Power and its Endorsement by the Masses

Thinkers begin with assumptions about human nature, and then proceed to rationalize behaviors and suggest improvements to order and efficiency based on those assumptions. I'm no different.

When it comes to my assumptions about human nature, I believe that power corrupts. Or at least, power leads to an increased tendency to take up the added opportunities and benefits associated with it. Where there's suddenly the opportunity to exploit, why wouldn't people take it up? We can't rely solely on the goodwill of human beings to do good and avoid being corrupt. I don't blame the powerful from taking advantage of their power. Why shouldn't they? In fact, considering one's payoffs (or capacity to get away with something) seems more predictive of one's behavior. It is naive to hope that those in power know the "right" thing to do. Even more so when the morality of our actions is a subjective matter, open to interpretation and debate.

The corollary to this assumption is that rather than devote time and effort to encourage those in power to behave, it is the masses who should be empowered. Power is a social construct and thus doesn't exist in a vacuum - it is nothing without the endorsement of followers and subservients. Thus, instead, I would hold responsibility of power abuse-prevention to the empowerment of followers, both potential and existing. Teach them to think for themselves and ask just one more question. Remove their ignorance. When the masses are critical, leaders cannot take advantage of their ignorance. That is a safer bet to the prevention of abuse of power than educating leaders on how they should behave and hoping that they will.

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.

Power

You can only neutralize one force with another force. Power begets other powers in a constant struggle. When you disarm a soldier with a flower, your flower is the gun wielding the influence. Life is a neverending flux of power negotiations.

That Is Not Dead Which Can Eternal Lie, And With Strange Aeons Even Death May Die

I've always been terribly fascinated with the unfathomable. Anything that can potentially be unfathomable, such as comprehending infinity or something darker, like peering into a pit of endless sorrow, has never failed to captivate me.

This is why H. P. Lovecraft's work, particularly the Cthulhu mythos franchise, continues to grip my mind. From Wikipedia: "Lovecraft's guiding literary principle was what he termed "cosmicism" or "cosmic horror", the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. ... Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the antithesis of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality and the abyss."

I think one aspect of my fixation with the unfathomable is that perhaps unfathomable things are not meant to be clearly understood by humans. So this raises curious questions, like what if a person did catch a glimpse of something unfathomable? Is it rosy, like what some people will consider to be divine, such as Truth? Or will it be that because we are not meant to fathom the unfathomable, its sheer power will destroy those who come within its range? Is the unfathomable the indication of the existence of a realm that we might come to describe as Infinite, Perfect, Ideal, Omnipotent, Pure or Godly?

Absolute power also falls into this train of consideration, as does notions of eternity and infinite regress.

I felt that Inception explored this notion to an extent when it broached the issue of death during a dream. The story asserts that people wake up when they die in a dream because it is a means of escape back to 'reality' (in inverted commas here because the movie deliberately leaves us questioning reality itself). But if the dreamer is unable to wake up and dies in the dream, he will remain in limbo and lose his mind.

To me, that sounds like what it possibly means to experience infinite torment and anguish in a short span of time. Is that what it does - derail the mind?

Is insanity also likenable to a computer hanging up? A computer (or program) can hang because it encounters a programming paradox. In one kind of paradox which is relevant to what I'm talking about, the computer encounters a circular (or catch-22) instruction in which the question and answer loops infinitely. For a silly example, I execute a function which asks the computer to create a list of emails if the executable file A.exe is open. However, what if there is a catch, or programming flaw, such that A.exe can open only if the email list is already created and thus needs to create the list of emails prior to the execution of the function? But, as can be logically seen, the creation of the email list requires file A.exe to be open. It's a silly example and I'm not sure if this is really a programming problem, but it's one I've thought of off the top of my head to illustrate the point.

The computer thus gets trapped in an endless loop of contingent requests that can never be fulfilled within the programming instruction.

What happens when a person's mind gets trapped in a loop like that? Given that there are many important things in life that are inherently paradoxical because humans are unable to reconcile them, does the attempt to genuinely reason and reconcile lead to Lovecraft's belief that sanity will be compromised? Does this suggest that perhaps sanity is a specific human trait that is meant (or simply happens) to keep us from actually perceiving what is absolutely and objectively true? Is God the ultimate paradox, which is why we can only reconcile it via faith and not science and reason?

Also, what happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object? Is the question really moot, as many people often like to dismiss it since it is simply inconceivable? That precisely brings me back to the fact that this is an unfathomable idea, and I'm all the more fascinated by it.

