Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bastards, beginnings, buttocks, Chinthanaya, damned lies, even more fish, fish, identity, lies, more fish, more lies, patriotism, politics, religion, republic, sri lanka
One morning I woke up and found that I was evil. That all I had stood for was twisted and blackened. All I believed in was unclean, contaminated by a germ that had taken hold while I was asleep. No longer could I feel patriotic, share in the simple pride of a waved flag, of a crisp military parade. Words like honour and independence tasted bitter now. Altogether new synonyms had wormed their way into my mind. Unity meant conformism, discipline meant submission, patriotism was now racism. Pride had become hate, democracy a shapeless beast, terrorism an excuse and freedom meant absolutely fucking nothing.
But last night, I was an innocent. I knew but did not fear the “Patriotism” that was Shaw’s “… last refuge of the scoundrel”; for what is society with no shared purpose, with no pride, no symbols to rally around? Would it even endure? So I had sought out that which was clean and honourable and euphoric, what I could stand up tall and salute. There was a simple pleasure of the skybound firework on the day of Independence: its rushed journey heavenwards calling me to the giddy heights of citizenship in this great enterprise of this country. I grew to love the clean detergent smell of wearing my national dress, the raising of a flag so ornate and symbolic that other’s tri-colour flags seemed so stark, dry and childlike. I honoured the pioneers who had not long ago secured our independence from the clenched fist of colonial strength.
Then, last night, delirious fevered dreams flashed vivid technicolour corruptions of what was simple, beautiful and pure. I dreamt of a State that disenfranchised its own citizens with a single act of parliament. Of academics and the educated, who should know better, incite violence against those who had been my brothers before I slept. Of laws to punish a religion growing, of an Oxbridge educated elite spewing Sinhala Only. As the fever took hold, I saw hundreds of citizens horded into buses and driven into empty spaces. There were flashes of children severed by shells that we calculated to be an acceptable cost of political convenience. I mutely screamed at an electoral majority that could not see any other solution but War. And all the time, I saw hate, spilling like bile, mixed with spittle, running down the jowls of the politicians, gathering on the chins of bestial men and women who in their bloodlust cornered and attacked all that was different, alien and ‘para’ –‘other’.
And at that point, my weakest moment, the microbic invader struck, confusing me. In this confounded state it showed me that we had become the Nietzschean evil we set out to destroy, that our souls were tainted and it told me that the articles which I had shaken my head at before were true, we were monsters, the LTTE and I, two sides of the same coin. That morally, this nation and all we tried to preserve was exactly the same as a group of people who strapped bombs to themselves and blew up innocents.
In my shame, reader, I believed this all. I hated myself. I read comments, op-eds, and even the hysterical messages of trolls who painted my red door black. Shrill voices screamed out how we were no better than that which sought to destroy us. As the infection multiplied, as the moral lethargy replaced the will to act and cycles of cynicism and withdrawal lowered my expectations further till all I could do was tiptoe past my bruised conscience and better sense. I almost succumbed that night to the fever that gripped me ever harder, a final mocking image locked in my mind of hundreds of my brothers and sisters lined up for busses with no destination as men with grey faces and grey guns looked on.
Just like that, the image flickered and I remembered how the story actually ended that day: A single citizen filing a fundamental rights petition against the forced eviction. I felt the ground tremble as the judiciary like a waking giant, reached swiftly to stop and reverse the executive action, holding it unconstitutional. And there alone, in the calm at the eye of the cyclone, I saw clearly what ideal was left to us, what it is we were fighting for, why were different from the monsters we confronted. It never mattered how stupid, base or corrupt the people and their elected officials were, we are still a Republic, we are a representative democracy, we have institutions, a separation of powers and checks and balances. We have a constitution which is a covenant between every citizen and the state. We are greater than the sum of our parts. No matter how often the law is bent, broken or bought it will always be there, if nothing else but as a sullen reminder, and we will know it is wrong and it cannot be got rid of. No matter how many votes are stolen, coerced or rigged, every so many years every leader must endure the risk of being cast out. It will not matter how many journalists are silenced, the media can only be reined, never retired. A state of emergency that has lasted some of us, our whole lives and successively more brutal governments have not been able to completely do away with the freedoms that is the promise of our noble enterprise. The glass may only be half empty, but, damn it, there is a GLASS. It can always be filled. Are we appalled by a state sunk in debate, argument and compromise? Celebrate this. We talk, because we know the alternatives. We know their price.
