Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Oddities in Silence
Of all the queer habits that I could've picked up amongst the silence the one I did not expect was to make friends with a grey bunny plushie. Pity plushies don't talk; at least they're nice to cuddle.
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
The world as was, the world as is, the world as will be
"We're past that stage", a friend reminisces; she was angry at two friends' seemingly distant reunion - they didn't hug and just went back to business. "it was just this mind-blowing moment when I heard that", she commented. I remember that phase myself - where me and Jon decided against taking a photo with the Jar. Our friendship is deeper than that, we thought.
October 12 2014 he replies a message I sent him on the 21st of August. Been busy, he says.
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A year later another message appears out of the blue. J's back in Singapore for three weeks. What do we talk about? Sweden? China? My plans for the future? His plans? The other J?
So much to catch up on, so much to talk about. At least I know that with some friends the fences are really moats instead of walls. Even if they're ocean-wide at least the paper aeroplanes come once in a blue moon.
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October 12 2014 he replies a message I sent him on the 21st of August. Been busy, he says.
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A year later another message appears out of the blue. J's back in Singapore for three weeks. What do we talk about? Sweden? China? My plans for the future? His plans? The other J?
So much to catch up on, so much to talk about. At least I know that with some friends the fences are really moats instead of walls. Even if they're ocean-wide at least the paper aeroplanes come once in a blue moon.
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Sometimes you don't realize but "We're past that stage" isn't a good enough reason to keep a memory of things. You ARE past that stage. We all are. But we don't stay there forever. We only recognize the stages that we've gone past but never the ones that are coming up, never realize that there is never a stage that doesn't need to be recorded for memory. Every stage feels eternal and everlasting until it's gone - the flights, the farewells, the breakups. We all move on, eventually.
It's fine if you don't want to remember the past and want to burn the pictures away. It's not fine if the pictures were never there because you foolishly thought that friendship was forever, that times never change and that people never change.
They do. They all do. We all do. The mother you see everyday making breakfast could be in the operating room tomorrow, screaming enough in the nights that you wonder if euthanasia via painkiller overdose would ever happen. The friends you see everyday for hours on end last year aren't even in the same continent as you anymore - Asia has no future for them. Even in Singapore, the people you see together, the people you support, may very well be apart the very next day. They have no future for each other. People move. People change. People move on.
When you realize that the times you spend together make up 90% of all the time you'll ever spend on Earth, that 90% of it is already gone, squandered into the good memories with nothing lasting to show, you think a bit more about the 10%. The remaining tenth that you have to earn - in flight tickets, in reschedules, in trying to get everyone together for what could be the final magical moment together. You start to see it for the magic it really is; the ones that come free along with the ones you earn.
It's just a pity you never know what the real percentage of remaining time left with each and every person you treasure is, huh. If you treat every meeting with your friends as the very last meeting you'll ever have with them (fearing the car accidents, plane crashes, and every other statistical outlier that could possibly fuck you over) you'd always treasure each and every second you spend with them. But you can't.
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We really should've taken that picture with Jar. Between Europe/America, Asia and Australia, who knows when the three of us will be together again? Three years and counting. Will it hit a decade?
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Thoughts about thoughts, writings about writings
It is not so much with much reluctance that I restart writing this blog, as it is with much inertia that I find it extremely difficult to restart this blog. I no longer have a way with words the way the mes of the past have had; I have probably traded a life of thought and mind for being more easy-going, glib with my mouth and more understanding of people.
I really wish I could easily write in the way I did last time, I do. But at some point life became about living as opposed to thinking and mindlessness became the way instead of questioning, Thinking became an issue of 'what is wrong' - thinking about how to correct a problem so that you can stop thinking. Maybe the problem is that you're thinking. Maybe that's the true sign that something's up.
It's not even that I am incapable of any coherent thought altogether - I've had decent, quality conversations with a number of friends talking about a large number of things under the sky. People, events, ideas, the like. The saying was that which category you talked about more determined your intelligence; maybe I just went from being intelligent to being dumb, average and smart at the same time. I could live with that. But my tongue flows when people are around. The good and bad, the smart and dumb, the deep and shallow.
But here it becomes a wall. Thousands of words are fine for university essays but five hundred a struggle when reflecting on my own life. Maybe it's the lack of people. If I have no one to interact with, the thoughts cease. Could that be the case? Could I just be a foil to everyone else's life, doomed to giving nuggets of wisdom and thought but never thinking hard enough about my own life? The thought is attractive - the conclusion depressing. But it is a thought. I've lost the ability to talk to myself. About myself. With myself.
The writing habits are still there. The rule of three. The nice, short and succinct sentences that give the little staccato in the writing. The longer run-on sentences that feel almost like rambling a series of afterthoughts after the initial point. but never truly follows coherently. The streams of consciousness that ebb and flow, the thoughts that slowly arise to the surface but recede back into the sea before I get a grasp on it. But the thoughts behind them are empty. All that is left are thoughts of thoughts. Writing about writing.
A thing about quiet people is that others always try to assign other traits to the quiet person - is his or her silence golden? Is there wisdom behind the facade or hollowness? Everyone knows that the man always talking is hollow - empty vassals make the most noise. No one ever mentioned that the quiet ones could go either way.
And for now, the silent vassal here is hollow. The attempt to knock at it to create some sound just echos and reverberates mindlessly. Just more sounds of knocking from attempting to knock, echoes of thoughts from trying to think, traces of writing from trying to write.
It's still too difficult for now, but I have to get back to this somehow. I have to try. I just hope I keep trying. The thoughts are there. They're still there for now. I have to catch them before they're gone and I stop thinking. Before the time where the only thinking I do is how to go back to being thoughtless.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Prayers in pain
Dear Lord all I wish for is for my mom to find a working combination of painkillers. That if surgery is an option that it goes safely and successfully. That we can eventually live past this and think "thank God that's over" instead of living in this for as long as she lives.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
On expectations and friendships
The man from the west (Ironically currently in the East) mentioned that pain and suffering only result from expectations. My mom told me that it was meaningless to feel pain and sadness over things you have no control over. You subject yourself to unnecessary pain, unnecessary sadness. You cannot hurt the man who never had expectations in the first place.
If the pain, the suffering can be prevented then, is it wrong to subject yourself to avoidable pain and preventable suffering? No, he says, there is nothing wrong - it is human to expect and human to be hurt. No, she will probably concede, there is a difference between meaningless actions and wrong actions - futility and moral wrongness are separate entities to compare.
Expectations, he says, can be likened to a form of human attachment. Perhaps the follow-up to that is that having no expectations suggests detachment. If you have no expectations, you cannot personally associate with the pain and disappointment - after all, you never expected a good outcome, how could you feel bad over a bad outcome? But in a good outcome, do you actually feel good about it? How happy is the man who expected to get second but got first, compared to the man who expected (and hoped) to get first and got it?
You wrote that friendship is beautiful because you have less expectations of it, and its reciprocation is a pleasant surprise - an unexpected joy. I disagree - you have expectations and hopes for it, regardless of the fact that you're aware they might not be met. Friendship is beautiful because people meet expectations even though they are not obliged to. They sound the same, but the disappointment that results is different - after all, you can't feel sad if you never expected anything. You can feel sad if you expect something even if you're aware it might not happen. Friendship is beautiful because it goes in spite of possible disappointment, not because it is a pleasant surprise over a situation where no expectations are harmed.
Are my expectations of friendship then wrong? If the annoyance, pain and hurt I feel is completely preventable, is it wrong to not prevent it? "In the first place", he asked, "is this something you have a choice over? The zen person doesn't think about not-thinking, he just not-thinks. There is no choice."
He mentioned that there are times where there are no skillful and diplomatic means to solve a problem, that the idea that you could overcome any problem if you tried hard enough is but American fiction and myth. Is it wrong to recognize the myth, yet subscribe to it regardless and to feel pain when you are forced to realize its mythical nature? To try to fix something that cannot be fixed, to rebuild a friendship that either spoiled or never existed?
___________________________________________
I seem to have, at this point, an obsession with associating moral rightness and wrongness to ideas of efficiency and utility. A rather unhealthy behaviour I must say.
___________________________________________
I considered why I was staying and didn't just quit, leave it all and be rid of these feelings. He mentioned feeling that way for ICT - mistakes better ignored but best confronted. "Deep down", he conceded, "it kind of unsettled me". Another good friend mentioned it as something to be proud of - to continue in spite of it. Is the struggle really as noble as they put it, though? Maybe I'm just a selfish and foolish guy thinking that this will pay off in the end. Who knows how I feel deep inside?
What I do know is that for a group to perform better, you need to have better teamwork. And while I've learnt that it isn't always true, I still prefer to subscribe to the idea that it's easier to make teamwork work if you're on good terms with everybody. Nothing wrong with the more professional approach but I wished it could've gone down this line instead.
For today, though, I just wish I could perish the thought that friendships can be bettered or fixed by trying to reach out to mend them...
...or perhaps stop seeing friendships where none existed, though that's even more pessimistic.
----------------------
The whole writing ended up much shorter than I would've thought it would, but I guess I should be thankful for the distractions that made it so. If there is any good in this it's that I now know better the people who do stick around with me in... more annoying times.
Alternatively it's just because the Amaretto's effect wore off and I'm more sober again.
If the pain, the suffering can be prevented then, is it wrong to subject yourself to avoidable pain and preventable suffering? No, he says, there is nothing wrong - it is human to expect and human to be hurt. No, she will probably concede, there is a difference between meaningless actions and wrong actions - futility and moral wrongness are separate entities to compare.
Expectations, he says, can be likened to a form of human attachment. Perhaps the follow-up to that is that having no expectations suggests detachment. If you have no expectations, you cannot personally associate with the pain and disappointment - after all, you never expected a good outcome, how could you feel bad over a bad outcome? But in a good outcome, do you actually feel good about it? How happy is the man who expected to get second but got first, compared to the man who expected (and hoped) to get first and got it?
You wrote that friendship is beautiful because you have less expectations of it, and its reciprocation is a pleasant surprise - an unexpected joy. I disagree - you have expectations and hopes for it, regardless of the fact that you're aware they might not be met. Friendship is beautiful because people meet expectations even though they are not obliged to. They sound the same, but the disappointment that results is different - after all, you can't feel sad if you never expected anything. You can feel sad if you expect something even if you're aware it might not happen. Friendship is beautiful because it goes in spite of possible disappointment, not because it is a pleasant surprise over a situation where no expectations are harmed.
