Motionless

I can hardly believe it, but I'm finally back home again. It's been a pretty draining few weeks in Shanghai, and it still bothers me to come home, then have to leave it again so soon, but that's the way things work out.

On the flight back, I couldn't quite get to sleep, and I finished the book I brought along a bit too quickly, so I had a bit of time on my hands. Sitting there motionless for 3 hours, I thought some things through, carefully examining some things in my life that I never really bothered to think about before. Now this is actually quite rare, because I seem to overanalyse everything, and finding something I've never thought about seems fairly difficult these days. Not that I can claim to have thought about everything intelligently, competently, in detail or coherently, but most things about myself have undergone some level of dissection. Gives me a bit of grief too. I have a lot of trouble simply accepting anything about myself. I have to think about it and reason it out. Everything has an explanation, a cause, an effect. All of these have to be considered and taken into account before I let anything about myself go.

Back to the point. Looking back on all the interpersonal relationships I have encountered, I was wondering why some fade so easily while others seem to last. The criteria cannot be a simple matter of likes and dislikes, for many people whom I do like have disappeared from my life with no struggle on my part. It cannot be mutual valuation of the relationship, for no matter how much all parties try to maintain the interactions, drifting can still occur. It certainly isn't a matter of interest or meshing of personalities, for these can be subsumed under the former criteria. So what is it? Pondering this, I came to the conclusion that a simple division of how one views others would explain a great deal.

Finding someone interesting is different from liking that person. And liking someone is different from caring for that person.

Let us examine these definitions and their differentiation. Finding someone interesting is actually quite easy. I could sit in any public place and find numerous people to interest me, if only superficially. A brilliant physicist could interest me, as could a celebrity of some sort, or more commonly, a pretty girl. There are many ways of sparking interest. Yet simply because I think it is fascinating to listen to an academic talk about a subject of some interest to me, does not mean I will actually like him as a person. The interest is detached from a personal opinion of the object. Many people find me interesting, for I always have an opinion, and am always able to back it up, if I can be bothered to. The things I see, and the way I see them, are often different from the norm, but my logic usually works, deny this as many will. My personality confounds some people, unable to believe that anybody acts as I do, but I do not really act all that differently from most people; I simply present it with some slight twists. The twists are perfectly obvious if you are able to understand the references my mind makes, but even I will admit that these are too myriad and involved for anyone not in my mind to grasp fully. These traits apparently make me interesting enough to some people, but this is a far thing from being liked by these people. I am not a likeable person. Few indeed are those who actually do like me beyond the obligations of society. We are supposed to like or at least tolerate those who behave within certain constraints in certain social settings. For example, in a primary school classroom, we are obliged to pretend to be friendly with every other member of the class. Even when cliques form, as they invariably do, there is a pretense of friendship toward the other members of your own clique, despite the bond likely being nothing more than a common social status and positioning. There are some people whom you do develop a liking for beyond these structures of false friendship. There are few indeed who can honestly claim that they like me. No no, that is inaccurate. Most people are unable to admit to themselves that the difference.

Affection has a different connotation to simply liking a person. An endearing old man you meet every day on the bus may be easy to like, but how much do you really care for that old man? Many people do not like their siblings, but must admit to caring for them. This is an easy enough category to lay claim to, for the wiring of our brains ensures we hold some genuine affection for many people related to us. This hardly means we like all our close relatives. While the transition from caring to liking seems common, it is far more rare for the reverse process to occur. I personally doubt the latter has ever occurred with me as the object. I truly wonder if it has occurred with me as the subject.

Alright, too terribly melancholic for my first night home. Many things to settle in the next few days, and I need a nap. I'll save the depressing bit about exploring these in actual relationships for later.

Millions for billions

I was reading some horoscopes online, and somehow, they seem terribly accurate.  The description of my personality seems dead on, and the forecast of my mood for July is freakily close to reality.  Maybe there is some sort of higher power after all.  Perhaps the stars can determine my identity and actions.  Who knows, eh?
 
