absolutum dominium

someone's been complaining tt i no longer blog.

apparently lyrics and personality tests postings and italicised paragraphs do not count as blog entries.

but nonetheless, the past 3 days have been strange for me. or rather, i have been strange for the past 3 days.

i have been experiencing this pathological desire to exterminate.

i'm not very sure where it comes from or why it has chosen to manifest during the past few days. ben attributes it to the fact tt i still cannot kill heroes while playing dota, such tt my 'pek chekness' and feelings of hero-killing inadequacy have therefore been translated into this need to be violent in real life.

*shrugs*

don't know about tt. it's just a strange feeling. it's like this need to be vehement and malicious, tt stems from an innate complex... maybe tt of arrogant megalomania? *pause* well. maybe not tt extreme; there are no delusions of global domination. but it's like... something like my despising of original girls, just stronger and applied to a broader range of people. it's not about suicide or committing murder; why kill one and be labelled a common murder? after all, when you hit 1 million, it's no longer murder, it's statistics.

i guess it's also what has been transpiring during the past few days. diana set up this petition for csj. and i signed it not because i think he should become the next pm or something like tt (ok, i still don't think he's very smart. i feel like his actions are tantamount to banging his head into a wall over and over again. the wall doesn't become dented, but your head becomes a bloody pulp). but i signed it because of what he represents and because what is being done to him has the effect of sickening me to my stomach. i feel like the reasons being uttered in a court of law are like lies because there has neither been any effect nor any scandalisation of any sort by csj on the judiciary, and yet he has been sentenced as such.

and i guess what sickens me more, is tt people don't give a fuck. sure, some people are signing the petition (some to hilarious results, i might add), while some are not signing because they "agree to disagree" - they think tt csj is an idiot and therefore he deserves to be in jail for giving the opposition a bad name. but what i cannot stomach, is the people who don't sign because they are afraid.

i know tt csj has not been portrayed in a good light by the media. obviously. it is the national newspaper after all (and might i add, they are doing this whole "throw doubt on the integrity of bloggers exercise", even though i think this being so done because they fear the advent of the blogger and its effect on earth-shaking events like politics. after all, if blogging is the new political movement in the U.S and in canada, no matter how much you try to stem or censor, there is no way you can stop a behemoth). and obviously he looks like an idiot. and of course, it isn't mentioned tt he has a phd in neuropsychology (i think. and on an unrelated note: notice how everyone remembers jbj as the sad old man bankrupt, but not many people know that he was once a district judge in malaysia, as well as a senior counsel in singapore???). or tt he is married with a wife who is also an opposition member mand the proud father of 3 beautiful kids (which you will also know about if you watch "a singapore rebel" by martyn see. on a separate note, martyn see is doing something like a michael moore. but unfortunately he's probably not going to be the michael moore of singapore. he's probably going to end up slapped with a nice heavy fine and a jail term for making a political film. i feel even sicker just talking about this). he is a man and a singaporean like you and me, with a lot of ideals and a lot of idealism. he wants to test the system to breaking point, and even though it is idiotic behaviour and he's probably going down for it, what i admire about him is tt he cares enough. he doesn't just up and leave. he doesn't say "lan lan. we live in this place. liddat lor. just accept". he doesn't give up, he doesn't say die. he keeps on fighting.

what about the rest of us?

the amount of political apathy, the amount of which singaporeans just don't give a fuck, sickens me. i want to exterminate the people like these, who don't give a fuck beyond their own lives. yesterday the 3 of us were engaged in a heated debate with this russian lady in our fundamentalism class about the imposition of absolute rights. and i was saying tt the imposition of rights has to be qualified and applied in culture-specific contexts, because the universal declaration of human rights is a fallacy and a concept developed by the western superpowers to impose their own ideals and values upon the rest of the world. and places like asia or the middle east didn't really give a fuck about freedoms of speech or equality or privacy or what fuck concepts these were. of course, in a room full of western supremists, we got associated with extremism and dictatorships (not tt i guess i can blame them. they've never come to singapore before), but still... it was a real exchange of ideas. and the recognition of the lacuna between the western and the asian cultures.

(which, on an unrelated note: i think we should accept that there is such a lacuna and such differences. i think it is a fallacy and ridiculously narrow-minded to assume tt humans are all one and the same. and for tt reason i don't like particularly kentang people who wanna be all americanised or briticised and who despise so-called "asian values", who scoff at their own race and country and who adopt a western accent just because. it's one thing to be born and to grow up in western lalaland, and another thing to be asian and to pretend tt you're not. i think tt's just pathetic, coz as long as you're a munjen, you'll be a munjen no matter how much you pretend you're not.)

but anyway back to the topic in question. i don't see why we just don't care. i don't see why we're just so afraid. i don't see why we're just so ignorant. i find it pathetic tt singapore can rename itself "suicidopolis", and tt the number of youth suicides is on the rise for the top 2 reasons:

1) study stress
2) unrequited love

because ben and diana think tt this is a worthy quote, i shall put it up here:

"unrequited love is not a country-specific phenomenon."

and if you kill yourselves for the above 2 reasons, then i think tt you are truly pathetic. is there nothing else in life more important? have you no dreams or ambition?

when you're 13, don't you have dreams of becoming a soccer star and playing in the big leagues? of becoming and actress or a writer or doing what you want?

