Leap

"Sometimes you have to take the leap and build your wings on the way down."
- Kobi Yamada


Kind of makes me think of how Bruce Wayne could only make the leap once he didn't have the harness on.

You Okay with That?

Maiden MMA Experience

Attended my first ever MMA fighting event at the One Fighting Championship 8 held at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on Friday. I think it'll be an experience I'll never forget, and the fact that I spent almost the entire day the next day watching MMA videos is testament to that.

There is something absolutely gripping about seeing two men take it out in physical combat. Aside from the practical requirement for rules and safety precautions (not quite the "first rule of Fight Club" sort of stuff haha), such battles are deeply rooted in our mammalian psyche. The same exciting, conflicting tension between the fear of vicarious pain and the anticipation of seeing a new victor emerge engulfs both those who have never seen a fight and those who have watched these fights for the 100th time alike. These combat scenarios are timeless - men (and some women) have been duking it out since time immemorial and there is always honour, either from earning it or defending it, from defeating your opponent while an audience devours the scene with hungry eyes. These fights are psychologically gripping also because deep in every man the question is asked, "when I'm head to head with another man for a fight and I'm stripped of my socially constructed but physically very useless accolades, can I hold my own?" In our society today, we (rightfully and thankfully) do not need to physically assert ourselves to the extent that men had to in the ancestral past, but when the time comes that might decides who's right, do we have what it takes?

There was an exciting line-up of fighters from all over the world and all sorts of different fighting styles, and it is in the differences that interesting observations can be made. These are cursory observations that are only anecdotally substantiated, but for instance I've noticed that Asian fighters are a lot more patient than Western fighters. For good reason, perhaps, because on the one hand, Asian fighters tend to have less mass and thus, on average, cannot go head on with a Western fighter on strength alone. On the other hand, there is a weakness to be exploited when up against aggressive Western fighters, who may leave themselves exposed while on the attack. There are exceptions, of course - Brock Larson was extremely patient in his fight against Melvin Manhoef (although one's from the US while the other is Dutch), and the Filipino Kevin Belingon is a hard-hitting little striker.

I found style match-ups to be extremely crucial. The most exciting fights involved a compatible match between either striking specialists (going for the knockouts) or grappling/take down specialists (going for floor work). Matches with different styles are interesting too, which usually involves the fighters trying to manoeuver their opponent into unfavourable positions. Such fights may become quite tactical.

Then, there are the heavyweight "mismatches". OK, there wasn't exactly a heavyweight category during this round of fights (or maybe One FC doesn't have them), but in the middle weight category between the grappling specialist Brock Larson and the striking specialist Melvin Manhoef, the fight went on for loooong stretches where nobody threw a punch or did anything (much to the displeasure of the fans, and the referee "booked" both fighters!). It was supposed to be an explosive fight between two very overpowered fighters, and yet nobody made a move. When somebody finally did, all hell broke loose for very brief periods.

This makes sense from a power balance perspective. When we think of war between two entities, the more powerful the arms, the less likely the individuals will make a move because it would be too decided and costly. Exciting head-on battles with lots of charging and fighting occurs when armies wield swords, but once you arm soldiers with powerful guns, everyone sits in trenches, not daring to make a move. Likewise for the Cold War - when the threat of total destruction is too costly, a tense peace prevails. Status hierarchies among individuals work the same way too - powerful men at the top seldom fight head to head; instead they trade politically correct back-and-forths that usually amount to nothing other than reminding the other party that they're still here, while low status men at the bottom are the ones who really slug it out.

Here's the colossal match-up between Melvin Manhoef and Brock Larson that for long stretches only served to bore, until the epic triggering of kicks and strikes from Manhoef led to a comical roundabout chase at 3:47.

INTP

Babel Fish, QED

Gonna repost a classic from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

The Light

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
- C. S. Lewis

Great quote, maybe, but only for its point on illumination rather than anything to do with Christianity in particular. Replace the word "Christianity" with "science" or "good theory" and it still makes sense to whoever has a different set of faiths and beliefs comprising of those (such as me).

The only people who fear death
are those with regrets.