Alright, don't feel like writing anything requiring a brain now.  I think I'll just mutter incoherently a bit about random things.  It's really hard to discern patterns just from a bunch of numbers.  I was never good at it in school, and I'm not good at it at work now.  I have to strain really hard to envisage the line graphs and overlay them to compare trends.  There has to be an easier way to do this.  I don't think I can survive doing it for another couple thousand or so sets of tables.  I don't like math.  One of those things I figure I can always find people to do.  It's like lawyers.  I was just thinking about how much money lawyers make, and how the market clearly fails to correct for the spectacular supernormal profits these big law firms reap.  But hey, I don't want to be a lawyer, I want to be one of those guys keeping the corporate law departments of major law firms really busy.  Pay millions to save billions.  That's the way to go.  Why quibble over small money when there's so much cash flying around in the world?  All I need now is to figure out how to catch some of it.  That seems simultaneously the simplest thing in the world and the hardest.  After all, rich people aren't smarter than me.  I haven't met too many people smarter than me, and none of them are particularly rich.  So I'm definitely qualified.  But being qualified doesn't quite cut it.  Still have to find out the address to mail the application to.  Somehow I doubt the path I lay out before me will take me where I want to go.  Yet it seems the only path that is reasonable and considered.  Sigh, I think I need to strike the lottery and win a hundred million dollars after tax or something.  Now there's a plan.
 
Argh, tired as hell, and I still have to work tomorrow morning.  Everything just seems a little less worthwhile these days.  Nothing seems quite as interesting, and some things just a little less real than I thought.  Depth is something difficult to judge, it seems.  And I appear to be a poor judge anyway.  The darkest shadow may hold nothing more than the shallowest of pools.  Do not mistake a ripple for a wave, or a trick of the light for a ripple.  I think it is time to close my eyes and shut out the deceitful vagaries of the world.  I shall no longer expect, and so no longer feel disappointment, only a mild, bland sort of content.
 
I know I'm tired when my thoughts spill without any attempt to control and shape the stream of fluid into some sort of coherence.  Time to rest.

Familiar

Ah, I suppose I might as well get in a word here. Quite ridiculous how lacking in energy I feel here. Just feel sapped of all vitality, whether it be physically or mentally. So don't expect any brilliance for a couple of weeks, just some meandering musings. Oh, I should note another thing I thought about in a taxi somewhere and would like to eventually get to, transience of affection.

So let's start with the first item on my to blog list, moping. I mope a lot. It's a thing I do. Well, maybe not exactly moping, but certainly I do sink into myself and lapse into physical inactivity for fairly long periods of time, during which I appear to simply be zoning out. I suppose it isn't too inaccurate a description of what I do, for I am not focusing on anything pressing. I can sit happily on my bed, just mulling over the lettering used for the title of a book on its spine, the contrast with that used for the author's name, and the implications of that. I should note what I came up with sometime, it was quite inspired, I think. The point is that I simply do not really enjoy thinking about the important and pressing matters of life. I do not care for anything that demands my attention. I think the most interesting things are those that you choose to be interested in, not the other way around. It's the same reason I dislike salespeople who get all pushy or obsequious. I prefer to browse at my own leisure, without recommendations or opinions, just looking for something to catch my eye. It's a market thing, the right equilibrium will be found, but not when there's interference.

There are times when, I admit, I think I should be doing a little more, but those are the moments when I wonder about my direction in life and all that. Again, the subordinate thoughts only surface and become important when the larger overarching thought prevails. And I don't enjoy that larger thought. I prefer to let things flow as they will. All I require is to be able to shape and control my own world. I care not what the rest of the world does, so long as I am free to pursue my own interests in an environment of my own choosing. Inactivity is a marvellous thing. It allows you to relax and look to yourself for the ability to find something interesting. If I cannot find anything worth my attention without physical activity or interaction with other people, is that not quite an indictment of your lack of imagination? I like movies and books because they offer up the mind of another person, whether it be the director, scriptwriter or author, but as a static landscape, upon which I can craft what I will. The most valuable fiction is that which entices the mind to wander on its own down its paths. That is the reason I read so much fantasy and science fiction, for the wandering is all the more fascinating for the infinite possibilities which an artificial, uncompleted universe can offer. To locate something in our own physical world, the mind naturally imposes unimpeachable limits upon it. Some things simply cannot happen, and cannot be allowed to happen. The implications of some events can reach back in ways that are all too far-reaching, especially when one works as I do, with automatically running analyses of as many ripples as I can imagine.

The world has largely turned out to be a fairly staid and uninspiring place. Every place I go, the same story unfolds. Either it is a big city, and all big cities are essentially the same, or I do not enjoy the place. In fact, I do not enjoy many big cities. But I can generally be certain that I will not like more rural areas. So I am trapped between boring cities, and unpleasant rural areas. Semi-rural areas usually manage to get classified under one or the other. So I do not look for interesting things to do, only places where I can rest and enjoy my surroundings. I sometimes think I should just jump straight to retirement. Maybe the problem is that I grew up in Singapore, where the older cultures and the international ones are all easily available. So the exotic rarely feels exotic, and the cosmopolitan is all too familiar. Even something I truly have not seen before will seem vaguely known, for my experience extends beyond the personal into the realm of mass media.

