So I haven’t posted since the Malay O Levels, but I can proudly declare that it’s not because I’ve been lazy, but busy! Not the being-responsible busy or the dang-I’m-busy busy, but the happy kind of busy. So in defiance of the title (for now anyway) here’s what I’ve been happily busy with:
Planning for a cycling trip! YES I KNOW ITS PLANNING but buying bikes is a very time-consuming and expensive affair; I've got a mountain bike but a folding bike is more convenient. Luckily a nice uncle is lending his 
Yes, pretty ridiculous but its not just because I got sick of teachers saying I was skinny - I just wanted to see if I could do it. Going strong for two weeks already, if you can call it that.. One downside is eating more meat - I went veg for about a year (thus skinniness) and I really don't like the taste of it.
Finally watched an NC16 movie that was worth it. Twice! It deserves its cult hit status, and I love just the way the story flows – you know where its going, where it ends, but the process of walking and moving and loving is so beautiful you forget there is an end until you reach it. And isn’t that how first loves are supposed to be? Watched 2 more movies also, Tintin and Happy Feet 2, but this was the highlight.
Went to the Titanic exhibition at the Artscience Museum with a friend.. the Marina Bay area + Sentosa is really scenic nowadays, you get the feeling Singapore is really upping the game tourism wise - world class. Explored the East/South side of Singapore on a few occasions too.
And a few more – birthdays, SITEX, staying at Resorts World.. can’t believe it’s been only less than two weeks since Os. Oh and selling tickets at the HDBs with Cool People.
And finally I’m flying off to New York tomorrow for two weeks!! Going to be an immersion programme at Dalton School and staying at a host family’s house in Manhattan. I feel pretty nervous staying at someone’s house like that, but they seem really nice from the email they sent.
Alright so back on topic, I’ve mentioned the website before: http://www.snotm.com/, abbreviated from Stuff No One Told Me, and it’s very similar in theme and style to Things We Forget, but the art style is a gem. And it has wonderful long form comics like these at times:
There's no punchline or soundbite, no powerful quote, but the meandering wistfulness ties it all together on its own. Beautiful.
And I realised that yes there are essential truths in our life that guide how people act, or how things play out – the human condition as Lit students would remember – and my time this year has uncovered so many of these truths. Maybe being a “student leader” forces me to work with more types of people or be exposed to different situations, making discovering these truths easier, but I like to think it doesn’t matter where, what or who you are – you just need to be sensitive to the way people live, how people act and yourself. There’s no real word I can find to describe it (“metacognition”; “enlightenment”; “empathy” – people have tried) – all I know its a sort of intuition and curiosity that drives you to these truths.
And the wonderful thing is these are truths not models or hierarchies or theories, all of which are simply means to the end of uncovering truths about humanity or life one way or another. Truths are truths, and that’s where the buck stops. No more searching or decoding, just knowledge.
So I guess so far as a student, maybe I’ve found some things that have struck me as being close to the truth – rules that guide how one acts or reacts – and here they are:
1. No one owes you any vindication.
It’s a timeless situation: you know you’re in the right, or you feel someone is screwed up or has a selfish agenda – you deserve to win, or at the very least the one with the wrong morals/ideas/personality doesn’t deserve to win. They’re hypocrites, liars, fakes. And believe me, they can be found in any line of work, at any age. It’s all about a sense of justice. This came up while talking with Arjun over coffee: I asked him if he thought the “bad guys” would win in a certain context.
“Yeah, of course.”
I was pretty angry when I heard that. I played with toy soldiers when I was in kindergarten, and the good guys (green ones) always won.
Or Pikachu and Ash or the Power Rangers or the Justice League. You get it right? That the good guys win, not that I watched too much TV as a kid.
But I had asked the question precisely because I knew something was wrong with such a belief – a suspicion gained from experience. Yes, we all grow up and find out about the bad guys in the world, but I think even deep down we always believe the good guys will win. It’s the basis of goodness.
Don’t get distracted by the awesomeness. Anyway, you get from zero to hero in less than five minutes. A hero gets knocked down, but maybe in an episode plus at best he gets back up and trashes the bad guy. Something like that. And we get away with the belief that fighting for what we believe is good, to “beat the bad guys”, is much easier than it takes.
All it needs is for us to be a “good guy” to win.
And that’s the farthest from the truth. It’s fantasy. If being a good guy was all it took, the world would be perfect. No wars, no suffering. Just goodness.
But bad guys exist because good guys don’t fight them.
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
And that’s when I realised the truth of it. I’ve come across enough people who, in the belief that they are the good guys, get frustrated because things aren’t going their way, because the bad guy is a better speaker or manipulator, because they aren’t winning. All they need to realise is that they have to fight to even have a chance to win. Simple common sense, but you can read all the unhappy posts and vitriol online about one injustice or another, even as the writer slouches behind a screen, to know not enough people know it.
No one owes you any vindication, even if you believe you are in the right. You have to fight – and then we have another dilemma altogether.
2. If you really believe in it, you’re willing to lose for it
Most people have the values in the right place – they know it’s wrong to lie, to cheat, and say they’re willing to stick by them. So when you go up against the “bad guy”, who likely does all that, it’s painful to realise the one who cheats and lies wins. A lot. Which explains why Arjun said what he did.
Unfortunately, that’s the truth, at least part of it. Sticking to the truth is a leap of faith; because you believe the other person is also saying the truth, you are most vulnerable to the one who lies. You just need one person to resort to “evil” and he has the immediate advantage. It’s hard to fight rumours or lies because of this. And in order to fight back, to win, it’s tempting to use the same methods.
Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.
Another pithy quote for you! But that’s the danger with choosing to fight – the second stage of the battle. You know you’re in the right, so you choose to challenge the bad guy for it. Now it’s a test of your belief as to whether you are willing to resort to “bad guy” tactics to win in the name of your belief. Sadly, in doing so you end up trampling on your beliefs in the first place.
Realpolitik and pragmatism are all magic words to whisk you out of that dilemma, but really they are false solutions – in the end, you still go against what you stand for. But perhaps one would be willing to do so if his belief was not so much in “truth” or “good”, but rather “the greater good”. So in the end, you have to choose what you believe in carefully. And if you claim you really believe in it, you’re willing to lose if winning means having to go against it.
3. Not everyone’s morality is the same
It’s a pretty common experience for those who have been bullied or targeted by “bad guys”; at one point or another, you try to open your heart and appeal to his/her morality. This stems from the belief that everyone, deep down inside, knows the difference between right and wrong, and his/her evil actions are simply something like a cry for help, or arising from some confusion. He’s bullying me because he’s secretly insecure. She’s gossiping because she’s scared of being unaccepted. Something like that, I’m not that experienced.
But basically, we pin the reason for someone’s evil actions on anything but he/she is immoral. We want to believe that human nature is good. Sometimes, yes, someone acts out of insecurity or confusion. But believing that everyone is the same in terms of morality only opens you up to a world of hurt and pain when you encounter those who have been taught the other way.
It doesn’t matter whether human nature is inherently good or bad. Just as people can be educated to overcome their base evil human nature, if human nature is inherently good, people can teach themselves to go all the other way too. And it’s not our fault they are that way.
We need to give more credence to our gut inclinations and less to the dominant view that everyone was really a frightened, insecure child underneath, striving for love and protecting themselves from harm in the only ways they knew how.
If you’ve met manipulative people before, this quote came from a book/blog all about that topic by a psychologist.
Sometimes its hard to believe, but when it comes all the way down to it, there are such things as evil people in this world.
***
Okay wow, this post has been 2 hours in the making and I’m glad to have gotten it all out in one sitting. Maybe the stuff I learned and shared here may not be all that accurate or applicable to everyone, but it is to me. If there’s other stuff no one told you but you learned anyway, share below. Or tell me if there’s a problem with any of the three “stuffs” I put here. There’s certainly a lot more truths to discover out there.
I’m off to NYC now peeps. Host family has wifi so suannage is in order for the next 2 weeks. Also cause I have to write a blog portfolio about it.
“Host family has wifi so suannage is in order for the next 2 weeks” – likeaboss. haha hope you have fun (:
Things I’ve learnt…
If you want to get something done, do it yourself. This much is obvious, but not the fine print: Even if someone else was supposed to do it. I’m not saying that you can go around doing whatever you wish; but sometimes action is more useful than bemoaning the fact that someone else hasn’t done his job, and you’re suffering cause of it. Chances are, if he can’t be bothered to accomplish his task in the first place he won’t move even after you complain to him.
Along the same lines – if you want something done to your exact standards – the more precise you need it to be, the more likely that it’s more efficient if you do it yourself. I don’t know if you’ve bumped into these situations before, but it can get kind of frustrating working with people who can’t be bothered to put in effort…
Haha looks like I’ve got wifi already!
Anyway, yes definitely we have to bump up against these kinds of situations, what with project work and group work being all the rage nowadays… especially when you have to be the “leader”. My conclusion is that everybody has a motivation to do something, whether it be altruistic or materialistic, and to be a “leader” you either pinpoint these reasons and emphasize them, or find another reason to motivate them. However, ultimately if a person has no motivation to do so, they are better off the team. Of course, this is more applicable to leadership than project/group work where the person has to stay on the team. I reckon with peer reviews and individual scores you can needle someone to do work, but in the end if things go south you have to split it among the rest.
Thinking about it, there is also a difference in group work – group work where people come together to achieve an aim or goal of their choosing (and this is important), or people put together to achieve a set task (e.g. curriculum work). Of course the latter is then the false example of “interdependence”, “teamwork”, etc. etc. even as they are touted as part of a wholesome curriculum. A whole other topic to write about altogether.. thanks
point two is very, very, very true but on another dimension I would add one more thing- that not separating things into good and bad makes it a lot easier to accept everyone’s actions as being the manifestations of different agendas- not ones that are right or wrong, but just different. labelling doesnt bring you any closer to victory but understanding does. there was something someone said recently- I cant remember who, but it struck a chord with me- about how if two countries can come together and live in separate, individual harmony, instead of constantly trying to colonize the other, that’s really what brings about world peace- a lot of the time no matter whether you’re the good guy or the bad guy the only difficulty comes about in the forceful imposition of ideas and points of view on each other, the idea that one should reign supreme- I think thats the biggest fallacy.
but still- I liked point two, its very true. good luck with your fight!
Definitely – most people I’ve met who haven’t exactly been the most pleasant ones to work with are only like that due to differing agendas.. and if you take it to the macro level of countries it would be wrong to categorize them according to black or white. But if it comes down to individuals, I do believe there will be a few whom you cannot excuse based on their different agendas – their aggression or underhandedness is not the means to the end of their agenda, but rather their agendas are only created to serve such unpleasant facets of their character.