CCXIII - always, baby

If I had a baby sister, I wonder what she'd be like. Well, she probably wouldn't be very tall. I'm not even taller than my dad. She probably wouldn't be much taller than my older sister, and that's not very much to beat. My mum is not very tall. I suppose she'd look a lot like my older sister, have dark hair, dark eyes, fair skin. I need to give her a name. I'm thinking Hannah is a good name, I'm thinking that would be a name I'd put on my arm, in tall, elegant, sloping script. I think Hannah might work. My dad didn't have a name for her. I don't think my mum has a name for her. I think I have a right to give my baby sister a name, if anybody should, I do. I'd like to give her something unique too, a life, a backstory, a part of being alive for twenty something years. I'm thinking I'll make her a story. I'm thinking, this is my little sister we're talking about. I have a little sister and this is she.

Hi, Hannah. I'm your bigger brother. Maybe in the past I wouldn't be a good one, seeing as how I'm hopeless as a little brother to my elder sister (should that matter?). I'm your bigger brother, and I don't care what the other story is or are, I'm actually your bigger brother, and damn if I don't intend to be the biggest meanest one there is. Fuck, man, that's all there is to it. Hi, mei. I miss you. Hannah. I think it works. You're Hannah now, OK? You get it? You're my baby sister. Wow. Hannah Ho. You live, you get it? You are my baby sister. Hannah, bub ba pup ba doo bah. I just never realised it, that's all. I am an older brother, that is me, you. We -frantic finger gestures- are.

OK, not too tall. Well, probably not. I'm guessing you're sassy. I'm guessing you're a little confused, because you're the youngest, and it took me a long, long time to figure out who I am. Maybe I'm fast forwarding a little to where you must be now, and I mean it's not like we can skip all the past, right? So you're probably a little confused, but I'm basically hoping that you're not lost to me, that between me and you we kinda got something a little figured out, the way that I guess my elder sister and I, me, kor, never really made sense of, never really got to. We lost, that I know, but I'm hoping that somehow you and I made it. I'm really hoping that's true, that that's some part of me in you that would have somehow given you the courage to be a girl, a woman. I'm guessing you're sassy, notwithstanding all that, I'm guessing with my sniping and my bullshit somehow you're a lot funnier and maybe you make me laugh. Very few girls can make kor laugh, you know that? It's true! But I'm guessing you can make me laugh that ridiculous laugh that I make when I'm alone and I'm just fucking enormously tickled. I wonder whether you have that same laugh as I do, because no one else does, that booming, ridiculous, insane laugh. I hope you do! I would be so proud of myself if that were the case.

I'm guessing you're cute as a fucking pin poking through a button on some fucking fuzzy belly of a plush unicorn. God damn it, I bet you're the cutest thing I've ever seen. You know, I've fallen in love twice in my life. Twice, two proper times. I still bet you're the cutest, though, I bet you're the cutest. Hannah, I bet you're cuter than the lot of em put together. I bet you're funny. I wouldn't bet you're smarter than me - I just don't sense it. It's not that I don't believe there isn't anyone smarter than me, it's just that I don't sense it. Of course I can fucking handle having someone smarter than me in the family, what are you, stupid? Sorry, I like saying that a lot, well, at least thinking that out loud. But if you were smarter than me, well, come on now, you know and I know that that would take a lot of smartening. Hey, I'd be your biggest fan if you were. But let's just not say you're the smartest kid in the family, OK? We'll talk it over, we'll leave that for now. I bet you're funny! I'm dying to know that you're funny, kid. I'm fucking dying to know that you're funny.

I bet you'd like Casablanca too. I bet it! Casablanca is great. I only watched it around the time that I was in NUS, you know. I wonder what you'd study. I would miss the hell out of you if you went overseas, or worse, NTU. Fucking NTU. Anyway, I bet you'd love Casablanca. It's this old timer war romance with some real fucking movie lines, man, and a real bit of music too it. You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh, is just a sigh ... Wow, man, I think you'd like all the old timey stuff, same as me. I wonder if you're the purest of all of us, me included. Maybe somehow with you, we'd be closer. Maybe you're the best of us, maybe you bring out the best in us more of the time than anything. I bet you don't give a damn about photos, same as me. Well, this is maybe just wishful thinking.

Hannah, where are you now? Where are you? Can you hear me? Can you feel me reaching out to you, calling you from where I am? Can you hear me being here, holding your hand? Am I, will you stay with me, please, baby sister? I'm sorry, baby, I'm sorry.

I wonder if you'll like me, Hanny, because you know, I think all the kids I know like me. I think you'll like me! But at least that's what I'm thinking. I like to give people nicknames. You can have a funny one, or a cute one, or a cool ass one. But you cannot call me strange nicknames, because it doesn't work like that. Nobody calls me strange names anyway. Wee Jin is pretty fucking strange to begin with. You can fucking call me kor, or mister bear, or something, even Hey Buddy when you're annoyed with me. I would go what and probably glare at you, even though that sounds very mean. I don't want to hear you swear but I guess someday I'll let you do it when I'm around. You probably don't like to drink, but what do I know, right? God, you'd better not get influenced by bad kids. I would kick the fuck out of some punk kid who even thinks about giving you the wrong idea. Yeah, there is no half assed brothering around here. Mm hmm. Oh, boy, that kid who you like, he'd better have something to back his shit up. I do not find him funny, nor smart, nor good enough to be cocky. This is a conversation we're going to have a lot. You won't like it, I think, I'm not your dad. But god damn it, there's going to be some standards around here. Hannah, I'm talking to you, and I'm trying to do it as if you know I'm worth listening to. We're going to have to work that out a little, I think. I don't know how patient I am, sometimes. Usually I have to realise that I need to take a couple steps back so that this weird thing called "patience" can sometimes happen. Oh, you're going to know this about me, and you're going to grudgingly like it. I am a bad, bad tempered kid, man. I ain't gonna yell at you, but if I do, God, just don't, let's just not. I am a bad tempered man, kid, I know it hurts things pretty bad, but I just have this god damn fuse that will get triggered. But all that aside, you've got to like me, that's all there is to it. You've just got to like me, Hanny penny. Wow, it'd be so surreal doing all the stuff I want to do with you. Maybe all this is going to come true.

Kor loves you, OK baby, hugs! Mama would love you so much! Goodnight, Hannah. God bless you, mei.

CCXII - narcissus

It used to be that photos of yourself which weren't too flattering were merely artefacts, merely artifacts, I can't decide which. A little vaguely embarrassing, or maybe slightly endearing given some time, a little, well, what can you do. These things happen, it's just a bad photo of you. Nobody's wonderful all the time, a disney princess in every shot. Maybe with a little less horror and a little more bemusement a small window opens onto your sense of self esteem. But OK, no need to get into neuroses. But I think these days you try to hide these things somewhere they don't see the light of day. God, a bad photo. Let's get rid of the evidence and pretend that only some distilled notions of beauty exist in these momentary frames. I find that so awful. What are you afraid of exactly? What bugs you about so called imperfection? That you don't look beautiful from any other angle and at every other time the cameras aren't turned on? That to the people sitting beside you and whatever they don't know what you look like except through the clinically desensitised square of a photograph? That through eyes you could never look through someone is judging your odd features in some totality of beauty that you could never add up to? Geez, I just find that awful. It's so sad that the concept of photography, how we think of that in the general, has come to only so much. Wondering why some people look fabulous in photographs. It's all so silly. Examine the picture in your heart first. I remember reading that somewhere, or maybe I'm paraphrasing. Real truth and beauty is far above what appears unglamorous. Light doesn't reveal what looks good, it reveals what we should have known.

"Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing. Success depends on the extent of one's general culture. one's set of values, one's clarity of mind, one's vivacity. The thing to be feared most is the artificially contrived, the contrary to life."

"Without the participation of intuition, sensibility, and understanding, photography is nothing. All these faculties must be closely harnessed, and it is then that the capture of a rare picture becomes a real physical delight."

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

CCXI - empire

Kishore Mahbubani, writing on western geopolitics (vis-a-vis China, Russia, the Middle East, etc.) observes,

"What explains these failures? It is surprisingly simple. After two centuries of success, the region’s leaders assume their role is to sustain the expansion of western power. Not one of them has wrapped their heads around the new undeniable reality: the real challenge of the west is to manage decline."

