Jews as they were marched off to concentration camps. As for Julie Andrews and the benign sauerkraut gobbling nuns; they weren’t as innocent as we are led to believe either. Since Vatican’s complicity with the Nazi’s even managed to earn their CEO, the happy title of “Hitler’s Pope.”

 

No I am afraid the sound of music doesn’t quite cut it in the controversy free department. It’s far too racially and politically volatile, we simply have to bid, “Auf Weidersehn” to those insufferable Nazi saluting singing good to boot midgets.

 

I guess nothing these days is controversy free, not if one has to interact with the world, community and people. One element of maturity is the realization most of us we don’t necessarily seek out controversy for the sake of controversy. Granted there are racist, bigots and even the terminally illiberal and righteous who believe they have the right to talk down to people or dictate how others should live, behave or even think, but fortunately, they are in the minority.

 

For the vast majority of humans – most of us are simply trying not to give up on ourselves and others. All too often we’re hoping that we are doing, saying and thinking the right things. Though sometimes when I try too hard by smiling at strangers in the MRT, I come across as a crazed suicide bomber or worst still a Prudential insurance agent trying to hit my monthly sales quota. (trust me I prefer the former, at least they have to decency to go off in a flash, while the insurance agents keeps hounding, stalking and squatting outside my doorway).

 

Most of us are just trying to make our lives worthwhile, not only for ourselves, but also for our loved ones and the broader society at large – It’s a subtle and slow process fraught with all sorts of hazards – reaching out often is. One always runs the risk of rejection or coming across as awkward. All too often we may declare those who have different views from us are hopelessly incorrigible and simply choose to cut ourselves from them. So there we find ourselves, where I am in my silo, you in yours and the greater they, in theirs. Each to his own to fashion the known world, each nurturing their own prejudices and illusions as to what represents the truth.

Why? Because we daren’t touch of on those subjects where angels fear to thread religion, politics and race. Is it such a wonder that we continue to amble along like the blind wondering why we cant even make sense of the times we live in? Or why we still continue to fear the things we do.

 

(By Astroboy & Keith Ho / Socio / Politics / Satire – EP 995438- 2007 – The Brotherhood Press)

 

Hey did you miss out on this BP article? This is generated by our new auto-bot crawler – check it out The Incredible Koreans

 

Why even trolls deserve the right to privacy – a study on how to win all the battles and still lose the war

 

Today is big cycling day – so let’s dive straight in – Question: is privacy under siege? Let’s put it another way; how many of you really agree with what the admin of wayang party did when they revealed the IP’s of these so called trolls? SHOCKING: IP addresses of internet trolls traced to various government agencies and stat boards!!! Why was that so disturbing? And how does it really affect you and me?

The short answer is: if it can happen to them; then it can probably happen to you and me as well –  its conceivable what the team in wayang may have done in their zeal to track down and name and shame these trolls is they have effectively broadcasted the message to the entire blogosphere and beyond – you don’t have ANY rights to privacy i.e it’s a commodity that’s not even worth upholding.

And I have a problem with that; as this brings into sharp focus - the question: what’s the real cost of pursuing this short term strategy of annihilation?

I am not referring to whether it managed to produce the desired results i.e by putting an end to the spamming and cyber harassment (for all we know that may be all they wanted us to do, to cross that mythical line and turn on ourselves) – just as all us probably know the most expedient way to get information out of enemy combatants may be by torturing them with a blow torch – but would you condone it? 

That a thing may work as a theoretical matter doesn’t necessarily make it right, not if it comes at a price that suggest one’s constitutional theory is so reducible that it even condones pursuing an idea solely on the basis of cost and benefit calculations.

That illustrates the glaring moral dilemma when we place convenience, congeniality and expediency above principles i.e the right to privacy.What happens to the whole idea of privacy when we cross the line by denying it to even trolls?

To paraphrase what do we forfeit when we go down this slippery road?

I understand, it’s very easy to buy into this whole idea that privacy these days is worth squat – as Vivian Balakrishnan recently proclaimed “online privacy is an illusion.” But hang on there – what’s he saying? Just because something no longer has the power of agency in our age means that it no longer has any intrinsic value worth upholding and even protecting? Is that what he’s implying?