I Never Saw a Wild Thing Sorry for Itself

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

- D. H. Lawrence, Self-pity


Saw the line in bold tattoo-ed on a chick's back the other day. It is one of those illuminating moments where a light goes on in my head. I just had to go discover the source.

I can't find an exact date for when the poem was written, but apparently D. H. Lawrence wrote this while the study of psychology was experiencing a breakthrough. Thought, ideas of emotions, human motives, intuition, reason, and behavior greatly interested him. Lawrence lived between 1885 to 1930, so one might expect the psychological philosophies of William James and Sigmund Freud to be revolutionary and prevalent at that time. His essays reflect this energy and sense of enlightenment. In Self-pity, Lawrence emphasizes that man, of all animals, has the greatest ability of and capacity for self-pity, and sadly can express the most self-loathing despite his longer lifespan and capacity of thought as opposed to other animals.

Indeed, this is true even among humans with their vast variations in dispositions. The people I know who are wild and free are the most fulfilled and unregretful. They make delightful company.

My Life so Far According to Songs

PRESENT

Medina - You and I
Sunlounger - Change Your Mind
Pendulum - The Island
Gareth Emery - Sanctuary
Dash Berlin - Man on the Run
Armin van Buuren - In and Out of Love
The Killers - Mr Brightside
Muse - Starlight
Eminem - Love the Way You Lie
Gym Class Heroes - Cookie Jar
Fall Out Boy - Hum Hallelujah
My Chemical Romance - Helena
Trivium - A Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation
Seether - Broken
Damien Rice - Amie
The Spill Canvas - 3685
Stars - Your Ex-lover is Dead
Belle and Sebastian - Another Sunny Day
Third Eye Blind - Motorcycle Drive By
Jimmy Eat World - If You Don't, Don't
Gregory and the Hawk - Birds and Boats
Nada Surf - If You Leave
Lifehouse - Blind
The Juliana Theory - Jewel to Sparkle
Cradle of Filth - Nymphetamine
In Flames - Cloud Connected
Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence
Bowling for Soup - Life After Lisa
Earshot - Wait
Metallica - Enter Sandman
Nightwish - Nemo
Anberlin - Paperthin Hymn
Saosin - Bury Your Head
Senses Fail - Bite to Break Skin
I Am Ghost - We are Always Searching
Kill Hannah - Kennedy
Thrice - Stare at the Sun
Taking Back Sunday - Number Five with a Bullet
Black Lab - Learn to Crawl
Yellowcard - Gifts and Curses
Sick Puppies - All the Same
MXPX - Wrecking Hotel Rooms
Spineshank - Smothered
Placebo - Every You/Me
Chevelle - The Red
Brand New - The Quiet Things that No One Ever Knows
Puddle of Mudd - Blurry
Papa Roach - Blood Brothers
System of a Down - Chop Suey
Limp Bizkit - Rollin'
Linkin Park - Papercut

PAST

"Marriage kills your life. Then kids kill your marriage. And in the end we're all dead."

You get no less from my supervisor himself.

Banter never felt better.

Every Experience is a Gift, be it Good or Bad

"For the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously."
— George Gissing

I have lived by this quote for quite some time now. Every experience is a gift, be it good or bad. Every experience affords a chance to learn something, and that makes it valuable.

On one hand, this could mean that it all boils down to how we see the situations we're in. I could be criticized here for saying that I merely have very good rationalization skills, which makes me good at justifying anything that I've been through, minimizing my regrets.

On the other, I don't think it's as simple as that - being merely good at looking at the bright side of things is a diminished form of living; it is passive and rather uninspiring. Instead, what this importantly entails is having a frame of mind that embraces every opportunity one is thrown. Enter into novel situations with the perspective that one will come out stronger. We have no idea how much we can do until we do it. We are also more liable to regret the things we do not do more than the things we did (if it is the reversed, well to put it bluntly, that would be somewhat unfortunate). Every daunting challenge has its silver lining in the aftermath, and every emotion felt is beautifully intense inasmuch as it is fleeting. To have anything less (or worse, to want anything less), you're selling yourself short on life.

