When I clean my shinai...

... my mind wanders, and I think about any number of things. When I first started kendo and found out you have to dismantle a shinai completely every so often to check it for splinters and cracks, then repair and oil it as necessary, it felt like a chore. After a while it became routine, a part of kendo as much as kirikaeshi or suburi. Of late, it has become meditation.

My hands will move almost automatically, undoing the knots, pulling off the leather parts and spreading open the bamboo. Then running my fingers up and down the length of each bamboo stave, almost caressing it, feeling for the splinters that my eyes can't see. Each irregularity is sanded smooth, each stave given the same care and attention. Then they are rubbed down with oil, just enough to keep a thin film for each stave to absorb, keeping them a little moist to prevent them from getting dry and brittle. The staves are arranged together again, the leather hilt and tip slid on and the cord tightly bound, making the shinai whole again. A few practice swings later and the shinai is laid aside, waiting for the next trip to the dojo.

Lately, while doing this, I find myself thinking of the 'do' in 'kendo', that is, the '道' in '剣道'. Since I've started, kendo has been permeating every aspect of my life. The line dividing the dojo from the world beyond has blurred. One of the things common to every Japanese martial art is the very rigid, very specific etiquette. There is a right and proper way to do pretty much everything. There is a right way to enter the dojo, to leave the dojo, to bow to the dojo, to bow to an opponent, to bow to your teacher... There is a right way to sit, to stand, to walk, to face, to hold your sword when not in use, to don your armour, to put away your armour, to fold your uniform when not in use...

There are dozens, hundreds of little rituals that, over the course of months, become a part of every kendoka, all contributing in some small way to the ideal of the dojo as a place of learning and discipline. I'm not sure how it looks like anymore, from the outside looking in. These days the world seems more real when I'm in keikogi and hakama.

An interesting thought struck me the other day regarding the line between the dojo and the world beyond. In the dojo, when someone points out a flaw or weakness in your technique, you thank him. It does not matter if he is wrong or right, the fact remains that he has taken the effort to observe you and offer an opinion, and so you bow and thank him. And if you're smart, you do not take his critique at face value, but carefully reflect on its validity. This is a prudent, humble and sincere attitude to learning that I consider standard procedure in any dojo worthy of the name. And the thought that hit me was this: Would I behave in this manner outside the dojo?

I want to say 'yes'.

The realities of the world beyond the dojo do not lend themselves well to the ideals of the dojo. Take evolutionary biology. Between biologists, it's perfectly possible and normal for there to be disagreement. The empirical method and peer review are ideally the mechanisms by which scientific progress is made, with experts in their fields pushing forward their pet theories and, with honesty and humility, debating and refining the theories and helping the march of science as a whole. This can be said to be akin to master swordsmen dueling and bettering themselves in the process.

Now, scientists are human, too, and the history of science is replete with examples of backstabbing, oneupmanship, hubris and plain old narrow-mindedness impeding scientific progress. I liken such incidents to the ugly, awkward engagements between novice kendokas that have just begun to don armour and are as yet woefully lacking in technique. In time, hopefully, they will outgrow such silliness. Realistically, in science as in kendo, one will observe a spectrum between the two extremes.

And then there's creationists, who obnoxiously elbow their way into the scene, chock full of ignorance and dogma, proudly braying their "theories" with nary the slightest inkling of the utter absence of any intellectual merit to their position. Now this, this has no parallel in any normal dojo. This is the dojo getting invaded by a party of drunken yobbos, clad in gunny sacks, speaking in grunts and flinging excrement at any who approach. Hmm.

I don't think I'm all that far off the mark in making these comparisons, and this illustrates just one of many aspects of life in which good dojo etiquette alone doesn't quite cut it (ahahaha...). But looking at the creationist example, I can honestly say I'm not sure how to deal with it. Logic and reason do not work against such people, as many rational atheists would no doubt have experienced.

Every time I read the news I can't escape the feeling that the world is becoming a dumber place. On the one hand, on the wings of science and technology we reach higher and higher, yet on the other hand, the evidence suggests that a greater proportion than ever of the world's population is regressing into ignorance and superstition. Amid this maelstrom of conflicting memes, the dojo feels like the last bastion of all that is good about being human. To me, the dojo represents the highest ideals of the human condition; people gathered together with the sincere desire to learn, with the strength and resolve to earn knowledge with sweat, blood and tears.

I try to take the mentality of the dojo with me wherever I go, but, to be sure, it's hard sometimes. Well, not like that'll stop me from trying. Right, this post has gone on long enough. I'm a-gettin' offski.

Oh, in other news, since I started this post, a LOT has happened in my life, some good, others... well, the less said, the better. But on the upside, I done got triple promoted to 2nd kyu :-) And I'm on the Malaysian kendo team taking part in a big scrap in Hong Kong in March. W00t!

Oh, FFS...

This CAN'T be for real...

Hearts and minds revisited

Hokay, finally got round to listening to that lecture by Prof Damasio. Long story short, a dead end. It was a lecture delivered to an audience mostly comprising liberal arts students introducing his work in studying emotion, in a charming accent I can't quite identify which makes it sound as though he's meticulously putting every word in place with a pair of tweezers. So no answers for me just yet. Oh, well.

On a vaguely related note, I was listening to the radio the other day, and heard that David Guetta & Akon "song", Sexy Chick. And I facepalmed and despaired for the slow death of romance. I mean, really, have you heard the lyrics to that rubbish?



"I'm trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful..."

... and the best he could come up with is "sexy chick". "Sexy chick"?? Is this how far we have fallen? Is this how a man expresses his attraction for a woman in this day and age? Not 3 days ago I watched Gerard Depardieu playing Cyrano de Bergerac. Ah, that balcony scene... Now THAT's romance, not these crude grunts and babblings that pollute the airwaves*! Ah, the hell with it. No time to rant, there's books to omnomnomnomnom...


*For which many Malaysian DJs are also guilty...

So sad but so true...

Eat meat?

Sometime last year, I posted a question on Yahoo! Answers, re: Would you kill for your own meat? The occasional (and with Yahoo! Answers, inevitable) drooling, slack-jawed idiot answer aside, quite a few answered no, mostly because they were too squeamish to deal the killing blow with a boltgun or whatever. I ask this question a lot (not to vegetarians, obviously) in person, too, and usually meet with a negative response.

Not to mince words about it, I think that's terribly hypocritical. That having been said, I also think it's a very easy trap to fall into, given how far removed the fresh, clean, happy little packets and cans of meat we see in the supermarket are from the bloody horror of the abbatoir. When you eat meat, you take life. There's no two ways about it. Life is a valuable thing (particularly to the entity from whom you are taking it), and I do think it's important for people to realize just what they're buying into when they bite into a ham sandwich or fried chicken or some such. Most will easily understand the price tag one puts on a brattwurst, but far too few really think to draw the connections between calf to cow to lowing, screaming, wide-eyed, twitching, dying beast drowning in its own blood to hamburger.