(http://www.mahbubani.net/…/Look%20to%20China%20for%20wisdom…, 21 March 2014)

Perhaps one should be hesitant to carry this sentiment too far past the context it originated in. But it seems to ring a faint, evocative bell, at this time. Perhaps something has broken, perhaps our onlooker's faith in the rationality of things eventually turning out right, given recent events, has gone slightly askance. Or can it simply be that this is, after all, the end-game of western political art; that this is, for the happy fatalist, the inevitable outcome of such as democracy untrammeled, the good/evil polarisation of a two-party republic, the final renaissance of populism, capitalism, individualism, demagoguery, and all that?

If this is true, then perhaps it is not that such and such a man steps into the space, it is that the space was always there for such a man as him. Yet that is perhaps the common, unitary truth behind any form of politics, any form of government over a polis - that in the end the guardian who guards the guardian is at best some kind of man, or men. Socrates argued that it was essential for the guardian class of each polis to be specially educated and nurtured for rule, and rule be reserved to such as these. Wishful thinking, but probably the only good prescription.

The troubling thing, in my view, is that I'm not entirely sure this particular man has realised that he has to, whether he likes it or not, manage something that seems to be a little on the decline.

CCX - at a last moment, realisation

Little birdie, did you not know?
Did you not know that the road you lie on is rough and ugly
That the great hulking shapes that roar by your body are unkind
That while you have grown from so small a birdling
Warmed by the golden, sometimes waning autumn sun
And the horrid rain so cold and discomfiting to your nest of patchwork twigs
Picked and weaved with careful beaking
That the wind that sings grand themes to your kinfolk
Reminding them of grandfathers taking wing on lesser plumes
Now carries tidings of their children, where they lie
Little birdie, did you not know?
That if you miss the sudden turn
That so often you managed so well, and so deftly
Carving so freely your arcing paths in the sky
And near the ground, and past the columns and trees
Tracing paths of joy and being
Little birdie, did you not know?
Your chest of feathers are soft and furry
They glow softly in the evening sunlight
Your dark wings now fold across your eyes
And the life you once held spreads now to the earth
That the sequence of your final tumble
Spiralling, collapsing, crumbling
Will not be mourned
Little birdie, did you not know?
Such as you now know, little birdie.

CCIX - stranger things

I find it so frustrating trying to explain Latin American literature. It's inexplicable.

In a way I've always felt frustrated trying to describe things. It's a frustration that has many sources. First, you're trying to describe an idea, a concept. I don't think it's a failure of the English language itself, but in general, there are some things which defy easy description. I think most of the time what we're looking for is just that, short, clear, precise description. That's the holy trinity. If it's done just right it has a self propagating kind of assuredness about it. A bit, one-eighth bites, just enough to grasp someone's attention, good enough to get the essential core idea across, maybe even a little to get someone to think of the nascent possibilities.

And I think that the older I've gotten, the more I want to understand something right down to its core, right down to what it essentially means. I want to know it, I want to hold it in my mind like I hold a stick in my hand. I want to feel it, grip it, heft its weight, sense its range of motion in my wield, swing it around a little, feel the world bend a little around its whip. I just feel like that's how I want to know things. Put two and two together once in a while. Think the way these things should be thought. But (and!) it's hard, and it's even harder after that to do justice in a word.

Don't get me wrong, I love describing things. Way down deep in my soul there's something that gets very satisfied when explaining something, and doing it right. I feel when I was younger there was probably something like that in me, but I couldn't always do it right, and that was usually both a little embarrassing and a little frustrating. It didn't come from a desire to be smarter than the next guy, nor to be a little stranger, nor to be deserving of a little more attention. And I'm glad it wasn't these things. In some ways I think it's a curiosity that my books have given me. Books can give a lot of things, and all you have to do is sit back and think a little. Sometimes I wonder what people actually think when they read what I've written. It's a little hard to imagine that the ideas that sprout out of their minds are the same ones that I have; after all, everyone's wired a little differently. We're not reading code with the same programming language and instructions, we're all a little different. What's evoked in each of us? The prejudices, memories, lingering tastes, blind spots, haunted senses. What music we listen to. I mean, it's pretty incredible. Nobody reads the same thing out of the same written words.

And sometimes ideas are very complex. Some ideas take a lot of introductory understanding. It's hard to describe a car to someone who's never seen a wheel, so in the same way it's hard to describe, I suppose, Kafka to someone who's never really been introduced to the core philosophical concepts. You can't just hand someone five thousand lego bricks and ask him to build a battlemech. I'm not even saying Kafka is a complete car. But not everyone has a really robust, intuitive sense of, say, validity and soundness. You know, I've always felt that the most dangerous thing in the world is to draw the wrong conclusions from given premises. That, and the danger of mis-describing something, are basically the evils which the whole house of philosophy was built to fend against. The most important thing in the whole wide world is to correct incorrectly drawn conclusions, no matter how strongly someone feels about them. The problems philosophy usually runs into is that a) certain premises which philosophy relies on are essentially contested, and b) some core concepts are metaphysical, so that it may seem as if the "best" and most commonly accepted answers are given short shrift, while really our dear philosophy people aren't able to produce sufficiently beautiful (short, clear, precise) answers in return, and they claim that they'll never be able to. So that seems to give us nothing, which is more beautiful than the deception, but not always. I think what they label absurdist existentialism is basically a paradigm example of this sort of philosophical terminus.

But you know, that's beautiful, if you can live without having to embrace something. It's not easy, but that doesn't mean such nothingness is meaningless. Better to be a "fool"? Well, I can't say. Camus discusses the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was from the old Greek legends, a king (there were many kingdoms during the period these legends were set in) who was supposedly very intelligent, very curious and perhaps a little audacious. I kinda get the impression he was a little morally ambivalent. Well, in the Greek mythology conception, morality is basically heroic deeds and worship of the gods. Anyway, Sisyphus does a bunch of things which infuriates the gods, makes them look foolish. That's the one thing they really don't like! The dead can't go to hell because he tricks and binds Death, something like that. Hades gets pretty angry. They catch him and force him to roll a fucking boulder up a hill. When it reaches the top it rolls back down. It's an eternal sort of punishment, a warning to fucking humans not to mess with the gods. In a way it echoes Prometheus, who is chained to a rock while an eagle eats his liver, which grows back every day. Anyway Camus says, well, we're all like that a little, really, it's an analogy of ourselves. We go through these incredibly taxing routines, and some of us don't really realise the futility of it all in a way. But Camus also said, sure, of course Sisyphus is wise enough to recognise the irony of his labour, the asinine futility. Roll a fucking rock up a hill, only to have it roll down. But Camus says, hold on, once he's reached the top, he's man over himself again. His feet plop down the sides of the hill after the boulder, and in that ease he's fully alive, fully aware, cognisant of the triumph of that moment. I was riding my bicycle one night. Rolling downhill, not having to fucking pedal, I realised exactly what that felt like. I don't know that it was "worth" it to have pedaled all the way up that hill, but that moment of pure recognition felt like a special, purified through fire, kind of breaking the n^th wall. Maybe that's all existentialism is, really.

And I mean what kind of music do you listen to? Shit, man. That's a wonderful example. Some music is simply way too hard to grasp. A lot of classical is like that. Some people just don't like rock the way that I shun balloons. Too unpredictable, too rude. Hell, it's pretty impossible for me to identify a Miles Davis tune. What does that make me? I don't know. Music sounds different at each time of the day. In the evening, jazz makes sense, not while the sun shines. It's bizarre. What does that make us? We're not computers and programs, moods matter. What is that, what is mood? It's so bizarre.