If that were really true; then we could just as well save millions in tax dollars by dispensing completely with the criminal justice system which requires law makers to impute innocence on the accused by perhaps outsourcing the judicial process to Guantanamo prison interrogators – but one reason why we still expect judges and not super computers to decide on criminal and constitutional cases is because many of us perceive the need to uphold the indelible rights of the individual even if it comes at an exhorbitant cost to society - taking the principled and not expedient approach it seems is the price of living in a civilized society.

And here, what we may all need to consider is what sort of net culture are we propagating when we deny these trolls their elemental right to privacy?

Are we perhaps trading in the long and high principled road approach that guarantees rights for you and me for the seat-in-the-pants, cost benefit approach?

Because if you want the former gold standard – then we need to pay the price! We need to give these trolls the same rights that we enjoy ourselves. It’s hardly a matter of choice as it remains one of moral congruence, clarity and consistency. The converse is if we choose to settle for the latter - then don’t be surprise if someday someone just puts a policeman into your head – by leveraging on that dumb argument: if you got nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear.

The whole problem with that justification is it’s never ever made one molecule of sense; only because that idea would only work in a perfect system where abuses can never occur - and we all know, no such system exist any where in the world – that is why smart people build in checks and balances – and one of the best ways of doing this is setting limits – that’s probably why no one knows the PIN number to your ATM.

As I said, no one disputes the fact we may already be living as Vivian says in age where the notion of privacy has diminished – and this leaching, chelating or scouring is only too clear when we consider how even benign everyday technologies such as cell phones, EZ link card, credit cards can be so easily used to monitor, track and snoop in limitless ways – neither does it pay to nurture the minstrel illusion as we barrel deeper into the digital age; our idea of privacy would be able to have the resilience to remain intact against the digital onslaught – it cannot, but the solution to the erosion of privacy problem doesn’t lie somewhere in throwing up our hands and saying – Vivian style, “anonymity is an illusion” That’s not how smart people have traditionally reacted to an erosion of anything from seawalls,mud slides and receeding hairlines - they profile ever more creative ways and means to ensure that the erosion is stemmed, arrested and mitigated - and this may take the form and shape of insisting that information should not be freely bandied around or used only under very controlled circumstances – that’s how smart people get on top of the privacy hubris – as technology increases so does the means to protect privacy increase correspondingly.

As I said no one disagrees real privacy is in a dreadful state – but what cannot be so easily discounted away, is just because technology has diminished our right to remain truly private; it does not prevent us as a community from working to develop an online culture to ensure abuses of private information is kept to a minimum.

And it’s this wispy notion of protecting our privacy - that we as netizens need to keep very much alive as what’s a stake is not merely the issue of law & order, the constitution and politics, but they also involve very human questions – as the lost of privacy (real or imagine) provokes anxiety and a whole range of feelings as to how each and everyone of us wants to define themselves online as free people - I have no doubt, by instilling the quotient of responsibility by erasing anonymity, this may very well solve 99.9% of the governments problem when it comes to getting a handle on the internet – but in what way does this nourish understanding? How does it even add value to the ongoing social narrative? It cannot – at best, it would amount to going through the motions – aping the form without the content - that’s why I am not too concerned about Teo Ser Luck’s internet YP forays (can even go and use the best consultants, I’ve even talked to some of them here - one word as our Northern cousins will say, “tak boleh pakai lah.”) - granted for the first 2 months, it may get the hits, but as time goes by without a solid philosophy on how to sustain and nourish the ongoing Singapore social narrative – it simply doesn’t have the stamina to see it through to fruition – no chance in hell.That’s why I feel, it was wrong for wayang to have revealed privileged information concerning these trolls – as what is require may not be accepting the idea privacy is death, but rather the reverse –  a collective commitment that because privacy may be imperiled, it needs to defended even more vigorously and robustly - and how do we accomplish this? Except by subjecting us all to one set of laws – and this would compel us all to consider whether, we should extend the same rights to trolls? I would even go as far as to say it behooves each and everyone of us to keep this crumbly idea of privacy alive - as I cannot think of a better way to destroy the policeman in our heads and to drive out fear. (if you have a better way please share it with me, because I really don’t know)

I suspect one reason why the custodians of power loathe the idea of online anonymity has nothing to do with credibility and everything to do with their lack of imagination in being able to manage conflict in this new environment – and against that overwhelming deficit the most expedient way to deal with it is by putting a policeman in the head of every netizen – that way the real world status quo ante is replicated online.