There is NO comparison between this Republic which we are equal citizens of and a systemically violent, fascist personality cult. If I need something to hang on to, I will hang onto this. I don’t need to expect the best motivations of the leaders to ensure that my freedoms will survive. It will, battered and bruised, because that’s what it is built to do in a democracy.
I see now that we’ve quite missed the point by celebrating our independence. There is so little to gain recounting our release from an imperial rule, when you consider that the single most significant event that took place that day was the birth of the republic. The beginning of the hard work of building a nation. The metaphorical inking of the eternal contract between the state and all its citizens, even those yet unborn. This day something wonderful was birthed, a people with the mandate and opportunity to create their own destiny, to govern themselves, a prize that so many are denied elsewhere. As much as we’ve squandered it and made ourselves unworthy of it, it still there, silent, resourceful enough to swiftly counter even an act Executive excess and only needing a single citizen to call it into action. And that is what we need to do, we need to USE IT. To build on it. THIS is the ideology worth fighting for, THIS is worth standing up for. This is my pride. I have found myself to be an Idealist and I am NOT ashamed.
The fever is gone. I’m going to put up that flag now.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bastards, belief, buttocks, escaped gorillas, even more fish, fish, god, kuhn, lies, more lies, philosophy, popper, religion
Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα. Δε φ, οβʊμαι τίποτα. Είμαι λεύθερος.
‘I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.’ – Inscription on the tombstone of Nikos Kazantzakis
Prelude
You presumably believe in something. It is possible that we differ in these beliefs. While the particular question of whether you are right or I am wrong is clearly not getting a conclusive or persuasive answer in a hurry, it makes sense to, you know, understand the nature of our differences and perhaps where our conflict if at all, may lie. A highway code if you will. Learning the signs and the basic flow could help us, both, avoid painful collisions and looking like right idiots.
A confession first. As far as I am aware of, atheists are not syndicated. It is likely that this manifesto would only apply to a few of us.
Some of us are agnostic. Boom. Boom.
Guess what, it seems these questions of deities, afterlives, creation, are a little tricky. And we have to put our hands up and go: you know what, I have no clue how to prove there isn’t a god. It looks like this one will go to the judges. But hey, for everyday purposes, I’m going to stick to the premise that there isn’t one. It makes sense to me; and you know, should overwhelming evidence present itself to the contrary, I would be more than glad to re-evaluate my position. Your contribution here is minimal unless you can produce that evidence. And please, please don’t hand me a piece of your scripture or even WORSE, some damned leaflet written by a complete yokel for whom ‘Bible Belt’ is both a home town AND what they keep their trousers tied up with.
Some of us are not un-examined lives.
70 percent of my class inherited daddy’s faith along with the used car business and the mysogeny. Eating chalk between classes, demonstrating sheep-like cognitive functions and an otherwise complete lack of personality kept them off the radar of the more vicious and punitively inventive of our teachers.
A few of us were getting into trouble with Jesuit priests for asking them what existentialism meant. And for arguing the question that was the hairline fracture that lead to the final schism from the beliefs of my fathers: ‘Why is faith needed for redemption? Isn’t my Buddhist friend, who leads a good life as deserving of the embrace of a just God?’
The chief questions that troubled my gangly colleagues at this time was: ‘does it show that I am a compulsive masturbator?’ and ‘how long is it before the blindness/anemia sets in?’
Soon after, as my friends embarked on a voyage of self discovery with the opposite sex, their genitals and extra strong beer, some of us weren’t that hot with the ladies. So we read. Of Descartes’ failed attempt to prove the existence of a God in Meditations of First Philosophy; of Heller rail against a God in a world gone mad in Catch-22; of Satre’s protagonist secure an abortion for his mistress… no doubt still smoking Gauloise and looking cool.