Are my expectations of friendship then wrong? If the annoyance, pain and hurt I feel is completely preventable, is it wrong to not prevent it? "In the first place", he asked, "is this something you have a choice over? The zen person doesn't think about not-thinking, he just not-thinks. There is no choice."
He mentioned that there are times where there are no skillful and diplomatic means to solve a problem, that the idea that you could overcome any problem if you tried hard enough is but American fiction and myth. Is it wrong to recognize the myth, yet subscribe to it regardless and to feel pain when you are forced to realize its mythical nature? To try to fix something that cannot be fixed, to rebuild a friendship that either spoiled or never existed?
___________________________________________
I seem to have, at this point, an obsession with associating moral rightness and wrongness to ideas of efficiency and utility. A rather unhealthy behaviour I must say.
___________________________________________
I considered why I was staying and didn't just quit, leave it all and be rid of these feelings. He mentioned feeling that way for ICT - mistakes better ignored but best confronted. "Deep down", he conceded, "it kind of unsettled me". Another good friend mentioned it as something to be proud of - to continue in spite of it. Is the struggle really as noble as they put it, though? Maybe I'm just a selfish and foolish guy thinking that this will pay off in the end. Who knows how I feel deep inside?
What I do know is that for a group to perform better, you need to have better teamwork. And while I've learnt that it isn't always true, I still prefer to subscribe to the idea that it's easier to make teamwork work if you're on good terms with everybody. Nothing wrong with the more professional approach but I wished it could've gone down this line instead.
For today, though, I just wish I could perish the thought that friendships can be bettered or fixed by trying to reach out to mend them...
...or perhaps stop seeing friendships where none existed, though that's even more pessimistic.
----------------------
The whole writing ended up much shorter than I would've thought it would, but I guess I should be thankful for the distractions that made it so. If there is any good in this it's that I now know better the people who do stick around with me in... more annoying times.
Alternatively it's just because the Amaretto's effect wore off and I'm more sober again.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
2013 Reflections
Reflections, reflections. The year will be over soon and reflections
for the year must be done before the new one comes. はいそれじゃ今年のまとめ：
去年の話だけど代表としてＫＡＣＡに参加しました。 そのお陰で音ゲーがどれほど世の中の人を繋げるのがよく分かった。 台湾も韓国も日本も音ゲーでつな げるなんて凄いなぁ。 ＫＡＣＡの後は皆とつなぐためにツイッタはじめました＠ＲＢＲｉｅｚｚ。 大体音ゲーツイットしかしてないけどまぁそれでもいいん じゃない。
Lost my favourite music game and had to fly overseas just to play it but it's being replaced for now and SDVX is pretty fun. Can't beat RB for me and I don't really bother as much with scores but it's good enough I guess. Don't really know whether I can convince anyone to bring it back but I guess I can try at least.
Also I might be slow but it seems I'm a little more well known in the arcade community than I thought I was. >_> Oh well. I've been holed up at Cityvibe much more this year compared to last but I'm still thankful for all the friends and rivals I've made from SDVX, RB, and IIDX. It's nice to see that the music game community is still pretty awesome irl even if the JB FB group has kind of gone to hell and back, and it's really heartening to see that competitions, as rare as they are, are as lively and active as ever. Hopefully next year is a better year with regards to music games as this one - still hoping someone will change their mind and bring RB and Pop'n back into Singapore at least ~_~.
去年の話だけど代表としてＫＡＣＡに参加しました。 そのお陰で音ゲーがどれほど世の中の人を繋げるのがよく分かった。 台湾も韓国も日本も音ゲーでつな げるなんて凄いなぁ。 ＫＡＣＡの後は皆とつなぐためにツイッタはじめました＠ＲＢＲｉｅｚｚ。 大体音ゲーツイットしかしてないけどまぁそれでもいいん じゃない。
Lost my favourite music game and had to fly overseas just to play it but it's being replaced for now and SDVX is pretty fun. Can't beat RB for me and I don't really bother as much with scores but it's good enough I guess. Don't really know whether I can convince anyone to bring it back but I guess I can try at least.
Also I might be slow but it seems I'm a little more well known in the arcade community than I thought I was. >_> Oh well. I've been holed up at Cityvibe much more this year compared to last but I'm still thankful for all the friends and rivals I've made from SDVX, RB, and IIDX. It's nice to see that the music game community is still pretty awesome irl even if the JB FB group has kind of gone to hell and back, and it's really heartening to see that competitions, as rare as they are, are as lively and active as ever. Hopefully next year is a better year with regards to music games as this one - still hoping someone will change their mind and bring RB and Pop'n back into Singapore at least ~_~.
Got randomly dropped into a great project group and a great OG -
probably the luckiest thing to happen to me this year as far as NUS is
concerned. Wonderful people, and I honestly have no clue how my ISE life
would be like without these guys. Kind of a scary prospect in
hindsight. Damn. Really glad that you guys are there, and I'm looking
forward to hanging out and working with you guys again next sem.
小さなバンドに入りました。 あまり練習時間がないけど大切にしています。 十年以上やった聖歌隊を止めた後歌うチャンス全然なかったからなぁ。 久しぶりの歌える場所があることは「運が良い」としか考えられない；これだけを心か ら感謝してる。 これからもっと皆と仲良くなりたいけどちょっと難しいだね。 まぁもうバンドのページいっぱい書いたからここまででいいかな。
Realized once again how great my friends are, over the various meetups to catch up, random crashing of people's houses (and vice versa), and all the conversations on FB/WA (across timezones or not), regardless of whether they lasted minutes or hours. Thanks for being with me through the good and bad times, the boring and stressful periods, and the joyful and painful days. バカな時でも支えてくれて本当にありがとうございます。 親友達はどれほど大切なんてもう一度分かってくれました。 シンガポールにいてもいなくても僕にとって皆は大事な宝なんです。
All in all the year's had its ups and downs but it's been mostly great everywhere. Life's been good to me even though I don't think I've done that much, and hopefully it stays that way next year - but I guess I'll be putting in more effort into keeping things good, be it friends, colleagues, work or life.
来年もよろしくお願いします。
小さなバンドに入りました。 あまり練習時間がないけど大切にしています。 十年以上やった聖歌隊を止めた後歌うチャンス全然なかったからなぁ。 久しぶりの歌える場所があることは「運が良い」としか考えられない；これだけを心か ら感謝してる。 これからもっと皆と仲良くなりたいけどちょっと難しいだね。 まぁもうバンドのページいっぱい書いたからここまででいいかな。
Realized once again how great my friends are, over the various meetups to catch up, random crashing of people's houses (and vice versa), and all the conversations on FB/WA (across timezones or not), regardless of whether they lasted minutes or hours. Thanks for being with me through the good and bad times, the boring and stressful periods, and the joyful and painful days. バカな時でも支えてくれて本当にありがとうございます。 親友達はどれほど大切なんてもう一度分かってくれました。 シンガポールにいてもいなくても僕にとって皆は大事な宝なんです。
All in all the year's had its ups and downs but it's been mostly great everywhere. Life's been good to me even though I don't think I've done that much, and hopefully it stays that way next year - but I guess I'll be putting in more effort into keeping things good, be it friends, colleagues, work or life.
来年もよろしくお願いします。
Monday, December 30, 2013
The Power of Words
You said that talking to people online is but a distant form of communication and relationship - that it would be near impossible to really know a person just by talking online. Perhaps there is more truth to be found in real contact - mannerisms, appearances, the little subconscious signals the human makes that he or she will never notice but will never escape your gleaming eyes. The online, I suppose, is but a farce; a makeup of the soul and brain.
You don't realize that sometimes, talking is all we have. And online is all we have. Not everyone has the luxury of physical contact, the knowledge of when your friends will be available to meetup, let alone the choice to meet them tomorrow to catch up over a cup of coffee. The doctor-to-be in Australia came back for a week in December - the previous time was July, and the one before over a year back. He's freer next year because it's his research year, but what after? Back to the rural hospitals with minimal access to the outside world? The looming thought of marriage to his highly conservative girlfriend? The realization that the only time I will ever get to meet him again is with a $800 air ticket and a prayer for him to have good fortune not to encounter too many of the dying?
For some, even contact is a privilege an honour we are undeserving of. But I digress.
There are those who get close and then start talking to each other online very often. I'm the opposite in cause and effect. As far back as I can remember every single friendship I've forged across the past decade that has lasted the test of time has started from talking online; it is the cause, not the effect. There are those who can't bother with farces, illusions, the makeup of the self and soul, who speak their mind without hindrance, who bare their self without fear. I trust them to take it, and they trust me to receive likewise. Of course trusting in a person and being trusted by a person are completely different matters - no doubt I fall completely guilty of mistaking this - but it works.
What difference is it, after all? The difference between talking with a person through a monitor and talking to a monitor is merely the trust that the person on the other side is truly a person - no robot, no fake, no pretending. When you don't bother with these things communication might get complicated - misinterpretations, misunderstandings. But you adjust and learn, and trust that this is the person behind the words, the person in the personality. Nothing clears up a misunderstanding faster than frankness and questions.
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I'm at the stage where I can only write incoherent writing without proper linking between everything and conclusions. I blame 3am writing without the alcohol.
You don't realize that sometimes, talking is all we have. And online is all we have. Not everyone has the luxury of physical contact, the knowledge of when your friends will be available to meetup, let alone the choice to meet them tomorrow to catch up over a cup of coffee. The doctor-to-be in Australia came back for a week in December - the previous time was July, and the one before over a year back. He's freer next year because it's his research year, but what after? Back to the rural hospitals with minimal access to the outside world? The looming thought of marriage to his highly conservative girlfriend? The realization that the only time I will ever get to meet him again is with a $800 air ticket and a prayer for him to have good fortune not to encounter too many of the dying?
For some, even contact is a privilege an honour we are undeserving of. But I digress.