As long as I feel like I'm not compromising on my sanity pursuing these mental obsessions, I guess I'll keep at it for a long while. And maybe only in death will I know the answer.

Labeling

Why is it that people are averse towards being stereotyped, or stereotypes in general (although they probably commit it themselves)?

This is because the very act of labeling or defining something is a political act. The moment you have defined something, you have constrained it into something you want it to be. This is an expression of power over the object you have just defined.

Powerful people the world over have exerted their influence by labeling, defining and stereotyping groups of people they wish to subjugate, because this sets boundaries on who they are and what they can do. This is the kind of soft power that works more effectively than pure force itself, because the moment a label you have been given takes root and gains acceptance, the more legitimate your limited place in relation to others will be. Your label takes a life of its own and does the job of keeping you in check for the labeler.

This is also the reason why it is so liberating to be able to resist being labeled. You could either be comfortable as what you're defined to be, adopting it as an identity, or you can prove people's stereotypes wrong, surprising them and smashing their stereotypes of you to pieces.

Whoever Insists His Business Has Nothing To Do With Politics Is Obviously Lying

I was just musing to myself (yet again) how offering a product or service on the basis of an idealistic notion of serving your patrons (and society at large) is just not enough in our modern day and age. In every practical market/industry, there are companies that have firmly established themselves as benchmarks for the quality of the services or products offered, and many of these companies are big-ass corporations.

In other words, it is insufficient to go into business without a workable business model that will cover all kinds of things ranging from finances to logistics to human resources. Going in with a product, even if it's a great one that will benefit mankind greatly, and hoping its weight will carry itself is naive and unrealistic.

With this notion in mind, 'bigness' can be a great advantage to gain for any corporation that wants to firmly root itself in the market and lock out competition. It is terribly difficult for new firms to enter certain markets because it is too difficult to offer products and services on the level that the existing giants already provide for.

Anyone who is decently versed in the supposed virtue of the free market will know that it is an established fact that the more firms in a market there are, the more efficient the market becomes - competition is good for the consumer and society on the whole.

The fact that bigness shuts out competition is a profoundly bad thing. Market moralists will argue all sorts of things to defend the market intellectually, but the truth is that any corporation that becomes big enough tends to become a monopolist.

But while I argue that it is a bad thing that new firms face difficulty in entering markets locked out by big corporations, it does not follow that big corporations should therefore lower their standards or provide handicaps so as to give weaker entrants a chance.

The issue really is in the immense amount of power that resides in the hands of big corporations who now can redefine the rules as consumers become dependent on them, a power that is unchecked because there are few entrants and firms that can provide alternatives for consumers. With bigness comes great power and with great power comes the potential for great sin.

Also, there are tons of reasons why the pursuit of profit at all cost is bad, or why the Milton Friedman argument that the 'only thing businesses should care about is profit' is a dodgy mantra to follow. But here's an important one. Without virtues or ethical principles guiding a company's direction for profits, especially when the company is a monopolist, the company can be easily bought over by politicians.

Should there be any social elite with the capital who decides to further any self-serving agenda, any spineless powerful corporation can hop on the bandwagon to further the interests of that social elite, providing all sorts of support ranging from commodities to marketing to manipulation of consumers, as long as the social elite has sufficient money.

When political power and corporations come together, giving rise to the agenda-setting problems that the United States particularly faces, society can be quite doomed.

Of Virtue And Self-Interest

In Section 3 - Thrasymachus and the Rejection of Conventional Morality - of Part I of The Republic, Socrates is faced with a fierce (albeit petty) advocate of "justice as the interest of the stronger" in the form of Thrasymachus.

It is noteworthy that Socrates, a proponent of virtue and objective morality, never really deals convincingly with this postulation that the more powerful person determines what justice is. Such thinking is embedded in the realist school of thought, with its subsequent and significant catchphrases like 'history is written by the winners', 'those in power determine everything' and 'might is right'. When one thinks of justice as essentially a system of fairness and the restoration of equity, one realizes that 'justice' is really a plaything in the hands of realists.

That is not to say that Socrates' idealism is worthless. Socrates appeals to the idea that there is a fundamental good, and although it is difficult for mere human mortals to pinpoint what it is, we can all agree that it all stems from life itself. Throw a baby in a swimming pool and it struggles to survive. Another is possibly social relationships. We cannot do without our parents, and we often cannot do without friends. There are certain tendencies that are part of our nature qua human beings. That is why I think it is morally correct to respect life, which relevantly makes any issues dealing with life, especially the termination of it, difficult ones. The fact that most of us can agree that humanity flourishes when there are things like love, justice, harmony and goodness instead of hate, injustice, disunity and evil is indicative of some objective good, morality or truth.

