Why Alvin Tan has got the game of life backwards….

Look here dummy. It is really very simple – how to be your own man, that is. The goal is roughly divided into 3 main stages – first graduate with a passable upper class honors, make enough money to strike out on your own as the master of your destiny. Make something significant out of your miserable lot. Then when you find you’re the ONLY monkey standing proud on the hill – then and ONLY then, can you really afford to be your own man!

But when one hasn’t even cut the first baby set of teeth by graduating. Let alone chalking up the requisite number of years as a “Yes sir, three bags full…” salaried man to get the contacts, network and experience. Or for that matter even started a business to turn the first million successfully.

Then to step right out into the world in your own skin – just takes the idea of being your own man to a surreal and unbelievable level – where it could be said, Alvin Tan is so open minded, his brains is probably spilling out.

All you have really done is painted yourself into a corner Alvin. How silly. Now 1 to 3 is going to be ten or maybe twenty times harder – I am sorry, but you are fucked!

Darkness 2012

————————————————————–

“Understand this! The facts of life are cruel and often brutal. If you happen to be a blogger in Singapore. Then it makes absolutely no sense to be honest and forth right, if you happen to be either a civil servant or salaried man. The chips are really stacked against you from the word GO. If you happen to only draw a salary of less than 3K. Then you shouldn’t even be blogging.

Whether you like it or not. People really only respect money. No one is just going to just respect you as a human being. I know they should. I even believe you have every right to be accorded a modicum of respect. But you know what? That’s the exception. That unfortunately is not the way, the world works. All you really have, if you don’t have the power to give back as good as they dish out is the illusion that others respect you.

I really don’t believe it makes any sense whatsoever to rely implicitly on the sagacity, patience and the unlimited ability of others to understand you – you know what? In truth no body in their right frame of mind would even want to understand another person – why should they? Life is after all tough! So people dont normally sit down and think about others deeply UNLESS there is the right incentive to do so – in most cases, people will make decisions about you based on what they perceive to be right or wrong according to their standards and NEVER yours.

My point is the ONLY time when you can really afford to be your own man is when you are in a position to say to others, “I do not need this job.” Or, “I don’t need your approval to turn the wheel of life” i.e “what you think about me has absolutely no capacity to alter my earning capacity.”

You really need to go right back to fundamentals and ask yourself – WHAT IS THE GOAL? If the goal is to get ahead in life – then I think, it pays to play the hypocrite and even tow the line or at least create the impression that you are not the sort who enjoy rubbing Vaseline all over your body and singing naked under the moon.

Either that or work really hard to gain financial independence. Let me put it another way. If the other side knows that you have deep pockets or the capability to overreach into their comfort zone and mess up their lives. Then they will think twice and even thrice about suing you or even marking you down for doing whatever you have done – as if they try to pull that stunt, you probably have enough influence within your circle of business associates and friends to inflict significant damage on the other side. This they will have to factor into their risk assessment, if they want to take you on.

But if all you can really do is breathe and shit along with remaining permanently stuck in the 2K salary zone and you expect the world to be fair and square to you. Then I think you have to be either very naive or stupid or both. As in Singapore this is the really the unwritten rule of blogging. If you don’t have the capacity to take the other side to town – then you simply cannot AFFORD to be your own man. You just have to get used to shutting your mouth or towing the line – and that is the truth and nothing but the truth.

That is to say, a precondition of being your own man first requires you to be financially independent. Without this then it is pointless to talk about freedom and the right to be who you really are – and it’s best to just keep your clothes on.”

Extracted very recently from a thread about Alvin Tan, captured by the Brotherhood Press in Ekunaba.

———————————————————————————————————

“does being single make me less of a man?” It gives me no pleasure to say this ladies. But, of course it does. I guess one can wax lyrical about the joys of being independent, single, unfettered etc etc.

Or seek comfort food in endless male bonding sessions etc etc. But my point is these are merely very poor substitutes for the real thing – you got to understand, when a man or woman is single, its really an unnatural state – and whatever we may use to try to fill up that blank space has to be at best a prosthetic like a plastic limb or a device like a wheel chair that one regularly uses to get by.

Sure singles can spend their time like cripples and wax lyrical about how all men or women are half and quart measures and we would all be better off winging it on our own – in the way cripples often recount with glee how wheels are far more kinetically efficient than even human limbs. They may even be right! We may even be able to do really nifty tricks on our wheelchairs from time to time for laugh. Only let us all be frank and also accept the idea that when a cripple is confronted with a flight of stairs. Then reality hits home and usually it hits hard.

I know how it is to be alone more than any of you. More than maybe all of you in this thread combined.

I am also acutely aware of how an intelligent man can even derive an almost delightful perverse sense of pride and satisfaction from that petulant idea that he needs no one – that he can and will always manage all by himself. But I don’t ever want to go down that road. Never. As it’s really the road to perdition. That can only lead one to a hall of mirrors, where the incomplete man somehow manages to do the impossible and successfully convinces himself that he is somehow whole and complete without a woman – perhaps I have spent many years alone in mainly hostile countries where I have always had to be a hard and difficult man. And I am acutely aware of how a man IF left alone for prolonged periods can only be very destructive, cruel and inhumane. And that again is something that is so easy to do. So very easy.

But my gut feel is the greatest danger to any man like myself, especially, if he is successful is to be lulled into the false belief that incompleteness can somehow magically be transformed into a whole and complete state of being – that he can somehow be complete with just the sheer power of money, status and influence. And that if you must know is terribly easy to do. So easy it seems. That one can even step into that comfortable place and never ever want to step out again.

And that could well be the ONLY reason why I never ever want to allow myself to even step into that place. I much prefer the crushing and bitter sweet reality, as you put it,

“does being single make you less of a man?”

And the reply is yes, it does make me less of a man. Much less…. I am afraid. But at least even in this discomfort zone…I am still a whole man who knows and accepts the truth…the truth and nothing, but the truth.

Now you must excuse me ladies. I have to go to field now. I need to get drunk with my jungle friends.

Darkness 2012

Extracted from a thread in a blog in District 9 (currently under measured responsed) relayed by the Starcruiser KDD California – The Brotherhood Press – subject: LIFE, HONESTY and the RIGHT TO BE YOUR OWN MAN.