was talking to ben and we both admitted tt as much as we missed our friends in sg, we were dreading going back. there's something so much more preferable about being here in vancouver. in singapore, we study and work hard to get our 1s and 2-1s and become lawyers. but here, somehow i don't think i would contemplate being a lawyer. i could take on a few jobs to put myself through college, maybe take a few more years off, and in the meantime contemplate what i would like to do in life. i can do any-fucking-thing i want here. i can be a snowboard instructor during the winter season, make money and have fun doing it.

and considering tt north americans start dating even earlier than asians, isn't it strange tt "ünrequited love" isn't high on the list of reasons on why north americans kill themselves?

fuck it. it's not about standard of living, and i've said it over and over and over again. it's about quality of life. it's about having the freedom to choose who you wanna be and what you wanna do. it's not about being dictated by the shackles of money (or the pursuit of), the burdens of responsibility and the ideas of face and reputation... it's so much more. it's self-determination, and self-actualisation.

i was proposing maslow's theory of human needs as a reason why singapore had a lower quality of life than canada.

paraphrased from wikipedia.org:
"Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs, which he often presented as a pyramid, has self-actualization at the top as the highest of those needs (or conflicts or tensions) in ones life. '
The base of the pyramid is the physiological needs, which are necessary for survival. Once these are taken care of (resolved), an individual can concentrate on the second layer, the need for safety and security.
The third layer is the need for love and belonging, followed by the need for esteem. Finally, self-actualization forms the apex of the pyramid.

In this scheme, the first four layers are what Maslow called deficiency needs or D-needs. If they are not filled, you feel anxiety and attempt to fill them. If they are filled, you feel nothing; you feel only the lack. Each layer also takes precedence over the layer above it; you do not feel the lack of safety and security until your physiological needs are taken care of, for example. In Maslow's terminology, a need does not become salient until the needs below it are met.

Needs beyond the D-needs are "growth needs", "being values" or B-needs. When fulfilled, they do not go away, rather, they motivate further. He outlines about 14 of these values or B-needs, including beauty, meaning, truth, wholeness, justice, order, simplicity, richness, etc.

Maslow also proposed that people who have reached self-actualization will sometimes experience a state he referred to as "transcendence," in which they become aware of not only their own fullest potential, but the fullest potential of human beings at large. He described this transcendence and its characteristics in an essay in the posthumously published The Farther Reaches in Human Nature. In the essay, he describes this experience as not always being transitory, but that certain individuals might have ready access to it, and spend more time in this state. He makes a point that these individuals experience not only ecstatic joy, but also profound, "cosmic-sadness," (Maslow, 1971) at the ability of humans to foil chances of transcendence in their own lives, and in the world at large."

the idea here, is tt singaporeans never go for self-actualisation. we're still trying to fulfil the basic needs, and throughout our lives we exist. we breathe, we work, we study, we exercise, we look for love (sometimes), but we never actually live. we don't dream; if we do, they get shattered very early on in life. we don't self-determine, yet alone self-actualise. we feel like we have little say over our own lives, like we are always victims to be controlled by fate or some higher power or authority (like *cough cough* the men in white).

fuck it. i hate this whole victim mentality. if you wanna be a victim, then be a fucking victim. be exterminated. do nothing? then so be it. don't come and complain and say tt you're life sucks or tt you're unhappy with life. was saying tt singaporeans' fave pastime is complaining. whenever you read the local media, all you see in the forums are the most boh liao space-wasting letters EVER about some complaint or other. in canada, people rarely ever complain. sure, canada isn't as efficient as singapore, but people are more laid-back. there are certain things tt they can do without. just because they gotta wait 5 min more for you to cross the road, they aren't going to press their horns as though tt 5 min is the difference between life and death (fuck those goddamn ugly singaporean drivers). no one has a problem with holding the door a little longer for you when your arms are full of stuff. and you can say hi and make small conversation with almost anyone so long as you want to.

i think a lot of singaporeans complain coz it's all they know. it's their only outlet for expression. because they feel so helpless and out of control tt their only way of exerting some sort of assertiveness is through complaining. as the consumer is always right and what fuck reason, therefore no matter how dumb or stupid the complaint, they just do so. i think tt's sad and these people should also be exterminated. oh well.

my compatriots tell me tt my blog entries are so vitrolic tt i look like i have a problem with half the world. i think with this entry i might look like i have intentions to exterminate half the populace of singapore. i've been asked: why not go anonymous? i'm taking a risk to blog about things like this with my identity known to so many.

but my defences is this:
1) i don't make baseless assumptions. everything tt i say is based on evidence of some sort.
2) this is my own personal opinion and is refutable.
3) the audience for this blog is small. it's private, not public, and intended for mainly friends. if you come in for the sake of reading it and you think tt it is a public nuisance, then i think you got problem. better go imh get check up. it is not a threat to national security or what fuck reason.

and if you watch v for vendetta - which makes me sadder actually -, i think one propoganda machine is enough. the thought police of 1984 should not exist in real life; otherwise i think i really have a good enough reason to go kill myself. seriously, i would rather die than live in a 1984-esque place.

anyway v for vendetta was amazing. i loved the ideas. i loved the ending scene (spoilers here) with the blowing up of parliament and all the guy falkian-masked people marching to the square, and then removing their masks to see fireworks played to classical music. viva la revolucion.

yes, people power is possibly anarchic and chaotic. the french revolution was a long drawn-out and very bloody affair. but it gave people hope, and revolutions continue to give people hope.

i cannot wait for when the wto conference comes to singapore in september.