There are those who get close and then start talking to each other online very often. I'm the opposite in cause and effect. As far back as I can remember every single friendship I've forged across the past decade that has lasted the test of time has started from talking online; it is the cause, not the effect. There are those who can't bother with farces, illusions, the makeup of the self and soul, who speak their mind without hindrance, who bare their self without fear. I trust them to take it, and they trust me to receive likewise. Of course trusting in a person and being trusted by a person are completely different matters - no doubt I fall completely guilty of mistaking this - but it works.
What difference is it, after all? The difference between talking with a person through a monitor and talking to a monitor is merely the trust that the person on the other side is truly a person - no robot, no fake, no pretending. When you don't bother with these things communication might get complicated - misinterpretations, misunderstandings. But you adjust and learn, and trust that this is the person behind the words, the person in the personality. Nothing clears up a misunderstanding faster than frankness and questions.
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I'm at the stage where I can only write incoherent writing without proper linking between everything and conclusions. I blame 3am writing without the alcohol.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Ironies
There's that inherent conflict in saying 'Rest in Peace' to a man who committed suicide. The knowledge that you say it with full awareness that peace was the last thing to ever hit his mind and the last thing that he ever found on Earth and can only find it in rest. The fact that by its very definition no one can ever empathize with him, and whatever sympathy present is more pity than understanding of the pain experienced.
I only wish what you can find peace where you've moved on to.
I only wish what you can find peace where you've moved on to.
Monday, March 11, 2013
More thoughts on music games
I realized after a while that how good you are at a game really changes your perception of what is 'fun' regarding the game. While I can only speak in terms of music games, I'm pretty sure this is applicable to any genre (and in fact any discipline or hobby). At the risk of alienating every reader of this, I'll stick to the genre I know.
For one, you realize a lot more thought went into certain things you overlooked before and how other things actually have much less thought to them. It's the difference between why Lindwurm, Valanga and Vairocana are awesome charts in Reflec Beat and HAERETICUS is anything but - the difficulty is literally thrown in for difficulty's sake because you cannot figure out why this person out there decided that this should be a chain, that should be a hold and this should be a double. If the rationale fits, the notechart becomes an extension of the song very naturally; you can understand the notechart as quickly as you understand the song.
Another example I can think of is how all the relatively noob people at IIDX all go "wow Beastie Starter on IIDX is an 11 this is easy, this is boring stuff" and I see the KACA 2012 IIDX representative comment that it's a really good chart and I tend to agree. Another example is Just Awake on Jubeat and how I can remember Jovian immediately calling it out as a lazily done song and being shot down because it was apparently "fun" - in the sense that you had to press lots of buttons.
For most people in music games they look at one thing first - difficulty. Anything that doesn't fulfill this requirement is a terrible song. You can see the examples everywhere in music games - everyone rushing for Evans on jubeat just to score a C, some kid proudly declaring that he's 'youngest in SG to AAA deadlock' and every other person around looking forward to spam lvl 10+ songs, and people thinking of every song in IIDX as a 12 ("is it me or is this easy?" when you're barely passing 11s on Easy Clear? seriously?)
Once you start clearing all the actually hard songs, however, you start to understand the subtleties of the difficulty and the creativity behind it. All the hardest songs in IIDX are hard for very different reasons - Mei for the legendary slow-to-fast scratchspam, Plan 8 for that highly note-intensive scratch ending, Nageki for its doublescale near the ending, p†p for the hold notes and sudden trills at the ending, DIAVOLO for the ultra fast staircases, Himiko for the entire slow ending. All these have a lot of thought into them to make them difficulty but NOT insanely awkward, where the player can understand how s/he's being challenged by the chart creator in a manner that isn't "I want you to P1 scratch with your right hand" or something equivalently stupid.
Then there're somewhat iffy things like Timepiece Phase II CN Ver where there's a random measure with a hold note on 4 and a 3-5 jack if I remember correctly. It basically screams "I want you to random this because I know it's stupidly hard to hold the middle note and have jacks on the two notes just beside". If you can understand how a chart is supposed to work AND STILL disagree with the creator on why it's bad, the chart is irrevocably bad. Of course this understanding can't be superficial like "fast streams are bad" or other forms of arguments derived more from one's lack of skill than from one's capability. Once again, to rage at HAERETICUS again, it's the difference between the hold notes in Valanga and the hold notes in HAERETICUS - you cannot imagine Valanga without the hold notes because sufficient thought went into it that you imagine the holds as integral to the notechart. HAERETICUS not so.
Ultimately though being good at the game changes your perspective of difficulties and fun - you start to understand the motives and mindset behind certain charts. You can start to see how certain things fit in together naturally (this may be circular logic but nvm) and other things are sloppily thrown together. It may seem somewhat like a case snobby connoisseur-ism, but I do stand by the idea that you should be good at the game before you start criticizing whether something is good or bad, especially against someone else much better who expresses his/her opinion about it.
For one, you realize a lot more thought went into certain things you overlooked before and how other things actually have much less thought to them. It's the difference between why Lindwurm, Valanga and Vairocana are awesome charts in Reflec Beat and HAERETICUS is anything but - the difficulty is literally thrown in for difficulty's sake because you cannot figure out why this person out there decided that this should be a chain, that should be a hold and this should be a double. If the rationale fits, the notechart becomes an extension of the song very naturally; you can understand the notechart as quickly as you understand the song.
Another example I can think of is how all the relatively noob people at IIDX all go "wow Beastie Starter on IIDX is an 11 this is easy, this is boring stuff" and I see the KACA 2012 IIDX representative comment that it's a really good chart and I tend to agree. Another example is Just Awake on Jubeat and how I can remember Jovian immediately calling it out as a lazily done song and being shot down because it was apparently "fun" - in the sense that you had to press lots of buttons.
For most people in music games they look at one thing first - difficulty. Anything that doesn't fulfill this requirement is a terrible song. You can see the examples everywhere in music games - everyone rushing for Evans on jubeat just to score a C, some kid proudly declaring that he's 'youngest in SG to AAA deadlock' and every other person around looking forward to spam lvl 10+ songs, and people thinking of every song in IIDX as a 12 ("is it me or is this easy?" when you're barely passing 11s on Easy Clear? seriously?)
Once you start clearing all the actually hard songs, however, you start to understand the subtleties of the difficulty and the creativity behind it. All the hardest songs in IIDX are hard for very different reasons - Mei for the legendary slow-to-fast scratchspam, Plan 8 for that highly note-intensive scratch ending, Nageki for its doublescale near the ending, p†p for the hold notes and sudden trills at the ending, DIAVOLO for the ultra fast staircases, Himiko for the entire slow ending. All these have a lot of thought into them to make them difficulty but NOT insanely awkward, where the player can understand how s/he's being challenged by the chart creator in a manner that isn't "I want you to P1 scratch with your right hand" or something equivalently stupid.
Then there're somewhat iffy things like Timepiece Phase II CN Ver where there's a random measure with a hold note on 4 and a 3-5 jack if I remember correctly. It basically screams "I want you to random this because I know it's stupidly hard to hold the middle note and have jacks on the two notes just beside". If you can understand how a chart is supposed to work AND STILL disagree with the creator on why it's bad, the chart is irrevocably bad. Of course this understanding can't be superficial like "fast streams are bad" or other forms of arguments derived more from one's lack of skill than from one's capability. Once again, to rage at HAERETICUS again, it's the difference between the hold notes in Valanga and the hold notes in HAERETICUS - you cannot imagine Valanga without the hold notes because sufficient thought went into it that you imagine the holds as integral to the notechart. HAERETICUS not so.
Ultimately though being good at the game changes your perspective of difficulties and fun - you start to understand the motives and mindset behind certain charts. You can start to see how certain things fit in together naturally (this may be circular logic but nvm) and other things are sloppily thrown together. It may seem somewhat like a case snobby connoisseur-ism, but I do stand by the idea that you should be good at the game before you start criticizing whether something is good or bad, especially against someone else much better who expresses his/her opinion about it.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Thoughts on KAC and SG Arcade
It's a good year for SG music gamers on content and a terrible year on wallet and affordability. And an especially good year for me as far as being a music gamer is concerned, hahaha.
I must say that we have KACA and a very devoted fanbase in Taiwan/HK to thank for Sound Voltex, Pop'n Sunny Park, and presumably RB Colette coming into the Asia region so quickly (And even coming in at all in the case of Pop'n and Voltex).
My personal observation is that gamers there are really quite an amazing bunch of people. Queueing 2+ hours just to get "front row seats" on the floor, bringing the Tricoro poster, drawings of Pastel-kun, every album of Sota Fujimori's Synthesized Series (1-3; 4 only just got released) - no way in hell you'd ever see that in Singapore, seriously. Sure, it's survivor bias but I really doubt we even have enough of such people to make a crowd. The scene just can't compare. You just won't have people screaming "WE WANT SOUND VOLTEX AND POP'N IN TAIWAN" to Sota/Qrispy. In any case, Qrispy did say that they'll bring the issue up to management and see where that got us. It's great to witness it all in action rather than have one lame email saying "Colette will come in March 2013".
Even competition-end they are more passionate. Look at this, a player-organized tournament to commemorate the opening of Colette in Korea. It's been a grand total of two days and everything's done already. None of that bureaucracy crap or team spirit or community, these people are just passionate for playing the game. (I still stand by the opinion that if you really want a successful turnout at any event you organize then you should use any means necessary to achieve it. Trying to act aloof and pretending things are going well will do you no good when said event ends up a failure as far as turnout is concerned. Yes, I'm pretty explicit here if you're in the know.)
It's kind of tragic that all this comes at a time of a revenue-sharing model that makes games $2.50 each.
There's more I'd like to write but argh 3.20am in the morning. Urgh
I must say that we have KACA and a very devoted fanbase in Taiwan/HK to thank for Sound Voltex, Pop'n Sunny Park, and presumably RB Colette coming into the Asia region so quickly (And even coming in at all in the case of Pop'n and Voltex).
My personal observation is that gamers there are really quite an amazing bunch of people. Queueing 2+ hours just to get "front row seats" on the floor, bringing the Tricoro poster, drawings of Pastel-kun, every album of Sota Fujimori's Synthesized Series (1-3; 4 only just got released) - no way in hell you'd ever see that in Singapore, seriously. Sure, it's survivor bias but I really doubt we even have enough of such people to make a crowd. The scene just can't compare. You just won't have people screaming "WE WANT SOUND VOLTEX AND POP'N IN TAIWAN" to Sota/Qrispy. In any case, Qrispy did say that they'll bring the issue up to management and see where that got us. It's great to witness it all in action rather than have one lame email saying "Colette will come in March 2013".
