What’s Holding Back Change? – You!!!!!!

 

Tell me, how did the kidney of the one eyed dragon end up in the body of Mr Tang? Was it something like alien abduction involving teleportation and telepathy? “Dunno.” Maybe this is another case for agent Mulder & Scully of the X files – hang on! Here comes another curve ball: why is when you type “brotherhood” and “Darkness” and post it in a thread in The Online Citizen, it automatically goes into moderation mode forever? Recently, I asked our internet Liaison officer this question, Singaporedaddy (who I am sure some of you are very well acquainted with) during one of our regular cycling sessions, he just made some teeth sucking sounds shrugged his shoulders and said, “dunno.” Coming to think of it, why didn’t Cheong Yip Seng aka “the master of impossibility” mention the corrosive effects of the climate of fear in his report when he was tasked to chart a long term vision for the internet? What happened there? Dunno again. Why is Lee Wei Ling writing her own column in the ST these days? What’s the basis that accounts for this bizarre turn of events? Did she recently discover something monumentally important while working with brain damaged patients that gives her extraordinary insights to suggest her libations and lamentations may even hold out some life changing message for all of us who are still in the dark? Again dunno.

 

Yes a disturbing pattern appears to be emerging, one that even suggest there may even be gaps (I suspect the size of the Grand Canyon) and blanks in our understanding of how things usually work or may come about.

 

As some of you already know I am not a big fan of gaps, blind spots and black holes where stuff just go right in only to disappear leaving everyone looking at each with that dumb quizzical look.

 

One reason why I am not a big fan of gaps and blanks is because when you think real hard about it; they do fuck all to solicit deep spirited understanding; that’s to say instead of bridging minds where people can all come together to reach some common understanding. They alienate and disenfranchise people pushing them to far flung quadrants like distant specks in some galaxy – where if you notice, these missing blanks in the social narrative don’t so much disappear as they get filled up and conflated by hucksters, charlatans and folk who are really bent on a spot of mayhem and mind control.

 

If you really want to know how terrorism and extremism takes root. Look no further, here you have it! Ignorance if you notice can never ever fester in an open society where issues are regularly vented and brought to light. What they rely on is the precondition of twilight and darkness, where the truth may be so elastic that it lies somewhere in no man’s land between hopes and dreams. And that simply creates ideal conditions for someone to come along and fashion their self serving version of the truth and sell it as the best thing since sliced bread; next thing you know people scrambling to strap bombs and blow themselves up in the name of Mickey Mouse – the way I see it those deadenders deserve to go down the dodo red carpet hall of fame. As they never even once bothered to fill up the blanks with filler or pour concrete over those gaps in the story? To paraphrase; they never bothered to demand for the truth; so is it such a wonder someone just comes along and fills their heads with all sorts of sugary shit.

 

I mean, if those losers stopped and used their brain for one moment. Maybe it would dawn on them: “Hey, if it’s such a great idea why don’t you go blow yourself up first? How sure am I, the moment I push the red button. I am going to be magically whisked to paradise surrounded by 71 virgins? What happens if those virgins happen to be the erudite spinsters from the SPH (The sisters of perpetual hesitation) thrown with a couple of penguins to make up the numbers?”

 

Get my drift? See my point?

 

But what’s even worst than having to regularly deal with gaps and blanks in the narrative is how they are increasingly used by leaders these days as the preferred crowbar at subverting and bending the truth. I don’t doubt for one moment – gaps and blanks offer a great way of pulling the wool over one’s eyes. Create a statistical sink hole and no one can even follow in your wake; you become invisible like a stealth jet plane. Create a blank here and there and no can even pin you down on the specifics; you keep your options open – you even get a complimentary “get out of jail” card free; you get to do what you want to do with impunity - its a blank cheque.

 

But what really disturbs me is how widespread and prevalent this corrosive practice is these days; despite the background chorus that keeps harping on about more transparency, opening up and doing away with red tape – I may be wrong, really, I could; but some things just don’t gel very well.

 

And these days all I seem to be able to ses is an endless stream of contradictions; one after another; it doesn’t matter whether it involves subverting the truth in a church where the pastor regularly rebukes the congregation by labeling them faithless and sloppy Christians, if they so much as ask: why does Jesus need to go into real estate business by building another mega mall? How might that serve the whole idea of the kingdom of God? 