The time seems to have arrived for me to decide to make something of myself. Whether I will remains to be seen. The issue has been avoided too long, and I will have to confront it in a matter of months. Life should be more like a fantasy novel, where destiny always has something in store. But does the reader or the author ever care what happens to those the hero encounters on his path? Is their destiny to be nothing more than a part of his? Or is his to fulfil theirs? At any rate, there seems little enough in the way of resolution to this problem, and I shall torture myself over it some other time.

Extremes

Ok, I have been wanting to work through some things in the last couple of days, and I am absolutely certain I'll veer off-tangent again today, so I think I'll list what I can remember now. Moping, desire, meticulous, weather, shopping. Sounds fairly innocuous, but I'm sure I'll make whatever I come up with ridiculous and convoluted enough for me to cringe if I ever read my archives. Which reminds me of a gripe. I cannot access any blogspot sites in China! I can't get gmail either, so that bothers me. I'm basically blogging blind, and hoping all this makes it through, because I can't be bothered to actually save it.

Been doing a touch of moping recently, and realised that I actually quite enjoy it. I've been exiled to Shanghai to serve as labourer for my dad. Well, not exactly. I'm doing an internship, I suppose, and I guess I am learning quite a lot about doing business, the situation in the Chinese market and all that. I do wonder if I'm going to put it to any use though. One thing I have realised about China in the two weeks I have been here is that I don't like it very much. Aside from the weather, which can be awful anywhere, there are the rude people, the dust everywhere, the dirty streets, the greed so thick in the air you can smell it, the horrible driving habits, the way everyone speaks Chinese with accents so thick I have to concentrate like mad to understand them, the conceited yuppies who don't realise they have little indeed to be stuck up about, the weird social intricacies that get me stared at whenever I do anything, the way I can't order ice cream at Haagen Dazs without getting stared at for speaking perfect English, then downgrading it to make myself understood, the beer girls who perpetually hover at your shoulder while you order your food, the way waiters can never be found when you need one, the way the locals don't iron their clothes for work, the spectacularly unprofessional dress sense of the locals, the lack of a garbage chute or room in the apartment buildings, the complete lack of a decent English bookstore anywhere, the strangely limited shopping experience, the incredibly oily food loaded with msg everywhere, the way none of the Chinese software works properly on my computer, the way they censor half the internet, the ... uh ... I think that's about it right off the top of my head. I'll add ... um, no, I think I'll leave it at that. Wouldn't want anyone thinking I'm anti-China, would I?

The thing that strikes me about what I dislike about this country is that most of them can be found in some degree in most other countries. So what is it about their presence here that riles me so? Perhaps it is the way this country acts as a retroactive mirror for my own. I imagine if I were to step back 30 years in time, Singapore would be very much like China in many respects. In fact, in many aspects, Singapore is still like China. Several of the things that bother me about China can easily be found in Singapore. More interestingly, I actually enjoy them when I find them in Singapore. The more down to earth places in Singapore, I can enjoy, though I do not claim to be entirely comfortable in. Oily food is the best food in Singapore. Those who disagree clearly fail to appreciate the glint of oil all over any sort of hawker food. The people in Singapore, while polite, manage to be rude in an entirely different sort of way, ignoring you rather than pushing you aside. And I actually like being ignored while I browse through a store at my leisure, knowing that I can call a salesperson if I feel like being bothered. So it seems ridiculous that I am disturbed at finding the same things in China, when they are part of the reason I like Singapore so much.

The only explanation I can come up with (ok maybe I can come up with a lot more, but this sounds more dramatic) is that China represents an extreme. It is a land of extremes, and I have always been a person who values careful management and moderation. It is where I can find the most extreme instances of anything I care to imagine, and none of it is appealing. The more down to earth aspects of Singapore are magnified here, and I do not like them as much when there is no counterpoint of modernity and that indefinable quality I associate with developed countries. That is a strange quality, that seems impossible for any developing country to capture, no matter how controlled the setting. You can put the richest, most educated people in China together in a club, and somehow, there is something lacking. There is something that seems beyond the mere physical surroundings, and the conversation of the people, and the uniforms of the staff. There will be some indefinable thing that is missing. Perhaps it is merely my own mindset, knowing that beyond this tightly controlled veneer of sophistication, there teems a mass of chaos just beyond. Perhaps that is it. Order as opposed to chaos. Simplistic perhaps, and certainly unfair, for chaos exists in any society. Still, there is some quality of order you can find in the cities of America, Europe, even Singapore, that is utterly lacking in China. Having the trappings of modernity is one thing, having them integrated into the city in a vaguely logical and comprehensible order is another. There are hundreds of skyscrapers here, but they are placed so haphazardly that one is not reminded of New York City, but of fungus.