Latin American literature is impossible. I love it all, and I don't think I'll ever be able to describe it. There's no way to give an accurate summary of Rulfo, Borges, Marquez (might be the easiest of the lot, but still), Llosa, Cortazar. The last guy is maybe the best. I thought Rulfo and Marquez were the best, but I don't know what I don't know and I know nothing. Cortazar might be the best. Why? I can't explain it. You have to read it, and not only that, you have to fail pretty hard. Then you have to go away for three years, and read him again. That's what I did. I get him, but barely, not very well, but enough to see the little strings. Hopscotch. Have you ever heard of a book that could be read once through, and also by a certain determined sequence of chapters, 1, 27, 2, 28, 3, 46, and something like that? Christ. Cortazar might be the best. Characters both self-aware and ridiculously self-complicated, entangling with others who kind of are a little insane as well. The best thing about really good books is in my opinion the way that separate individuals appear to "understand" each other, and then whether these fictions of understanding are believable. Take A Hundred Years of Solitude. The strangest, most withdrawn, most singular characters, surrounded by other individuals who grasp what they are, internally come to terms (or simply have from the beginning), and leave them to be. How is it you understand me? I've always felt a little strange in that sense, that it was just an impossible thing for anyone to get me. I embrace that a little. A sense of otherness, a not-here kind of feeling. Just enough to stay true to a little something within.

Trust me, Latin American stuff is the best. Why? I can't tell you. I don't really want to. It's a secret, actually. But I'm telling you, it's the best. You should never expect me to explain it. I can't, and you deserve better. It is the best.

CCVIII - on lawyering

I'll be honest, I think lawyering is bullshit.

That's actually the number one answer I should be giving when I'm asked why I'm out of commercial practice. But I don't, because I have a very advanced idea of what bullshit is, and I hate to gripe, for many reasons, chief of which being that I think to gripe is to be extremely ungrateful. But let's look at all the things I didn't like about it.

OK well, at my first job I worked in a pretty cramped office. I had a computer, a desk, and high bookshelves, stuck in a wedge end facing the center of a circular floor. I think it sucked, I think it was a miserable place to sit and work. The chair I had, well, that we all had, was awful, it probably looked old when it was made, and that was probably in the early nineties. That's good in a sense, I didn't want to stay there at all. I remember sleeping on the stiff carpet once, over a weekend. That doesn't exactly make for pleasant memories, I suppose. But walking around the floor, it was a pretty sombre place, a little cold and hushed. I did not like it. I did not like the meeting rooms, well, most meeting rooms anywhere are pretty terrible, funnily enough, and I did not like the so-called partners' rooms. There was just something about that office that didn't scream fun, and coming from the university, where we were used to having beautiful spacious rooms, large tables, high windows, and corridors and halls in the pre-war style, well. It was like living in an enclosed tenement, next to crotchety landlords. I did not like it, and I felt bad for people who had been there longer than I had, which is a little strange way to be for a first year associate. When I drive by the tower I give it the finger, for old times' sake.

OK, next, I did not like three out of four of the partners I worked with. We worked for all of them at once, and immediately you might think, Oh God, that sounds awful in practice, and by and large it is, when you're at the plump end of the paddle. We had to fill in hours, which was extremely not fun. If I had one thing I would never do again in my fucking life it would be filling in my god forsaken hours. I would rather clean toilets than fill in hours. Part of the reason we filled in hours was for the partners to figure out how we were partitioned out. That is a fucking lame reason. Trying to fix a workload coordination problem between partners by having your employee report his functional hours is in my view getting it ass-backwards, given that time-spent is a function of multiple variables, including not least difficulty, efficiency and appetite. In my view it's impossible for any employee to objectively or accurately represent to one partner the task given to him by another partner; conversely, it's arguably far more effective for partners to either inform each other of the amount of work partitioned out to each employee, or to be more or less responsible for assignments to selected employees. Of course, the first option requires diligence and transparency, and the nature of a partner's work or preference for employee may make the second option unpalatable. In short I think the pool system referred to here requires far better partners' coordination than was apparent at my first job.

Of course, the hours system is also a way of checking each employee's, broadly speaking, efficiency, and for partners to figure out how much clients can or should be billed. Both of these two things is, in my opinion, rubbish. Efficiency in legal work is not something that can be intelligently measured (except in conjunction with other considerations, and then strictly only as a minor factor) by hours spent. Work must chiefly be assessed by the quality of the product, and forcing employees to think in terms of duration, imposed terms of duration, mind you, is in my view counter productive to a very great degree. We are intelligent people, and we broadly know whether or not we are working well in any set of circumstances. Of course, the nature of practice is extremely difficult, but I strongly doubt any notion that we have no clue about time-efficiency. I mean, come on, we've done exams all our lives under timed conditions, are you kidding me? We get it, trust me a little, OK. Well, you can guess whether or not time is a factor the partners tend to emphasise when it comes to efficiency. As such, this sort of emphasis would encourage associates themselves to be selective with their reported hours, and that would be stupid on so many levels. And conversely let me tell you this, it takes a lot of inefficient struggling to get to a certain competency. That's actually essential, believe it or not. We need time, in somewhat nursery conditions, to figure it out.

As for per-hours' billing, it's all rubbish anyway. It's estimated, given a fee cap, then the partners' hours are somehow magically massaged to make it look as if the partners spend as much time, if not more, than the associates on each file. OK, you gotta play your game, I get it. But you know, all things considered, as a reason for filling in hours this becomes rubbish.

A vast amount, a vast amount of time is spent waiting around court to be admitted into the judges' chambers. I don't even want to go into it. Every damned hearing means time wasted. I hated that feeling, it gave me a nervous, resigned anxiety. With the advent of technology this felt stupider with each passing day. I remember once taking a taxicab in this sort of mood to court, and hearing the Gypsy Kings on the fucking radio. It changed my life, man, it snapped me out of a funk, a fugue.

Anyway as for the three partners I did not enjoy working with, they were demanding, unpleasant, and curt with their time. That's fine, but I did not enjoy it. Cao Cao once wrote, 疑人不用, 用人不疑, which is to say, if you doubt someone, don't employ him, and if you employ someone, don't doubt him. Henry L. Stimson said much the same in 1945 when he wrote, as the US Secretary of War, to his President,

"The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust."

I'll admit, I was a pretty terrible associate in my first year. But you know, I think the firm could have been more responsive. There are reasons why a first year associate struggles, these aren't fucking mysteries. But I guess it's fair enough that if at first I don't impress someone, then it becomes harder, all things considered, to turn out right in their eyes. I get it. In my mind, I know that I'm pretty bad in my first year at things, just like in school. I wish I'd done better, but I hadn't, so that's the truth of it. It helps to have a little faith in people is all I'm saying.

There was also another so-called consultant in the firm who was basically the lady boss, and boy she acted like it. Working for her made my skin crawl. At some point she actually told me and another associate, well I was doing this just to test you, and you guys did a good job, you passed the test.

As for expenditure, well, at some point our claims for transport allowance home was curtailed. That kind of blew it for me. I mean, we're not fucking around here, we too want to go home, and that goddamn eighteen or twenty dollars these guys weren't willing to give out is just pathetic in my view. And not to mention that disbursements can and should be claimed from a client, given that a judgment sum usually includes a small mention for disbursements. That kind of blew it for me.

The hours and the pay, well, it ain't nothing. I get better of each, easy. I never regretted neither. And I need my own time out of work. Work isn't important enough to define me, and it never will. Most days I went home asking myself, did I earn the two hundred and fifty dollars of pay that I'm owed for today? And if I did, fuck it, that's all I wanted to know.

As for the good work we did, I had a couple of pro bono matters that I remembered well. But given the rather meagre standing I had at the firm and the attendant pressures, so much for it, you know what I mean?

Did I become a better lawyer? Yes. Would I have a better run of it now if I went at it again? I'm pretty sure of it. Is it worth my time, is it worth me getting back in it? Absolutely not. Commercial practice is the pits and little in the type of industry that was the subject matter of disputes was essentially interesting. Now law school was tremendously interesting, and as a student it was about the most fun thing I could have done. But lawyering was bullshit. I'm not cynical, as you can see. I have my reasons, and that makes me a critic, not a cynic.

The industry is in a pretty weird state at the moment, as the middle section of lawyers has gone completely thin. It goes to show you that the golden days have gone, and that in the past, being a practicing lawyer for the long haul was a far more palatable notion than it has been for recent years. Take efforts to increase the numbers of graduating students with moderately unenthusiastic growth, exports and all that internationally and you get the sort of conundrum we apparently face today, where there aren't enough spaces for first year associates, but the third to tenth year lawyers have disappeared. Well, I'm on the outside looking in, chuckling sarcastically. So screw you, practice, you were bad for me, and it doesn't take much of a man to know himself well enough to figure that out.