Even competition-end they are more passionate. Look at this, a player-organized tournament to commemorate the opening of Colette in Korea. It's been a grand total of two days and everything's done already. None of that bureaucracy crap or team spirit or community, these people are just passionate for playing the game. (I still stand by the opinion that if you really want a successful turnout at any event you organize then you should use any means necessary to achieve it. Trying to act aloof and pretending things are going well will do you no good when said event ends up a failure as far as turnout is concerned. Yes, I'm pretty explicit here if you're in the know.)
It's kind of tragic that all this comes at a time of a revenue-sharing model that makes games $2.50 each.
There's more I'd like to write but argh 3.20am in the morning. Urgh
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nif01WZ9aI
If money weren't an issue maybe I wouldn't be in this city at all.
I honestly think that there's something innately tragic about this carpe diem mentality and how it garners support and faith amongst people, even serving somewhat as a panacea for the lost. Better to live a short and full life than a long and miserable one, they'll always say. Just do something that you're passionate in and don't care about the money.
Be my guest, but please don't ever think that this mentality will ever help the world at large. It's interesting because I see top comments on youtube that feel that "There will always be someone that will be interested in what you aren't interested in", extending it to even cleaning the sewers, ignoring the problems that education, proportions of people who want certain jobs, changing perceptions of what is socially acceptable, people to care after and other issues (I'm really tempted to put "economics" as an issue precisely because they say "ignore the money")
The number of people who will truly enjoy what they do for a living right now is without doubt a scarce minority, a drop in the red ocean. To say that this should be the case and that all is fine with the world is almost wronging humanity in itself. But to go about this with a 'everything will solve itself' mentality or even the 'live life fully and quickly' kind of mentality is just a tragic response to the issue - to not attempt to fight your way to a meaningful survival and live instead as the bright spark that shines ever so brightly yet dies ever so quickly.
The very worst would be when what you intend to do doesn't stop at burning you away in passion - it further burns those who believed and had faith in you.Your dreams will cost others dearly.
Of course, once you master whatever you loved, life would be different. But when will that happen? Will you ever make it there?
---------------------------------------
Perhaps I am still bitter over it all.
If money weren't an issue maybe I wouldn't be in this city at all.
I honestly think that there's something innately tragic about this carpe diem mentality and how it garners support and faith amongst people, even serving somewhat as a panacea for the lost. Better to live a short and full life than a long and miserable one, they'll always say. Just do something that you're passionate in and don't care about the money.
Be my guest, but please don't ever think that this mentality will ever help the world at large. It's interesting because I see top comments on youtube that feel that "There will always be someone that will be interested in what you aren't interested in", extending it to even cleaning the sewers, ignoring the problems that education, proportions of people who want certain jobs, changing perceptions of what is socially acceptable, people to care after and other issues (I'm really tempted to put "economics" as an issue precisely because they say "ignore the money")
The number of people who will truly enjoy what they do for a living right now is without doubt a scarce minority, a drop in the red ocean. To say that this should be the case and that all is fine with the world is almost wronging humanity in itself. But to go about this with a 'everything will solve itself' mentality or even the 'live life fully and quickly' kind of mentality is just a tragic response to the issue - to not attempt to fight your way to a meaningful survival and live instead as the bright spark that shines ever so brightly yet dies ever so quickly.
The very worst would be when what you intend to do doesn't stop at burning you away in passion - it further burns those who believed and had faith in you.Your dreams will cost others dearly.
Of course, once you master whatever you loved, life would be different. But when will that happen? Will you ever make it there?
---------------------------------------
Perhaps I am still bitter over it all.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
KAC Flight Annoyances
Not being able to make a single arrangement even though I know everything right in front of me because people just aren't getting back to me is probably the most rage-inducing thing in the world.
The thing that kills dreams and hopes and attempts to make them into real life isn't naivete or fear of risk-taking - it's emails that take one week to get back to you and the tape and everything else that will never flow like clockwork that do.
Yes this perfectly fell within my expectations but I went ahead with it anyway fully aware of the insanity that this involves. I just wish that the insanity wasn't because I had only 5 days before the competition before I got a confirmed flight detail and because I was going to do what I was going to do.
Really, I know that real life is a bitch and things never turn out as easy as you'd wish they do but sometimes it gets more annoying than usual. Sigh
The thing that kills dreams and hopes and attempts to make them into real life isn't naivete or fear of risk-taking - it's emails that take one week to get back to you and the tape and everything else that will never flow like clockwork that do.
Yes this perfectly fell within my expectations but I went ahead with it anyway fully aware of the insanity that this involves. I just wish that the insanity wasn't because I had only 5 days before the competition before I got a confirmed flight detail and because I was going to do what I was going to do.
Really, I know that real life is a bitch and things never turn out as easy as you'd wish they do but sometimes it gets more annoying than usual. Sigh
Saturday, September 01, 2012
Of passion, conviction, and direction
Of what use is passion without direction and conviction?
Without direction, it is but a driving force that pushes the self, no more and no less. Powerful as it may be, it must be guided and steered before it can bring you to any desired destination. Without it you are but charging your way through the stormy seas without so much as a compass to tell you where to face, let alone the warming beams of the lighthouse. The short success stories always say to never forget your passion, to always charge forward and maintain faith that all will turn out in the end. The longer ones explicitly state never to lose your aim and never to go astray - the faster you charge the further you get from your goal.
Without conviction, then, what is it? But a short burst of emotion. A wisp of flame that burns brightly but soon fades once you question yourself. Am I truly correct? Am I headed on the right path? Without the conviction, the faith in yourself and the belief needed to keep the flame burning, the flame extinguishes as quickly as it was sparked. The winds of the world show no mercy.
Of what use is direction without passion and conviction?
Direction, without conviction nor passion, lends itself to inertia. One who sees where he must go but will never take the first step. The roots slowly grow, the vines entangle the feet. Soon the moss is growing at the legs and the vines slowly wrap around him. What started out as an excuse now slowly drains his soul, his life, his essence out of him. He slowly becomes an outer shell of his former self, the child who could see every possibility and every path stuck in the shell that couldn't move.
Of what use is conviction without passion and direction?
Conviction without direction is but misguided belief - firmly anchoring oneself to the thoughts of centuries past, the thoughts of the damned, the thoughts of those who do not exist. It cuts you off, severs you from the world, slowly forms an island around you. Soon enough the island is a fortress, the lone tyrant inside protected from reason and sanity.
Without passion it remains as it is - conviction. Nothing more. With no emotional fuel to power the belief, it cannot manifest itself as anything greater than the beliefs held in your head. It becomes a mere hindrance, an object you cast in rebellion against the world that turns against you, but never a force you use to drive yourself against the will of the world.
What then, would you still need, with the three combined?
You need the calmness and maturity to realize that to charge headfirst into life is to overload yourself, that to burn too brightly with the passion of youth will burn yourself out faster than you can manage, leaving yourself an older and more melancholic self than your age should be. That there should be moderation in such faith and faith in such moderation. That Vienna waits for you.
For without maturity, there cannot be control, regardless of direction, conviction, or passion.
Without direction, it is but a driving force that pushes the self, no more and no less. Powerful as it may be, it must be guided and steered before it can bring you to any desired destination. Without it you are but charging your way through the stormy seas without so much as a compass to tell you where to face, let alone the warming beams of the lighthouse. The short success stories always say to never forget your passion, to always charge forward and maintain faith that all will turn out in the end. The longer ones explicitly state never to lose your aim and never to go astray - the faster you charge the further you get from your goal.
Without conviction, then, what is it? But a short burst of emotion. A wisp of flame that burns brightly but soon fades once you question yourself. Am I truly correct? Am I headed on the right path? Without the conviction, the faith in yourself and the belief needed to keep the flame burning, the flame extinguishes as quickly as it was sparked. The winds of the world show no mercy.
Of what use is direction without passion and conviction?
Direction, without conviction nor passion, lends itself to inertia. One who sees where he must go but will never take the first step. The roots slowly grow, the vines entangle the feet. Soon the moss is growing at the legs and the vines slowly wrap around him. What started out as an excuse now slowly drains his soul, his life, his essence out of him. He slowly becomes an outer shell of his former self, the child who could see every possibility and every path stuck in the shell that couldn't move.
Of what use is conviction without passion and direction?
Conviction without direction is but misguided belief - firmly anchoring oneself to the thoughts of centuries past, the thoughts of the damned, the thoughts of those who do not exist. It cuts you off, severs you from the world, slowly forms an island around you. Soon enough the island is a fortress, the lone tyrant inside protected from reason and sanity.
Without passion it remains as it is - conviction. Nothing more. With no emotional fuel to power the belief, it cannot manifest itself as anything greater than the beliefs held in your head. It becomes a mere hindrance, an object you cast in rebellion against the world that turns against you, but never a force you use to drive yourself against the will of the world.
What then, would you still need, with the three combined?
You need the calmness and maturity to realize that to charge headfirst into life is to overload yourself, that to burn too brightly with the passion of youth will burn yourself out faster than you can manage, leaving yourself an older and more melancholic self than your age should be. That there should be moderation in such faith and faith in such moderation. That Vienna waits for you.
For without maturity, there cannot be control, regardless of direction, conviction, or passion.
Friday, June 08, 2012
ASD, Pushing aunties off buses and tragedy
A recent obaa-san pushing video made me think a fair bit about the kind of society that we're living in right now, the failure of people to consider the data and evidence (or lack thereof) and the hilarity of it all.
"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed."
Yeah this guy certainly had a bad day and everything changed. Imagine if you snapped one day and did something unforgivable and the whole world suddenly went out to get you. As if being unable to forgive yourself wasn't bad enough.
I'm not going to deny it - I was near there once. Being on the verge of insanity and doing some irreversibly violent stuff to innocent acquaintances at least. At least I haven't gone past that line yet (perhaps illusion, of course. But a man can hope) but therein lies the thought - how many others?
