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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. |
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Very |
Somewhat |
Not Very |
Not at All |
Unsure |
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% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
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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 |
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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: car, death, fish, lard, more fish, more lies
Mondays. Bringer of harsh realities, schoolyard shootings and for the unwary aasvogel, evil car shattering destruction and whiplash that could paralyse him in the next fifteen years. (Divert. ‘could’? What sort of value does the the word ‘could’ bring here? Could PARALYSE sounds exactly the same to me as: you will be paralysed NO MATTER WHAT. It’s like your doctor saying: “Good tidings, I’ve reduced your chance of PAINFUL DEATH by 12%. Who’s the Man?” And pats his own buttocks for a few minutes while you look away politely. )
Elaborate. The Aasvogel in question drives a car, a little Satanic Suzuki Swift with a manual transmission that is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Weekends and late evenings have seen such a diabolic vehicle accelerating happily, maniacal laughter ringing through the streets, a fellow speed demon or unfortunate trapped in the front seat as we challenge the widely held view that: thank you, the price of gasoline is high enough already, we get it, Mr Gore, we should use less. Now show us the pretty picture with the polar bear trapped on the rapidly dissolving ice floe.
There are two states of driving for the Afrikaaner Vulture. Lets call them Go Satan, Go! and Sitbackitsgoingtotakehoursinthistraffic. The former is fun, exclusive to clear roads and gives that happy feeling as guess what, those boffins in Suzuki thought lets build tiny cars with 1300cc’s of JOY and they’ll fling themselves forward like there’s loads of Suzuki pussy out there they are missing out on.
The second state evolved as a reaction to those journeys that are the daily trips from Battaramulla to the places of work that invariably feel like an Odyesian journey, sans sirens. Perhaps the occasional Cyclops. The Return on Effort Invested while driving at such times is minimal and weaving, creeping and swearing just have not shown any clear incremental benefit. Even the swearing, dear reader. For those who don’t know me or haven’t been in earshot at a wedding or a baptism or whatever it is your allowed to drink at, (oh wait, that’s work) I like my profanity. Nothing relaxes me as much as expelling the majority of my breath shouting something Inspiring and Educational. (Like ‘fuck’) It’s like untying a cerebral knot. After a fashion.
It is to be said that we are in sad state where even the profane cannot elevate you. Nevertheless, years of reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and forgetting the central theme has left me with: Tools. I can zone out from this crap. Which is why the decision to throw in my lot with Suzukius Diabolus was clear when i was presented with a choice of two cars, one with an automatic transmission, the other with a CD player. I had already got half my CD collection into the car before my lessor pointed out gently, this is the point you tell me whether you want to rent this car or not.
So there you have it, mornings were gentle strolls into work, listening to the Zephyr Song or Mozart’s Requiem (Deutsche Grammaphon recording). Cars would no longer be elbowed out of the way but allowed to pass if belligerent enough. Hardly anyone’s mother’s sustained any verbal abuse anymore. None was needed. Choirs sang Kyrie Elieson at studio volumes reminding all around that yes, you are going to die, get some good grovelling in while you’ve got the chance. Or at the very least learn Latin.
Today was different. If the Fates left a comment on my blog it would read “Dear Assvogel, you were so anxious about the work you need to get done this Monday morning and have been pondering your long term career directions and what you need to do to get there, we decided to help you out on both counts. Guess what, you only got in to work now at 11am and everyone was so understanding that you’ll feel impelled to stay till 8:30pm to finish your work. Oh and your career’s sorted. BMW will hire you shortly. As a crash test dummy.”
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.