CCVII - hidden mirth

东风夜放花千树，更吹落，星如雨。
宝马雕车香满路。
凤箫声动，玉壶光转，一夜鱼龙舞。
蛾儿雪柳黄金缕，笑语盈盈暗香去。
众里寻他千百度，蓦然回首，
那人却在，灯火阑珊处。

辛弃疾 (1140 -1207) - 青玉案·元夕

The east wind breezes through evening fields of flower-laden trees, sweeping stars low like drops of rain.
Handsome stallions and shimmering carriages glide effusive through scented streets.
Mellow flutes lead softly, a moon of fragile jade waxes in motion, and whirling lanterns mirror in play the night's movements.
Exquisite in finery and colour, gentle women dissolve tittering into the evening, trailing fragrance and intrigue.
Perplexed, amidst the thronging crowd she is vanished and lost.
Yet at last, under a mirthful lantern's glow, her beauty emerges, complete.

Xin Qi Ji (1140 -1207) - An evening of the Lantern Festival

[my translation from the original in Chinese.]

CCVI - the idea of freedom

I was driving down the expressway to town today at noon when the fact that I didn't have to show up for work, or do something scheduled in that sense, actually fully made sense to me. Rolling roads, idle traffic, sunlight through filtered shades, the wind rushing by, the bends and the curves, it was all there for me, throttling through my fingers.

I'm not typically the kind that worries about leaving a job, but I have to admit that even subconsciously I was a little sombre about the idea. It's a little funny that back when I was younger and I left my first job, I left with no worries at all, and bummed for as long as I did, and even went travelling a little before starting on the next job. I mean, that's the right idea, right? To live a little while you can, figure out what you're about. I think I did that. I read, played, exercised, thought about girls, you know, I tried writing, and that's been left aside for awhile, but I think I still have some unfinished business there, and which I might turn to in time. I figured out myself to a very good degree; to quote a great old boxer, I did the best I could with what I had. And of course having had to work for these past two years I left a little of what I was behind.

I'm a little caught up, I think, with the idea of what I'm expected to do. That's a little different from the idea of what I'm supposed to do. I think what I'm supposed to do comes as a reflection of what I'm actually fucking good at doing. But I have been thinking that what I might do before that is to work as a lawyer a little while longer. I mean, it's a real fucking career, isn't it? I don't know if I'm ready to say, well, I used to be a lawyer, and now, dot dot dot. And I'm actually not bad at being a lawyer. I'm actually not bad, and that gives me pause, it gives me a great deal of pause. But the days that I think to myself, I'm fucking dying here, outnumber the days that I leave thinking that all this still makes sense. I say to myself all the time, to varying degrees of gravity, that I'm fucking dying here. I'm fucking dying.

Of course I have the weight of my faith against all that sort of fretting. I do, it's true. I really do. From the things that I was taught, and which I believe, I accept the proposition that money (or reliance on it) is not really the kind of thing which makes us better when we worry about it. And throughout my adult life I've never had cause for concern about money. I find it very neat, and I think it's a little hard to fully understand or appreciate that without the lens of faith. Faith has been a very interesting, wonderful thing for me. It's somewhere in the back of my mind, and I think quite inspiring whenever it comes back into focus. Which is of course not to say that any other feelings of wonder and amazement, or religious-type feelings, if you will, couldn't be evoked by any other system of beliefs, or by the mere existence of beauty, surpassing beauty, in this world. It just so happens that Christianity is the one which I have adopted after all this time. Of course, I am asked to believe (and I do) that it is perhaps a rather special religion. But I think that when it comes to religion we have to look at the questions that are asked of it by first thinking about the objective of those questions. Some ask to test religion against the structures of the enlightened mind, conversely, some would like to figure out if there is such a thing as joy or peace in a divine sense, and of course many are curious in both senses. The former range may not have a definitive and intellectually satisfying end (if at least for those more philosophically cynical), and the latter reaches may bring a sense of cognitive dissonance in having to relinquish formal rationality (in the sense that a substantive leap of faith is actually required). But so much for this discussion.

The second idea that came to me when I was driving was that I have been given so many fine things that I have to make sure to use them, and also to be sure not to undermine their being used. It's something that I have been grappling with lately, the way that I often end up screwing things up by my annoyed reactions to situations which try my impatience too far. I'm actually a horrible guy. If it's a fair thing to wish, I wish that I had better role models growing up. I can read the old Chinese philosophers and their teachings on propriety and courtesy, but I need a life of learning to actually be like that. Anyway I realised that I was in this sense impairing the things that I could do, not for my own sake, but for those of others, and of the little children. And so I realised, deep in my heart, that I always had to take the high road, no matter what happened I always had to take the high road, because I had to be a person that little children, and that my friends and family, could admire and look up to. That I cared little for what people thought of me often meant that I had a very hard side to me, a horrible side. But I had to be Doctor J, or Jackie Robinson, in that sense, so that someone else might have something to believe in.

So that's the big secret. I'm actually really good with children. No, I'm the best. I'm the Doctor J of teachers. I'm not kidding, it's true. But I guess we'll see where that goes.

CCV - wild

I know that this is an incredibly irresponsible thing to say, but it's true, and there are few things more important than the truth.

I usually find myself saying that I really like being single. Well, being single means that I don't have to answer to anyone, and that I don't have to worry about anyone's safety, and by and large nobody has to worry about mine. Being single has it's wonderful, wonderful individual moments. I hate having to explain myself to people, especially knowing that a really good portion of them won't get it, even though I'm so god damn good at English (I'm actually fucking fantastic).

The apogee of being single is the experience of driving a motorcycle while drunk.

There's nothing like it. It is absolutely, terrifically fun. My god! it is so much fun. Whooo!

Unfortunately in my sober moments I know how stupid it can be. And of course, I also have the scar or two which should really inform my moments of reflection. Having said that, doing it, it's just an unbelievable, completely liberating feeling. Power, freedom, exhilaration, the wind, the scenes, the growl, the momentum. Forcibly hurling obscenities at things and people. It's everything it should be, unsafe, dangerous, criminal, and super. I would never recommend it except that someone who's actually single might figure, you know, I'll give it a go. Nobody should ever do it, but you know, my gosh, once you're in it, it's amazing. Of course not everyone drives or rides quite as well as me, so they should never, never do it.

I'm twenty nine, for god's sakes. I know that what I'm saying is really stupid. I'm not even going to lie and say I know what I'm doing. But it's the best feeling in the world.

CCIV - the nature of evil

I was just thinking to myself today, having kind of allowed myself a lull in between work, that the number one evil in life was boredom. But upon a moment's reflection I thought, no, the number one evil must be temptation, so that the number two evil must be boredom.

I hate being bored. I hate it with a passion. I take the malaise of being bored very personally. But I suppose doing evil is worse. So if temptation flows from desire, then if one does not desire, perhaps one can avoid evil.

What is evil? I think the logical or theoretical definition of evil might be, the opposite of good. And of course, the corresponding definition of good is the opposite of evil. This might not take us very far but it does not seem to me a deficient understanding of these concepts. If we use the terms "good" and "evil" purely as descriptions of fact or opinion, i.e. in their linguistic sense, as adjectives, then yes, they are opposites of each other. However if we want to use them in their thick sense, as in a value-laden judgment of something, well, perhaps something more is needed than this sort of circularity.

After some deliberation I thought, well, evil is the infringement of some inherent (or indivisible) necessary element of human life or flourishing, without appeal to a universal maxim. There's a bit of Hart's "minimum content" theory (which of course has its roots in natural law, re Fuller and Finnis) and the second proviso has a lot of Kant's "categorical imperative". It's also a little open-ended, in so far as it's not specifically fixed to human agency (at least as far as the first proviso goes). Whether this is correct or not, well, we shall see.

As far as dictionaries go, evil comes from yfele in ye Olde English and means immoral, wicked or harmful. But that does not necessarily take us much farther than my own short definition. Relatedly, malum is the Latin cousin of the word and basically represents the same idea, if with a little less sinister connotations.