On the other hand, Thrasymachus is a realist who believes that injustice pays more - obviously the just man is going to come off worse in a transaction with an unjust man who is going to undercut him. Thrasymachus postulates from a position that is fundamentally competitive and subjective - justice is served by whoever has the power to wield it.

Essentially, Socrates posits an argument of justice based on objective morals, while Thrasymachus posits an argument of justice based on competition for profit.

In reality it is extremely impractical to follow through on Socrates' recommendation. Anybody who wants to right the wrongs of a few thousand years by setting an example of himself based on Socrates' virtues as a just man is bound to perish, because the system we live in provides no sympathy or room for a heart of gold. However, Socrates appeals very deeply to me because of the very romantic idea that there is the possibility of ideal goodness. In this daydream, one sees how rotten to the core we are, as we exist so far away from that ideal today.

What's the prescription for utopia, one might ask. Ideally, we should rely less on the government, because the legal system simply cannot cover every dispute. In other words, there can't be rules on the right thing to do for everything. Teach kids well about what makes a good man of virtue and excellence, and let that be the guiding light that fills in the gaps of the legal system, and that lead him or her to go through life with other people well.

Singapore is easily the country with the most rules and laws on this planet. Singaporeans have internalized the rules accordingly, and parents teach their kids from young to be competitive and that it is good to be better than others and make more money than everyone else. What results is a rigidity and inflexibility captured well in kiasu-ism that is unparalleled anywhere else. But what else can we expect from being run by possibly the best practitioner of realism and the most exemplary student of Macchiavellianism?

Absolute Power And Invincibility

I'd better get some thoughts from my first political philosophy class down before I go for my next one tomorrow to smother them into oblivion.

As Brian Mooney went on about universal symbols of the divine popping up whenever we analyze political systems, the discussion eventually led on to the concept of a ring of invincibility. The question he posed the class was, "if there ever was an invincibility ring, where the wearer will be free to do as he pleases and not suffer any repercussions whatsoever, and you had the chance to wear it, would you wear it?"

He needed the simple layman reply of generally "yes" in order to lead on to his next point, but I'll come to that later. Meanwhile, his solicitation of an answer didn't generate much response, save for about 10% of the class raising their hands. I kept my hands firmly down - I had a conviction as to why I wouldn't want to have an invincibility ring. Dissatisfied, for some reason he fixated on me and pressed me as to why I wouldn't wear the ring of invincibility. In a stroke of inspiration I managed to articulate to some extent what I felt about the non-social consequences of wearing such a ring and stubbornly refused to believe that I would succumb to such an endowment of power. While that wasn't quite the answer he was looking for in order to prove his point later on, my response turned out to be part of his explanation why such a ring philosophically doesn't exist.

The idea is very interesting, and it goes something like this. On my part, I wouldn't accept the ring even though I would no longer be accountable to anybody because there is something quite intuitively scary about absolute power. I may no longer be indebted to anybody around me, but the fact that I have lived 23 years of my life dealing with people and knowing how people are and that they can be harmed is enough to generate a conscience that makes me feel guilty and thus accountable, if not to anyone, then to myself. I would only accept the ring if I suddenly existed without knowledge of anything about people, but was still intelligent enough to make decisions, because only then I am freed of the burden of a conscience. It is in fact the self to which the conscience is accountable which is the most important point. With consciousness of people from past experience, I will be unable to contain the monster that comes with unaccountable absolute power even if I no longer need to bother about people any more in a real and present sense. The conscience, to me, is the key: the ring will lead to a non-social consequence where my conscience makes me accountable to myself and therefore the decay of the soul becomes possible. Furthermore, because of the unlimited nature of such a power, there is no end in sight - the neverending decadence of the soul becomes a living hell. I would refuse the ring for the reason of conscience alone.

Brian Mooney went on to further state that this is why such a ring doesn't exist, because realistically we are a species bounded by human interactions. Our nature demands it, and the fact that we are indebted whether we want to or not to other humans makes us conscientious. For those who contend that power is all that matters, is everything or is the only currency in this world are choosing to detach people from their very nature. And we see this unfolding in history, as we observe how people such as McNamara and Hitler have committed atrocious war crimes in the pursuit of power - they have practically detached themselves from the fabric of reality in which human connections are essential in order to execute war plans that are devoid of humanity.