The question is can wayang afford to play that zero imagination lackadaisical game? Can it use the hammer to solve every problem? I don’t doubt those trolls may have stopped spamming your site – but at what price did this come by? Did it come at the expense of giving up the high moral ground? And when you think about it, that’s everything in the internet. As privacy isn’t really just a worthless idea like what Vivian shared with us so candidly - it’s much more than that as what it really ungrids is the classical liberal conception of personal autonomy, independence and liberty – and you could just as well go back all the way to 1890 when the right to be let alone was first defined by Louis Brandies and Samuel Warren and see how the internet has managed to articulate that idea so beautifully in our age - in short, its everything that makes up the whole idea of the internet. Had Vivian hit the books, before he opened his big mouth, he would have never have said what he said - as what he says can never resonate in the hearts and minds of netizens. If anything all he’s doing is glossing over a doctrine, by attempting to repackage it without a comparable thoughtware – that’s what happens when ministers are lazy and so complacent that they dont even bother to read broadly and deeply.

Now you understand why when you reveal private information on even trolls – then you’re no better than those who you regularly criticize – as you have in effect become the very thing which you despise and wish to change - and with that it could be said although you may win all the battles, you will also do the impossible and lose the war – as the real war is waged in the hearts and minds – and to win there, one simply cannot cross those lines – and broadest line in blogosphere that runs deeper and truer than anything else is the privacy line – if those people want to cross it; go ahead, be my guest, but we should never be the ones. As we are really nothing more than custodians and keepers of these lines for perhaps the next generation that will come after us – do you now understand?

And there lies the paradox of our age when privacy is increasingly under attack from various seige machines – and the more we believe what we may be experiencing is the passing of an age; the more covetted and cherished the whole idea of privacy becomes - very much like how freedom in a repressive regime usually acquires an exaggerated likeness of being - that can only really happen in conditions of acute scarcity.

The ultimate irony of the whole privacy tussle may well be; it’s precisely because we are already living in the age where anonymity is a myth – or how sneaky CCTV’s can so easily put an end to the simple pleasures of life where a man could scratch his balls without having to discover the offending footage plastered in youtube – what may yet bear out from this medley is the perverse effect instead of all of us accepting the notion privacy is already dead; the reverse may yet be we would like to revive it; as it can only be a highly sought after commodity - in the same way sperm whales continue to enjoy a moratorium on whaling as they are endangered and run the very real risk of extinction. 

This paradox of privacy under siege bears out only too clearly when we look at how the marketing manifesto makes brisk business of tagging the word private from everything to private banking to having your private mile high queen sized bed at 35,000 ft.

Believe it or not, you can sell anything if you put the word private in front of it – and the wayang team would do well to buy into this idea, if they really want to succeed.

Darkness 2009

 

The brotherhood press 2009

 

To read more essays click here!Brotherhood   

 

Does looks really matter?

Well,  you decide…personally, I think the laugh is pretty cute….after 10 jugs of tiger beer on the tap, of course (pun optional).

Well after this, I am sure – I am going get some charming death threats in my inbox again.

Darkness 2009

Did you miss out on this essay? Catch it here: Why Blogosphere needs to run TOC, Wayangparty and the Brotherhood Press out of town!

Why Blogosphere needs to run TOC, Wayangparty and the Brotherhood Press out of town!

Nope, I didn’t fall off my bike and hit my head –Nope, you didn’t hear wrong – it rang out sweet and clear – “blogosphere needs to do us in along with TOC and Wayangparty!” I realize this whole idea may sound a trifle loopy – but that’s only because you don’t know about the evil power of one versus the goodness of the many.

 

I am not a fan of juggernaut big anything – matters little whether its mega churches, hypermarkets, bloated charities, super duper blogs or even flabby big firms. Where big features all it really does is level off the field of possibilities – reducing choice to perhaps a card board chicken case of – take it or leave it!

 

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out: how big simply spells trouble and it applies just the same to blogosphere.