But, it's unrealistic to expect everyone to go up to an animal and kill it themselves. One of these days, I do hope to go to a farm and really understand with these two hands what it really means to kill to eat, but I'm not so sure how feasible it is to demand this of every meat-eating city-dweller. So I was quite pleased to stumble into Earthlings*. More details on Wikipedia. If you're not vegetarian, I very strongly recommend watching this. In fact, I insist. And don't avert your eyes - you don't have that right.

There were, I felt, a couple of blatantly cheap attempts at yanking on the heart strings. I suppose it would be kinder to say that it was a bit melodramatic at times, but appeals to emotion on matters of any importance strike me as annoying more than anything else. Still, the actual video footage was more than a bit harrowing, and a sharp reminder of how, in the name of profit, humans will sink to such depths. And though I disagreed and doubted (particularly on the veracity of the numbers and the reliability of their sources), the Earthlings experience did have me thinking.

Naturally, while watching Earthlings, I automatically looked at how I live my life in relation to how I impact animals. So here's my thoughts on Earthlings, subject-by-subject:

Pets- My 2 cats are adopted, spayed/neutered and from all outward appearances, have bamboozled me into being their butler, these very words being typed as Haruka slinks across the table, running her stubby little tail under my nose.

Truth be told, I do not consider strays to be an actual, looming, economic threat in and of itself, but a symptom of a deeper, more insidious malaise in modern urban society, namely how little each of us gives a shit about the world around us.

Food- I'm Malaysian Chinese and have therefore consumed an absurd amount of chicken and pork, though I generally loathe having steak of any kind. Nevertheless, I felt a bit guilty having always been aware about battery farms, though not quite so aware about the horrors of pig farming. Just knowing this, the movie Babe seems like a sick joke. As such, I shall endeavour to cut down on meat. And continue to discourage those I know from the consumption of shark's fin soup.

What I was left wondering, however, is this: What kind of person would I become if I was the one handling the boltgun/knife every day? It's very easy to look at these butchers and think ill of them, completely ignoring the situational forces that shape human personalities. So I think it's worth wondering what it would be like to be in their blood-soaked wellies, slitting throats, sidestepping fountains of blood, ears filled with the screams of the dying, nostrils clogged with the stench of death and fear, day in, day out...

My readings into the ideals of Bushido tell me, time and again, that to take life is a very serious matter indeed. Such high ideals seem to ring so very hollow in the face of the gory realities of the modern abbatoir. If animals are to die to feed us, I want it to happen with the least suffering possible. I want them to have a life of blithe contentment before death takes them, swiftly and without warning, with surgical precision. And as we see in Earthlings, what I want is very far removed from the realities forced upon the modern farm by simple economics. To produce more meat at the lowest prices, this is what it has come to. Would you be the one to buy meat at, say, triple the price, knowing it came from a happier cow? And even if you did, what stops corruption from setting in and having you pay higher prices for the same old meat with a different label? What a hole we have managed to dig for ourselves...

Clothing- I have 1 Fossil wallet, which has served me since December 1999. And some of the bits which hold my bamboo blades together are thick leather. Oh, and belt and shoes. Other than that, I've never considered wearing bits of animal about my person, other than woolly sweaters, which saved my hide in the bitter winters of China and Germany.

While the footing was quite shocking (particularly the Chinese fur farm) one is left wondering about the scale of the problem, that is, what I want to know is whether this activity is causing large-scale damage to ecosystems.

Entertainment- I totally consider bullfighting to be unnecessarily barbaric, and do confess to feeling a little glow of schadenfreude** on seeing the bull put one over the men in tights.

Research- Now on this part, I think Earthlings drifts into the realm of the naive. For instance, if, say, I wanted to test a facial soap for whether its irritating to the eye, is not the quickest way to determine whether this is so to squirt some into a living eye? Now, I really don't think all that many research labs have the benefit of enlisting the services of Johnny Knoxville or Steve O and gang, so when there's no way round testing on living tissue, what do you do? Make full use of criminals on death row? Are there not guidelines regarding the use of animals in research? Research grants are not provided to abuse animals on a whim!

In any case, I think the whole business of attacking animal testing is mixing up cause and effect. The long and short of it is, this section of the documentary did not have any impact on me whatsoever because it failed to cite any relevant numbers thus obfuscating the actual scale of the problem.

Now, the reason scale is particularly important with research is because use of animals in food, clothing and as pets is so ubiquitous that it's quite obvious that even small changes in attitudes will have tremendous effects on society in general. Entertainment isn't quite as common but reflective of base, ugly barbarity in the human animal, i.e. deep, dark desires to watch terrible violence inflicted on others or to lord our supremacy over others, whatever form it may take.

Research, on the other hand, is a cold, calculating affair. It is not carried out to satisfy any desires other than the desire for knowledge. Even if it was, rare indeed is the scientist who can afford to ask for grants to dismantle animals simply because he likes the noises they make when their heads explode. It seems to me that the focus would be better placed on the market forces driving the research, i.e. what is the research for? Cosmetics? Weapons? Genetics? Psychology? Neuroscience? Furthermore, to say that research on animals "tells us about animals, not humans" is a painfully ignorant statement worthy of that tiresome Word Salad-monger, Sarah Palin, who famously pooh-poohed research on fruit flies. Suffice to say, this knocked the credibility of this documentary down a few notches.

In sum, Earthlings struck me as a sharp and harsh and absolutely necessary reminder of one aspect of what it is we build the comforts of modern living on. I say one aspect, because, really, there are many, many other ways we exploit our environment or even other nations (human, of course) to feed the machine of capitalism. To what extent the issues raised in Earthlings are a problem to humanity is left fuzzy, thanks to a near total lack of numbers and statistics to bring things into perspective. However, even with the purely qualitative treament given by Earthlings, it is clear that humans as a species are trotting obliviously towards their own destruction. The manner in which we ravage the planet and the natives makes it blatantly obvious that we are a very, very long way indeed from achieving a stable equilibrium with Earth.

* 95 minutes long. I really don't recommend eating while watching this. Have a cup of tea.

** I fucking love that word. I shouldn't. But I do.

Akakkubi Ryu Kenjutsu*?! Is nothing sacred?!

Rhetorical question, of course. I, and no doubt many other jaded infidels around the world, am perfectly aware that the very concept of 'sacred' is just another convenient human delusion. But I do love martial arts and am especially partial to anything to do with kendo, i.e. anything to do with the arts of Japanese swordsmanship.

I love the history and culture behind the sword, the atmosphere of the dojo, the practical wisdom bought in countless duels and battlefields, the rush of crossing swords with strong opponents... And I love the fact that a Japanese dojo is a bastion of quiet**, graceful, secular spirituality in an increasingly stupid world.