But he also goes on to say that the ring of invincibility is an important construct in political philosophy because it is what every idealistic sociopolitical system that has been conjectured is structured around: how to keep tabs on a society whose men are expected to desire such a powerful ring. That was the 'statistical evidence' he needed from the class response to show that such a desire generally does exist and that it should be a consideration for anyone trying to develop a theory for utopia.

I get goosebumps just anticipating my next political philosophy class.

Affirmation

Here's why economics matters. To me at least, it's not so much the pursuit of a perfect system in which the world can run its resources, because I doubt that there can ever be such a thing, but it's the fact that economics shapes reality because it concerns every layperson. It's the reality of who's getting what part of the pie and how is that part of the pie attained. Am I going to work for it? Am I going to receive it through welfare? Is it going to be taken from me? These questions are going to be answered by the form of politics that my country employs.

Economics, and what kind of economy a tribe, a kingdom or a state is going to have, is the driving force and the legitimacy behind power and politics. Politics is power, because it refers to governance and the legal use of force, and power can only be gained when one controls resources.

The history of man is peppered with battles that have been waged for the attainment of resources. Modern history has seen us shift the basis of power from a physical one to one of economic ideology. The fight between the Democrats and Republicans is essentially due to the difference in economic management - more socialist (and left-wing) or more conservative (and right wing)? The cold war was a battle between capitalism and communism. Americans are dissatisfied with Obama because of the inadequate validity of his economic agenda which have turned out to be rather expensive, ineffective and socialist, which is disappointing in today's world where we are still trying to move on from the Keynesian era of full employment as the goal. Politicians are battling it out every election day to promise better economic packages because this is what matters to the people most - how much less will you be taxed?

Politics exists because power drives the world. Power is about the ability to gain control over people. The control of people is gained through the manipulation of the economy, because people depend on resources.

That's why economics is important, because if everyone knew to some degree the impact that the economy of our state has on our lives, then we would know how to revolt, how to vote and how to decide what kind of country we want to have and live in. We would know the extent of our rights and how to differentiate between a government that is serving us well and a government that is just pulling political bull. We would know if we would rather live in a competitive society or one that redistributes wealth. We would look at the ideologies expounded by our leaders with more enlightened eyes. We would know where on earth we're going.

A Goosebumpy Morning

I woke up fifteen minutes earlier today to one of those cruelly refreshing downpours you'd wanna go to bed to, not fight against on the way to work. It just felt like it wasn't like any other dawn. I was reading my book and plugged in to music (which, I must mention, has superb clarity in such solid bass that I feel like I'm in the song itself) when, somewhere through on the commute with all these faceless others, thoughts started spilling into my head like a glorious invasion.

To the point, I've always been fascinated with the idea of power and the concepts and implications associated with it. I wouldn't fully attribute my realizations this morning solely to reading Ayn Rand's work, but her book contributed to the tipping point's push. Idea after idea came to me, and for once in a long while, I actually feel a great sense of conviction that if I were to write a book or a long dissertation that would define my work if I were ever going into academics, it would be about power.



"The same context specificity leads people to take the escalator to the StairMasters, but the philosopher's case is far, far more dangerous since he uses up our storage for critical thinking in a sterile occupation. Philosophers like to practice philosophical thinking on me-too subjects that other philosophers call philosophy, and they leave their minds at the door when they are outside of these subjects."

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan.

I believe, when it comes to politics, movements, science or globalization, we're either living on a very exciting brink, or we're already right in the midst of all the action. For my fellow Generation Y folks, there are many things we could tell our kids we lived through - 9/11, Obama, the rise of democracy, the IT boom, and so on and so forth.

But when it comes to our generation's status intellectually, ideologically and philosophically, we're so dead. The modern hard drive of thought has been conveniently segmented to the thinkers so that people don't have to grapple with it and move on with other 'more important things'. It's worse in some countries than others.

And when new ideas do get consolidated, what happens? They're sold and milked for money.

Not that it's right or wrong; aside from a gripe and some lamenting, it's definitely not my place to judge. But we're just forgoing the need to understand, say, the truth or deeper logic of zero or infinity as mathematically philosophical concepts in exchange for pushing the next decimal point and increasing formulaic accuracy (to make better machines and improve industrial efficiency) because one is now perceived as more practically important than the other.

It's no wonder that sometimes we feel like we don't know where the world is headed. Foreign and global policy is a mess. We can only go somewhere when we are steering in the right way, and ideology constitutes knowing this direction. Underpinning ideology is a society's set of individual moral philosophies that guide each and every person. And at the individual level, many people are already lost or apathetic.