We also debated. Entire coffee and tobacco harvests have been laid waste in our earnest late night discussions, musings and dialogues. Were searched for Gods, Justice, Goodness, Values, and mostly Truth. We spoke with the smartest people we could find, with the disinterested and zealous; with the godless and devout; priests and madmen. And now, here, our choices and ideas are not those of the unexamined or unquestioned mind. Nor are we afraid of our ideas being picked apart or questioned. We are the product of our journey and our ideas have developed and changed as a function of it.
So if you want to be the next leg in my explorative journey, do better than a patronizing smile and a ‘why don’t you want to read my leaflet?’. Otherwise, my guess is that you discovered religion late, right after you gave up the compulsive chalk eating; probably though your personal difficulties or the fear of mortality, loss or isolation and think the rest of us are late starters too. If I’m refusing to engage you, it’s because frankly, I think you are going to waste my time. I’m really OK with you calling this arrogance. Which it isn’t; but frankly, your premise that I am a blank book, unexamined and intellectually inert, is.
We don’t think all of you are stupid. Just some.
No. Honestly. We do not think you credulous or stupid by virtue of your beliefs alone. Unless you are a Scientologist or Mormon. There’s really no way I can broaden my definition of beliefto include people who believe what they read in paperback sci-fi. That’s not a belief. That’s a condition. Like the guy who fell on his head and now thinks he’s a tomato.
Nevertheless and notwithstanding, the intelligent and accomplished have had unshakable faith in the divine. It is possible that individuals who commanded respect and awe, or others who thought, said and did the fantastic, would have not evaluated their beliefs; that they would have accepted the faith of their fathers without choice or analysis. But we would find this uncharacteristic and irreconcilable with our idea of them. Your belief is neither offensive nor laughable to me. Really. Here’s me not laughing at Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Science is not God.
Philosophers have a really tough time with the Scientific Method. Thomas Kuhn argued convincingly in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that science was not a linear process of the accumulation of knowledge, rather a set of crises which forced ‘paradigm shifts’. Suddenly, the scientific method was full of dispute and speculation. It wasn’t the simple, incremental, rigorous, unbiased process it was purported to be.
Meanwhile, we had lots of trouble with crows. Karl Popper took induction apart, the logical basis of observation, leaving no logical argument in favor of it but that it works till it doesn’t.Inductive logic, which says that having observed black crows all our lives, we expect the next crow we see to be black is as unjustified as the counterintuitive process saying ‘well the next one must not be black.’
So if you think that you’re on to something by exploiting your perceived difference between a ‘law’ and a ‘theory’ as your masterstroke against Natural Selection, well guess what, ALL OF SCIENCE is THEORY. And none of it, say the philosopher, is truth.
We have beliefs and values.
That bridge I’m about to drive over? Is it going to crumble while I’m on it? Did I know the man who built it? Designed it? Do I trust the physics to hold up? The materials? You know what, the guy in front just made it across. What the hell. Guess I will too. We believe in things, both spiritual and not. Your assumption that my mind is an anarchic wasteland, where I believe in nothing but what I have evidenced, is wrong. We have belief structures. In fact for some, the non existence of a god is a premise we accept without rigorous proof, i.e. a belief.
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“How important is it for a candidate to have STRONG religious beliefs, regardless of whether those beliefs are the same as yours? Is it very important, somewhat important, not very important, or not at all important?” CBS News Poll. June 26-28, 2007 |
||||||
|
. |
||||||
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Very |
Somewhat |
Not Very |
Not at All |
Unsure |
||
|
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
||
|
ALL reg. voters |
27 |
36 |
16 |
20 |
1 |
|
|
Republicans |
43 |
35 |
12 |
7 |
3 |
|
|
Democrats |
23 |
35 |
19 |
23 |
0 |
|
|
Independents |
20 |
36 |
17 |
27 |
0 |
|
In the great Democrat litmus test recently Senators Obama and Clinton showed that both a Woman and Black was conceivable and realistic as a choice of the American people’s Chief Executive. But polling numbers above have ruled out a non-religious President of the United States. It’s not surprising therefore that ‘Shares our Values’ is a consistent and accurate measure of a voter’s personal preference for a candidate.
Despite the popular idea that values must be religious, I ask you, is it hard to imagine that atheists have values and make conscious choices to live by them? That our values should differ, like our belief structures do is expected, but that they stem from choice, experience and commonsense is so hard to imagine?