As such, I do sympathize with the Japanese masters when they lament the corruption of their fighting arts as they spread overseas. Those who have observed the tides of cultural evolution will shrug and say that this is an inevitability, like the spawning of well over 300 styles of kung fu (wushu? Never was too clear on that point...) in China, some of which, to be brutally honest, have as much practical use as a knife made out of yoghurt. The fighting arts, and the accompanying code of ethics, become warped into new forms as they are passed from one person to the next. Without the crucible of combat to separate the chaff from the wheat, even the most freakishly absurd mutations of the original forms are allowed to survive, when ordinarily they shouldn't.

The days of storming dojos and bellowing challenges to rival masters are long gone, but the Japanese obsession with doing things properly (aizuchi) ensures the general purity and integrity of their martial arts and the accompanying philosophy. However, it seems that outside of Japan, karate has turned into something else. Once upon a time, kata was an austere, physically demanding form of moving meditation, a way to polish up technique and concentration.



Seems to me that in certain quarters, the focus has shifted somewhat:



Frankly, I'm not sure if this is karate. Wearing the pyjamas and the belt does not make the karateka. I enjoy seeing good tricks and hats off to them for such displays of skill, strength and agility and all but, I'm not sure this is karate.

Call me naive, but I came to the conclusion years ago that the only reason of merit to learn how to fight is so one never has to fight. In the arduous journey of learning the rigours of combat, one should come to understand that fighting is not a real solution to this world's problems, and that the very worst adversary you will ever face, the one who will defeat you before you've even raised a fist or sword, the one who will hound you, mock you, poison your mind, cripple you with doubt, whither you with apathy, tear at you constantly until your dying day is yourself.

I find many Eastern martial arts take great pains to teach this harsh and valuable lesson, hence I do feel a wee twinge of irritation at the sight of a McDojo. Even more so when said McDojo doesn't even bother making any effort towards authenticity, as evidenced by some so-called "karateka" who cannot even pronounce 'katana' or 'bokken' presuming to teach how to use a katana, which for some odd reason is missing it's tsuba (hand guard).





This charming practitioner of the ancient art of posing with a sword not only tries to pass off his antics as a genuine martial art, but does so in the name of a certain Jewish zombie king. It's also more than a bit telling that he doesn't even know the difference between a bokken and a shinai. For those of you who don't already know this, observe. This is a shinai (lit: Bamboo blade):

And these are bokken*** (Lit: Wooden sword):

Apparently, his school is called 'Yeshuas Ryu Karate'. The age old theist pastime of lying for [insert messiah of choice here] opens a new front. I think I'd rather stick to my name for it - Akakkubi Ryu Karate. If nothing else, at least the name is honest and gives a true and fair indication of exactly what these people are about.

Oh, and as an added slap in the face for people like me, Redneck-san up there has a whole series of videos all on Expert Village. Suffice it to say, I no longer trust a damn word from Expert Village.

Tres Tew, ah facepalm at yew...

* Literally:- Redneck Style Sword Technique. No that's not what they call themselves, I just made that one up. I think it kinda fits.

** Not literally, of course...

*** I got the white one for my birthday. Isn't it pretty? ^-^

Not amused this time, Mr Clarkson...

I was reading Jeremy Clarkson's thoughts on science and, as distasteful as I find them, I am forced to acknowledge that how he feels about science is not far off from the general public (mis)conception of science, which boils down to a woeful inability to answer these two questions:

What is science?

and

Why is science important?

I have devoted much of my readings in this life towards understanding the sciences, so the answers to such questions have been a part of me for a very long time. To be brutally honest, I cannot help but feel a twinge of anger at those with no understanding of such questions, and smugly blow them off with those most loathsome words: "Ignorance is bliss". I have vented most furiously on this blog at such people, and more. But then I have to remind myself that such thinking from those versed in the sciences is yet another reason why people get intimidated into the monstrous trap of anti-intellectualism in the first place. Anyway, it's good to reflect every so often on whether I myself have fallen into the trap of blindly adoring science.

So, my answers to the above questions, laid out in the simplest terms I can muster, are as follows:

What is science? - The most common error people (including Mr Clarkson) make regarding this question is mistaking science for technology. Handphones, digital watches, the Porsche Carrera GT and peach defuzzers are technology, though you are free to argue that the Porsche Carrera GT is art. Science, simply put, is the process of gaining knowledge through empirical* means. It is embodied in the scientific method, which is:

1. Query -Identify the phenomenon that needs explaining.
   
2. Hypothesis - Formulate a hypothesis explaining said phenomenon.
   
3. Experiment - Devise an experiment to test the hypothesis.
   
4. Theory - Based on experimental results, formulate a theory governing the behaviour of said phenomenon. (If you're lucky, clever, or both, your hypothesis at Step 2 won't be far off.)
   
5. Testing - Test the theory against the phenomenon.
   

The thing to bear in mind here is that Step 5 never stops. We keep our eyes and minds open, and if something should crop up proving the theory wrong, the theory must be revised, or even thrown out in it's entirety, making way for new theories to be devised, and perhaps edging a few steps closer to the truth.

Thus, science is a means by which our knowledge of the universe is gained and constantly refined, that is, evolves. Of course, the reality of it isn't quite so perfectly hunky dory, but, as any decent engineer knows, you learn more from your mistakes.

Why is science important? - The answer to this question is twofold.

The first part of the answer is very mundane, but nonetheless extremely important and it is simply that science works. Science, by virtue of it's self-correcting nature, is an unstoppable juggernaught, an ever growing snowball of knowledge. As mentioned above, errors are not an issue, they are a learning opportunity.

The second part of the answer is that science represents an ideal. One might as well ask: Why is truth important? It is the child of humanity's noblest intellectual passions. It is the unflinching, unwavering desire to learn and understand. It is fearlessness in the face of the unknown. It is tearing down the barriers of delusion and reaching out to grasp reality. It is the humility and courage required to admit and learn from your mistakes. It is a shield against the hypocrites, snake-oil salesmen and bullshit-mongers of this world.

Search for and protect truth. Question everything. Hold nothing sacred. And expose falsehood without remorse. It is a powerful, and sometimes harsh, ideal to live up to, and I would be terribly naive to think it to be the reality of the scientific community. Scientists are human, too! But then is that not the point of an ideal? To be a distant star for us to reach for, even though we know we may never attain it? In science we find an ideal with real benefits for humanity. Knowledge. Understanding. These are real. Not childish promises of a blessed afterlife, but let's not drift in that direction.

Anyway, there you have it. My answers to 2 questions which are close to my heart. I should state now that even I don't think science is the be-all and end-all to healthy living, but a small measure of understanding of science** most certainly helps.

Why does kitty always pick this point in my blog posts to forcefully remind me she wants to be stroked?

* The Japanese/Chinese version of this word is actually very descriptive: 経験主義 (Keiken shugi). A literal translation into English yields "experience ideology ".

