ratm

okay… this is a long post and is prob gonna bore you. and even if you get through it, most of you will wonder what the fuck i’m on about. but i need to write this… more just to get my own thoughts in line. i’ve been trying to make sense of a few things for a while now… i guess i haven’t got it all figured out just yet.

anyway, so i’ve had a little time recently and i’ve started listening to a lot of rage. and I’ve just finished reading a book called into the wild. it’s about a dude, chris, who after graduating from college, “gave his entire $25k in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet”, and fucked off around america living like a vagabond, trying to find some sort of truth. looking for some meaning in life. he ended up starving himself to death in the wilderness in alaska. fucken idiot. but i think, his story is touching. and perhaps a little relevant.

what i’ve found really surprising lately are the number of people i’ve talked to who seem tired with the world. tired with the system. people who i’ve always assumed to be driven. people who, just a few years ago, had professional ambition as wide as all the world. people who have found their soul-mates. people who have perfect kids. people who have a great family. people who have great jobs. who are good at their jobs. who are comfortable in their jobs. people who have more money than they could ever imagine. people who, materially, have everything. honestly i have been shocked. i had no idea this tiredness was so widespread.

so what is it with the system? what is it with all the bullshit?

chris’s issues were pretty clear. he hated the inequalities of the system. he hated the exploitation of people by the system. he hated the hypocrisy of the people within the system. it was all around him. in everyday life. everywhere. and he had the feeling that there must be something else. something simple. something pure. something not tainted by greed. not tainted by the system. something true. so he packed up his shit and walked into the wild.

he was however an idealist. and I don’t think the masses are that opinionated and concerned about ideals and other people and what’s happening at a higher political level. i think they are just disillusioned with their own day-to-day existence. the daily grind. and i think their disillusionment stems from some sort of detachment. a separateness. a lack of identification with what they are spending the majority of their time doing. and a feeling of inevitability. a feeling of, “this is what I have to do”.

“america touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and i have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. and in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. the only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve”.

fuck you
i won’t do what you tell me

anyway, chris seemed to get a lot of shit sorted out on his travels. and he wrote some classic passages in his letters:

“so many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. the very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. the joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

and:

“you are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. god has placed it all around us. it is in everything and anything we might experience. we just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.”

in fact there is no such thing as unconventional living. only unconventional thinking. our thinking is flawed. our basic logic, inherited from ancient greece thousands of years ago, is inherently unconventional. a system of thinking, “whose mythos has endowed our culture with the tendency underlying all the evil of our technology, the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn’t any good.”

“the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn’t very good”. i fucken love that. that sums up the whole fucken mess perfectly. our value system is upside down. we hold “good” subordinate to “reason”. and no, “reasonable” is not the same as “good”. you don’t sit in a dull job because it is “good”. you sit in a dull job because it is “reasonable”. i’m not gonna change my circumstances in life because i’m earning good money and i’m living comfortably. i’m not entirely happy, in fact there are big gaping holes, but that’s okay because what i’m doing is fucken reasonable. and so you become detached.

so are you standing in line?
are you believing the lies?
you bowing down to the flag?
you got a bullet in your head

actually, if our value system was the right way up, chris was incorrect when he said “we just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle”. if we put “good” on top of “reason”, make “good” the highest truth, we wouldn’t need courage to give up the “dull job” to follow something better. in fact, we would need courage to stay in the “dull job”. with a new improved value system, it would be logical for us to pursue the “good”.

from what i can see chris got his value system the correct way up. he got his shit in order. and he found truth. no reasonable person would fuck off into the alaskan wild with a bag of rice and a few tolstoy novels. i mean… tolstoy??? wtf? tolstoy would bore you to death. and that’s exactly what he did to chris. but that’s beside the point. chris didn’t do it because it was reasonable, he did it because it was good. and he had a fucken good time doing what was “good”.

I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!