Take then my long definition. It would appear to include forces of Nature, wouldn't it? So if a meteorite smashes into and annihilates a part of the Earth, that would be evil? If a toad dies and poisons a well used by a village, would that be evil? But then, could Nature be capable of having an evil nature, or put more accurately, are the acts of Nature properly to be described as being good or evil? How far can we, collectively taking the natural movements of individual ants, trees and stars, anthropomorphise Nature? Is Nature a sort of "being" insofar as certain types of physical consequences can be conveniently ascribed to it where beyond the power of man? You know, once upon a time, cows were put to death for goring men - over time, it was the owners of these cattle that were made to compensate victims where they had been negligent in herding. But let's leave aside acts of Nature - it benefits our analysis little to label such acts as being good or evil. I suppose also that for us and for our evolutionary ancestors who have been weaned for millenia on the fantastical conditions of this earth, gravity, nuclear forces, the sun's fusion, the chemical properties of oxygen and nitrogen, etc., it seems a little incongruous to begrudge the universe a meteorite or two. After all, it is generally perceived that the great reptiles would still roam the earth were it not for one or two of those types of extinction event.

Let me refine my definition thus: evil is the infringement of some inherent (or indivisible) necessary element of human life or flourishing, without appeal to a universal maxim, provided that there exists a causal nexus between the infringement and the agency of some moral being.

But perhaps this misses attempts. So for example a person might attempt to injure another by repeatedly wishing bad consequences to be visited on him, and believing that wishes come true. So the definition should include attempts, whether workable or not. Of course, for a man to pray for the deliverance of his enemies into his hands is not necessarily evil, depending on the sort of holy writings he subscribes to. Not to say that everything should properly be viewed as being relativistic, but I think as far as this analysis goes we should only properly allow appeals to universal maxims. Anyway for now it suffices to take the word "infringement" as being shorthand for "infringement (or attempted infringement)".

What then is a "universal maxim"? I don't even know if Kant ever had such a list. For Kant, he proscribed that one should only do that which one could, at the same time, will it a universal maxim. So, for example, love your parents if it is universally a maxim that one should love one's own parents. Don't kick the cat if it is not universally a maxim that one should kick cats, or if somewhere out there someone might disapprove of cat kicking behaviour. Kant also went on to say that one should always treat humanity, whether your own or that of others, as an end in itself, and not only as a means to an end. This is interesting, if a little difficult to pin down precisely. Perhaps as an example, if one happened to have slaves for labour, one should imagine that those individuals might benefit from being paid for their labour.

So let's say there is a plot of land and someone wants to hire a labourer for fair wages. Two such labourers for hire turn up. Is it evil not to find some way to hire both? For in hiring only one, we would necessarily be denying the other the benefit of pay. While we do not deny him the possibility of finding alternative labour, let us assume that there is no other means of self-provision available. Would it then be evil? Well, I don't think so. I think in this case we can appeal to a universal maxim, which is this: it is fair for men to compete, within legal bounds, for resources in a free, egalitarian and competitive society.

What about omissions? Should I, seeing a child floundering in a pool of water, reach out a hand to right the child? Perhaps I should, but I think the universal maxim in this case would probably have an element of reasonableness. If there were two thousand such children within a hundred kilometers of me I could not possibly be expected to help them all. So here we find echoes of the Atkin's neighbour principle.

Should then all evil, according to this definition, be avoided? What about an argument for efficiency? Suppose pee splashing outside the urinal is evil - it forces one to clean the floor, which is definitely an infringement along the lines postulated above (and even though it is probably a negative externality in so far as generally the hired cleaner does the cleaning). But can one always pee cleanly within the urinal? From my own anecdotal (but substantial) experience, I rather doubt it. So it is generally efficient to use the urinal standing up and going full blast, even if it results in say 0.05% of all discharge ending up outside of the urinal. Then there must be a utilitarian argument for the universal maxim, which might be posited as this: One should not avoid evil where it is extremely inefficient to do so. But that seems to offend the senses in a quite primary way: shouldn't that be exactly when evil should be avoided, i.e. when it is the most inconvenient? And also, who gets to decide on the balance of cost of evil vs cost of avoidance? Does this not then bring on the spectre of well, option A which kills 1 and option B which causes the death of 2?

Let's discuss that last part for a minute. If we were compelled to take the lesser of two evils, should we still be considered to have performed an evil act? This perhaps is where the dichotomy of the "justification" and "excuse" theories come into play. If we kill an armed robber in self-defence, we say we are justified. If under gunpoint we allow a robber to take someone else's gold, we say we are excused. Where justified, presumably, we have committed no evil, or perhaps we say we have committed good, which presumably whitewashes the base act. Where excused, conversely, we say that the evil committed was reasonable (if internally consistent) given the circumstances. Does that make sense?

I think this analysis has more or less canvassed what evil is generally thought to be. For my part I think that very often when people do use the word "evil" they tend to base it on or around maxims which are far short of universal, and that sort of looseness gives them free reign to apply the label, and with it, the sorts of dark connotations that the word carries. I think this could be the kind of demagoguery that Orwell warns about in his Politics and the English Language. But you know we are so accustomed to our own societal mores and values that given a certain consensus we often neglect stopping to think about the underlying nature of our ideas and concepts, not to mention I think the possibility of our own personal characteristics. But that would go a couple of steps beyond the scope of the present essay.

CCIII - gotta live your life

I usually don't sleep very well in the days leading up to certain occasions.

As much as I hate the feeling of waking up groggy, it's interesting as well, in the sense that the ideas that seem to take fleeting shape in dreams reveal a little about the things that motivate us.

Of all that remains of the things that I thought of and imagined as a child, of all the child-person that I used to be, my dreams remain the only direct connection to that strange, fearful and colourful world. I often miss that person. I wonder what he would think of the things in this life, what he would say, whether he would laugh, whether he would be afraid.

I have a book by Freud which is titled the Interpretation of Dreams. I didn't manage to finish it when I was about sixteen or seventeen. Writers in the German language, and I'm sure Freud is quite an example, tend to write in very long sentences, and perhaps that is how they think as well. I will give it a shot again, hopefully soon. From what I recall of it, dreams are a kind of reflection, a wish-fulfillment. And so I think there is something to be said about dreams having a certain theme of self-consolation.

I found myself in a supermarket the other day, thinking about things that I could offer to my old friends, guests of my home. I find it a little funny that even today I still don't know what to think of it all.

Patience? I've been single for twelve years, man. I'm a monk. I don't need patience, I'm good.

CCII - in the afternoon glow

I found myself today staring out of the twelfth floor office windows, rehearsing these lines in a soft voice.

I have long ago given up on the idea that I might have joy in the sense of romantic love. The joy that I have comes with ... living with the faith that I have, and in the moments of each day. Surprised by each moment of joy, being wholly alive at each frame, each window, me, in this marvelous world, realising all these marvelous things.

The joy that I had wished for was in some sense narrow, perhaps arbitrary, even self-deceiving.

Look at me now. Twelve years have passed, and my feelings for you haven't changed. They will not change as long as sunshine passes down through warm, summer streets.

I now live in the steadfast belief that for you this joy has become a reality.

I wish I had gone for your wedding, so that instead of believing I could instead know that to be true. I wish the younger me had gone. But all the same I wish and believe that this is true.

And so, goodbye, goodbye forever.

CCI - on to Bedok

Boy, it’s hard work buying a house.