** Of which, if the Angels & Demons movie is any indication, Dan Brown has none whatsoever.

Quick thought on Capitalism

Just recording a little something that just popped into my head so I can come back to it later:

Would capitalism work in a closed system (i.e. assume a nation with no external trade at all) with zero population growth and total abolition of interest? And by no interest I really mean NO interest whatsoever, none of that Islamic banking pussyfooting about the issue by calling interest something else, mind you.

I think about sustainability a lot, and it seems to me that the first serious step towards sustainability would be to halt population growth. If we're going to get everybody to achieve a reasonable standard of living, it would make things a hell of a lot easier if there weren't more mouths to feed with each passing day, no?

Anyway, I'm-a leave this here for now. Hope I remember to come back to this...

Wanna know Japanese culture and history? Start with the Yen

An interesting conversation came up in Jap class today, but alas, it was cut short, mianly by my atrocious inability to express myself adequately in Japanese. So, as a quick break from pondering the depressing inevitabilities of the Culture War, I'd like to quickly record my thoughts on the matters discussed, partly so I can come back and see if I can say them in Japanese later, partly for the benefit of classmates bored enough to come and read my blog.

The matter of Japan's cultural idiosyncrasy came up in class, and all were at a loss to explain why Japan is so damn... well, Japanese. You know, the sheer open-mindedness, the intense focus on etiquette, the incredible work ethic, the high pressure lifestyle... stuff like that. So, me being me, I brought up the matter of Bushido. The teacher pointed out that throughout Japan's history, the warrior class had always been a teeny tiny minority, and thus were in no position to significantly affect the long-term cultural evolution of Japan. And here I knew instantly that my teacher had not read Nitobe Inazo's book. Alas, my counter argument fell flat on its face, for here I did find the limits of my Jap vocabulary. So, what follows is what I wanted to say at the time, but couldn't.

It does not matter that the vast majority of Japan's population comprised peasant farmers and craftsmen during the age of samurai. What matters is that there existed samurai to uphold the ideal of Bushido. Those who lived the ideal, however few, would live forever in the stories told of their deeds. Bushido would survive, not as a code of ethics followed to the letter by every strata of society, but as a distant ideal, practiced by heroes, real or fictitious, a faraway moral peak that everyone else aspires to. This is one way in which Bushido filters down even to the lowliest peasant, as told in much greater detail in Nitobe's book, which seems very plausible to me.

What English-speaking boy hasn't heard the tales of Arthur and his knights, then fantasized of performing great feats of valour and gallantry with sword and shield? Is there a Chinese speaker on Earth who has never heard of Guan Yu, Yue Fei or Wu Song? On the Japanese side, who in Honshu knows nothing of Uesugi Kenshin, Takeda Shingen or Chuushingura? All these stories are centuries old, and have captured enough imaginations to leave an impact on the cultural mores of the societies that birthed them. Now, in the 21st year of Heisei, there are no bushi, but the very shadow of Bushido is sufficient to keep Japan a breed apart from every other modern nation.

Bushido lives, but not in the form stipulated in Hagakure. It is manifest in various aspects of Japanese society. It is clearest, perhaps, in the spiritual aspect of Japanese martial arts, in such concepts as zanshin, rei or fudoushin. It is apparent elsewhere, in etiquette, in the respect held for learning, in their sense of pride... I see these things, and though maybe some parallels may be found in other cultures, it is the confluence of these aspects of Japanese culture that makes it uniquely Japanese, and it appears to me that these aspects all find their roots in Bushido.

This is NOT to say that Japanese culture and Bushido are one and the same! It's an easy trap to fall into, but to be sure, there are many things that are uniquely Japanese that have little to no connection with Bushido - Noh, ikebana, Kiyohime, Momotaro and a taste for raw meat, to name but a few. In bringing up Bushido, I merely hold it up as a word which best describes the single greatest factor that makes Japan Japanese.

Of course, I'm still an empiricist, and hence am very much open to the suggestion that I could be completely wrong and, as always, am most welcoming of any comments or criticisms of my observations. Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a litter box that requires my immediate attention...

If you haven't picked a side, then you're part of the battlefield (Part 2)

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. - Ephesians, 6:12

Sounds good, doesn't it? Sounds like even way back when, "St" Paul had his own bone to pick with government corruption, perhaps a wealthy and powerful merchant, that is, capitalist pig, or two, eh? Just goes to show that back then, people were at least as stupid, simple-minded and naive as they are now.

I have some difficulty with the concepts of good and evil. One man's good has a way of being another man's evil. You know, like how one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. When you're young and stupid, the world seems so black and white. Looking back, I can't help but laugh at how I enjoyed those silly old 80s action movies. The beautiful people were obviously the good guys, and no matter how many bad guys they faced, everyone knew that good always wins in the end. Being the bad guy meant you were either a hopelessly malcoordinated, cockeyed meat puppet waiting to be killed, or a diabolically powerful evil genius whose fatal flaw is, for some reason, gloating far more than any reasonable human being would. It was a Captain Kirk world of shoot-the-ugly-ones, shag-the-hot-ones.

Then, assuming, of course, that you keep your eyes and ears open, you see a bit more of the real world. We find that most of the black and white doesn't actually exist in the real world. And that what remains is, naturally, grey. Even if we were to take the broad view that evil is "knowing better and doing worse", we never see in real life evil done for the sake of evil, like some Saturday morning cartoon villain*. There's always something behind it - mental illness, the profit motive, escalation of an existing conflict, and perhaps most insidious of them all, delusion...

Dichotomizing the world to fit ideals of good and evil is childish and stupid. Deep in the heart of the very worst conflicts mankind has known are simple-minded fools who could only see the black and white, who divide the world into Us and Them and what we forget, all too often, is that these people whom we so quickly label as tyrants and psychopaths are backed, every step of the way by mobs of perfectly ordinary people, like you and me (minus the ability to think critically) who bought into the bullshit.

Bullshit is relentless. Anyone living in any modern society is mired in it, every day of his life. As any marketing executive, clergyman or politician would know, making up bullshit is much, much easier than disproving it. The good empiricist is, for the most part, shielded from it all by the unfailing power of empiricism and a skeptical mind.

Perhaps it seems cold or soulless, maybe even elitist. The empiricist looks upon many things that many people hold very dear indeed with disdain, most notably faith. In subjecting everything we perceive to the stringent standards of empirical truth, we cut through the tides of bullshit, and see far more of the real world than would more credulous minds. This is a double-edged sword.

On one hand, the observable universe has a great many wonders to offer. There are few intellectual exercises as beautiful and rewarding as tracing how the relatively simple mechanism of evolution by natural selection gives rise to the myriad forms of life on Earth. It is humbling to learn the lives of atoms, and of the terrific forces that came together to form this planet and its brethren, and their stately procession around our happy yellow sun. It is gratifying to see the scientific method put to use, to see new technologies emerge to push up our quality of life up by a couple of notches.