“i think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature or with programs full of things for other people to do. i think that kind of approach starts at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. the social values are right only if the individual values are right. the place to improve the world is in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there”.

a welcome email

i started work in singapore last week. i knew it was gonna be a bit strange. but didn't count on it getting super weird super quick. this is a series of emails i got from a lady in malaysia welcoming me to the team on the first day. let's call her lucy-lui. in order to protect her identity.

lucy-lui:

Hello David, welcome onboard..let me introduce myself, I am Lucy-Lui, handle SEPL.
Here is our tax team photo.

me:

Hi Lucy-Lui,
Thanks for your welcome and photo!!! Would be grateful if you could point out Lee Chong and yourself :)
It will be nice working with you.
Have a good weekend.
Cheers,
David

lucy-lui:

hehe. You guess...
tips : I am standing on the left front row. Chinese
Chong Lee is the tallest at the back. Chinese

me:

hahaha... thanks for the tips. it is nice to be able to put a face to names. unfortunately we don't have an updated team photo as yet :(
btw... that is a huge cake you guys have on the desk in front :)

lucy-lui:

i can imagine your face & body , let me put all the best part of the superstar into one. kekeke. as i heard that you are like Hollywood superstar :)
that is banana cake from secret recipe.

lucy-lui:

opppss.. did i said something wrong.. if you are not very handsome, my apologies.

bali

when i went in to sign my new employment contract i sure did get a fright. 14 days leave. per calendar year!!! goddamn singapore employment laws. it's pure exploitation. considering i haven't had a full-time job since april 2007, i thought that was a bit rough on their part. so decided to head to bali for the wend for one last big chillout before starting, once again, to plunder the world's natural resources. i have no morals when i need money. i am pure rapist.

so i landed up in kuta. the hub of bali. loads of sea and sun and sand. and waves!!! but no scando's. buddha must be punishing me for a return to my evil work ways. so for two days i did nothing. i just chilled. for a change. i learned how best to fix a motorcycle. i dreamed of spurs and bentley and modric and gds and berbs. i watched sunsets. i drank beer. i oggled girls. i also thought about how the future rushes up from behind you, the past receding away before your eyes. like sitting on a train, in a seat facing the the back end of the train. and i decided i wanted to become an uncarved block. just like pooh. 

"then what day is it?" asked owl.

"it's today!" squeaked piglet.

"my favourite day," said pooh. 

and then i became a bit restless. so i went drinking. ace out. and it was happy hour. for three hours. two-for-one special. and i sat by the bar and started thinking about noah's ark and parallel lines and the highest truth. and pretty soon the pub (paddy's pub - go figure) turned into a night club. quality. so i decided to sit there and look pretty and bide my time until the right opportunity came along. so i sat there and looked pretty and bided my time. and continued to drink. and sure enough, but not quite soon enough, opportunity came knocking. by the time the pretty dutch girl with blue eyes came over to chat i was super rocked. and i fell off my barstool. for no obvious reason. i just kinda swayed and then fell off. she just left me on the floor. bitch.

so the next morning i needed to get healthy and when i woke up i went for an afternoon swim. it was about 6pm and the sun was just above the horizon, throwing reds and pinks and oranges across the water like skipping stones. not a breath of wind. there were only two of us in the line-up. myself. and a body-boarder. he had one of those old mach2 boards. yellow top. black rails. orange slick. it was one of the best wave sessions i have ever had. consistent beach break. peaking at around 3 foot. throwing lip and beep barrels. it was awesome. i was living without desire. i was becoming the uncarved block. 

the sky could be blue

i don't mind

without you it's a waste of time

the last time i felt like that, without desire and at one with nature, was when myself and frank were frolicking in the waves in mozam and we pulled a kevin and perry go large. FLOATER!!! there was a bunch of dutch or austrian or some foreign european girls down current innocently playing catch with a tennis ball or frisbee or something. the plan was to watch their faces for signs of recognition as it bobbed through their circle: hey, is that a... FLOATER!!! cue jaws-like panic. splashing. screaming. a big wailing siren on the beach. general all-round mayhem. i panicked though at the last moment and chopped it into four neat quarters with three sharp kung-fu chops and it disappeared below the wave line. childish shit like that amuses me enormously. 