In the end, I must admit my personal search for the divine was spurred by my firmness for the very values i am suspected of not having. Having my question above on the necessity of faith for salvation answered in a manner I saw as unjust, I made a decision:
I rather be in a hell with friends I knew to be wonderful, warm, exemplary people than in a heaven in the shadow of an arbitrary and unfair god.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bastards, construction industry, escaped gorillas, fish, houses, lard, lies
‘It is said, that statistically speaking, an infinite number of monkeys in a room messing about with typewriters would result in one having written Hamlet. What is often overlooked is, that you get one copy of Hamlet AND a room with an infinite quantity of monkey poo.’ – Aasvogel – Masturbations Vol. III.
1. First rule of Fluid Dynamics – NEVER talk about Fluid Dynamics.
2. Second Rule of Fluid Dynamics – Water flows downhill, for fucks sake…
3. Third Rule of Fluid Dynamics – Ignore Rules #1 and #2.
[Reader warning: much invective to follow]
It was a simple enough instruction to Sarath – Baas (Baas-Unnehi: an honorific for skilled workmen/artisan and therefore meaningless in the current context) and his whoop of liberated simians, whom I have mentioned previously, strategically shaved themselves so as to pass as construction workers of the homo sapiens kind. This in order to take on the job of building my pièce de résistance , the natural granite terrace that would effectively double that square area of the house, that was not garden. This was meant to be a long awaited marriage of The Aesthetic and The Practical. Finally after much tears, pressure and glaring silences, someone was to make an honest woman of The Aesthetic. I could talk the angles of approach I had in mind, of how the eye was to be drawn through the house out to the scene behind, of how the living space of the house was to not only be the square area contained within the walls, but that which was around it. My plans would routinely expand for this space. We could eat breakfast on it, jazz bands would throw gigs on it, we could lie on mats and watch shooting stars on it! This damned terrace would be the theatre that I would act MY LIFE on. I was going to notch up as many verbs as I legally could, right here, on the roughly cut granite of POTENTIAL.
Enter my construction workers and the MASONS from HELL. They confidently assure me that what I am desperately trying to explain the significance of, is a rather simple job which they have already done successfully for a recently satisfied client. So I should calm down. I am not swayed by their confidence on my project. I point out, that, philosophically speaking, Beauty, like Truth, lends existential purpose to itself, and my terrace would only serve its purpose by looking fabulous. That Nature abhors an ugly terrace; that there are circles of hell Dante carefully omitted to describe; where builders of such monstrosities would be forever rebuilding the same damn terrace over and over again while demons prod them with their fiery penises. And laugh at the tiny genitals of their charges. Genitals which stare out from the inside of small glass jars on tacky IKEA pinewood racks.
I walk them though the angles of the house pointing out that I want the stones laid in straight lines so that, see here, someone entering has their eye lead by the stones, which must be laid straight, OK? I go on to tell him of the man in Kandy, who in exchange for a small fortune is having has family gnaw the edges of the very stones we will be laying, till they are perfectly straight. Got it?
I move on with the requirements for proposal: Leave a slope away from the house when you build it, I said. Let it slope 4-6 inches across the 8 feet of it. Let the rain flow away from my house rather than collect in pools in it. This terrace is important. Every stone costs me money I haven’t even started earning yet and the peace of mind I have become accustomed to living without.
The lead Gorilla nods. Explains to me with the maximum of his newly evolved condescension, that I am clearly in need of something to take the edge of my OCD; that the project is not only possible, but it is simple. Work can start tomorrow. Apparently his band of banana rustling miscreants are back from the latest of a series of relatives’ funerals and are ready to take my money. Now would I go away please so he can get back to picking lice from his mate’s fur?