One student committing suicide might become widespread and disturbing news but it'll hide the thousands of others who are driven to this very thought on an almost daily basis - a far more dangerous, disturbing and worrying news and issue. A video of a man snapping and pushing an old lady down on a bus goes viral and sparks a witchhunt of sorts; an event of coincidence that overshadows the possibility of incidents like this occurring on a much more frequent basis than people imagine, and the thought that many others are driven near this state for whatever reasons.
All because one guy had the dumb luck to video a drawn-out argument between a guy on the verge of lunacy and an old lady who unwittingly pushed him past it. Scary, huh?
So there's the thought - what if the one off event wasn't the man's actions, but the fact that it was filmed?
But I digress, of course. Scary thoughts are rarely as important as emotionally involved ones.
I find myself sympathizing with his words at times (empathizing, even) about being an abused product of society and such - even if I haven't been through the things he's been or done the things he's done I could at least say I've felt the way he's felt. And the witchhunt burns with their screams that it's all a pity party and it is no excuse for his actions. Cynicism seeps in the former argument and obviousness seeps in the other. Why would a guy state his side of his story if not for the hope of garnering pity from the masses? Geez, that's such a false dichotomy (is it even a 'dichotomy' if people only see one possible result?) I really have nothing to say.
What we have here is a video - at least said to be taken at the halfway mark when the guy snapped. We know nothing about the first half of the incident, and evidently everything else in the second half shows the man at his worst. We could assume that there's nothing to the first half of the incident OR we could -gasp- believe him and take his account of what happened prior to his snapping at said lady.
Of course I'm not going to say the auntie in question was an absolute jerkwad and deserved whatever happened to her but I'd like to pay attention to the fact that the initial spark was the guy telling the aunty not to push the bell so late. I'd like to see how the video would be when filmed with that - how different would the whole thing be with the entire incident in context rather than completely dragged out of it. I mean, it's kind of like watching a family argument where the husband slaps the wife in the climax without seeing the entire buildup of the wife screaming at the husband and telling him she cheated on him with the neighbour, right?
And then comes the other part where the old lady has accepted his apology and doesn't intend to press charges. But no, the hunters scream, the man is insincere in his apology and is just making pity for himself! As if the man needed to seek forgiveness from the hunters for being a lamb to the slaughter as opposed to seeking forgiveness from the old woman he pushed down (and received, mind you). Do you have an obligation to apologize to the people out to kill you for an incident you have already settled with another? No? Then why do you think of his words as an apology? He owes you nothing. He's giving an explanation to the events that led up to the mindset in his head. Regardless of whether the mindset is flawed or not, sincerity is the most irrelevant thing you could bring into the situation at this very point - do you doubt the sincerity of a recounting? No, you don't! The thing you doubt is the goddamn accuracy, not how "sincere" a person was while recounting it!
So then the obvious statement shines - what the person says is no excuse for his actions. He's just bringing depth into the picture - a situation everyone perceives as shallow because it's the most convenient thing they can do. From a situation where "this fucker went and screamed and pushed an old lady down the bus" to a situation where "this man had a fucking bad day and is on the verge of insanity and an old lady unwittingly pushed him past it and he turned into a fucker and screamed and pushed the old lady down the bus". Does it make the situation more acceptable in any way whatsoever? Of course it doesn't. What it did do is give a fuller picture to the narrative and explain how the hell the guy turned into a fucker instead of just assuming he was a fucker in and out.
Then there're the saddening statements about autism and ASD and whatnot from people who claim that it's just an excuse. I think the saddest one I read was an RJ student who wrote that he did a full year project on ASD, knows many ASD people who are nice and don't resort to violence unlike the guy, and proceeds to say that ASD isn't an excuse for these obviously violent and unnecessary actions. It almost makes me feel like he approached the issue of ASD without personal experience of the flipside of it. (To his defense I agreed with the rest of what he said, minus the insincere part - because like I said, it's not really an apology in the first place.) What makes me really sad, though, is that he seemed to me like he felt that because he had done a one-year research project on ASD that it empowers him to tell people afflicted with the syndrome to conform with his knowledge of it. It almost felt like economists screaming at the economy for not behaving the way they learnt it would. Humans and human constructs just aren't that simple.
I've helped out with ASD students before as a relief teacher. It wasn't long, I admit (definitely not a year) but it gave me the chance to at least be on the ground with them. Perhaps I'm being a hypocrite by shooting down the RJ guy for his knowledge and trying to affirm my stance with my own experience with ASD but I'm going to give my own experience anyway. I'll just try not to associate any judgment with it. (And every name from here is fake)
I've seen some students that I felt were terrible (the principal apparently thought they were perfectly ok kids in the school - that kind of scared me a bit) - the big girl Akira who always resorted to violence because she was incapable of expressing herself via words and only via fists. That's a girl I could barely hold back - I hurt the girl just trying to hold her back from charging into the other girl she was arguing with, Ash.
They're always good friends until Ash says something she shouldn't (she's insanely kaypoh and is forever butting into the things Akira does and says) and makes Akira exasperated and on the verge of harming someone. That's the fine line - one stupid remark from turning an otherwise entirely fine and friendly girl into a brute ready to charge you down.
There's the kid Gary who was always violent from his hyperactivity and attacked people with scissors because he can't keep his fingers to himself. It's too boring. I'm terrified of him because he's also insanely vulgur, violent and can't count to 20 easily by himself. He's ten (or so).
There's that kid whose name I can't even fucking remember who needed two teachers to pin him down when he went on a fit just because of an argument over cake. Who repeatedly took my arm and played around with it, swinging it like it was a rag toy. Who always named a random body part and needed you to scratch it to calm his itch lest he deal a strong blow to your body.
Then there's the stories. Of a kid around 15 who die-die wanted to take PSLE and cried for joy when his score wasn't 2 digits. I nearly cried at my 257 (or 258 I forgot liao it's damn long ago) because it was the lowest amongst my close friends.
These are real people. They're in a special school being taken care of by specialized teachers (who are in short supply) in order to transition properly into a functioning member of society. They learn and try their best to turn into and perform as what society considers "normal".
I've worked as an assistant for teachers on certain days instead of being a relief and all I can say is that I have utmost respect for their vocation and the dedication and SKILL they have for their job. It's not easy teaching 10 students each with multiple (yes they're rarely individual issues) disorders that require differing techniques to address and educate properly. My mother herself related her own experience of needing to spend three months just to teach a student how to count to three. I believe it's one of her greatest achievements in the school. I have hope that the teachers at the school I worked at can teach these students and lead them on this journey towards being a member of society and I'm certain other special education schools are at least capable of the same standards that I witnessed while I helped out at mine.
What I have little hope of, however, is expecting the same to be done for ASD-and-other-disorders-inflicted students who were not lucky enough to be taught at a school that specializes in their education.Why would I have any faith in it? They just aren't taught to teach students with this kind of issue. The teachers would shun the student and toss them out of class - why else would a special education school exist if not for a dumping ground of students unwanted by the "normal" mainstream education system?
The thought that a student like Gary can enter society without ever being taught by someone capable of addressing his mental and physical issues scares me. The opposite thought that a student like Gary, after being taught properly and working well in society, can suddenly get completely shunned by the nation because he reverted to his old self in a moment of folly, rage and stupidity scares me equally.
Does this make Gary's actions forgivable in any way whatsoever if he so decides to assault someone with scissors while in the office? Good god, no! The law is the law, assault is assault! But obviously he has to be treated differently from the well-doing scholar who assaulted a co-worker with scissors simply because he truly lacks the mental capacity for proper contemplation!
And that's one of the most major points people are missing because they just haven't been exposed to it. They haven't experienced firsthand what people with these issues are (or more specifically, aren't) capable of. They relate to them with the knowledge they have (a most likely rosy if not extremely scientific one) and it just cannot compare with the truth simply because it's just too far out. I'm honestly frightened to think of what could have happened to this guy while he was in school. Let's say what he says is true (if you want to doubt anything doubt the accuracy rather than the sincerity first, as I said earlier) and he never attended a Home Econs, D&T, Art and Craft, Science, Physics, AMath, Chinese lesson and was essentially segregated from his class his entire school life. Can you even begin to imagine what that would do to your psyche? Now that you have, can you imagine what that would do to the psyche of a person WHO IS ALREADY MENTALLY CHALLENGED?
Some will challenge me now, of course. That entire premise just sounds entirely ridiculous and drama-ish. What's a black swan, then (Nassim Taleb please if you don't know)? I'd already say that the entire situation was a black swan situation caused by the coincidence of a man deciding to film an incident from an exact particular point onwards that painted another guy in a particularly bad light (well, worse light if you will. It's not as if filming the whole incident would've put him in a good light). It blew what could have been a guy pushing an old lady down the bus, feeling bad, apologizing to the old lady afterwards, being forgiven and life moving on - to a guy pushing an old lady down the bus, feeling bad, apologizing to the old lady afterwards, being forgiven by her, and subsequently burnt on a stake by the Singaporean community because what they saw of the video framed him in this particular light.
People are driven by various factors to do things. No, they aren't always good and informed, obviously. But people should at least gather more facts before they act almighty on their pedestal of pseudo-anonymity. It's insanely tragic that the society I'm in right now is quick to rage, quick to cool, quick to forget but never quick to forgive and quick to think and consider what the fuck could have happened that led to this. To remember that all it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy, and even less for the less-than-sanest.
"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed."
Yeah this guy certainly had a bad day and everything changed. Imagine if you snapped one day and did something unforgivable and the whole world suddenly went out to get you. As if being unable to forgive yourself wasn't bad enough.
I'm not going to deny it - I was near there once. Being on the verge of insanity and doing some irreversibly violent stuff to innocent acquaintances at least. At least I haven't gone past that line yet (perhaps illusion, of course. But a man can hope) but therein lies the thought - how many others?
One student committing suicide might become widespread and disturbing news but it'll hide the thousands of others who are driven to this very thought on an almost daily basis - a far more dangerous, disturbing and worrying news and issue. A video of a man snapping and pushing an old lady down on a bus goes viral and sparks a witchhunt of sorts; an event of coincidence that overshadows the possibility of incidents like this occurring on a much more frequent basis than people imagine, and the thought that many others are driven near this state for whatever reasons.
All because one guy had the dumb luck to video a drawn-out argument between a guy on the verge of lunacy and an old lady who unwittingly pushed him past it. Scary, huh?