 

Consider this: what happens if we only have one or two big blogs? What happens to the thousands of small voices?

 

Yes, we need to kill off  the evil power of one – take a hammer even to the whole idea of investing everything in just a handful of players: it matters little whether it’s in the field of business, politics or products and services to perhaps girl friends or even whether we should just do with one chicken rice vendor in a food court – in short, the evil power of one is no good – it just doesn’t come around. The chances are if you’re going to rely on it; it will let you down big time! 

 

If you’re a consumer, you’ve got to settle for less – if you’re speed dating, you’re probably end up being squashed to death by a 2 metric ton blind date and need I say, if you’re blog reader, you probably have to put up with my lousy spelling, grammar and comatose inducing post – that’s what happens in the absence of choice, diversity and the elemental right to say –“no thank you.”

 

You either have to lump it, or do without…..

 

In the land of the evil power of one, be it one newspaper, one chicken rice vendor or one super duper blog – what’s served up has to be consumed, not because its good or the best, rather the alternative is having to do without!

 

That’s why I strongly believe we (netizens) should consider migrating away from the whole idea of creating a single super duper assembly line of information i.e uni-polar (power of one internet) net where there may be ONLY two or three dominant players to perhaps creating an idea of a multi-polar net (the power of many) – where power is fragmented further into yet smaller pieces – the goal has to be to break ourselves up further to free up the voices of the multitudes.

 

The idea is to move away from inadvertently creating a monopoly like the Strait Times or Temasek -  this should prompt us to consider: would it be such a good thing if ONLY one or two blogs monopolizes all the traffic in the net? In what way does this seed diversity and increase the range of possibilities? How does it nourish understanding and bring people closer together?

 

The short answer is it cannot.

 

 

If anything, all it does is narrows the aperture  of possibilities to ONLY a few blogs and that simply endorses unmitigated abuse of power – this state of rot is reflected in the outlook of the MSM, where instead of dedicating themselves to the task of giving us the news without fear or favor – all the seem to do is forward the contrived reality of the govt of the day – is it such a wonder the only people who seem to defend the relevance of newspapers happen to be the very people who benefit most from it.

 

That incidentally is the real danger that confronts us all in the internet age – when all traffic flows only to one or two confluence points – what’s likely to happen is – these self styled czars – including the brotherhood press (as I don’t even trust myself) will eventually have the power to censor, delete, color and even filter your thoughts! – the end result: a contrived reality is forwarded that has absolutely nothing to do with reality – anyone who has ever had his comments censored in TOC will testify to this mind bending reality –  if it’s done solely in the name of responsible blogging then that’s fine.

 

The problem most of the time it’s got nothing to do with responsibility blogging – and everything to do with  – well you are just making me look bad, so I don’t think other people should read this!

 

The prognosis of the pervasive power of the evil power of one or just a few is chilling to the idea of a free internet.

 

Where power is diffused in the hands of many – there will be checks and balances – along with the whole idea of balance of power – it becomes impossible for one point of view to gain the center stage; instead the story is continually winnowed and whatever finally emerges has to be very close to the truth.

 

This incidentally is how the whole idea of democracy works – its premised on the idea of separation of powers – by deliberately fragmenting the power in the legislature, executive and judiciary. This way no one single entity is able to usurp power and exert undue influence.

 

 

My point is simply this; it serves no purpose to built another Byzantine version of Temasek online; if the imperative is to drive out the bad and seed the good then we should look at extending the linkages and networks even further, instead of reducing them to only a few isolated digital islands - the converse of not doing so is we run the real risk of regressing and even convalescing under the sheer weight of putting all our trust in ONLY the big to deliver the goods – and in the wake of the biggest recession the world has ever seen – that simply has to be a very stupid idea.

 

No it’s clear, we will have to drive the brotherhood press into extinction and hopefully take TOC and Wayangparty along with us – trust me, no one is indispensable – that’s the only thing that I’ve gathered from this whole economic meltdown – absolutely no one!

 

 

And don’t be surprised if at the end of it – you may even end up with a better blogoland!

 

Got to go for my swim now…please do feel free to correct for spelling and grammar –see I told you all, that’s what happens when we only have the evil power of one and a few.

 

It just doesn’t come around.