It starts for me with living alone, renting. I liked it, in a way. It’s just like the idea of lodging, which adds an air of workingman respectability to it. A little room, a door, a place to hang your hat; just the basics. Not counting my time in the army, that’s nine years I’ve lived in rented places, and some of those were on borrowed time, from my dad’s old friends. The thing with renting, well, the things with renting, are chiefly that the old stuff I had had to be stored in various places in between, and then there’s all this tedium of moving from one place to another. But this is not very interesting. What I think about the renting situation is that I never thought it beneath me, I never did. There was a song by Albert King, the great blues guitar player. He played a flying V upside down, with the bass strings below. Boy he had thick fingers. There was a song he wrote called Match Box Blues, and in it he goes, could a match box hold my clothes? And so I never thought renting was beneath me. I had way more stuff than a match box could hold, and that’s all there was to it. I think often of my time travelling in Vietnam with some of the army boys when I think about the things we have. Once upon a time my fathers and mothers would have lived just the way they did, and no one could ever think poorly of them. I remember coming back right then and having a hamburg steak with some friends for thirteen dollars and thinking it was just unreal how much things cost. And so I never feel sorry for myself. But the thing I remember most about the places I’ve stayed in are the running routes around the area. Hell I can remember the running routes on holiday, like in Johannesburg when it was so cold I had to breathe through my gloves, and the ryokan we stayed in in Takayama, when I went running with a shirt tied around my head. Of all the ways to get a feel for an area, to get in touch with a place, running is the best. I remember everything, all the thoughts, everything.

The house part, well it also has to do a girl, who I fell in love with. But it didn’t work out, and I think today I might admit, with a little reluctance, that it would have never worked out. The truth about it was that there was often something about me that didn’t quite impress her, all things that I think meant very little when weighed against, well, the sum of their parts. After that I wrote a little more in my book and that became a part that I am still proud of having written. I also started looking for a place again, and that rather quickly turned into Bedok. So you see, there’s that, too. I just needed a little time, that’s all. But fuck it.

Anyway, buying a place takes money. I realised that by having, all things considered, just enough. Any more and I’d be reaching, and I’d have to be lucky with things past completion. As things stand, I’m two pizzas from being pretty much maxed out. It’s a little mind boggling that I can afford quite all these things, a little exhilarating, and certainly, it makes me feel a little small. I get the same kind of feeling when I look at the stars, the grand scheme. I think of the springs from whence my water comes, all the men and women I do not know. I think of the families that lived in this place, the men who imagined this town, and built it. So there is a lot to live for.

Looking for places is usually equal parts interesting and tedious. All neighbourhoods have something interesting about them, and it’s always a little exciting when sifting through stuff and determining value. At the range I had and with the criteria I employed, it was interesting to see that the places offered had pretty high variance. I don’t remember being too impressed with most places, until Bedok. It had just the right everything, and I don’t mean that frivolously. I’ve lived here for two weeks and I still think it’s wonderful. High, windy, in a really amazing estate, accessible from next year onwards, near to two really nice stretches of park and the reservoir, goodness. Anyway I closed the deal and bought the place the next day. I remember wondering if the family had to move. Anyway, it had to be: just bin’ness.

The loans and the lawyers and all that stuff, pretty standard. The renovations I got my guy to help, a pro. In exchange, his expenses and a dinner with his family. The furniture was pretty fun, actually, but I’m pretty sick of ikea for now.

On the day of the moving in I dropped my fucking piano. I know by now that the only way to get over losing something is to get something to replace it, but dropping that fucking piano is going to cost me a thousand dollars. It doesn’t only happen in cartoons, kids, I actually dropped my fucking piano. All that trouble, and I fucking dropped it.

Anyway the house was in decent shape when I got it. Sure, I had to put in a lot of elbow grease to spiffy up the place, but nothing a guy couldn’t handle. I mean, all the cleaning and scraping, all the assembling, the thing works, you know what I mean? The thing’s alright. I had a mean budget and I put it to work. Except the fucking sofa that went on sale a week before it was due for delivery; three hundred bucks I’ll never get back. I got pretty lucky with some of the stuff though, so I guess that evens out. But anyway, from a bare place with that god-damned sealant on the kitchen tiles to a pretty groovy set of digs, most things in their place, I mean, it turned out pretty good.

I remember moving in the first night and sleeping on the cardboard from one of the self-assembling chairs, using the chair cushions as pillows. I heard cardboard wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t. I’ll take cardboard any day. The next day, when the mattresses came in, I was too busy doing stuff to get set up, so I slept on the mattresses with the plastic still on it. That was a mistake. Plastic wrapping is very uncomfortable. The next day I slept without the plastic wrapping, and with a towel instead. That was much better. By the Monday that followed I slept in a bed, with sheets and all. Golly, I’m such a baby.

Anyway it’s actually really fun owning a place. I’m figuring out my meals, figuring out my patterns, figuring out my neighbourhood, figuring out what I like. I’m pretty much dialled in, except a couple things which should be coming in fairly soon. I figure I’ll set up my guitars as well. More importantly, though, I’ve got a grand total of seventeen, count ‘em, books coming in through the mail. Boy, that’s exciting, that’s always exciting.

Life should be so easy. But you know, for some reason or other, it’s usually extremely frustrating. I feel like my ire has been raised to dangerous levels three times a week for the past month or so. Oh they call it Ireland for some religious reasons. Anyway that life is so frustrating is a theme that is a little beyond me. I know why I get frustrated, but I find it hard to believe that there are so many stupid people in the world that piss me off. It’s unbelievable. I can’t change anything, I know, but all I’m saying is that like everybody who is a certain level of stupid should stay away from me. I think that’s all I’m asking. Is it me? You know, it’s possible. Maybe I can’t be into something for the long term, given the usual distribution of stupid people one is likely to meet in the middle to long run. I mean, I’m alright, I’m alright, except when I find that one little shit that does it and all of a sudden bang! I’m losing my fucking mind over here. Anyway perhaps living by myself like this is good for me. Is it me? Yeah, it is.

Anyway moving is such a pain in the ass I don’t think I ever want to do it again, not with all that elbow grease to go. And looking at it, the value of the place, too, is I think off the charts. It’s worth way more than what I got it for, way, way more. Just way more. I think it’s one of the best estates I’ve ever been in as well, which is saying quite a lot. Everything is just settled, laid back and expansive. I love it. I’ll take it.

CC - Ye Pharisees / O Jerusalem

Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, saying,

The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.  For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

CIC - wonder

I was thinking today, lying down, looking at the stars, about three exceedingly grand statements.

The world, and all its marvellous phenomena, can be described in atomistic* terms.

There is a metaphysical essence we call the human soul, given that cogito ergo sum.

There is a God out there.

In my mind, I wonder what this all means.

*(well, the fundamental forces have been investigated quite impressively, but some of the quantum stuff remains a mystery).

CIIC - On abortion

I was reading today the Catholic Pope’s 2016 Amoris Laetitia, or “The Joy of Love”, his post-Synodal apostolic exhortation (you can find it here). Boy, what a phrase that is. I will call him “Pope” for short, although I think in the movies they generally prefer to call their ministers the more familiar (indeed jocular) “Padre”. This Pope, an Argentinian named Jorge Mario Bergoglio (and this rolls off the tongue so well) took his papal name as Francis, after an Italian saint, Francis of Assissi (1181 to1226), whose back story is rather gruesomely one in which he received, perhaps miraculously, the wounds that the Christ endured at his death. Anyway, Francis, as far as appears to me, seems to doing a wonderful job, and in some ways the world has taken respectful, even admiring attention. And I have found his exhortatory letter to be quite well written, and I mean this exceedingly well. Of course, it tends to take the conservative view of things, but I think, sensitively, and intelligently. And simply, to be sure. So, for instance, he respects a relationship which is stable and well-meaning (my own words), but he thinks that a family must be centred on one which is able to “transmit” life. Of course, I would think that this does not go quite far enough in terms of even-handed treatment of the topic, but I will accept that for him the conversation has not yet been shuttered off.

I pause here to acknowledge that there are inherently some differences in what the average Catholic is said to believe and what the average Christian, or in my case, a (flakily) self-professed liberal Methodist (a neo-Wesleyan, if you like) might be said to believe. However for my purposes I think that one who accepts the Christ belongs properly to this wide concept of what a “believer” is and so I think that sufficiently disposes of this for now.