On the other hand, it is disheartening to see just how much our species has devoted to the creation and perpetuation of bullshit. It is sad to see young minds filled with myths and prejudice, to be taught to talk to imaginary entities and to learn to hate anyone they find talking to a different imaginary entity. It is appalling to see a scripture full of inconsistencies and outright lies held up as the gospel truth to the exclusion of empirically gained knowledge. It is utterly infuriating to watch people wreak large scale suffering upon each other, for no real reason other than mass wilful ignorance. And on a more down-to-earth note, it's painfully tedious to wade through the meaningless tripe that chokes our mass media.

I've heard any number of believers say it takes strength to be faithful, that it takes a certain kind of power to believe with all your might in something for which there is no evidence. To me, that is simply a child turning a word around to shoehorn the world into a narrow, narrow mind. Faith is craven cowardice. It is letting the animal in us triumph over the discipline and vigilance necessary to maintain a skeptical worldview. It is succumbing to a base desire to want to believe in comforting lies. It is opening the floodgates to unlimited delusion. This is not a silly game of semantics. This is putting denial in the spotlight, showing it for the wretched little beast that it is.

I for one have no illusions about the Culture War. However strident the voices of Reason, there are simply far too many easily absorbed delusions out there. There are too many sheeple, and for every one who finally succumbs to clear thinking, many, many more will leap in to take his place, fueling the bullshit engine that drags humanity ever closer to environmental meltdown.

More to come in the next post in this series....

* Or at least the Saturday morning cartoon villains that I'm used to, e.g. Cobra Commander, Mumm-Ra, Skeletor... Ooh, my age is showing now...

Something Serious from Something Awful

Here's an interesting change of pace from the SA Forum goons. Gaze thee upon the shit humans will put each other through in the name of profit. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but, assuming even half of this is true, there are a lot of men in suits out there that the world could do without.

If you haven't picked a side, then you're part of the battlefield (Part 1)

There's a certain intellectual glamour to the idea of a Culture War, and, me being me, I led myself to wonder if wasn't simply a figment of the imagination; a fiction, created by those who would claim to take responsibility for popular culture into their own hands, for any number of reasons, whether it be out of altruism, hubris or plain old lust for power. In this light, one can see how it is in the interests of certain outspoken charlatans to perpetuate the myth of a culture war, to fabricate unseen enemies eroding the morals of the common man so they can set themselves up as the bastions of righteousness against the insidious influence of a "radical Left aided by a cultural elite that detests Christianity and finds Christian moral tenets reactionary and repressive".

It seems to me that there is in fact a Culture War, but it's scope and scale reaches far beyond the petty visions of Buchanan or Bush. It reaches deep into every society, or at least ones with the affluence necessary to support an intellectual elite, and has raged for as long as such societies have existed. Oddly enough, I'm not actually sure if it can really be termed a 'war'. But maybe that's just my being averse to using the word 'war', having seen it wielded far too often as a blunt instrument of cheap propaganda; War on Drugs, War on Terror, War on Dengue*... Anyway, the reason I'm not so sure 'Culture War' is an appropriate term is this: Is it still a war if situational forces make it an inevitability?

To me, war suggests an aggressor of some sort. For instance, if I took a bunch of gladiators, split them into two teams, then left them to it, that doesn't strike me as war. War can break out for any number of reasons, but there generally isn't an overarching situational presence pushing two sides into conflict. This so-called "Culture War" seems to me to be an unavoidable friction caused by the intellectual gap between different strata of society. On one side are the intellectual elite, the best and brightest, who see the big picture and try their utmost to warn society of the dangers ahead. On the other are those who seek to keep their fellow men in the dark, whether in the name of profit, power, or simply because they are compelled by a delusion which they happen to subscribe to. And the battlefield is made of the simpler, impressionable minds in between.

Capitalism further exacerbates this, because it's in the best interests of those with a product to sell for as many people as possible to be stupid and gullible, hence the ceaseless efforts of marketing executives to spam our lives with as much useless garbage as possible, to weave the ridiculous illusion that our lives are made that much better by this handbag or that handphone, that the personal lives of celebrities are actually worth knowing about, that your worth as a person is determined by the petty trinkets you gird your bodies with... But, while this accelerates the decay of the majority's intellect, it also pushes enough money around the economy that greater levels of affluence are achieved, thus giving the intellectual elite to that little bit more resources. Demand for flashier technology pushes engineers and scientists to ever greater heights of expertise. Capitalism makes the smart smarter and the dumb dumber.

But, it takes a lot of dumb to produce a little smart, and when you couple this state of affairs with democracy, well... Is that not what how we have come to be where we are? An exasperated intelligentsia, struggling to be heard, doing everything in their power to make sure the mistakes of the past are not repeated, pitted against the masses. The credulous masses, played like fools by snake-oil salesmen, faith healers, clergymen, populist and anti-intellectualist movements, sensationalist media, well-meaning but woefully naive hippies...

In every age, the intellectual elite have gazed out upon the masses, pondered and despaired. Yet somehow, despite all this world throws at us and, more amazingly, despite the horrors we inflict upon each other, we bumble through. Some may draw optimism from that, but I'm not so sure. In ages past, thanks to limitations of communication and transportation technology, when a civilization made a catastrophic mistake**, it was fairly localized, and the civilization would vanish, get consumed by neighbours, or some such. And in the age of spear and sword, there were far fewer of us then, so even the most cataclysmic wars then, were merely insignificant squabbles compared to the horrors of 20th century war.

But this is the age of the internet. When one big and powerful nation messes up, everybody suffers. You need only look at the stock indices across the globe to see just how closely we're all connected, whether we like it or not. This is also the age of the nuke. It takes one war, one real war to scour this planet clean of human life, or at least blast us centuries into the past. This is not an age whereby humanity can simply "bumble through". Who knows what the next great mistake will cost us all? Post-apocalyptic futures make for compelling fiction but I wouldn't want to live in one.

I'll continue this later, I think... This is gettting longer than I'd anticipated.


* A uniquely Malaysian thing, I think.

** Think Rome, Easter Island, the Anasazi...

Meanwhile, in the world of medicine...

There was a time when I would have felt at least some measure of righteous indignation on finding out about the dastardly deeds of Bernard Madoff. USD 60 billion is nothing to sneeze at, and that kind of money could have done a lot of good, especially now, in a world where there's really never enough. These days, however, such things feel... normal. They feel like the status quo, that a Bernard Madoff lurks wherever there's an abundance of gullible people easily tempted by easy money. And that's the awful tragedy of it, I suppose, that such things have become "normal".

So it came as no real surprise to me when, in the field of medicine, another unscrupulous wretch was uncovered. The URL says it all, really:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-medical-madoff-anesthestesiologist-faked-data

That having been said, I am irked by this, which is to say, this pisses me off a lot more than the Madoff case. Why? Oh, where to start...