[Skip to the present day. Now that the damned slopes are built all wrong, I pace my hall like a madman on rainy nights waiting for that One Rain that is going to flood my hall, destroy all my yet unpaid for wooden doors, leaving me a gibbering mess. I must admit I am filled with a little historical skepticism. It was once taught to the young Aasvogel that the feats of his Sinhalese ancestors 1200 years ago was so impressive that they built a gigantic irrigation tank 5km long that has a constant slope of a couple of inches per kilometer. With a monotonous voice and the ever present threat of violence, the young Aasvogel was advised that this cannot be done today with existing technology, which has perplexed archeologists and engineers alike. Bollocks. Now, I don’t doubt that the agricultural civilization in the north a millennia ago possessed technology capable of such precision. After all this was before daytime reality TV, and people probably had more free time to figure out an elegant solution. I would like to assert that the only way the furry ancestors of Sarath-Baas and his rag-tag band of poo slingers would have built a 5 kilometer long artificial tank is by accident; the original request having been to build a fucking terrace. ]
I returned the next day. But of course, work has not started. I learn that when Gorillas say tomorrow, it turns out that there are CAVEATS. It reads like this: ‘We start work tomorrow, provided that
1. my workmen return from the binge-fest that their distant cousin’s mate’s funeral turned into;
2. Anything else I decide to prioritise instead;
3. I can still be bothered.’
But of course he expects to start tomorrow. For sure. I smile. Say a bad word to myself and get back into the car.
Days pass. Eventually even dead relatives are forgotten and the now sober and broke workers return. We are off! I come a few hours into the first day’s work. The primates appear to be UN-laying stones. Scraping off the cement and putting them back in the big pile in the corner. Naturally I am curious. Curious enough to launch the next Mass Cat Suicide. I ask a silly sounding question. Eventually, Gorilla #2 aka, ‘Surly’ responds. It seems they started laying the stones only to find that their imaginary line which was straight… WASN’T. Now I’ve seen lots of masonry sites in my career as a complete bloody civilian to civil engineering; and consistently I’ve noticed that the prevalent technology of the time is The Long Bit of Twine. I’ve heard that they even use it to build the straight bits of PARTICLE ACCELERATORS FOR FUCKS SAKE. So why don’t I see it used on my site? I take charge, call over Surly and instruct him to build with twine the grid that has been wanting. I leave, musing as I push the car into reverse, of what red hot metal rods could do to Gorilla behinds.
Success. The grid has worked. Stones are being placed in a pattern that excites the Aasvogel! Now, the concrete grout must go around the sides of my precious stones. I watch the first few being done. I see that the concrete is being smeared all over the stone face as my team clumsily work out their recently acquired opposable thumbs. I raise a small red flag: “That grout stuff on face: can you clean it off? It’ll ruin the stones.”
“Don’t worry, it’ll come off like a flakey prayer. We’ll sweep it off in fact, gratis. Ook.”
“Are you sure? I mean it’s cement, right? Same stuff that holds my walls together too, If I’m not mistaken.”
“Nah, it’ll come off.” This from the Aasvogel’s own father, a man who built hotels for a living not too long ago. Now, I like to take the advice of specialists, after all, what is the modern economy but about specialization? Today we’re long after the era when people used to complain about The Information Overload. That was when Megabytes was the standard, for crying out loud. Today, who can be the generalist?
Turns out I’m full of shit on that one too. Now my stones need acid etching. And not just vinegar. I have been directed to get my hands on nothing less than concentrated sulphuric acid, the scariest shit I’ve heard of, stuff which my chemistry teachers always hid from me. We’ve synthesized Nitro-Toluene (That one ‘Tri’ short of TNT, folks.) in the lab but they never ever let us have fun with the concentrated sulphuric Acid. The same stuff which I can buy over the counter in Pettah. I have to get the gorillas gloves, goggles, masks and also some clothes to cover their entire body. All it takes is a drop of their sweat to fall into the concentrated sulphuric acid and it will splatter everywhere maiming, blinding and killing. They only need to breathe the fumes to burn their respiratory system. I have to supervise every single movement they make. Now, on the few days I sleep, I have nightmares where I look away for a second, turn back to find one of them giving action to the thought: ‘maybe this would all go faster if I just splashed this everywhere’. I am grimly resolved, that if any die, I will simply dissolve what’s left of him in the vat of the acid. I’m not fucking explaining THIS one to the police.
As I try to piece together whatever shattered fragments of my sanity I can find, I realise what has transpired. My father, much like his idiotic son, likes to rely on specialists too. After all, that is how hotels get built you know, he relies on his subject matter experts for their recommendations. His specialization being, to carefully manage the many pieces of the complex project to completion.