Exploring many facets of a life modelled on Christ, one of the things Francis wrote on concerned abortion. Without mincing words, the Catholic church is quite well-known for its stance against permitting contraceptives, and of course the darker corollary of permitted abortion. In this vein, Francis follows:

“Here I feel it urgent to state that, if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed. So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right to one’s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the “property” of another human being. The family protects human life in all its stages, including its last. …”

I think this is inherently an undeniably valid argument. But on the other hand stands an equally valid argument, and I will put it simply as this: No woman (or man) should be forced to do something which she/he does not wish to do, within reason. Of course, the fundamental premises of either point of view devolve entirely (if not under duress) from the deepest beliefs one holds: if one believes in a benevolent monotheistic figure, one might believe that any little human being (no matter the circumstances of his conception) is equally created and/or equally to be treated as any other; conversely, one might instead believe that there are certain circumstances in which no one could possibly expect (and here I sigh mightily in writing) a little human being to be given the benefits of physiological independence (a deeper sigh follows). You know, when I think about it, if one takes the strong Christian view that we are all born in sin, the former argument (of equal creation) takes on truly formidable strength.

Of course, there are also the thorny issues: what if the life of the mother is at stake? (sigh) what if the child is in a bad way? (sigh) what if the poor woman was forcibly taken? (deep sigh) Well, no one knows. These are awful, awful questions. You know, it could come down to anyone, and the answer could differ depending on the circumstances. And then there are further considerations for after the birth of the child. It seems to me that taken on the whole these are (and must be) deeply personal choices, and it matters a lot how one is involved in that choice. Even abstract questions become cornered into realist concerns: what is human dignity? can one’s posited understanding of human dignity survive one’s choice whether to abort or not? It is daunting, an impossible task.

Somewhere down the line, it’s inevitable: the choice will haunt a person. And you know, the line that separates what it is to “murder” and to “kill” is not really a clear, black one – one need only compare the categorisations in sections 299 and 300 of the Penal Code (and all the exceptions!). Take again an argument which could flow from natural law: in certain circumstances, even animals eat their young. Or look at it again in this way: if you had a computer which could, if given certain data about one’s circumstances at birth, simulate the life that person would have, life to death, and if you ran that simulation ten thousand times and out of all those, six thousand five hundred and eighteen tended on balance to be rough (including that person’s indirect effects, e.g. further children) wouldn’t there be some argument that, you know, not living might be predictively better? Like you know, if someone from the future could go back and have Hitler aborted, wouldn’t that be grand? Boy, oh boy.

In the end, I’ll say this: I think it’s OK for a woman to select abortion, but I sure hope she thinks about it (obviously, she’d also have to deal with all the general biological instincts at self- and child-preservation). So I don’t agree that a blanket view either way could ultimately be right (with full apologies to all).

My admiration and gratitude, Jorge, Pope Francis. Salut.

CXCVII - On the modern computer

I have recently been reading and thinking about the present era, which I think may be fairly, if somewhat uneasily, described as being the era of computers, the modern era. Let's imagine that the post-modernists are ahead of their time. No, this is still the modern era, and we are still the ones being outmoded.

Of course a computer would beat a man at a game set by logical rules. What else could you expect? I read recently about Bobby Fisher's genius at chess, and that the modern chess game had settled into how one played chess openings. Fisher was so disgusted with this that he developed Chess960, in which the row of pieces behind the pawns were set at random, and then mirrored on both sides. Chess played in this way would depend, presumably, on how one applied the ideas of each piece rather than the ideas of openings. But perhaps a computer would beat even Fisher at Chess960. And so what could one truly expect of a Korean champion at Go. Hubris on his part was a little strange, although understandably so, a kind of xenophobia.

And so I imagine that a computer could someday, if given the benefit of physical form, shoot a basketball more accurately than Larry Bird, hit a baseball more truly than Ted Williams, smite a man more soundly than Muhammad Ali, run the track more swiftly than Usain Bolt, dribble a football more supremely than Lionel Messi, or ride a motorcycle more unerringly than Valentino Rossi. All this is admitted. But this is nothing, for these do not comprise the essence nor the beauty of sport. A computer, by definition not subject to human limits, could never comprehend the way the game is played, that is, by humans. Thus it could not possibly see the things that a man must see to triumph over another, imagine and develop tactics which can be applied in unison, and finally, play the game in totality as it must be played so that one man and one side can fairly be said to have beaten another team of men. In other words, human institutions, whether of sport or otherwise, which depend inherently on the limits of man and thus the maximisation of man's abilities in competition, cannot possibly accommodate or tolerate the introduction of such a thing as a computer, and yet remain human institutions. But perhaps here we argue merely on the back of definition. So we must come to some point in all this, and it is this: it is only meaningful for humans, and not computers, to perform operations not inherently based on logic or on calculations. The universal computer may be able to perform any task given to it in program-data form, and perhaps someday it will be able to apply that logic at the most fundamental levels, but even then, it could never be as a human is, and that is, to live in a world where logic is perhaps a necessary condition, but never a sufficient condition. Even as to this necessity it is not clear: some believe in God, who by definition could not be forced into logic, some believe in the indescribable, in the paradox of the beginning of existence, as in Eastern philosophy.

At this moment I hesitate to think that a computer might play the violin more stupendously than Jascha Heifetz, or write a novel more eerily magnificent than Juan Rulfo did. But I will accept that a computer could mechanically do something as good as, if not better, than the masters, and I accept that given a transcription of Liszt's Liebestraum or a script of Pedro Paramo a computer might credibly pseudo-compose something not too distant from these. Nonetheless it seems to me that such a process could not even begin to describe beauty, creativity, or imagination, or any of the wonderful things that humans have done since we first looked up at the stars, down below at the sands, and out across over the hills and oceans. No computer could ever dream. No music playing into the microphonic ears of a computer could ever evoke the precocity of one's childhood days, of one's wistful longing for home, or for one's cherished loves. Per George Dyson, no computer could ever point out to another which clouds looked like strange, forlorn cats. (Here however I hesitate to say that no computer could ever see in a flash of insight past the apparent theoretical limits of its own logical framework.) For we are fundamentally different from computers, for although I suppose even computers, of digits and data and near-omniscience and formlessness, have limits, their limits are fundamentally different from ours. No computer would ever sit as Descartes did beside his fireplace and wonder whether he was in a dream world created by a devil of peculiar malevolence. Cogito ergo sum applies to us, ratio simpliciter applies to them. Man is a political animal, as Aristotle once wrote, and that is what separates us from all other animals. Computers are neither political nor animals, and that is what separates them from us. In some ways that is a rather simplistic way to sum up, but it remains, in my view, fundamentally significant.

To my mind our response to life in the modern era is to never forget that we are the ones who dream, who believe, who love beauty, who inspire and are inspired, who imagine and who create. We must grasp this closely and firmly, this the very fire that Prometheus risked his liberty to give to us, his beloved people. The history of the universe will record that out of life, the modern human walked the earth about 66 million years after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, the last of the great extinction events, that in 1936 the mathematician Alan Turing wrote a paper which would provide the theoretical architecture out of which the universal, programmable computer would first be developed, the ENIAC, in 1946, consisting of "17,468 vacuum tubes, 7200 crystal diodes, 1500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and approximately 5,000,000 hand-soldered joints", that it was used to perform post-war calculations for the hydrogen bomb (probably in relation to implosions and fluid dynamics), that in 1997 a computer beat a world champion from Russia at chess, and presumably, that a computer will achieve many other things besides. But this I believe: it will not be stated there that the computer was ever the equal of a man.

p.s. On the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine, or the "Baby": the first random access memory equipped computer (see http://goo.gl/mQA5m3):

The first program to run successfully, on June 21st 1948, was to determine the highest factor of a number. The number chosen was quite small, but within days they had built up to trying the program on 2^18 , and the correct answer was found in 52 minutes, involving about 2.1 million instructions with about 3½ million store accesses.