I'd like to think that medicine is a science. I find it comforting to believe that the body of medical knowledge is acquired through means empirical, i.e. placebo-controlled trials, peer-reviewed journals, checks and balances, etc. Matters of health are close to everyone's hearts* so an insane amount of time and money and hope are invested in medical research. Especially money, as Ben Goldacre points out. So it's a harsh and unsettling reminder to all just how badly the medical profession has been compromised by the profit motive when we see someone like Reuben rise to prominence and bamboozle everyone with falsified data and unscrupulous practices. Forging signatures, for fuck's sake!

So what does it mean for the profession when such filth as Dr Reuben turns up? Obviously there is a serious flaw in the system, and this is no small matter, given that the word of one prominent doctor can, at the same time, earn said doctor hundreds of thousands of dollars and cost millions of lives. And it doesn't stop there, mind you. Even after the perpetrator is caught, the profession is dealt a serious blow to its credibility, sending sod knows how many thousands of the paranoid and gullible scurrying off for alternative treatments. You know the type. Crystals, homeopathy, laying of hands, quacks, maybe some magic ointment from the local shaman**. How many more lives do you suppose that will cost?

And it ripples out still further. Medicine, to the uninitiated, is, like many sciences, an impenetrable bastion of diabolically complex terminology, and, by association, a failure in the field of medicine is a failure for all of science. Because of the taint of one scumbag, the boffins are all that little bit less trustworthy. One more justification for the anti-intellectualist, the Luddite, the religious conservative...

Perhaps you may think that people aren't that stupid. I think not. Maybe it could just be because I'm in Malaysia. I could walk into any shopping mall*** and rope in, say, 100 people, and safely bet that less than 5 of them could tell you, in the simplest terms, what is the scientific method. I'd expect very much the same rate of scientific literacy in, say, an accounting firm, Republican states and damn near any house of worship you can name.

This whole Dr Reuben debacle is indicative of an awful failure at so many levels it's embarassing to look at them. Because the medical establishment failed to police itself, his papers got published. Because society fails to police it's corporations, conflicts of interest arise within the medical profession. Because of failures in the education system, the greater part of the populace is ignorant, gullible and scientifically illiterate.

And this is in the USA, mind you, where, despite the best efforts of the Republicans, groundbreaking research is still being carried out in many fields of science. Can you imagine how deeply the cancer of ignorance spreads in Malaysia, where the highest one can aspire to is come out on top of a scrum of vapid, inane, consumerist cubicle-jockeys? One need only turn on the TV or the radio! Verily, our air is abuzz with the very best (and utterly tasteless) efforts of our unspeakably crass marketing executives. If our government has failed to educate, it is they who perpetuate into adulthood the intellectual wasteland put there by our textbooks.

So, thank you very much, Dr Reuben. Don't misunderstand my meaning, you are still a 24-carat cunt, and deserving of the very worst tortures imaginable for your crimes against humanity, but your crimes are a sharp reminder to us all, that we can do better, and that we must do better.

* And every other part of their anatomy, ahahaha...

** Still plenty of those here in Malaysia, alas. See, this is why many foreigners (including my Jap teacher) think people still live in trees over here.

*** Except maybe for the wonderfully geek infested Low Yat Plaza.

Quick reminder for Malaysians...

... simply because this is something that really, really shouldn't be forgotten, as BN and the local papers would like us to believe. In 2002, there was a murder, a murder most foul. Since then, the culprits were found and, being of sufficiently high rank in the BN government, scapegoats were found, a few well-placed threats were made, key witnesses conveniently vanished and a few pairs of bloodstained hands are walking away scot-free. The story to date, in all it's diabolical detail, on Asia Sentinel*.

* Because Malaysian newspapers evidently don't have the balls to do any real reporting on anything more significant than some cranky old fart's opinion on naming trees. Get a clue, foo', there's no such thing as contempt for an institution as anachronistic as monarchy.

In other news...

The Good:
Monarchy doing something useful? w00t! Props to King Abdullah!
As we all now know, pot makes you swim faster. I suppose it also helps if, like Phelps, you happen to be genetically engineered to be the supreme ultimate swimmer. But fear not, the playing field will be evened, because science prevails! Man, those things need to be in the Olympics.

The Bad:
This is not a happy time for pirates the world over. Notably in Beijing, and, horror of horrors, Sweden! Oh, teh noes! Piratebay, where are you??

The Ugly:
A good, if somewhat depressing, summary of the present state of Malaysia.

And since I'm here, the funny:
Books I'll probably never read, though I'm ashamed to say I do have a copy of manga Hamlet. It's painfully bad.
By the way, who's old enough to remember this?

Ramblings of a White Witch sympathizer

I never liked C S Lewis. I think his books are rubbish, especially Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. While I will freely concede that he is indeed a skilled writer with a talent for creating immersive fantasy worlds you can lose yourself in for a few hours, I am not in the slightest bit impressed with his sense of narrative structure, and found the whole business of "have faith, and the Lion will come and save everybody on a minor technicality which was conveniently overlooked by an apparently inept (though rather hawt in the movie) nemesis" sorely lacking in storytelling skillz. I don't know about you, but I find something deeply unsatisfying about an epic struggle between good and evil where victory is won against all odds by the better rules lawyer, bolstered by a dose of that most convenient of all deus ex machina devices, magic.

Another thing really ticks me off about C S Lewis - his role as Christian apologist. At the age of 30, he gave up on rational thought and turned from atheism to the Church of England and has been a favourite poster boy ever since. I attended the Alpha Course while in university to satisfy my curiousity re: Christianity. It's very telling of the intellectual bankruptcy of Christianity if the best they can do is shove C S Lewis' lack of resolve in my face. Even more so if the best argument he could come up with is the argument from morality.

I had just gotten acquainted with C S Lewis' Universal Morality last night, over a pint in the pub (which, as we know, is the only real way to discuss philosophy) which appeared to me to be trying bang a fifth wheel onto a car. For those who don't know about it, Lewis basically argues that the apparent manifestation of certain "universal" moral traits suggests that a higher being is behind the creation of said traits. In his own words:

These then are the two points that I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

Oh, the pomposity... The moment this argument was laid out to me, I was led to doubt. Call me a cynic, but I catch a whiff of bullshit anytime anyone talks about a "Law of Nature" from anything other than the standpoint of mathematics and/or the physical sciences. For the sake of my being able to keep my lunch down, we'll stop abusing the phrase "Law of Nature" in this childish manner and stick to calling it by it's appropriately fanciful name, universal morality.

Now, there's any number of ways to rip this silly idea to shreds*, I went with Occam's Razor, looking at the development of our social norms from the evolutionary standpoint to show that there's simply no need for the concept of a universal morality to create the illusion of it's existence.