So there's the thought - what if the one off event wasn't the man's actions, but the fact that it was filmed?
But I digress, of course. Scary thoughts are rarely as important as emotionally involved ones.
I find myself sympathizing with his words at times (empathizing, even) about being an abused product of society and such - even if I haven't been through the things he's been or done the things he's done I could at least say I've felt the way he's felt. And the witchhunt burns with their screams that it's all a pity party and it is no excuse for his actions. Cynicism seeps in the former argument and obviousness seeps in the other. Why would a guy state his side of his story if not for the hope of garnering pity from the masses? Geez, that's such a false dichotomy (is it even a 'dichotomy' if people only see one possible result?) I really have nothing to say.
What we have here is a video - at least said to be taken at the halfway mark when the guy snapped. We know nothing about the first half of the incident, and evidently everything else in the second half shows the man at his worst. We could assume that there's nothing to the first half of the incident OR we could -gasp- believe him and take his account of what happened prior to his snapping at said lady.
Of course I'm not going to say the auntie in question was an absolute jerkwad and deserved whatever happened to her but I'd like to pay attention to the fact that the initial spark was the guy telling the aunty not to push the bell so late. I'd like to see how the video would be when filmed with that - how different would the whole thing be with the entire incident in context rather than completely dragged out of it. I mean, it's kind of like watching a family argument where the husband slaps the wife in the climax without seeing the entire buildup of the wife screaming at the husband and telling him she cheated on him with the neighbour, right?
And then comes the other part where the old lady has accepted his apology and doesn't intend to press charges. But no, the hunters scream, the man is insincere in his apology and is just making pity for himself! As if the man needed to seek forgiveness from the hunters for being a lamb to the slaughter as opposed to seeking forgiveness from the old woman he pushed down (and received, mind you). Do you have an obligation to apologize to the people out to kill you for an incident you have already settled with another? No? Then why do you think of his words as an apology? He owes you nothing. He's giving an explanation to the events that led up to the mindset in his head. Regardless of whether the mindset is flawed or not, sincerity is the most irrelevant thing you could bring into the situation at this very point - do you doubt the sincerity of a recounting? No, you don't! The thing you doubt is the goddamn accuracy, not how "sincere" a person was while recounting it!
So then the obvious statement shines - what the person says is no excuse for his actions. He's just bringing depth into the picture - a situation everyone perceives as shallow because it's the most convenient thing they can do. From a situation where "this fucker went and screamed and pushed an old lady down the bus" to a situation where "this man had a fucking bad day and is on the verge of insanity and an old lady unwittingly pushed him past it and he turned into a fucker and screamed and pushed the old lady down the bus". Does it make the situation more acceptable in any way whatsoever? Of course it doesn't. What it did do is give a fuller picture to the narrative and explain how the hell the guy turned into a fucker instead of just assuming he was a fucker in and out.
Then there're the saddening statements about autism and ASD and whatnot from people who claim that it's just an excuse. I think the saddest one I read was an RJ student who wrote that he did a full year project on ASD, knows many ASD people who are nice and don't resort to violence unlike the guy, and proceeds to say that ASD isn't an excuse for these obviously violent and unnecessary actions. It almost makes me feel like he approached the issue of ASD without personal experience of the flipside of it. (To his defense I agreed with the rest of what he said, minus the insincere part - because like I said, it's not really an apology in the first place.) What makes me really sad, though, is that he seemed to me like he felt that because he had done a one-year research project on ASD that it empowers him to tell people afflicted with the syndrome to conform with his knowledge of it. It almost felt like economists screaming at the economy for not behaving the way they learnt it would. Humans and human constructs just aren't that simple.
I've helped out with ASD students before as a relief teacher. It wasn't long, I admit (definitely not a year) but it gave me the chance to at least be on the ground with them. Perhaps I'm being a hypocrite by shooting down the RJ guy for his knowledge and trying to affirm my stance with my own experience with ASD but I'm going to give my own experience anyway. I'll just try not to associate any judgment with it. (And every name from here is fake)
I've seen some students that I felt were terrible (the principal apparently thought they were perfectly ok kids in the school - that kind of scared me a bit) - the big girl Akira who always resorted to violence because she was incapable of expressing herself via words and only via fists. That's a girl I could barely hold back - I hurt the girl just trying to hold her back from charging into the other girl she was arguing with, Ash.
They're always good friends until Ash says something she shouldn't (she's insanely kaypoh and is forever butting into the things Akira does and says) and makes Akira exasperated and on the verge of harming someone. That's the fine line - one stupid remark from turning an otherwise entirely fine and friendly girl into a brute ready to charge you down.
There's the kid Gary who was always violent from his hyperactivity and attacked people with scissors because he can't keep his fingers to himself. It's too boring. I'm terrified of him because he's also insanely vulgur, violent and can't count to 20 easily by himself. He's ten (or so).
There's that kid whose name I can't even fucking remember who needed two teachers to pin him down when he went on a fit just because of an argument over cake. Who repeatedly took my arm and played around with it, swinging it like it was a rag toy. Who always named a random body part and needed you to scratch it to calm his itch lest he deal a strong blow to your body.
Then there's the stories. Of a kid around 15 who die-die wanted to take PSLE and cried for joy when his score wasn't 2 digits. I nearly cried at my 257 (or 258 I forgot liao it's damn long ago) because it was the lowest amongst my close friends.
These are real people. They're in a special school being taken care of by specialized teachers (who are in short supply) in order to transition properly into a functioning member of society. They learn and try their best to turn into and perform as what society considers "normal".
I've worked as an assistant for teachers on certain days instead of being a relief and all I can say is that I have utmost respect for their vocation and the dedication and SKILL they have for their job. It's not easy teaching 10 students each with multiple (yes they're rarely individual issues) disorders that require differing techniques to address and educate properly. My mother herself related her own experience of needing to spend three months just to teach a student how to count to three. I believe it's one of her greatest achievements in the school. I have hope that the teachers at the school I worked at can teach these students and lead them on this journey towards being a member of society and I'm certain other special education schools are at least capable of the same standards that I witnessed while I helped out at mine.
What I have little hope of, however, is expecting the same to be done for ASD-and-other-disorders-inflicted students who were not lucky enough to be taught at a school that specializes in their education.Why would I have any faith in it? They just aren't taught to teach students with this kind of issue. The teachers would shun the student and toss them out of class - why else would a special education school exist if not for a dumping ground of students unwanted by the "normal" mainstream education system?
The thought that a student like Gary can enter society without ever being taught by someone capable of addressing his mental and physical issues scares me. The opposite thought that a student like Gary, after being taught properly and working well in society, can suddenly get completely shunned by the nation because he reverted to his old self in a moment of folly, rage and stupidity scares me equally.
Does this make Gary's actions forgivable in any way whatsoever if he so decides to assault someone with scissors while in the office? Good god, no! The law is the law, assault is assault! But obviously he has to be treated differently from the well-doing scholar who assaulted a co-worker with scissors simply because he truly lacks the mental capacity for proper contemplation!
And that's one of the most major points people are missing because they just haven't been exposed to it. They haven't experienced firsthand what people with these issues are (or more specifically, aren't) capable of. They relate to them with the knowledge they have (a most likely rosy if not extremely scientific one) and it just cannot compare with the truth simply because it's just too far out. I'm honestly frightened to think of what could have happened to this guy while he was in school. Let's say what he says is true (if you want to doubt anything doubt the accuracy rather than the sincerity first, as I said earlier) and he never attended a Home Econs, D&T, Art and Craft, Science, Physics, AMath, Chinese lesson and was essentially segregated from his class his entire school life. Can you even begin to imagine what that would do to your psyche? Now that you have, can you imagine what that would do to the psyche of a person WHO IS ALREADY MENTALLY CHALLENGED?
Some will challenge me now, of course. That entire premise just sounds entirely ridiculous and drama-ish. What's a black swan, then (Nassim Taleb please if you don't know)? I'd already say that the entire situation was a black swan situation caused by the coincidence of a man deciding to film an incident from an exact particular point onwards that painted another guy in a particularly bad light (well, worse light if you will. It's not as if filming the whole incident would've put him in a good light). It blew what could have been a guy pushing an old lady down the bus, feeling bad, apologizing to the old lady afterwards, being forgiven and life moving on - to a guy pushing an old lady down the bus, feeling bad, apologizing to the old lady afterwards, being forgiven by her, and subsequently burnt on a stake by the Singaporean community because what they saw of the video framed him in this particular light.
People are driven by various factors to do things. No, they aren't always good and informed, obviously. But people should at least gather more facts before they act almighty on their pedestal of pseudo-anonymity. It's insanely tragic that the society I'm in right now is quick to rage, quick to cool, quick to forget but never quick to forgive and quick to think and consider what the fuck could have happened that led to this. To remember that all it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy, and even less for the less-than-sanest.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Emptiness
I'm dreamless right now.
It wasn't like this in the past, of course. I've had sweet dreams, bad dreams, crazy dreams, crushed dreams, faded dreams, fulfilled dreams, broken dreams, and torn dreams. Maybe more than I could've handled back then, but I dealt with what I had without going completely insane.
...........................and it's gone. I'm dreamless now.
I suppose I can't blame anyone but myself for it - I closed the door on it myself. 5 years of yearning (maybe more). Poof, just out the window like that. Never even knew it existed.
Except that only now I realize that nothing else existed as a replacement. Well, sure, you'd say; that's obvious, isn't it? No one comes up with replacement dreams. Hell, what's a replacement dream anyway? The next best alternative forgone in selecting the optimal choice? Was there ever an opportunity cost to dreams and dreaming? A cost to a pretty much non-monetary thing that we try, ever so hard, to monetize?
But it's empty. An empty freedom. Expected emptiness, of course - work and believe that long with the belief that you'll make it through to the light at the end of the tunnel for so long and you'd find the darkness looming all around when you finally realize that the light came from the roof; that you tricked yourself into thinking that you could just walk your way out of the damn tunnel, staring into the mirror directed upwards. The goddamn light ten stories up that you could always stare at but never reach.