The extremes I find here are not moderated in any way. That bothers me incredibly, for it assaults my conception of desire. If I want something, and it is given to me, should I not be happy? Instead, I complain when too much is given. In that case, should I not be happier if it is not given in the first place? If so, then I did not want it anyway. Oh, I know, everything is about moderation. But moderation is a funny concept when you think about it. Moderation means that you only want something a bit. There is no division between want and not. The answer lies halfway. Yet some people claim to desire something without reserve. This is usually along religious lines, where they want to become wholly immersed in God or some such divine being. So I cannot truly want something unless I find that thing which I am willing to accept completely and without reservation. But that seems quite impossible. Even if I did want to become one with God, I would not kill myself this instant to achieve it. So even that is moderated. Those who do kill themselves to achieve it are labelled insane. Perhaps they are the only ones who are able to fully realise what desire is. What else is there to show that a person really wants something?

Ok, I seem to have managed to completely miss all the points I listed at the beginning. Oh, that last paragraph wasn't about the desire I listed. Ah well, some other time perhaps.

Choosing poverty

There are moments when I wonder about the way people look at other people. I'm a bit of an elitist myself. I believe that smart, capable people should be ahead of the rest, should possess advantages and be treated better than everybody else. Is that really so wrong? That's the way the world works. That's the way the world moves forward. Progress can only exist if those who are smarter, more capable, faster, stronger, whatever, can get some sort of reward for exploiting their advantages to the maximum, or at least whatever extent they feel like. If everybody was content to remain as they are, or believed that having more than others was bad, the human race would still be stuck in the Stone Age.

Think about it. Imagine if the Greeks didn't believe in creating classes. The only reason, well maybe not the only reason, but a major one nonetheless, that the Greeks were able to come up with so much cool stuff is because the women and children did all the work and left the men to sit around thinking about stuff. The Romans wanted to be the bosses of the world, and they ended up bringing civilisaton to Europe. Qin Shi Huang wanted to rule China, so he did, and laid the foundations for a unified and lasting civilisation. We could keep going. It is only by believing that one is better than others, and that superiority deserves recognition and reward, that we have been able to progress at all. Arrogance is often derided as the worst of flaws, but that is precisely what we value in others and ourselves.

I watched Troy the other day, and it struck me how much we want our heroes to be arrogant and elitist. Anybody who watched that movie would agree that Achilles and Hector would have made better leaders of their respective factions. Why? Not because they were more capable administrators or benevolent leaders or anything along those lines, but simply because they were so good at something. Achilles was pretty handy with a sword, and Hector was an extremely endearing sort of fellow. If their conceit had extended to being the boss, we would have cheered. When Achilles was ready to kill everybody in the tent, including the king, I forget his name, to get back the girl, everybody wanted him to do it. There was almost an audible sigh of disappointment when he swallowed his arrogance and sheathed his blade. We want our heroes to have absolute confidence in themselves, to decide to do something difficult and impossible, then do it. It is not enough to actually accomplish something, the attitude must be there as well. I think that's why professional wrestling is so appealing to pretty much everybody, if they will only admit it. Every person in there is just completely arrogant and believes in his own ability to beat the crap out of everybody else. The bad guys are less so. When the good guy responds to a challenge, the bad guy is invariably freaked out, and needs his cronies to help him out. That's why we cheer the confident good guy who beats up loads of people at a time, and boo the bad guy, who needs to cheat to win. It is the arrogance that attracts admiration. The Rock character is completely arrogant and overbearing. He shows up and insults everybody, including the audience, who boo him initially, but the sheer confidence and cockiness he shows soon wins their cheers again. We want to see people who believe in themselves.

Yet arrogance remains one of the most common gripes about character. I think this is largely due to a schism between fantasy and personal experience. When we look at someone with fantastic force of personality, perfectly arrogant and with complete belief in himself, we may either consider him as a hero, or some fellow with too high an opinion of himself. The only difference is in the interaction. Say we take a sports player. If a football player has the audacity to try the most ridiculous tricks, or struts about the field as if he owns it, we consider him to be authoritative and worthy of adulation, if he actually pulls off his tricks, of course. But when we encounter him outside the strict context of the playing field, and he continues to be so completely confident and self-important, we think of him as self-important. Just look at how we view, say, Franz Beckenbauer. We want to idolise a confident hero, but the everyday nitty gritty of living with him, we find irritating.

