Padd Solutions

Converted by Falcon Hive


As you get older, you tend to find yourself looking back more and more.


When you're young, chances are you couldn't wait to grow up because you wanted to do things you couldn't do as a child. But as we get older, I think many of us find that we want to go back, half-wishing that somehow we could reverse time, perhaps dreaming that we could change some things about the past.

Is life doomed to be full of nostalgia and regret?

Well, I think nostalgia can be a kind of recreation, so it's not really a bad thing. Regret, however, is much more difficult to judge. I won't say that we should never have regrets, because some things are worth regrettingwithout the prospect of regret, we might do things that we would do well to regret later. But is it worthwhile to live a life full of regrets?

As I reflect on it, it becomes more apparent how different and perhaps incommensurate with others' every individual's experiences are. You would think that people with broadly similar circumstances would have broadly similar experiences, but that's not necessarily true at all. While today's mainstream philosophy often regards experience as very much an internal thing—experience is intangibly subjective and thus it is impossible for one person to fully apprehend another's experiences—most people still intuitively think of it as an external thingthere is a real world that we are obviously interacting with and is therefore what determines our experiences.

I think the truth is somewhere in between (or a configuration of both?). How you felt, thought and acted are determined both by your circumstances and how you perceived them. The past is like this or that because you are partly responsible for making it the way it is, not just through your externally-oriented decisions but also through an internally-oriented one—how you chose to see and internalise your circumstances at that time.

Indeed, how you perceive the past is also a choice. However, there is a relatively inflexible element to memory in that it is to a large extent determined by past decisions you made, which are unchangeable. If you saw your days as miserable, you're likely remember them as miserable today whether you want to or not because the decision has been made in the past to perceive and thus remember them that way.

How you feel about the past is perhaps more of a choice. But, by extension, you're still relatively unfree to choose since the memory that you are reacting to is, as I mentioned above, inflexible even in the internal (self-determined) sense. Therefore, I think regret is often an unavoidable feeling.

What can certainly be helped and what really matters is your decisions on the present and, to some extent, on the future. And as I mentioned on New Year's eve, past experiences can help by informing these decisions. So you may regret things in the past, but don't let the mistakes you regret bleed into the present, either by persisting or by negatively affecting your ability to choose how you live your life today.

Thus, the past may be there to be wept over and the future may be there to worry about, but the present is here to be lived and enjoyed.

As we get older, I think we would do well to keep that in mind.




What does it mean to live the good life?


That is Aristotle's question. It's also one that we would do well to think about in this day and age. Does it merely translate to pleasure-seeking, a vulgarised Epicurean way of life, or a crude Utilitarian one based on the consumption of material goods? Looking at how many people view life and its rewards today, those do seem to be very popular views.

Well, I won't be preaching about the good life here. I will merely borrow Aristotle's concept of the eudaimon life—meaning a fulfilling or flourishing life—because I think it's very appealing. Basically, it's a life in which one seeks to realise one's potential as fully as possible.

What I will instead talk about is how the eudaimon life figures in politics. After all, a coherent ethical system has to integrate the private with the public or the individual with the social and political.

I think it's a great weakness of the modern (and here I mean liberal) political system that it doesn't tackle this question. At most, it only goes as far as to praise freedom or autonomy and encourage the means that are necessary to ensure it, such as political participation. Of course, governments often do promote the concepts of a harmonious society, healthy living and etcetera, but these are a matter of policy rather than integral aspects of a coherent philosophy.

The problem comes where, instead of enabling a pluralism of perspectives that the prizing of autonomy warrants, modern political philosophy merely ends up looking away while a dominant ideology monopolises the people's consciousness.

And that ideology can do so because people have material needs, which it has been able to dictate, both through their provision and through the creation of new ones. In other words, with a pervasive market system based on the valuation of most aspects of life through currency, it has been able to dictate people's way of life. It has also been able to create a false consciousness, which I take to mean the creation of endless wants and needs that it and only it can fulfil.

It's no wonder that many view life as a long road of hard (or not so hard) work that promises to reward them with comforts and luxury. And in such a society, money (and I don't mean just hard currency), as the universal medium, becomes paramount. Everyone becomes, often involuntarily, money-minded.