Think of these social norms, these unwritten rules of behaviour, as memes. Just like genes, what it takes for memes to survive and prosper, the three magic words, fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Does it not follow that, of the possible rules and rituals for a society to live by, there is a small subset of rules that serve to help said society survive and prosper? Other rules don't do so well or simply do not really serve the greater good of the societies in which they are practiced, e.g. Female circumcision, polygamy/polyandry**, use of phallocarps***, ferret legging, etc. As such, such practices, though they still exist, are viewed as bizarre or downright wrong by the rest of us, who haven't been held back wasting time and resources on them.

As history takes it's course, we find that, of the original set of societies, each with their own sets of memes governing behaviour, some will rise, some will fall, and a few will prosper. Those that prosper will have the memes accepted as "right" by the largest number of people - the utilitarian ideal given form by the forces of evolution by natural selection. The unquestioning masses living by these memes will have their sense of morality defined by these memes. Many individuals will become those gormless conservatives who will tell you that certain things are morally wrong "because it's just wrong". Be that as it may, we see here that what we take for granted as right or wrong are simply illusions. What is real is that what we call right or wrong are simply the right mix of memes governing behaviour that allow a society to be stable enough to survive and prosper. And at no point is it ever necessary for a sky fairy to plant such notions, i.e. universal morality, into our heads.

Consider the anthropic principle. Take a dozen men, have them each pray to their own deities, then shoot them all in the heads with a dozen guns but only eleven bullets. Somebody's going to feel he was obviously praying to the right god, but the fact of the matter is that the praying had sodall to do with his survival. In the same way, the notion of a universal morality, while cute and , in a way, appealing to simple-minded, insecure people who fear the cold touch of existential angst, is a completely unnecessary fiction.

Now, the brevity of my argument here is owed to the assumption that whoever reads it has some measure of understanding of the mechanism of evolution by natural selection and, of course, a little about memes. Alas, the bloke I was discussing this with last night, does not. So meh. This is just me recording my thoughts on the matter for my own benefit, because I'm rather pleased that I managed to come up with this on a gut full of awesome Thai food, Carlsberg and Hoegaarden. So much for getting my chubby arse back under 82kg.... :-(

Addendum: I just read that again and realised I'm being a bit harsh to Mr Lewis. Public understanding of evolutionary biology has made leaps and bounds (well, except among Republicans, of course) since C S Lewis' time, and his position, while still wrong, is based upon an ignorance of matters scientific quite typical of the period. The point still stands, though, so I'm not bothering with editing the above post more I already have.

* Here's a nice one that Google popped up pretty quick.

** Not really a good idea with a species equipped with all the biological hardware to produce males and females in more or less even numbers.

*** Go on, Google it. You know you want to.

Shock! Horror! Eh?

I just laughed when I saw this. Long story short, if you cannae be arsed to clicky the link:

- Malaysians suck in bed. No, not literally! I mean, Malaysians can't get no satisfaction. 2 out of 3 men and 3 out of 4 women are dissatisfied with their sex lives, apparently, placing them number 6 of 13 countries surveyed in the Asia-Pacific Sexual Health and Overall Wellness Survey, conducted by Pfizer.

- Singaporeans are even worse off, at number 8. Nya, nya, nyaaaa...

This didn't strike me as terribly surprising, seeing as the general impression one gets of the two countries is that Malaysia bears the unfortunate taint of widespread theistic religion, bringing with it the usual intellectual consequences and, of course, sexual repression. And Singapore, hell, everyone knows Singaporeans are generally too stressed out trying to earn moar money to enjoy some sweet lovin'.

What really surprised me was who was at the bottom - Japan! JAPAN?! zomg wtf r u kidding me?? From the country that brought us THE most diabolical pornography on this side of the planet? The same people who regularly redefine Rule 34 with every new manga? The nation that tried* to outdo 2 Girls 1 Cup? Where you can hire a woman of negotiable affection dressed up as Hello Kitty? Where you can take a train ride through THIS?

You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking it's like... wasabi.

At first you take a little, then you get used to it, so you take a little more... Then by the time you're say, 50, you've got to check underneath your wasabi to make sure the sushi's still there. Same thing with Japan and sex. They've been so open and had so much of it that what it takes to satisfy them defies normal human imagination. Well, that's the closest thing to an explanation I can come up with.

If anyone out there comes up with something better, I'm willing to hear it. For now, my cats are in dire need of a bath...

* And succeeded. I really shouldn't bring up something like this just after having lunch. Don't ask me for details.

Mysteries...

... that I'll probably never know the answer to. Starting with this picture:


1) How does this man pee? Is using urinals even an option anymore?

2) How does he poop? Does he need help? Upon sitting, does he completely engulf the toilet seat? How does he wipe his nether regions?

3) How does he even put his clothes on? Can one, with a physique like that, actually reach down to tie one's shoelaces?

4) How does one reach this unfortunate state of being? Is it really just a case of too many calories + too little exercise? Is it an unfortunate accident of genetics? What do people like this actually do for a living?

5) Is it even physically possible for this man to engage in sexual intercourse?

If anyone out there has any answers, do tell, coz I don't think I'm going to be pursuing this line of inquiry any further...

Travels on the Net

I often tell people I mostly live on the Net, and sometimes they ask what on earth is it I do there*. So here, I'm-a bring you a wee slice of what I wolf down each day:

Chun Li cures melanoma! I kid. The researcher's name is known by civilized people (that is, those who actually know where a Chinese surname is supposed to go) as Li Chun. What actually caught my eye was the bit about using targeted nanoparticles, which is always exciting.

Bill Gates unleashes mosquito swarm into crowd! Hokay, perhaps an exaggeration. It was a wee jar. And they were clean, i.e. no interesting diseases on them. I'm sorry, I'm Malaysian, skeetoes are a fact of life round here, I snap 'em out of the air with chopsticks and, as such, am not impressed in the slightest by such a gesture. Still, props to the guy for chucking USD169 million towards a good cause. Epic win.

Try my kung fu! I've been teaching myself how to use sai off Youtube, mostly from this chap here. Yep, I know, it's not even vaguely the same as learning from the dojo but exercise is exercise. I'm not going to pretend for even a moment that I'm a capable combatant with sai, but hey, I find performing the kata relaxing, and a good workout. Each of those things weigh about as much as my heaviest bokken so this is proving most useful for building up the strength and stamina I need for my eventual return to kendo. If you like the look of sai, do check this out for supreme sai l33tness. I personally like it better in hakama. As for self defense, you want self defense? Here's your self-defense.

Don't try his kung fu! In the search for nice kata to copy and practice, one also finds a fair number of deviants. And by deviants I mean facepalmingly pretentious little goits who take a perfectly decent martial art, stick in some cute but utterly meaningless flourishes and then try to sell it as a martial art. Like Ultimate Fail over here. However, there's something to be said for guys who actually do have the mad skills and decide to break the mold to take a martial art and make a performing art out of it. The results are kinda pretty, actually.