F.C. Williams later said of the first successful run:

"A program was laboriously inserted and the start switch pressed. Immediately the spots on the display tube entered a mad dance. In early trials it was a dance of death leading to no useful result, and what was even worse, without yielding any clue as to what was wrong. But one day it stopped, and there, shining brightly in the expected place, was the expected answer. It was a moment to remember. This was in June 1948, and nothing was ever the same again."

p.p.s. When reading this essay again I think it is quite clear that I have given computers the benefit of certain doubts, but not others. In other words the assumptions I have taken, collectively speaking, put me in something of a middle position: I accept that computers can do more than merely follow instructions, but I do not accept that a computer could ever produce, say, a generally informed value judgment. Somewhere in there lies the concept of what it means to be "thinking". It is one thing to be given orders, it is quite another to be given objectives. But I suppose if computers were given every opportunity to do so, it would be silly to bet against their never being able to "make the jump". Conversely, I think that my essay ends up exploring what is, interestingly enough, significant about being a human being. Whether a computer should aim (or be aimed) to be more human-like is perhaps an interesting question in itself. After all, we are path-dependent in a very strong and important sense: we are the products of eons of adaptation, a process of conversation, if you like, between our environments and our genes. Without belabouring the point, a computer has neither. Obversely, why should anyone ever want a computer to give him an answer that might properly have come from a human? In other words, there seems to be to be a very important teleological (i.e. purpose-based) inquiry that ought first to be examined when it comes to the question of the future of computers. I hope however that I have, in these words, demonstrated this to require more than a merely practicalist examination.

CXCVI - For the rain to return

I never figured myself to be a writer of poems, because I don't like poems. I don't like having form and structure in quite this way. It seems often to compel one to artifice and forced manipulations and, what is worse, hollow pomp. Too often shallow finery is taken for artistry, and so I generally view poetry with disdain. Another thing with me is that I don't actually like Shakespeare, the Bard. It's too rich for me, too dramatic. I think also that his plays generally treat grandiose themes without quite sifting out the deeper things, the subtler things. Goethe's Faust, on the other hand, I thought was magnificent. But so much by the by.

I wrote a poem for a girl not long ago. It surprised even me. It occurred to me one day to do it, as I suppose it occurs to young men to do romantic things of this sort. In my mind I wanted to give her something; I wanted her to be able to be just the sort of beautiful woman that men wrote love poems to. I gave it to her in a text message. The story ends there, as things must, sometimes. On my part, I am satisfied.

I have titled it, For the rain to return.

As the ground gently awaits the summer rain
So wait I in patient respite. Listening, feeling,
For you. For I know not when this rain will return.
I know not the clouds which bear you,
Nor the cerulean blue oceans from whence you came.
I know not the lands where you rest your head,
Nor the waters which feed you, and give you strength.
I know not your moist lips, nor the warmth of your breath,
Nor the softness of your hands. These I adore.

I know only that you are rain.
Thus I can say that the earth adores the sky, far above,
And searches, not anxiously, but as it must, unceasingly, still,
For the winds to turn.
I wait for the first of the cool, steady breezes which sweep an arc before your feet,
For the lightest of soft drops which sprinkle the earth between your toes,
For the pitter patter which follow the trace of your steps.

Once more I inhabit, I become the soil of this earth,
Where I am laid down I wait, patiently, for this joy,
I am at ease.
The rain relents, and the rain returns.
Thirsty, I drink from its flow, your touch, your caress.
Famished, I clutch the warmth of your fingers,
I breathe in the fragrance of rain in your hair.
I am awash with the gaze of your eyes, deep and dark,
Impenetrable as the swells of the ocean.
I am swept along, leaving my shores
I sink in the water’s embrace, in the depth of your body.
For I am the earth, and I have waited for this joy, for you – for rain.

CXCV - on a Monday late afternoon

I went running this late afternoon after work, as I usually do on Mondays now.

It has become a good sort of rhythm. I like doing this, week in, week out.

It just is, for now, it just is. I run because I am, and on the rare occasion, hard, because it happens to be what I want to be.

I had to stop at a traffic junction, underneath a large flyover. I usually say long swear words when I have to stop. Where I stopped, there was a gap dividing the lanes spread out above. It was a concrete duo-lith, well, a shallow Y-shaped structure. It had in its centre a large rectangular inset about sufficient to fit a statue of an inconceivably tall man. Taller than the tallest man you can think of, and broader. If you stopped for a second and focused on just that idea, one step removed from just the right concentration, you might imagine being in front of an altar, stately in its existence, in its unassuming, un-intricate way. But carrying that on, the altar might just as well have been neglected for some time, un-noticed. All around its centre a running of dark green vinelings grew, upwards, towards the light, clinging with resilient tendrils along each hook and cranny of the roughened concrete surface. Some, not many, had made it to the top, drawn always to the block of light cast by the sides of the Y. You might cast your eyes towards those few little leaves that had made it to the very top of the concrete, basking tenderly in the still warm glow of the sky, framed against the gentle blue of the horizon. The curves of the vinelings tracing arcs along the concrete surface might make you think of the beauty of nature, of the laws of physics, of life that desires to live, all the time, all the time of time. Did those leaves win, reaching the top? Were those the only winners, and so the rest? And after a little contemplation the truth might be that existence is, in this way, its own reward. And so perhaps there is no necessary reason why life bothers to be.

Isn't it strange? Today I told the moon of my crush, of the adolescent longing in my heart. The wonderful woman I see on Sunday. Mr Moon, I told you my secret. My only regret is that I were not forty years old, and I would sweep you off your feet.

The moon may appear to stand still in the sky. But clearly it moves. It waxes and wanes, and it appears in different positions. More importantly, if it weren't moving, it would be hurtling right into the ground at my feet. The moon is always moving, even though it appears to stay right there. Even when it always appears to stay in one spot when the car is moving. I wonder how big the moon is, whether I could go around it on my own. I wonder what the earth looks like, whether it is green and blue with white splotches. That's my favourite part of the day, looking at the sky.

CXCIV - 无，名天地之始；有，名万物之母

道德经第二章

天下皆知美之为美，斯恶已；皆知善之为善，斯不善已。
故有无相生，难易相成，长短相形，高下相倾，音声相和，前後相随。
是以圣人处无为之事，行不言之教，
万物作焉而不辞，生而不有，为而不恃，功成而弗居。夫惟弗居，是以不去。

The Canon of the Tao, chapter 2 (translation by Professor Chang Chung Yuan)

When beauty is universally affirmed as beauty, therein is ugliness. When goodness is universally affirmed as goodness, therein is evil.
Therefore: being and non-being are mutually posited in their emergence. Difficult and easy are mutually posited in their complementariness. Long and short are mutually posited in their positions. High and low are mutually posited in their contradiction. Voice and tone are mutually posited in their unity. Front and back are mutually posited in their succession.
Thus, the wise deals with things through non-interference and teaches through no-words.
All things flourish without interruption. They grow by themselves, and no one possesses them. Work is done but no one depends on it. Achievements are made, but no one claims credit. Because no one claims credit, achievements are always there.

====

I have long wondered after the utterances of the Taoist philosophers, and of "eastern" philosophy in general, beginning of course with the wonderfully enlightened teachings of Confucius. How does one begin to approach such a body of thought? Serious philosophers have taken these works seriously, but why? What have the "western" philosophers, Schopenhauer et al, felt were their counterparts' contributions?

With some amateurly reflection I have come to vaguely grasp that the limits of the western classical schools, premised generally on rational thought and epistemological analysis, must, by their own inherent premises, come to a hard end where the absurd, the unfathomable lies. The world of thought, beyond the sensible, material world, the theory of the forms, the things in themselves, the utmost margins where Descartes' cogitations (ergo sum) end, beyond that, what? Why did Kant posit existence in real space and time? What played in Kafka's and Camus' mind? Why did Wittgenstein create a novel, perhaps even now poorly understood, theory of logic? What did Derrida's deconstruction theories consist of, if not the limit of the fathomable? Can nihilist ideas contain some kernel of meaning?

I feel that this chapter 2 posits one of the central tenets of eastern thought:

"being and non-being are mutually posited in their emergence ...
故有无相生 ...".

It is in the acceptance, from the beginning, of the paradox that emerges from these ideas as a characterisation of the unfathomable - and the relationship of the material world with this the formless Tao - it is in this that I think one begins to grasp that which spans the vast divide between what is rationally defensible (i.e. western philosophy) and what might be described as acceptance of premises decided arbitrarily, for instance, by faith in a prophet's writings. The unfathomable, accepted as the antithesis of and somehow also the source of the material world, gives the key to insights possible without formal epistemological structures.

"Thus, the wise deals with things through non-interference and teaches through no-words. All things flourish without interruption.They grow by themselves, and no one possesses them ...
是以圣人处无为之事，行不言之教，
万物作焉而不辞，生而不有，为而不恃 ..."