I've had a supportive parent that prides himself with telling everyone that I've gotten into a respectable course at a prestigious university and immediately tells me the moment their backs are turned that he had nothing to support me with on this journey. Played around with me for two years every fucking week mindfucking me while fetching me to camp. Screaming at me for half an hour and sending an sms saying he loves me and wants me to get into the best uni I could get myself into. Then blaming me for not praying because "if I placed all this in God's hands everything would settle itself" because obviously praying by himself didn't get him far enough. Then telling me the family's financial situation after coming off for the past ten years as if he actually had money in the bank instead of wrecking his paycheck month after month after month. Then asking me of what value it was to send me to this course overseas and downplaying it one year after you boasted me off to his own fucking bosses about me. Monetizing my dream and trying his best to destroy it once it was no longer of value to him.
The part I hated the most is that I still had the choice of going. I could - I would just wreck the life savings of the saner half of the pair that made me. The one that made sense and reason. The one that made less yet would give more. And that's what the cost came down to - my dream or her future.
And so I'm dreamless. It's the worst feeling there is and I did it to myself. Of course that's not so bad. The whole thing just reeks of first-world fucking immaturity and foolishness, the goddamn elite kid whining about not getting into the stupid school he wants to get into because it's just too fucking expensive and he's complaining because he has no grasp on money. When it won't fucking matter in a few years time when he's out looking for a job, competing with those who made the assumption that going overseas would make you more attractive on the resume, that piece of paper that just sells you as a product to the world (hopefully at the best price, as far away from "competitive" as possible).
Sure they're right. It won't matter then. But fuck if the feeling I have right now is insignificant and childish and immature. That's me. I apologize for having subscribed to the ideal that somewhere out there across the ocean education exists that couldn't be described by the words "大开眼界". I apologize for feeling like a frog in a well compared to my peers in secondary school and believing that surely amongst the best universities I could once again find and learn from such people as my peers. I apologize for being a mediocre man amongst the elite. The elite mediocre. I apologize for believing that exposing myself to the best could allow me to slowly yet surely learn to be like them.
Life obviously never fucking worked that way. It's hilarious, really - the lack of direction I have now.
I remember a story a friend of mine wrote. Its title - Any Dream Will Do. You can't get "any dream" unless you abandon "your dream" - but what dream remains amongst the broken pieces that can make up the "any dream"s that you hold on to; the paper mache of broken dreams glued and sewn up like a monstrosity of its former self? The shine broken apart, the shards dulled, the mediocrity at its purest.
It's crying over spilt milk. Because there's nothing else in the wasteland once the milk seeps in.
It wasn't like this in the past, of course. I've had sweet dreams, bad dreams, crazy dreams, crushed dreams, faded dreams, fulfilled dreams, broken dreams, and torn dreams. Maybe more than I could've handled back then, but I dealt with what I had without going completely insane.
...........................and it's gone. I'm dreamless now.
I suppose I can't blame anyone but myself for it - I closed the door on it myself. 5 years of yearning (maybe more). Poof, just out the window like that. Never even knew it existed.
Except that only now I realize that nothing else existed as a replacement. Well, sure, you'd say; that's obvious, isn't it? No one comes up with replacement dreams. Hell, what's a replacement dream anyway? The next best alternative forgone in selecting the optimal choice? Was there ever an opportunity cost to dreams and dreaming? A cost to a pretty much non-monetary thing that we try, ever so hard, to monetize?
But it's empty. An empty freedom. Expected emptiness, of course - work and believe that long with the belief that you'll make it through to the light at the end of the tunnel for so long and you'd find the darkness looming all around when you finally realize that the light came from the roof; that you tricked yourself into thinking that you could just walk your way out of the damn tunnel, staring into the mirror directed upwards. The goddamn light ten stories up that you could always stare at but never reach.
I've had a supportive parent that prides himself with telling everyone that I've gotten into a respectable course at a prestigious university and immediately tells me the moment their backs are turned that he had nothing to support me with on this journey. Played around with me for two years every fucking week mindfucking me while fetching me to camp. Screaming at me for half an hour and sending an sms saying he loves me and wants me to get into the best uni I could get myself into. Then blaming me for not praying because "if I placed all this in God's hands everything would settle itself" because obviously praying by himself didn't get him far enough. Then telling me the family's financial situation after coming off for the past ten years as if he actually had money in the bank instead of wrecking his paycheck month after month after month. Then asking me of what value it was to send me to this course overseas and downplaying it one year after you boasted me off to his own fucking bosses about me. Monetizing my dream and trying his best to destroy it once it was no longer of value to him.
The part I hated the most is that I still had the choice of going. I could - I would just wreck the life savings of the saner half of the pair that made me. The one that made sense and reason. The one that made less yet would give more. And that's what the cost came down to - my dream or her future.
And so I'm dreamless. It's the worst feeling there is and I did it to myself. Of course that's not so bad. The whole thing just reeks of first-world fucking immaturity and foolishness, the goddamn elite kid whining about not getting into the stupid school he wants to get into because it's just too fucking expensive and he's complaining because he has no grasp on money. When it won't fucking matter in a few years time when he's out looking for a job, competing with those who made the assumption that going overseas would make you more attractive on the resume, that piece of paper that just sells you as a product to the world (hopefully at the best price, as far away from "competitive" as possible).
Sure they're right. It won't matter then. But fuck if the feeling I have right now is insignificant and childish and immature. That's me. I apologize for having subscribed to the ideal that somewhere out there across the ocean education exists that couldn't be described by the words "大开眼界". I apologize for feeling like a frog in a well compared to my peers in secondary school and believing that surely amongst the best universities I could once again find and learn from such people as my peers. I apologize for being a mediocre man amongst the elite. The elite mediocre. I apologize for believing that exposing myself to the best could allow me to slowly yet surely learn to be like them.
Life obviously never fucking worked that way. It's hilarious, really - the lack of direction I have now.
I remember a story a friend of mine wrote. Its title - Any Dream Will Do. You can't get "any dream" unless you abandon "your dream" - but what dream remains amongst the broken pieces that can make up the "any dream"s that you hold on to; the paper mache of broken dreams glued and sewn up like a monstrosity of its former self? The shine broken apart, the shards dulled, the mediocrity at its purest.
It's crying over spilt milk. Because there's nothing else in the wasteland once the milk seeps in.
Friday, May 04, 2012
The price of a dream
What is the price of a dream?
Is it your life? Your hopes? Your time? Your ambition? Six years as an employee of an organization you couldn't care less about; your chance at living a peaceful and quiet life completely blown apart and destroyed? Your prospects and your future cast in iron contract upon a piece of paper, the black ink darker than your soul after society sucks it out, leaving whatever hollow shell there is remaining.
Is it their lives? Their hopes? Their time? Their ambition? The car they hoped for, or that long holiday after years and years of slaving. Their very savings swept off by the wind into another country; another land. Their very life reduced to a pittance just to uphold the nobility of your dream.
The dream coexists with the life, hopes, time and ambition, some would say. It's obvious, isn't it? They work towards it. Yours do, at least. The rest get trampled down in the mud and dust, a pathetic state that couldn't even evoke any mockery from the very connoisseurs of schadenfreude.
What IS this dream, anyway? A culmination of all the hopes and ideals placed onto a single object/location/status/profession? That you must have/be/go/experience it? Do you even have the certainty that this is truly what you want? That you can go through it, say to yourself that you're truly "living the dream" as of this moment up to this moment, and when it's finally over (if it ever does) heave a sigh of relief and say "that changed my life and I will never regret this"?
It's a projection. That's the problem. That's what the dream is - an attempt to foresee yourself in the future. A prediction - or dare I even say it, a calculation - that you, the apparently predictable self that you are, under this circumstance of obtaining said dream, will act in this particular manner and end up in a certain state that could not have been obtained otherwise. This "particular manner" and "state" that you envision, are they even remotely close to the truth that will come your way in the future? Let's say it doesn't. What then? Do you say "Oh dear, I'm sorry. The thing I always worked towards obtaining happened to be useless and pointless for me. I felt nothing about, toward, and from it. It made no difference to my life. I apologize for trampling on things you held dear to you just to attain this utterly pointless thing just because I held it dear to me."
I like to feel it's an obvious answer. I almost certainly know it isn't nearly as obvious just because I haven't been in this scenario myself yet. Even if you trust circumstances to dictate themselves in a certain way, you realize it's difficult to predict how you react in such a circumstance - it's almost paradoxical to predict your future actions while espousing the virtues of free will. You could of course technically predict with absolute certainty, except that would technically be dictatorial prediction. It's pretty much foul play to predict someone's death in the next hour while hiding a knife behind your back.
Say it does. Can you be certain that this state and manner of self come as a result of attaining said dream? Can you be certain that this isn't something that could've been reproduced elsewhere? It's a depressing state to feel this, but dreams aren't unique. People share dreams. Two million people out there dream of being the president - who knows whether you'll even have a hundred who truly appreciate and feel gratitude to have such an honour. Who knows how many who wish to be a billionaire would waste their money and lives away in a mere decade? Dreams come by the dozens. They're cheap. The price to pay for them aren't.
I suppose that's the crux of it all. Attaining your dreams may be priceless, but the act of it rarely is. If yours is, be thankful - your dream is either a marvelous gem or worthless trash. Pray it is the former.
For the rest of us, the experience is not so much a noble journey to the destination of legends but a cold transaction between yourself and the tangible forces of society or the intangible forces of nature around. Your life for this. Forty grand for that. A pound of flesh for your vengeance. His blood for your undoing. And all that you can do is pray that for all it cost, it was worth it.
Is it?
Is it your life? Your hopes? Your time? Your ambition? Six years as an employee of an organization you couldn't care less about; your chance at living a peaceful and quiet life completely blown apart and destroyed? Your prospects and your future cast in iron contract upon a piece of paper, the black ink darker than your soul after society sucks it out, leaving whatever hollow shell there is remaining.
Is it their lives? Their hopes? Their time? Their ambition? The car they hoped for, or that long holiday after years and years of slaving. Their very savings swept off by the wind into another country; another land. Their very life reduced to a pittance just to uphold the nobility of your dream.
The dream coexists with the life, hopes, time and ambition, some would say. It's obvious, isn't it? They work towards it. Yours do, at least. The rest get trampled down in the mud and dust, a pathetic state that couldn't even evoke any mockery from the very connoisseurs of schadenfreude.