Only today, on the matter of the sticky-to-stone-ness of concrete, he got his specialist advice from the same bloody gorilla.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Chinthanaya, damned lies, ducks, fish, lars, lies, more lies, politics, scarf, sri lanka
Today if you went out to the street, you wouldn’t be able to find someone who voted for Mahinda Rajapakse and co. You’d sooner find out who shot Roger Rabbit. I would like to know the tuktuk driver numbers in Sri Lanka, because there’s a demographic who’ve withdrawn their once vocal support.
Trishaw drivers are small-businessmen and are exposed to the the Sri Lankan economy and their withdrawal of support is linked to commercial reasons. Colombo has less purchasing power, and is less secure than before. Less people travel at night, and those who do travel with taxis for safety. The exchange rate of the ruppee has reduced the government’s ability to subsidise fuel. Their half-thought out supportive slogans are replaced with sullenness.
I’m tired of small time thinking. Sri Lanka’s failures aren’t about the triumph of evil or even about great crimes. Our failure is thinking too small. We will not be the first country to lobotomise politics or set ourselves incredibly low intellectual standards but we are the worst country to do so. We’re not the comfortable middle class American living in a country with strong institutions, wealth and economic power. This is Sri Lanka, with it’s the scarcity of resources, dreadful alternatives.
Ours is huge number of serious problems that need debate and discourse. Opportunity, employability, economy, identity, governance,equality and the lack thereof should keep a young nation like ours up though the night. We need new solutions, we need to look at older ones too to see what to do and what not.
Instead, reaching for the easy opportunity, we have marginalised these issues to a point where an entire electorate discusses the price of bread, forced conversions and and how the masculinity of a candidate is eclipsed by the luxuriant growth on the other’s upper lip.
What is worth fighting for is certainly worth thinking for. Passive resistance in the Indian struggle for independence was less of a philosophy; more a gambit that as part of the wider strategy, outmanoeuvred the British. Britain, having cloaked their blatant commercial interest in India as welfare and civilisation, woke up to find themselves shooting unarmed protesters. Unable to sell this any more to their voters or to international onlookers, they were forced to leave. And it wasn’t passive resistance all the way: Critics of Gandhi have argued that some of his non-violent protests were also allowed to end in bloodshed. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/articles/gandhi/index.html
The lesson: It wasn’t a triumph of non-violence; it was a win for the smarter player. Successes don’t come from simple doctrines, they are engineered. We should devise the steps leading to the outcomes we seek, not throw adolescent tantrums against what we see as unfairness.
I think we need to think out our plans if we are really going to live in Sri Lanka in the future. I don’t know about you, but I have no exit strategy. My only alternative is to work to make this a country I can and want to live in. I don’t expect it to be easy, and certainly don’t expect it to be quick, but i rather not leave the most important questions of the day to be addressed as they are now.
I’m going to pick questions I see as important and ruthlessly classify some as unworthy of activating my neurons. Debate is invited. I don’t expect to be right even most of the time and certainly will be arse deep in subjects that are outside my comfort zones and asking the stupidest questions. This activity stems from an idea that the answers we seek should be simple, clear and be derived from rational thinking and debate rather than the from the opaque advice of a professional elite.
More to follow.
Found that this piece of pop culture has its place on the web.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0K_LZDXp0I
‘Paul and Patty know this and they are always ready to take of themselves. Here they are on their way to school on a beautiful spring day. Bit no matter where they go, or what they do, they always try to remember what to do if the atom bomb explodes right then. [Flash] “Its a bomb! duck and cover!” Paul and Patty know what to do. paul covered the back of his head. so that he wouldn’t be burned. And Patty covered herself with the coat she was carrying. They knew how to duck and cover… [scene of picnicking family ducking and covering]This family knows what to do, just as your own family should. They know that even a thin cloth helps protect them. Even a newspaper can save you from a bad burn…’
Enjoy. The war on terror is the poorer for its lack of turtles singing in black and white. Surely the U.S. Department of Homeland Security could see fit to fund some technicolor embarrasment for posterity.