Every individual has potential. To waste it with negativity, hesitancy, fear, reluctance, sloth, and subsequently, regret, would be sin.

Bottom of a Bottle

'O Patience, how you tug and you push. Bestowing upon me your evil twin, impatience. I know this is a marriage I will never be able to divorce myself from, an attachment I will be doomed to be unable to wean off.

But I will straddle the two, because I must. It is the only way. And although the balance is an artful one, it is a fine line between pleasure and pain, and heaven and hell. Choices now revolve around choosing what is right, and what is easy.



Some advice to arrive at my doorstep; just four years quite late. It is fascinating how the world works so seemingly strange, but at the most abstract of perspectives this whole thing makes so much sense.

"We defined thinking as integrating data and arriving at correct answers. Look around you. Most people do that stunt just well enough to get to the corner store and back without breaking a leg. If the average man thinks at all, he does silly things like generalizing from a single datum. He uses one-valued logics. If he is exceptionally bright, he may use two- valued, ‘either-or’ logic to arrive at his wrong answers. If he is hungry, hurt, or personally interested in the answer, he can’t use any sort of logic and will discard an observed fact as blithely as he will stake his life on a piece of wishful thinking. He uses the technical miracles created by superior men without wonder nor surprise, as a kitten accepts a bowl of milk. Far from aspiring to higher reasoning, he is not even aware that higher reasoning exists. He classes his own mental process as being of the same sort as the genius of an Einstein. Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal."

- Robert Heinlein, Assignment in Eternity (1953)

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

- Nietzsche

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible."

- T. E. Lawrence

Three Passions

I could cry reading this.

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness - that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what - at last - I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me."

- Bertrand Russell, Autobiography

The Intrinsic Value of Ideals

There's a new home owner moving in to the flat directly above mine, so there has been lots of construction and renovation work going on, which means endless drilling, hammering, and sweeping for stretches of days on end.

Some time last week, the ceiling of my parents' bedroom leaked; cement and grime-mixed water started forming ominous damp patches before it began dripping onto the bed and all over the place. To top it off, because it has been raining very heavily these few days, dirty water washes off from the balcony upstairs onto ours, and when it dries the whole balcony is caked in some kind of sandy, muddy residue. Suffice to say it was a rather unpleasant experience.

So, my dad kicked up a heroic fuss, and somehow managed to get the contractor for the works upstairs to:
(1) provide sealant and paint patching servicing for the patches on the ceiling;
(2) provide workers to clean up the balcony;
(3) use their own water ("But sir, I don't have a hose that long which can connect from upstairs to downstairs." "Go and get one!")
(4) replace my parents' bed mattress (seriously!).

This morning, a Singaporean worker came in to help with the ceiling. He assessed the situation, and then said in half-dialect and half-chinese: "I can paint your entire bedroom ceiling and two other room ceilings for $30 if you like."

So, obviously this $30 offer was an under the table offer; his boss would have no idea what's going on here. My mum took it up - $30 is virtually nothing to us in this context, considering how much effort we would have to put in acquiring the paints and brushes, and then panting and huffing (toxic smells, no less) while fighting against the concrete sky ourselves.

His offer really struck me. Firstly, it is very reasonable, or cheap, to put it bluntly. He probably meant it as a good offer, in fact. This is the effect of how the wide availability of similar services and the perceived low prestige level of the job can reduce the value or price of a person's work. Secondly, and related to the first, this man's work should be no less important than the other officey work that I'm more attuned to, having a degree in hand that grants me access into corporate jobs. In fact, without the bedrock of a hard labour industry that frees the rest of us from dirtying our hands and using our brains more, there wouldn't be any tertiary industries to speak of. Yet, this man has been inhaling toxic paints probably all his working life (and I'm already slightly giddy from the leakage of the smell despite him closing the door, enclosing himself in the room with the fumes trapped in there, so that we wouldn't have to endure the smells) - god knows what kind of effect that has on his health - and earning a meagre wage that, because of the advancement of the rest of the economy and our country's emphasis on high status, creative, innovative, entrepreneurial, and corporate work, can barely keep up with inflation or support a dignified way of living (I know the dignity of life is a subjective point, but I firmly believe it has a lot to do with how one fares in relation to others).