 

Or even if the act of subverting the truth occurs in the corridors of power in the UN security council, where Colin Powell once held up grainy power point slides of mobile toilets which he conveniently passed off as mobile biological labs.

 

If you really want to know how the Bush administration could have once sold that contrived version of reality to the whole wide world; then ask yourself why didn’t the journalist, academics and statesmen ask for more proof before rushing into a war? How was it even possible so many people acquiescence wholesale to the mufflement of the truth?

 

If you really must know; it’s your fucking fault – Yes, there’s no way to cushion the blow so I am not even going to hold back. You just have to suck it in and roll with it – you the news consumer, you the blog surfer and you the silent watchers voted inadvertently with your keyboards and mouse clickers to create that very same reality that you’re now bitching non stop about  – and this brings me to the main nub of this article, that if we want to fashion a better world for ourselves; then we can no longer just remain bovine consumers – we need to be proactive “Mind the gap!” consumers of information, products, services and what regularly served up in our internet.

 

It doesn’t matter whether its deciding to plonk your money in a bank that has a policy of never divulging whether their vaults regularly offer sanctuary to the Medellin cartel or corrupt leaders who regularly bleed the poor dry; it doesn’t matter whether it’s buying into products of firms who regularly tie up with vendors who chain kids to some sweat shop to make sports apparel; or even a chain store that keeps on passing off saccharine laced junk food as mother’s milk while they spend millions of dollars playing hide and seek with the FDA to hide the truth from all of us.

 

Or even blogs like The Online Citizen who regularly censor your comments; so that they’re able to fashion a contrived consensus to project their own reality how Singapore is: where, if you’re not mindful. You may even take the path of least resistance and buy passively into the sugary notion; you’ve now finally found a place called Avalon: where you may even have such a thing called a real voice and choice; when infact, we all know it’s closer to the illusion of having a real voice and choice.

 

There is a world of difference: and if you don’t know – it just means; you don’t know and life really just goes right on.

 

My point is this! If we really want equity in people and planet; then we need to be more conscious of our decisions, prerogatives and the choices we regularly make; we need to understand there is power not only in our words, thoughts but also the hundreds of insignificantly small decisions we may even make on a daily basis.

 

Be it deciding to eat in a food court where the waitresses are hired only because they delight us no end with their eye popping cleavages which probably came at the cost of turning out Ah Mah and Ah Kong out ontu the streets. Or perhaps plumbing to spent a vulgar sum on some cooking holiday instead of ploughing it into the local economy to benefit ordinary folk who may currently be struggling to make ends meet – we need to understand that even the most innocuous decisions we regularly make such as deciding to click on a website - is akin to throwing a pebble in the pond as its effects radiate out long even after we’ve gone; that if we want to dissociate ourselves from the whole idea of fashioning a bochap, brutish and ferocious society that is based on the law of the jungle; where only the fittest and the most intelligent survive and the weakest perish and deserve to die – then we can no longer afford the cost of remaining bovine and pretend as if the choices we regularly make doesn’t have a rippling effect on others; it matters little whether it’s an innocuous or even a benign act – like a blog surfer who only decides to read big blogs like The Online Citizen whilst disregarding small sites like the Singapore Daily, Tomorrow.SG  or Sammy Kopitiam– my point is even by engaging in that seemingly innocent act; unknowingly we may even be unconsciously fashioning a dystopian landscape in earnest by snuffing out thousands of small voices out there in blogoland who may all have something incredibly poignant and valuable to say but cannot do so to shape the ongoing social narrative of our age.

 

What then will we all be left with? The empire of bones….. perhaps?

 

You go connect the dots; you decide whether you want to buy into the plan or carry on as if it’s business as usual– only, understand this! Don’t say no one told you now that you know what you know; that’s never ever going to be an excuse anymore. As now you know; you have all the power to fashion a better world to even elicit greatness in others or for that matter to grind them down to dust and the power is right there in front of you, in the palm of your hands.

 

Darkness 2009

 

[The Brotherhood Press 2009 – No EP code is attached to this document due to upgrading of Ekunaba servers – img 2009)