What IS this dream, anyway? A culmination of all the hopes and ideals placed onto a single object/location/status/profession? That you must have/be/go/experience it? Do you even have the certainty that this is truly what you want? That you can go through it, say to yourself that you're truly "living the dream" as of this moment up to this moment, and when it's finally over (if it ever does) heave a sigh of relief and say "that changed my life and I will never regret this"?
It's a projection. That's the problem. That's what the dream is - an attempt to foresee yourself in the future. A prediction - or dare I even say it, a calculation - that you, the apparently predictable self that you are, under this circumstance of obtaining said dream, will act in this particular manner and end up in a certain state that could not have been obtained otherwise. This "particular manner" and "state" that you envision, are they even remotely close to the truth that will come your way in the future? Let's say it doesn't. What then? Do you say "Oh dear, I'm sorry. The thing I always worked towards obtaining happened to be useless and pointless for me. I felt nothing about, toward, and from it. It made no difference to my life. I apologize for trampling on things you held dear to you just to attain this utterly pointless thing just because I held it dear to me."
I like to feel it's an obvious answer. I almost certainly know it isn't nearly as obvious just because I haven't been in this scenario myself yet. Even if you trust circumstances to dictate themselves in a certain way, you realize it's difficult to predict how you react in such a circumstance - it's almost paradoxical to predict your future actions while espousing the virtues of free will. You could of course technically predict with absolute certainty, except that would technically be dictatorial prediction. It's pretty much foul play to predict someone's death in the next hour while hiding a knife behind your back.
Say it does. Can you be certain that this state and manner of self come as a result of attaining said dream? Can you be certain that this isn't something that could've been reproduced elsewhere? It's a depressing state to feel this, but dreams aren't unique. People share dreams. Two million people out there dream of being the president - who knows whether you'll even have a hundred who truly appreciate and feel gratitude to have such an honour. Who knows how many who wish to be a billionaire would waste their money and lives away in a mere decade? Dreams come by the dozens. They're cheap. The price to pay for them aren't.
I suppose that's the crux of it all. Attaining your dreams may be priceless, but the act of it rarely is. If yours is, be thankful - your dream is either a marvelous gem or worthless trash. Pray it is the former.
For the rest of us, the experience is not so much a noble journey to the destination of legends but a cold transaction between yourself and the tangible forces of society or the intangible forces of nature around. Your life for this. Forty grand for that. A pound of flesh for your vengeance. His blood for your undoing. And all that you can do is pray that for all it cost, it was worth it.
Is it?
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
The tragedy of the human world around me
It depresses me to no end of the state of the human condition.
That I can find myself amidst debate (if I even dare call it that) between a guy too selfish to care and a guy too jaded to try, that such a argument even occurs over the most trivial of subject matters. That I can hear people admit the flaw of the human state and not even attempt to do anything about it. When was humankind so defeatist?
I see a friend defending an acquaintance of his against the majority and I see him turned into a martyr for it. I see him being burned at the stakes unnecessarily for trying "to be a saint" and I see that his attempt to defend his acquaintance soon deteriorates from a valiant attempt into a slur and barrage of ad hominems. It's tragic because I see my friend sinking to the level of those he was intending to strike, and I see them pointing out the hypocrisy, the irony, and making fun of him for it.
It just screams "We won; we dragged you down to our level. There is no moral high ground now - there never was, and there never will be."
I talk to a friend of mine while sitting by the roadside - he tells me that he's tired of it all. He can't keep up the goodwill anymore, he can't salvage the tear in the relationships anymore. I feel like telling him to just carry on the good fight, but I hear the parties he tries to save admit their own lack of care for other people's motivations for their actions. I wonder why he ever bothered trying to save such relationships. I wonder whether it was doomed to fail from the beginning. I wonder whether it was worth it at all.
Maybe it isn't.
I recall a drink over a small table in a jazz bar; my drinking partner commented to me that she felt no one was born evil or innately evil. That everyone was innately good and just expressed themselves wrongly, resulting in ill will instead of goodwill. I now question that thought more than three years on. Maybe people just aren't programmed to be good. Because to be nice, understanding, and reacting in the best possible way one sees fit after considering everyone's point of view is impossible for certain people - it runs counter to their very character and the idea of goodwill cannot even enter their mind without sickening their very core. They cannot be good; they can merely pretend to be good until the farce sickens them and they can no longer resist the joy of being a fucker.
It's sad that I can find people whom I am absolutely cool with in real life and get to talk cock with argue like barbarians over the internet. I find it sad that I can see a friend say "I want to stop this stupidity" and degrade himself into joining the masses in half an hour. And the worst part about this is that I can see two groups of people I enjoy the company of burn each other over the most trivial non-reasons. I cannot understand how one side can ever think of such an argument in a "I won / You lost" scenario when all along it was a "You lose, I lose" scenario to me. Honestly? You think you can win such a mudslinging argument? You can say that with a clear conscious?
It's even more depressing that I can hear people comment that such arguments are a good form of entertainment, popcorn-worthy shows. I hear the sensible people say that they would've deleted the arguments; eliminated any scent of bad will off the face of the earth. I hear the popcorn audience plea for the war to be over before the evidence is erased. I cannot even bear to point out the logical flaw and contradiction in erasing the evidence when the war was already over - wasn't the point of deleting the arguments to prevent it from breaking out in the first place?
I hate it all because it's just so tragic to witness. People are jerks. People are bastards. People are fuckers. I've come to that conclusion long ago, and I know I'm not the only one.
It's just that I invest faith in humans - faith in them that they aren't the absolute human scum that I occasionally think they are at times. It's not an investment with good rates of return, but it's a worthwhile investment and the ROI is but a secondary matter. But that faith that I invest - it bankrupts on me as if my faith was a monetary commodity worth stealing. That there are moral bankers out there robbing me of all my faith while they snicker to themselves along Wall Street, wondering what to do with all the faith in their hands. Faith I had in humanity, now in the hands of scum who sully its value with their incredulity.
Perhaps faith was worthless all along. Not just monetarily, but morally, even ethically, worthless in every aspect. Perhaps having faith in people wouldn't give you any more faith to have in others - it just gave you disillusionment in the face of vanity, pride and stubbornness. You couldn't fight the three. Stubbornness never gave up, vanity never knew when she lost and pride never acknowledged that it was your victory. Faith had nowhere to belong in the amoral.
And it appears, neither do I. Not in the grand scheme of failure that is the human condition.
That I can find myself amidst debate (if I even dare call it that) between a guy too selfish to care and a guy too jaded to try, that such a argument even occurs over the most trivial of subject matters. That I can hear people admit the flaw of the human state and not even attempt to do anything about it. When was humankind so defeatist?
I see a friend defending an acquaintance of his against the majority and I see him turned into a martyr for it. I see him being burned at the stakes unnecessarily for trying "to be a saint" and I see that his attempt to defend his acquaintance soon deteriorates from a valiant attempt into a slur and barrage of ad hominems. It's tragic because I see my friend sinking to the level of those he was intending to strike, and I see them pointing out the hypocrisy, the irony, and making fun of him for it.
It just screams "We won; we dragged you down to our level. There is no moral high ground now - there never was, and there never will be."
I talk to a friend of mine while sitting by the roadside - he tells me that he's tired of it all. He can't keep up the goodwill anymore, he can't salvage the tear in the relationships anymore. I feel like telling him to just carry on the good fight, but I hear the parties he tries to save admit their own lack of care for other people's motivations for their actions. I wonder why he ever bothered trying to save such relationships. I wonder whether it was doomed to fail from the beginning. I wonder whether it was worth it at all.
Maybe it isn't.
I recall a drink over a small table in a jazz bar; my drinking partner commented to me that she felt no one was born evil or innately evil. That everyone was innately good and just expressed themselves wrongly, resulting in ill will instead of goodwill. I now question that thought more than three years on. Maybe people just aren't programmed to be good. Because to be nice, understanding, and reacting in the best possible way one sees fit after considering everyone's point of view is impossible for certain people - it runs counter to their very character and the idea of goodwill cannot even enter their mind without sickening their very core. They cannot be good; they can merely pretend to be good until the farce sickens them and they can no longer resist the joy of being a fucker.
It's sad that I can find people whom I am absolutely cool with in real life and get to talk cock with argue like barbarians over the internet. I find it sad that I can see a friend say "I want to stop this stupidity" and degrade himself into joining the masses in half an hour. And the worst part about this is that I can see two groups of people I enjoy the company of burn each other over the most trivial non-reasons. I cannot understand how one side can ever think of such an argument in a "I won / You lost" scenario when all along it was a "You lose, I lose" scenario to me. Honestly? You think you can win such a mudslinging argument? You can say that with a clear conscious?
It's even more depressing that I can hear people comment that such arguments are a good form of entertainment, popcorn-worthy shows. I hear the sensible people say that they would've deleted the arguments; eliminated any scent of bad will off the face of the earth. I hear the popcorn audience plea for the war to be over before the evidence is erased. I cannot even bear to point out the logical flaw and contradiction in erasing the evidence when the war was already over - wasn't the point of deleting the arguments to prevent it from breaking out in the first place?
I hate it all because it's just so tragic to witness. People are jerks. People are bastards. People are fuckers. I've come to that conclusion long ago, and I know I'm not the only one.
It's just that I invest faith in humans - faith in them that they aren't the absolute human scum that I occasionally think they are at times. It's not an investment with good rates of return, but it's a worthwhile investment and the ROI is but a secondary matter. But that faith that I invest - it bankrupts on me as if my faith was a monetary commodity worth stealing. That there are moral bankers out there robbing me of all my faith while they snicker to themselves along Wall Street, wondering what to do with all the faith in their hands. Faith I had in humanity, now in the hands of scum who sully its value with their incredulity.
Perhaps faith was worthless all along. Not just monetarily, but morally, even ethically, worthless in every aspect. Perhaps having faith in people wouldn't give you any more faith to have in others - it just gave you disillusionment in the face of vanity, pride and stubbornness. You couldn't fight the three. Stubbornness never gave up, vanity never knew when she lost and pride never acknowledged that it was your victory. Faith had nowhere to belong in the amoral.
And it appears, neither do I. Not in the grand scheme of failure that is the human condition.
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