 

 

Darkness 2009

Ekunaba and Strangeland readers pls note: there will be a server upgrade – SLF 1 to 7 will shut down @ 1530 hr (local time) for a period of 8 hours – KOHO.

Find out why Singaporeans dont see the need to have babies: Why LKY should play SimCity to find out

Did you miss out on this one? Find out more about THE EVIL POWER OF ONE go on, blow your brains out!

Why LKY should play SimCity to find out about our baby blues

Today is big cycling day – so we will just have to do a hello, bang-bang and good bye – coming to think, wasn’t that how our parents use to make babies? What’s happened recently? Why is LKY smacking his head!

 

Why is it so difficult to just get down to the whole business of making babies? It should be the most natural thing in the world. What’s the fuss all about? Why does it have to be something like the Da Vinci code?

 

My pet theory is; it may have something to do with the sworn enemies of the brotherhood – yes, those erudite spinsters who reside in that self styled monastery known as SPH (the Sisters of Perpetual Hesitation); who often write toe curling accounts on the seven habits of highly effective wife beaters – to why I rather sleep with my dog than a man – in their cloistered enclave when their mother superior Sumiko exclaims: “I’ve missed the boat.” Her underlings cheer on, “Well done, our aim must be improving.”

 

Leaving that all aside our baby blues remains a pithy summary of the sign of our times – it’s serious when you consider even Sengkang Sally these days seems to be hanging up her eggs.

 

In the early 80’s when the trend of forestalling the stork first surfaced it affected mainly the ranks of professional women – that was alright – besides all of them were batty and their abstinence probably saved most men from perpetual bitching.

 

But of late the trend of forestalling the stork seems to have reached pandemic levels and it’s even scissoring right through the length and breadth of our society! So out comes the same unsavory characters making a bee line in rogue’s gallery: high cost of living, not enough time, an uncertain future and the impossible demands of juggling jobs and kids etc.

 

Are they the only suspects? Could there be another reason why our birth rates are so low?

One clue that may explain why the baby figures are so shambolic may be found in the computer game called SimCity  – I happen to love the game. For one it’s a great way to take a holiday from my inferiority complex; as SimCity is really like playing god (though I don’t think he eats pot noodle or has to live in a room where clothes go to die) – now the thing that I learnt most about SimCity is:

Build a lousy system and you are likely to get lousy results; there’s no mystery there, it’s cut and dried; where the cost and penalty calculation become screwy is when you build a perfect system that’s so good that it even has reserves to gather momentum and when you pull on the brakes nothing happens!

 

It’s a bit like the Titanic 30 seconds before it struck the iceberg – instead of you playing the game; the game plays you – the levers of power are connected to nothing!

 

That dystopian nightmarish landscape bears out only too clearly in the game SimCity  – even the most benign and innocuous actions can be amplified and have far reaching implications – build a multi storey car park and the next thing you know you’ve created the mother of all traffic jams and that leads to probably an eight lane highway followed by deppreciation of real estate prices – next thing you know your neighborhood has turned into down town Baghdad; if you really want to understand why our baby birth rates is so low –here it is! -  the answer believe it or not can be found in a computer game and just in case you think – I am kidding.

 

I am not, I worked it all out mathematically one evening on a napkin in McDonalds.

 

The whole idea of playing the extinction game isn’t really so different from one those environmental horror stories; we so often hear about; When someone thought it would just be a dainty idea to bring a pot of flowers from the old country to brighten up the porch and dress up their bonnet for Sunday church.

 

But what happens when that species of alien flower finds its way into the local ecology and proliferates only to overreach its territory very much like a super invader to wipe up the rest?

 

The analogy isn’t so different from what really accounts for our baby blues. The historical accounts are sketchy; but the story goes something like this; during the late 70’s a great social engineering experiment was launched; the ‘2 is enough and 3 is company’ population control program.

 

It made perfect sense then to mitigate the high birth rates and leveraging on the apparatus of assimilation to broadcast the message it worked admirably, the problem was everyone from the policymakers to the social scientist who conceived this idea became so fixated on the drive train and breaking the land speed record; none of them bothered with the emergency brakes. In short, they forgot about the reverse gear – fast forward today; when we talk about our lamentable birth rates, it’s nothing more than a social Chernobyl experiment gone awry.

