On Politicians

"Nations which select the men who are to govern them might have been expected to choose men commanding universal admiration and affection; it might have been thought that those who were deemed wisest and best would be selected for the delicate and responsible job of managing other people's affairs. This, however, is not the case. In most democratic countries to call a politician is to say something derisive about him ... This is a paradox which was not foreseen by the pioneers of democracy. Indeed, it was not true in their day. When democracy is new it usually brings great men to the fore but it loses this merit as it becomes well established. Why is this?... Meanwhile, let us remember that in a democracy, criticism of our politicians is criticism of ourselves - we have the politicians we deserve."

Bertrand Russell

It sure is ironic that you should not let democracy fully develop for the sake of the nation. When democratic processes are fully established, it becomes a playing field favourable for the popular politician (in the negative sense) and not for a 'governor' - where qualities closer to a good manager, with a good sense of international and ground issues, would be more suitable. The unfortunate limitation of human capacity is such that the people who can 'get there' or usually very different from the people who can 'do it'. When the electorate choose options that will benefit themselves (as people tend to do on promises) and not those 'fit to rule' (which may not benefit the voter), the democratic machine blindsides itself. There is little point in criticizing the democratic system because there isn't anything hitherto better than this bad machine. But all these points toward a view that being more democratic is not necessarily a good thing ... and that we may have arrived at something good, perhaps unintentionally.

The Stillness on the Road

My workplace is considerably far. I spend about two hours on the road, on a public bus, every weekday. During this time, I do a couple of things - read the papers, take a catnap, use the phone, think, fantasize - but most often I listen to music, body and mind still and idle, and gaze at the moving scenery. Contrary to the preference of most people, I don't really dread the locomotion because it gives time to float the weight off my psyche, fill the fissures in my temperament and raise the sensitivities of my intuition. This I believe, is close to what some spirituality-inclined folks regard as the benefits of meditation - a purported enrichment and healing of the soul. It is also close to what some 'people' (for the lack of a better description) like to call 'personal space' - an escape from the unnecessary drama and futile bustle of modern life. I convulse at the use of either terms, meditation or personal space, because one is so 'urgh' (fuddy-duddy? uncool? what!?) and the other is so 'bahh' (emo? corny? what!?). In any case, words are just words and terms terms. The point is that such a still-locomotive 'therapy' (boy, I am on a roll for word loss) is really 'good' (vocab hemorrhage). I refer back to the title, which captures all I really want to say.

There is a line on the left you must not cross

"Modern ideas of liberalism, egalitarian ideals, welfare state concepts ... all these are appropriate in an affluent society, but are largely irrelevant to a nation struggling to escape age-old poverty ... These concepts encourage a propensity to laziness and inaction, inculcate a belief that society owes every man a comfortable living and proliferate trade unions whose main purpose is to get more pay for less work."

Goh Keng Swee

The Dangers of Communism: Marxism, Envy and the Hobbesian Man

As a restless, impressionable teenager who was frequently dissatisfied by my own material well-being, I was easily swayed by Marxist ideas. Throughout the years, I have many times been bought over by it, only to have it fizzled out by the irrelevancy to my day-to-day life. As fortune would have it, and I am fortunate, I never lived in a political milieu where I had a chance for Marxist ideas to germinate. In University, the Marxist scholars that I came to know were mostly hopping on the 'hip', radical bandwagon and severely lacking in any rigorous thought or realistic convictions. On many occasions, admittedly, I identified myself with this ilk of people, if for nothing, just to appear 'smart' or 'critical'.

As I started to think, Marxism began to seem like a frightening joke. Besides not making any economic sense (you don't really need any more evidence than to look at the economic fiascoes in North Korea, Russia, East Germany and the likes); its pitch though seemingly a morally right one, is a dangerously wrong one.

Marxism thrives on a very base and powerful emotion - envy. It borders on the genious of emotive language how Marxism cloaks envy with a cape of justice - that everybody should be equal. Instances where real exploitation takes place are given maximum exposure and unfounded generality. Overwhelmed, envy warps the reader's rationality into a lopsided train of thought that makes an imagined sense of justice so distortedly real. For the intellectually unperceptive, it gives highly-charged motive and erroneous justification for unreasonable action. Marxist material fail to mention one thing: as much as inequality is a very sad fact, it is also a very inevitable, natural phenomenon in any society, a Communist one included.

Communism has a very flawed premise. It conceives of Man in the romantic, as a Rousseau-sort benign nobility. Granted Man having such a capacity, it is closer to the exception rather than the norm. I am of the view, as History and experience has shown me, that Man is of the Hobbesian type. In a Communist society, once the high-falutin ideals start to wear off its charm, he will eventually partake in activities that will benefit himself rather than the greater good. And seeing the Hobbesian man benefit, other men including the romantics because of envy or a sense of justice (familiar?) react. If they are opportunistic, they will do like the Hobbesian man did. If they are not, they will find ways to stop and punish the Hobbesian man. Eventually, they resort to a legal social contract to deter and prevent people from such undesirable behavior. When sanctions originally moralistic turn legalistic to keep order, people's actions originally based on altruism turn into fear of punishment. Consequently, Communism loses its meaning and appeal in the hearts and minds of people; and people soon realise they are hopelessly trapped by rules and sanctions (not to mention physical boundaries and violence witnessed in Eastern Europe and North Korea) with little or no freedom. It befuddles me how Communism can work when its assessment of man is so naive, and throws me into despair how people can still believe it with so much evidence of its repercussions.

Yet, Communism did its part in History; not as it intended but laughingly collateral. It galvanised the poor man's sentiment into an actionable voice; the content of it though erroneous, its form powerful. Governments of the world were reminded not to neglect and pay lip service to the poor, for if they don't protect the interest of the poor man, Communism and its attendant emotive garbage would. That is Communism's greatest legacy - a caveat to governments the Pyhrric victory of the neglected, impressionable poor - its own failure.

The Lessons of Experience

"Most people learn nothing from experience, except the confirmation of their prejudices. To learn anything genuinely from experience requires a kind of open-mindedness which is the essence of the scientific temper, though many men of science are somewhat lacking in it."

Bertrand Russell