Padd Solutions

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Showing posts with label fundamentalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fundamentalism. Show all posts

Losing the world and one's soul

Posted by moses @ 07:46 • , , , • 0 comments


Maybe this is why one should not simply inflict the world upon a potential life.

Everyday people are born, persons of flesh and blood who live and die by their physical bodies. But men of God teach that the flesh is vulgar; and some believe them. They believe that we should live not for this world, but for the next.

Think about the children born to people who hold such beliefs. From a young age they are taught that the world is a vulgar place, from whose vulgarity they need to be insulated. The unbelievers, people who are worldly and are therefore vulgar should hence be kept at arm's length. On the other hand, there are safe places filled with people who think like them, places on which divine grace shines in a special manner. These children are to grow up within the circles found there, and they are to beget children within those circles when they have grown up.

This may indeed turn out to be the good life for some of them. For a few, however, the mixture of such teachings and a dash of naivety might result in lives that are worse off.

Experience might indicate that such beliefs need to be re-examined. People may not prove to be necessarily vulgar, or men of God might prove to be just as vulgar. Or perhaps the term vulgar itself has to be re-evaluated. Yet for some of these children, naivety may prevent them from adjusting their expectations according to the reality that they experience. They were taught to insulate themselves, and in the course of their formative years they isolate themselves.

A further subgroup of them might grow up relatively oblivious to the problem that they are facing, or they might remain nevertheless firmly entrenched in the beliefs they have been taught. Others, however, might realise that the task of living has been made more difficult. Having being taught to look forward to another world, they know little about how to live in this one.

Then they begin to doubt. They question what they have been taught and why it brings them pain. What good is it to gain the world but lose one's soul, one might ask? At this rate, some of those children can gain neither. If souls actually exist, that is—we know the world exists from experience, but the existence of souls is not so clear.

So what can be done to prevent this scenario? Maybe we should worry about what happens in this life first. Or maybe we should not simply seek to propagate our beliefs through our children's lives—that should be written into a contract that parents-to-be should be made to sign.

Big faith, small minds

Posted by moses @ 09:58 • , , , , • 0 comments


A week or two ago, the blog of someone I know received an unexpected comment. Some unknown dude (I shall presume it's a guy, since he sounds like one) seemed to have found the blog and commented, on the entry that talks about moving away from home for the year, that the author sucks and must be "a closet gay".

Well, I don't see what could justify such a comment to begin with. Is any personal reflection a sign of someone being a closet gay?

Another funny thing is the idiot seemed to have done this at work, without being aware that his IP address could be traced to his office. And apparently he works for Firebrand Interactive Ltd at North Bridge Road. Sounds like a pretty regular office worker.

So we can tentatively establish that some Singaporean office workers are juvenile. But the fact that he used the word "gay" in a derogatory manner also indicates that he is intolerant towards a sexuality that is different from his own. And I guess it would not be news to anyone who knows Singapore to say that many Singaporeans are intolerant in the homophobic sense.

Personally, I have little tolerance for the intolerant, but I like how John Rawls puts it: In the absence of a real threat to liberty, we should tolerate the intolerant because we shouldn't act unjustly just because others act unjustly. Moreover, a society that tolerates people who have no title to complain about intolerance towards them (because they preach intolerance themselves) might have a civilising influence on them over time.

In other words, we don't try to outlaw them like they try to outlaw others because we're civilised people, unlike them.

But I'm a Marxist, so I do believe that we should fight back. And we can do so by aggressively questioning the rationale of their political crusade. I'm confident that there is no way institutionalised homophobia is defensible in a modern and secular country. Who said it is immoral and why? Why is it unnatural? The clothes you wear are unnatural – do you propose having them banned for being unnatural? These are just basic questions that I've never heard a homophobe give satisfactory answers to.

And, even under the purview of freedom of speech, there are reasonable limits. Freedom of speech is not an excuse, for one, to have someone in a public position run away with her mouth. Leadership is, after all, supposed to carry responsibility, right? What would happen if public leaders started talking about their reservations regarding certain ethnic groups? What effect would that have on the society?

But I've written on this before, so besides the few points that I've raised here, I would like to leave the intolerant with something they do deserve – ridicule.

I bet they haven't spent much time thinking about what they believe. Maybe only prayed hard about it.


Proud to be... disenfranchised?

Posted by moses @ 10:16 • , , , , , , • 0 comments



I finally glanced at a newspaper today, and the first thing I saw was not encouraging.

According to an article on Today, most Singaporeans are proud to be Singaporean. Here's why:
The high level of national identity is due to the "multi-faceted socialisation process viz the education system, national service and mass media", said Singapore Management University law professor Eugene Tan. "This sense of belonging is further aided by the economic and social success that Singapore has experienced in one generation."
But that's not all the article mentions. Still quoting Prof. Tan, it says that most Singaporeans readily identify themselves as Asian rather than as part of an ethnic group, and that may be because
"... we have portrayed ourselves on the world stage as a microcosm of Asia, and that Western models of governance and way of life are not entirely appropriate to Singapore."
However, the article goes on to say that,
While Singaporeans took their duty to vote seriously, they were not sure how instrumental their votes were. Nearly half of them agreed that "politics and government are so complicated that sometimes (they) don't understand what's happening". Over one in two felt they did not have power to influence Government policy or action, while four in 10 felt Government officials pay little attention to what "citizens like (them)" think.
So we are proud of being Singaporean because we're a successful nation, and we're also happy to identify ourselves as Asian because our nation is successful without having adopted "Western" models of governance. Yet on the subject of our model of governance, a significant number of us think that we have hardly any influence over it. Neither do many of us have the understanding of how it works. So we're proud of being disenfranchised, and of a system we do not even know much about?

I think that the implications of what Prof. Tan said should make us rethink our attitude. And there's no reason to believe that he is completely off the mark. 'Asian values' have often been touted by our leaders as providing a good alternative to 'Western' political philosophy, and we regularly witness proud rejections of Western criticism in the local media, views that hold up the success of our nation as the vindication of our methods.

Amartya Sen has criticised the 'Western' and 'Eastern' (or 'Asian') divide that such a worldview paints as misleading, even though I do think that such a divide has been successfully manufactured in our psyche. He is also a strong critic of the brand of authoritarianism that is an integral part of the 'Asian values' package. And, looking back, I think I've come to agree with him – by summer last year, I had written an article defending democracy (which is unfortunately no longer available on The Straits Times website).

But right here we have the making of a damning critique just on its own. In what kind of society are people proud of a political system they do not comprehend and under which they have little if any influence? I can think of only two kinds: One that is fascist and one that runs on blind faith.

So what sort of model do we have exactly?