 

Yes, some one fucked up. And they fucked it up big time.

 

The lessons here are sobering – never ever mess around with something you don’t completely understand – that’s the problem when government decides to play a round of I am-God-almighty.

 

My point is simply this; it may have made pragmatic sense once upon a time to muck around with the lives of people, but even with the benefit of the best of intentions; the cost of doing so may simply be too horrendously high to contemplate in the long term; fact remains where the equation applies to people; the whole calculation may not even hold true as what we are dealing with here isn’t nuts and bolts – it’s not really a quantitative method as it remains a qualitative process; its more an art than a science; because you dealing with people and people don’t always behave rationally.

 

Yes, small things can have big consequences. They can even come back and bite you like a multi headed hydra. Worst of all, some of the mistakes we make can’t be reversed – once they go into the mind; they just stay there forever.

 

It would be good; if government just kept that in the back of their minds when they next decide to muck around with the internet.

 

Don’t say, I didn’t tell you; it’s doesn’t pay to play God.

 

Pls do correct for grammar along with spelling.

 

Got to go cycling now.

 

Darkness 2009

 

The Brotherhood Press 2009

Hey did you miss out on this BP article? The Incredible Koreans

Why good governance, may not be always good governance

As Singapore prepares to celebrate 50 years of “good governance” – it may be a good idea to just spend sometime asking ourselves whether Kishore is justified to adopt a “we have arrived” tone?

 

But before diving there – let’s just consider what is good governance? And is it really the magic bullet that can slay the bad and the seed the good in one go? Well, first of all you need to realize that good governance – has absolutely nothing to do with it’s dictionary meaning – it’s abit like dial a girl - it’s 10% effort and 90% imagination – so it’s a bag term that really defies pin point definition – I don’t doubt some people can rip out a bullet point list and tell you what it is – the problem is like all abstractions, it inspires the same problem with what’s often striven so hard for – it’s fails to pin down the nub.

 

If had to plumb for a definition of good governance it would be simply this – the need to establish accountability within government systems to reduce the abuse of power. Through – rule of law and not rule by law and.

 

The distinction is subtle and fine – so work in through your head, take your time, as the rest of this essay will not make sense – if it’s not crystal.

 

When the idea of good governance is applied judiciously – it works! For example if you look at the US system although it is radically divided over issues of how best to pursue the best end or means – none of them, no matter how fractious threatens the stability and legitimacy of the system – Americans may vilify one another as bigoted or morally depraved, but they know they will not be put up against a wall if their party loses a election or run out of the country on trumped up charges. Result: good governance shows that the cohesion of American society is stronger than its divisions – good wins over bad.

 

The problem with good governance as an idea, concept or even school of thought is when its given perfunctory treatment – that’s to say form takes precedence over function – where people aren’t so sure, if they cross the line, maybe they will get kicked out or bankrupted or have some part of their privacy revealed to their greater detriment – when that happens; good governance as an idea becomes not only a means to express contempt for the rule of law; but it also degenerates into a farce.

 

Why’s that?

 

Simple – good governance can really cut both ways – and this dichotomy bears out only too clearly when we peruse through the history of good governance; don’t be surprised, if instead of seeding the good, it even kills it dead and instead rubber stamps a whole lot of undesirable practices.

 

Don’t believe me, then consider this: why did the US invade Iraq? Good governance. Why is Najib Abdullah clamping down on the opposition just up North? Good governance. Why did China block Youtube? Good governance. Why did the Thai elites kick out Thaksin and declare martial law? Yes, you guessed it.

 

Yes, as we can see the appellation of good governance can sometimes be closer to the mark of the devil – closer even to the whole idea of perdition than salvation, if you really cared to drill deeper as our internet liaison officer Singaporedaddy put it so aptly in this entry: Inherent structural weaknesses in the PAP system of governance is sowing the seeds of Singapore’s failure (Part 1)

 

 

 

“Singaporedaddy on Fri, 27th Mar 2009 2:13 pm 

 

Good governance is really a double edged sword – the problem with good governance is its not always good all the time and all too often, it can be used to condone less than desirable practices and policies. This unfortunately is one area Kishore did not see the wisdom to talk about in great length – all he really does is say, we have good governance and off he goes like a train (presumably straight down a cliff)

So let us all be clear; good governance is a double edged sword – it can cut both ways; can even be used to sanction genocide and ethnic cleansing along with building a few death camps.