Happy birthday to Darwin... but fuck the Associated Press for having the gall to suggest that evolution is "in controversy" anywhere other than in the deluded little minds of Creotards.

Malaysian politics = epic fail! In case you didn't know already. On 8 March 2008, the Opposition finally made it's voice known, breaking the ruling party's 2/3 majority in the Dewan Rakyat. w00t. Still, I'll say that I presently feel more than a bit vindicated for not voting. Why? Because democracy in this country (indeed in many countries) is a fucking joke, the simple reason being that democracy being what it is, it serves the utilitarian ideal of maximum happiness for the maximum number of people if and only if the voting populace is reasonably enlightened and well informed enough to choose in favour of what serves the greater good. If, however, the greater bulk of the voting populace are selfish, petty and gullible** then democracy simply becomes shorthand for tyranny of the masses, with power going to the best salesman. In Malaysia, democracy means trying to choose between the least of all evils. Thanks to Malaysian politics, our newspapers are borderline worthless rags, fit only to wrap up the morning's nasi lemak. So, where to go for decent news?

Malaysia Today is pretty much as good as it gets, really. RPK's for the most part neutral, unbiased and has a sense of justice which I mostly agree with. The only point of contention in which I seriously oppose RPK is his stance as a Muslim apologist. Most of my regular readers (all three of them) know by now that, like many who bear the 'A' on their blogs, I view all the Abrahamic religions as a cancer that needs to be eradicated. Of course, one could do worse than to look to a decent historian for political commentary. My uncles inform me that the political blogs also make for good reading. I'm not convinced. Some of those bloggers might do well to act their age for a bit.

Whatever the case may be, recent events have shown that the 8 March victory has achieved nothing other than to take the mudslinging to new depths. Meanwhile, over at the KLSE...


Oh, yes, I do indeed think that certain people have better things to do than fuck about over who gets to wear the big hat in the state next door. Petty little bastards.

And when it all gets too much, one would do well to remember that, no matter how dire things look, no matter how much this world gets you down, there exist a good number of reasons to smile and hope. Here's one:



And that's it from me for now. That cat's starting to harass the Roomba again...

* And by there I mean here. Um.

** e.g. Republicans, anyone who takes the Star's political commentary seriously and 90% of those who commented on this article posted in Malaysia Today, among others. To their credit, at least Republicans for the most part have the decency to stfu and deal with it until the next election.

Remember what Ghandi said about eye for an eye?

I just watched Waltz with Bashir* and, as any decent movie should do, it had me thinking. For those who haven't watched, it's about the Lebanese War and the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. The story was told in the form of an Israeli film director who served with the Israeli armed forces at the time and, 20 years later, is trying to recall where he was on the day of the massacre. In the course of the movie, he goes to speak with various friends who also served with the Israeli army at the time of the massacre, and finds that many of them, too, have lost much of their memories of that day.

What struck me most about the movie was perhaps the humanity of it. The question it had me asking most was: What is a soldier? I've dabbled in martial arts long enough to understand and appreciate one-on-one combat, but watching Waltz with Bashir, it feels light years away from the chaos and horror of being a soldier in wartime. What I have trouble grasping is what it means to be one of many standing against another enemy to fight and die, but for what? As an empiricist, I find it tremendously absurd to die or, worse yet, to kill for one's beliefs, for precisely the same reason as Bertrand Russell: What if I'm wrong?

Having grown up on many mindless 80s Hollywood movies, I, for a very long time, had a pretty distorted view of what a soldier should be. For most of my childhood I was under the impression that a good soldier had to be unwaveringly patriotic and have no real skill other than being able to pull a trigger and shout, maybe pose a bit, at the same time, and just how good you were was easily quantified by one's body count. Nowadays I look at Rambo and just shake my head at the mind-numbing absurdity of it, knowing that that kind of soldiering only happens in silly videogames.

I have very little doubt in my mind that the Israel-Palestine conflict is not really based on religion. I don't think I can even begin to understand who or what started it - everytime I try it seems the chain of grudges stretches further and further back, so now we're left with a situation where it doesn't matter who struck first, that first transgression is but a miniscule speck compared with the mountains of atrocities each side has accumulated against the other. Each sides' justification for continued aggression is simply reciprocation. Sadly, it still doesn't look like either side is just going to go: "Right, sod this. We'll stop if you stop, alright? And screw the flags, we'll ditch both of them and make up a new one for both of us, deal?" But I digress.

It was interesting to see the various perspectives on the war, to see what it made of the people who touched it, to see what bearing weapons and being pushed to face an elusive and devious enemy made of men. Some, like the narrator, were still their plain old selves behind the flak jacket and carbine. They fired their guns not to kill, but because they didn't want to die. They thought not to destroy an enemy, but simply to go home as soon as possible. Faced with the chaos and horror of it, they found themselves lost and stumbling, their own sense of reason crumbling in the face of the madness around them.

Others, like the Phalangites, fell oh, so far. As depicted in the movie, the Phalangites were a textbook example of situational forces making monsters of men. The Us and Them mentality. The mentality of dehumanizing the infidel enemy. The anonymity of being men with uniforms, instruments of the state. The empowering influence of having a gun in hand. And, perhaps most deadly of all, the paranoia of knowing that guerillas or suicide bombers may be hiding among any one of the luckless people of Sabra and Shatila.

As the Phalangites went into the refugee camps to do their dire deeds, the Israeli army simply watched. At that point in the movie the words of Edmund Burke did pop into my head:

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

And when you see the videoclips of the aftermath, that's when you understand why the incident simply dropped out of the heads of the narrator and his brothers-in-arms. Who wants to be the one with that on their heads? To be the ones who stood by, weapons in hand and did nothing while unforgivable atrocities were committed right in front of their faces? I doubt very much I'd be strong enough to still be me, having witnessed something like that firsthand.

It brought to mind all those videos on Youtube, CCTV footage of people in, say, the queue at McD's, where some guy beats the everloving shit out of another, while perhaps a dozen or so people stand by and watch.

Who knows what other, similar tales have unfolded, on that scrap of land, fought over for as long as recorded history? I really wonder sometimes if, as I saw posted on Yahoo! Answers once, the only solution is to nuke the entire region off the map and leave it so irradiated it can't support any human life at all. Like an angry mother separating squabbling children: "I don't care who started it, if you don't stop, I'm going to end it."

Well, hell, that's my tuppence on the matter. I've no solutions, but Waltz with Bashir is a visually stunning movie that's well worth a watch. Of course, seeing as it tells the story from an Israeli perspective, that most certainly means it will never be shown in Malaysia, no thanks to certain irrational anti-Semites. But hey, that doesn't stop the pirates! Go watch. Think. Know. Now if you'll excuse me, my cats need a bath...

* Rotten Tomatoes gives it 95%. You MUST watch this, if you haven't already.