That is quite contrary to the eudaimon life. What the latter seeks is not material wealth, but wealth of character and being. It teaches moderation and encourages the pursuit of excellence. It seeks a balance between the material, social and spiritual.

But only if people are released from the shackles of material domination and false consciousness would they be truly free to pursue such a way of life.

And this is why I think the eudaimon life is related to and forms a moral structure for a socialist society. Far from being an egalitarian hell, socialism seeks to collapse the structures of material domination, to put the fruits of labour in the hands of those who laboured for them so that they may live their lives to the full. It does not stand for authoritarianism and collectivism. It stands for freedom in more aspects life than just the political.

Now, on a final note, does a political philosophy that seeks the fulfilling of one's potential imply support for a meritocratic system? This is something that needs more time to be considered. But if I were to hazard a guess I'd say no, in the sense that if meritocracy gives license for material domination by the meritorious, then it would be contrary to the spirit of a eudaimonic society.

Besides, we need to be careful when we talk about meritocracy. Without a level playing field and true quality of opportunity, true meritocracy is not possible. We need to distinguish between true and idealistic meritocracy and pragmatic meritocracy, the latter which Singapore (for example) subscribes to. Which do we mean?

Pragmatic meritocracy does not make a clear distinction between those who have the odds stacked against them and those who were born lucky. And our sense of fairness, which is apparently corroborated by neuroscientific evidence, should prevent us from buying into it.

If there is something wrong with the method of inquiry that analytical philosophy is partly guilty of, it would be the fragmentary way in which reality is examined. Each field or subject tends to be seen independently, frequently leading to big-picture incoherence.

Moreover, there is often (in less straightforwardly philosophical fields) a tendency towards a strictly realist method, focusing almost entirely on the empirical and taking revealed reality as the only plausible element in discussion. This again leads to incoherence, even where the subject is labelled as 'comparative'.

Now, (on a somewhat ironic note) all this might sound rather abstract and hence obscure. Well, I'll cut to the chase and speak from an example. After all, the empirical does have a substantiating role.

I read, with a measure of bemusement mixed with ruefulness, the 'expert' analyses on the recent trend of casino-themed toys becoming popular in Singapore.

In response to public concern, a few psychologists quoted by Today downplayed the significance of this trend. One compared it to the availability of "toy guns which encourage kids to play shooting and killing games", stating that "it is up to parents to decide what they want for their children".

At first glance, that's a pretty good comparison. Certainly, we can agree that casino-related toys becoming popular does not mean more children will grow up to be compulsive or reckless gamblers, as much as legalising homosexuality does not mean more people will become homosexuals.

However, in this case, that argument is only good as long as it stands alone. I suppose this is where psychologists who examine the individual removed from his/her social context should retire to the backbenches.

Had the toys become popular years ago, those experts would be completely right. But what makes this trend worrying is not some unfounded fear about the toys. Rather, it's the fact that it comes in the wake of the opening of the casino and all the hype that surrounds it. Hence, it's not a question of psychological effect alone; it's also a question of cultural trends.

What is worrisome, therefore, is not that the toys could exert some insidious influence on kids, but that the culture celebrating extravagance could. The toys are merely a vivid manifestation of that culture, a sign of how far down it has crept and become positioned to affect the people's psyche.

Businesses thrive on exploiting opportunities, and social trends generate the latter. Parents don't buy casino-themed toys to teach their kids "the concepts of chance and risk playing" and "the consequences of incurring debt", as one psychologist puts it glibly. After all, as the expert noted herself, more conventional games such as Monopoly could serve that purpose. Parents buy casino-themed toys now because they buy into the hype, one that is reminiscent of Wall Street's extravagantly reckless culture. That's not exactly the best thing to aspire towards, is it?

I think this is one of the instances where science, steeped in its own arcane knowledge, becomes negligent. Reason and science are not synonymous. I've written favourably about scientists (including psychologists), but I have to say that putting your faith in just any form of scientific inquiry isn't prudent either.

Here, I say that it is almost a crime to talk only about trees.