Countless conversations with people on the economic issues of minimum wages, welfare, taxation, and more generally, liberty, often reach some kind of extrinsic or utilitarian conclusion that we owe a lot to how the economy in Singapore is structured (by a particularly omniscient man, no doubt); it suits us (something about pragmatism), it has helped us survive over the decades, it has helped us compete globally.

But it is just as important to think of how the structure of this economy marginalizes some groups of people. Let's not even talk about foreign workers; here was a Singaporean man who probably has no access to other "better" work opportunities, very likely because of structural factors (I'm making some educated speculations - born into poor family, no money for further education, no qualifications, no access to knowledge that can enhance his productivity beyond labour, etc.). And more importantly, it is important to note that sometimes the economy, whether deliberately or not, is structured in a way that makes it okay to marginalize people. That's when it gets dangerous, because now we have some sort of "legitimate" reason to keep people down, or compromise on their dignity of life, or justify why their life value should be less than others. That $30 offer made me sad and ashamed. Sad for the obvious reasons stated above on the state of affairs, and ashamed because I know this happens, but I don't think so much about it until it's in my face.

This raises a question, both interesting and important, about the value of fundamental rights or ideals. I'm not particularly outspoken about rights because part of my sad reality is that I think morality is generally subjective at a human level (although I do - some will accuse me of contradiction here - lean towards the idea that there are objective truths). What is right or wrong can be defined by those in power. But this is why subjects should be given constitutional rights to check the powers that be, because power has the capacity to mute resistance against it when it no longer serves the greater good. And this is also why, I think, it is important to have and believe in some fundamental ideals - for some it is the right to life, for others it is the right to a livelihood, yet for others perhaps freedom - because powerful leaders are capable of instituting structures that prevent people from engaging in progressive resistance.

British MP Rory Stewart brought up a fantastic point on the importance of recognizing and touting intrinsic value in rights and ideals (as opposed to focusing on their extrinsic and instrumental worth) when arguing or pushing for them. He talked of the fundamental importance of democracy, but his idea can be applied to anything that's worthwhile to defend. On democracy, he said that for too long, people have tried to fight for it on the extrinsic, instrumental grounds that perhaps it improves the economy, or it creates jobs for people, or that it prevents war, etc.; such arguments for democracy will be undermined once another less desirable system is capable of offering the same good outcomes stated above. Very often, arguments switch from intrinsic ones to instrumental ones in order to please the masses, corporations that provide funds, etc. Perhaps pushing on ideals on intrinsic grounds is also too idealistic - the realist view will only consider costs and benefits, and interests. But each time we shift away from an idealistic stance to a realistic stance, we give up on something intrinsically sacred to the things that matter.

(Once again, I'm generally skeptical about the promise of democracy because it requires too many boundary conditions to work, but this doesn't mean that a well-functioning democracy isn't a worthwhile ideal since it encourages participation and an informed citizenry that cares about society, which are fundamental good-to-haves.)

So, on that note, I suggest that it is important to think of what matters for our society. There is admittedly no such thing as perfect equality in a society, but if we are willing to forgo a fight for equality then we can expect to see many low status people marginalized by the system, and that will be okay, legitimate, and justifiable on economic grounds. If we are willing to forgo a fight for welfare, health aid, better recognition for social workers, etc., then we can expect to see that society will still very much chug along with an acute rubric for the value of life, which is how much you are able to earn. This in turn has ramifications for which jobs are respectable and which jobs aren't. In my mind, a measure of a good society is one where most jobs, if not all jobs, can garner some form of equal dignity and respect, and that every worker can be considered to be of value to the society they reside in. These are conversations that on matters of fundamental importance that, while definitely not easy to reach consensus, should be carried out. Just because a system has seemed to work doesn't mean it should be the only game in town. More importantly, we need to think about important things that should be valued but aren't that the current system prevents us from achieving, or worse, from caring about.

Here's the TED Talk presented by Rory Stewart on his take on democracy and, to me, on the intrinsic value of ideals. A highly recommended viewing.

.

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour

- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Form follows function.