the next day i moved on to balangan beach in the south of bali where i slept in a shack on the beach. it was very cheap. but very beautiful. and very rustic. and quite hippy. the beach was dotted with huge palm trees and surrounded by weather-beaten sheer-faced cliffs. there was was an awesome right-to-left reef break that was a bit too big for me. but great to see. like one of those exotic zigzag magazine photo-shoot locations. a real surfer paradise. i really liked this place a lot. even though i'm not a surfer. i'm a body-boarder. and body-boarders rule man!!! 

the clouds above us join and separate,

the breeze in the courtyard leaves and returns,

life is like that, so why not relax?

who can stop us from celebrating?

for pumpkin 

when pumpkin, buttercup, and i were traveling in africa we would drink. heavily. just to pass the time. and dull the pain. we would then start discussing noah's ark. as normal drunk people do. buttercup would declare an unshakable faith in the story. something he can't explain. just faith. pumpkin would say the story is ridiculous. illogical. scientifically impossible. we would then start talking about the highest truth. and parallel lines. we had loads of discussions about the highest truth. and parallel lines. is faith any less of a truth than logic (science or mathematics)? 

poincare lived from 1854 to 1912, a professor at the university of paris. this man was an international celebrity at thirty-five, a living legend at fifty-eight...

... during poincare's lifetime, an alarmingly deep crises in the foundations of the exact sciences had begun. for years scientific truth had been beyond the possibility of a doubt; the logic of science was infallible, and if the scientists were sometimes mistaken, this was assumed to be only their mistaking of it's rules. the great questions had all been answered. the mission of science was now simply to refine these answers to greater and greater accuracy... it was hardly guessed by anyone that within a few decades there would be no more absolute space, absolute time, absolute substance or even absolute magnitude; that classical physics, the scientific rock of ages, would become "approximate"...

... in his foundations of science poincare explained that the antecedents of the crisis in the foundations of science were very old. it had long been sought in vain, he said, to demonstrate the axiom known as euclid's fifth postulate and this search was the start of the crisis. euclid's fifth postulate of parallels, which states that through a given point there's not more than one parallel line to a given straight line,  we usually learn in tenth-grade geometry. it is one of the basic building blocks out of which the entire mathematics of geometry is constructed...

... finally, in the first quater if the nineteeth century, and almost at the same time, a hungrian and a russian - bolyai and lobachevski - established irrefutably that a proof of euclid's fifth postulate is impossible. they did this by reasoning that if there were any way to reduce euclid's postulate to other, surer axioms, another effect would also be noticeable: a reversal of euclid's postulate would create logical contradictions in the geometry. so they reversed euclid's postulate.

lobachevski assumes at the start that through a given point can be drawn two parallels to a given straight. and he retains besides all euclid's other axioms. from these hypothesis he deduces a series of theorems among which it's impossible to find any contradiction, and he constructs a geometry whose faultless logic is inferior in nothing to the euclidian geometry. thus by failure find any contradictions he proves that the fifth postulate is irreducible to simpler axioms.

it wasn't proof but it was alarming. it was it's rational byproduct that soon overshadowed it and almost everything else in the field of mathematics. mathematics, the cornerstone of scientific certainty, was suddenly uncertain.

we now had two contradictory visions of unshakable scientific truth, true for all men of all ages, regardless of their individual preferences.

this was the basis of the profound crisis that shattered the scientific complacency of the gilded age. how do we know which one of these geometries is right? if there is no basis for distinguishing between them, then you have a total mathematics which admits logical contradictions. but a mathematics that admits internal logical contradictions is no mathematics at all. the ultimate effect of non-euclidian geometries becomes nothing more than a magician's mumbo jumbo in which belief is sustained purely by faith!

and of course once that door was opened one could hardly expect the number of contradictory systems of unshakable scientific truth to be limited to two. a german named riemann appeared with another unshakable system of geometry which throws overboard not only euclid's postulate, but also the first axiom, which states that only one straight line can pass through two points. again there is no internal contradiction, only an inconsistency with both lobachevskian and euclidian geometries.

according to the theory of relativity, riemann geometry best describes the world we live in.