The U.S. for example regularly uses the idea of good governance to impose their will and designs on other countries – why did Bush invade Iraq? Good governance – at times they use the UN – sometimes they use the IMF, including the fund’s policy on good governance, as a way of furthering narrowly conceived U.S. foreign policy interests.

So I think it pays to read up further on this whole idea of good governance. Things are not so simple; you just dont say you have good governance and everyone believes you and off you go – life is not so simple.

 

SD”

 

And that pretty much sums up the dissonance that accompanies the whole idea of the principle of good governance – the problem boils down to one word – it’s too broadly endorsed, and all too often it bestows the power to determine what is “good,” along with probably the whole idea of what’s “governable” to ONLY a select few – and the idea has to remain problematic. As it’s a darn good way to legitimize everything from power grabs, invasions to perhaps the dubious role of insisting that you should raise your hands up even to go for urination breaks.

 

And this brings into sharp focus the disconnect  –  new demands are emerging against the backdrop of the whole idea of what is good governance in internet age.

 

Unfortunately, when we talk about good governance alongside the internet –  it’s a bit like putting a horse drawn carriage in an eight lane expressway – government has been slow and bovine to capitalize on this new reality – they haven’t really articulated the set pieces which makes up the whole idea of good governance to reflect the reality of this new age – they still have their old hats rivetted on.

 

And this raises some disturbing questions – like how can government even begin to reap the benefits of a network approach to good governance when they don’t even see the wisdom of engaging citizens and civil society organisations in shaping and implementing public policy?

 

Where does the idea citizens as partners feature against this new definition of the term good governance?

 

The idea wouldn’t be so disconcerting – if you didn’t know in some countries, such as Scandinavia, Finland, France and Japan, governments have already set the e-ball in motion in earnest – they’re required to consult with citizens to assess the impact of new policies. Here the idea of good governance goes beyond just informing in advance; they’re leveraging on the notion: if governments want people to invest their time in consultation, they must account for the use of that input in policymaking and explain their decisions – its not enough to ape the form without the content.

 

How does that compare with our current system? Is there any room for improvement? Could the revision to the films act and the whole idea of appointing AIMs have been better planned to include more people – was the opportunity to strengthen the relationship between a government and its citizens squandered or reaped meaningfully?

 

Why do so many people continue to criticize the government for being remote from the people? Not listening enough and not seeking participation? Aping the form and going through the motions instead of genuinely recruiting the interest of those who seem more interested in tuning out to officialdom?

 

These are of course hard hitting questions that all have the effect of throwing cold water on the whole idea of celebrating 50 years of good governance – I think, I’ve give it a miss and go cycling instead – the road it seems goes right on and on and we are definitely not there yet.

 

Darkness 2009

 

Are you a new reader of the Brotherhood Press? Check out our brand new portal at http://wayangparty.com/ / as for Ekunaba and strangelanders readers – remember it CTRL -ALT to take you there with our new moving platform feature.

Can Singapore fail? Deih Kishore! Singapore already failed already lah!

Can Singapore Fail? Well let’s turn the question on its head and repose it this way: hasn’t Singapore already failed?

 

I don’t know; and though I did attempt to delve into the minutiae of Kishore’s “Can Singapore fail? I can’t say I gleaned any valuable insights – to be honest, it left me quite perplex. Now don’t get me wrong – I appreciated his candor like his enthusiastic endorsement of how we should all pick up tissue paper and plumb for dosai instead of English breakfast – only something seems to be sorely missing from this whole valecditory narrative.

 

Fact: Singapore has failed! In my humble opinion at least.

 

This hardly requires any elaboration; you could just as well draw on a host of motifs ranging from whether the 1^st division team really delivered the goods to the whole idea of how Temasek and GIC decided to plumb for banks when the clever money decided to go somewhere else – in my mind, there’s no shortage of examples testifying to the fact; Singapore has failed in every conceivable way imaginable.