Many people will protest this, saying that they do not object to the talented being willing to exploit their talents, or to them being conscious of and vocal about their abilities, but to the refusal to let others share in the benefits of their success. They look at the rich in this capitalist world of ours, and bemoan the massive inequalities of our society. The poor live in squalor, the rich live it up. I say that is ridiculous. The capable are sharing the benefits of their success. They are doing this when they succeed. Imagine a world where, say, John D. Rockefeller did not dominate his rivals and become the world's richest man. Without a centralised and strong oil company, there would have been no way of controlling the supply of oil we so desperately need today. We should not begrudge the riches of the successful, but recognise that it is a reflection of how much society has benefited by their talents. It is really very simple. There is no way of accumulating wealth unless somebody somewhere decided that whatever you offer is worth parting with his cash for. Any person who spends his money on anything is admitting that the thing he has purchased is worth more to him than the money. So the purchaser gains, as does the seller. That's the beauty of the capitalist system. There are no losers, because there can't be. No matter how low-paying certain jobs are, the worker finds the wage worth his time and effort. If not, he would not be doing it. Oh, some may complain that they have no choice, but they do. They can go become farmers, beggars, starve. The options are infinite. Not much of a choice, you say. I say it is. Is it worth your time and effort to avoid starvation? If it is not, then too bad for you. You have chosen leisure over survival. Besides who really thinks the sweatshop worker is worse off than the subsistence farmer? Only the middle-class university student. It sucks to be a subsistence farmer. You subsist. Sure, it might be dangerous and unpleasant to be in a sweatshop, but there's a reason people choose to be cheap factory labour rather than farmers. You might not find the tradeoff worth it, but you're not the one making the choice.

Does it bother me to see people in the streets begging for change, or rummaging through garbage for cans? Sure it does. I think people should have a better quality of life than that. Also, I think such poverty encourages crime. But again, this is a choice that these people make. I am certain they could find enough to live on if they move out to the country and work on farms. But they do not. They choose to live in abject poverty in the big city rather than live in abject poverty in the country. The only difference is that the contrast is more visible. That is their choice, and I do not presume to judge them for it. But I am judged for respecting their choice. I am supposed to be willing to redistribute wealth, to give up some of my own to enable others to gain. Well, imagine if the wealth of the entire world were evenly distributed. I do not have the statistics, but I imagine that every person would end up poor. Ask yourself, are you willing to give up your computer, your designer clothes, your cars, your comfortable homes, your ample meals, your holidays, the good schools for your children, just so that others may be happier? Don't be a hypocrite.

I seem to have veered off from my original idea, which is of the concept of lotteries. I shall continue some other time.

Fungus

So I'm in Shanghai. This is not fun. I thought summer was supposed to be interesting and relaxing and all that jazz. Instead I'm stuck in a city I dislike quite intensely, doing work that is neither fun nor relaxing. My Chinese is pretty good for a Singaporean; functional in a casual conversational context, but asking me to read a professional report in Chinese is pushing it a bit.

The big thing that strikes me about this place is how awfully messy it is. It's like they just decided to haphazardly build whatever they like wherever they like. Not exactly organised. It's like a game of Simcity gone wrong, one of those scenarios where you're given 30 years game time to fix a horrendously inefficient city. Office buildings of every shape and size are built all over the place, with a disgustingly bad sense of style and coordination. I mean, Singapore won't win many prizes for its aesthetics of urban design, but at least the buildings don't clash, and there's some sense of a city that grew intelligently, not exploded like a mess of fungus. Chicago is a pretty decent example of a city that has been built with some idea of aesthetics. Quite aside from all the supposedly famous architectural pieces, which I know pretty much nothing about, the buildings simply have some sort of similar theme despite their independent construction and looks. Walking throught he city, there is a feeling of walking through a cit with some sort of identity and history, where each area has a look and feel that is adhered to by each building in it. In Shanghai, the whole place is just a random jumble.

I know what this place reminds me of now. There was this game called Afterlife or something where you get to plan out Heaven and Hell. Heaven was your regular city planning exercise, but Hell was supposed to be inefficient, to make the afterlife unpleasant for its denizens. So Shanghai really does remind me of Hell. Hmmm.

Ok, the Internet is apparently censored in China, so I can't access blogspot weblogs, though curiously enough, I can access blogger. So I don't know if this post is going to go through at all, therefore I will not bother to elaborate at length on my topic of the day. Maybe some other time, when I'm certain it won't be wasted.