 

Why have we failed isn’t the main phalanx of this essay – I will probably have to write about it another time (as time is short and I am typing this on the train) – only let us all agree on the start line: we have failed – the reasons are multi factorial; could well be our fixation of the scholar system and the whole idea of leaving it all to the cult of infallibility – the very idea that only a select few can deliver the good life – or maybe it has something to do with our corseted view of how we usually define personal and organizational success; which sets us apart from countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia – where the effective power that drives the economy isn’t really the elite or technocrats; but rather the armies small of entrepreneurs – this came to me quite by chance when I found myself sitting next to kid on a business trip recently. I asked him, who do you most want to be when you grow up? – he just answered nonchalantly: “Li Khan Shin of course…that’s a dumb question.” Ask the same question in Singapore and you realize why the problem with our age has nothing to do a wider universe of how success can be attained; but rather the answer lies somewhere in the narrowed down version of what I term the tried and tested yellow brick road to success; where most people have in effect bought into the myth the only way to get the good life is to land yourself a scholarship instead of striking out on your own.

 

That in a nutshell sums up our lot – we are really the victims of our own scripting; by astudiously nurturing the myth that the good life can only be purchased by keeping to the apparent safety of the yellow brick road; most of us by default have inadvertently leveled off the field of possibilities to only perhaps a few ways to “succeed” in life.

 

Contrast that if you may with the American dream – where everyone and anyone can really strive for the idea of rugged individualism in a whole variety of ways which I can only describe as untraditional, unconventional and exciting – tell me how far would either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs get in Singapore?

 

I rest my case.

 

It may sound like a flippant question but its jugular when what’s really on the table is the idea of creating a new generation of trendsetters and not followers along with perhaps the whole idea of craving out competitive advantage, by all accounts – it has to be said, the American model provokes discussions on whether we have been too scripted by keeping to the idea of form while throwing out the valuable function. For all we know redemption on a national scale lies in the latter?

 

Its even conceivable part of that whole idea of being straight jacket requires us to ask whether the custodians of power have been “preaching” too much, which is quite different from teaching and mentoring.  Ultimately, what really needs to be discussed isn’t the valedictory idea of whether Singapore can fail? But rather can we even come to terms with the idea we may have perhaps already failed?

 

The question acquires a renewed sense of urgency when you consider how so often failure is often sidelined, white washed and even given the mind bending treatment to suggest everything is still humming along happily as planned – no doubt this is done with lashings of no regrets or deflecting the whole idea of blame by suggesting Singapore is really too small to tack its destiny in the broader world of globalization. Or even leveraging on the whole idea of good governance by trumping it as the only thing that really matters in the greater scheme of things – but nonetheless, it underscores our morbid fear of confronting failure head on – and that surely must be the greatest consternation to thinking folk as:

 

In business, like in statecraft – failure is the teacher – and admission of failure remains the key. My feel is the real challenge - has absolutely nothing to do with juxtaposing the minstrel question: can Singapore fail? But rather can we really afford NOT to analyze what went wrong so that we don’t make the same mistakes again. Can we really afford to elide wholesale the whole idea of how we have miscalculated the resilience and durability of the free market enterprise?

 

I’m not sure how this could be done if even in the face of incontrovertible evidence that suggest we should press the pause button and relook at many of our time honored assumptions –  the prevailing mood is still on of –  business as usual – or we did the very best we could under a given set of conditions and there is no scope further scope for improve – we are the best in the world – the masters of the universe – my point is simply this: its hard, if not impossible to imagine a group of people who still cling stoically to the departmental mindset sitting around a table discussing a failed policy, strategy or investment and reaching conclusions that don’t have negative impacts on certain members – in short, the opportunity to learn, improve and set a new course is squandered.

The real lesson here could well be not whether Singapore can fail as Kishore suggested? But rather; its less desirable twin that so often hides behind all great failures – can we really afford to admit that we have not already failed? And this should prompt us to consider whether perhaps the only real failure is failing to learn from failure it’self? – and there lies the shattered dream and the firmament of all our hopes in the sign of our times.

I have to step off the train now; its my stop – if only coming to terms with failure could really be that simple.

If only…..yes, it’s better if we contend ourselves with the sobriquet question: can Singapore fail?

Darkness 2009

Have you missed out on this essay? Will PAP end up like Basket Case UMNO? auto generated 098124