On bounded play and directed play

bounded play = rule of law.
Subjects within the bounded region direct individual will in individual directions within the scope of pre-defined norms. Like observing brownian motion within a tank. Because subjects collectively only have a vague idea of where these boundaries are, laws are required to strengthen these borders and penalties dished out for transgressions serious enough to cause harm. Subjects do not question the validity of these boundaries. If anything, only the area that the boundaries bind will have the potential to change.

directed play = rule by law and rule by penalty
Subjects do not question the area within the boundaries for this means exploring uncharted territory and acting upon intuition. Directed play maps a general direction and subjects cluster their will upon the pre-defined 'line'. Like speckles of dots surrounding a linear graph. Play is not conceived within the space, it is conceived with respect to the direction given. Play is then penalised for the slightest deviation from the prescribed direction.

random thoughts

How do I win the organics over to one side?

Freedom to think

Since the U.S. decided not to hide their position as a world bully in 2003, I've dedicated quite a few blog posts just to criticise Americans for their stupidity. Stupid people elect stupid presidents as a representative of their collective stupidity. Yet even admist all this criticism, I do envy the U.S. for their ability to produce such rich and diverse modes of thought.

Jon Stewart especially, though purporting himself to be nothing more than satire on a 'crappy cable channel' (please lah. Even Singaporeans watch your show), produces some of the best media content in the world. Anything that makes political debate accessible, but yet not dumbing down the content, is good material. In the past 2 episodes, he interviews VP Joe Biden and did an extended interview with right-wing journalist, Lou Dobbs, who comes across as a big scary fear monger in his shows:


I'm envious of the American freedom to think. You're free to be a liberal, republican, anarchist or whatever. So long as you obey the proper rules the govern a plural society. While it was expected that Lou Dobbs may turn out to be one of those conservative kukus that seem to pervade Fox news today, he turns out to be a pretty decent guy and makes fantastic, logical arguments. This created a pretty interesting dialogue between himself and Stewart each representing conservative and liberal modes of thought respectively.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 1
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I'm envious. They've got access to the fact, the figures, and were able to debate extensively about where America should go, and what it actually is now. Not only that, they managed to banter on, lightheartedly while dealing with serious issues. Both have different viewpoints yet both respected those differences, and agreed on the need to work towards a moderate, progressive America.

I'm quite sure that this country will never produce an equivalent of that. Politicians are media-averse and the ruling party won't engage journalism that they cannot be fully sure they can control. Almost as if they assume that their reality, is objective reality and any attempt to conceptualise the state of affairs otherwise is a malicious tainting of the 'truth'.

I'm also envious that America can call itself home to a rich collection of philosophers and philosophy. No one's disallowed from questioning, and certainly not of thinking critically about the government. It may have slowed down the bureaucracy, created more barriers to passing policies (as can be seen from the healthcare reform) and even slowed down economic recovery.

But being a nation is not just about passing the 'correct' policies efficiently to speed economic growth. It's about building a people, a collective will, and a collective philosophy behind what your nation stands for.

If a nation only stood for little else but economic growth, then it is not a nation. It is not even a city. It is a classic fordist construct with owners of the means of production at the top, and everyone else working towards their will. It is, your postmodern factory.

I've finished the damn philosophy paper at last so it's time to articulate my difficulty in expressing difference and opposition to western philosophy. I did not have a standpoint in which I could criticise that philosophy from. There is no philosophical tradition in Southeast Asia to fall back upon. Chances are, people opposing X theory in the west would have to look within the west for opposition to X. Either that or turn to the flogged horse, Marxism, which basically whacks everything in sight.

It's a difficult situation to be in. Singapore does not possess that rich self-refining discourse. We are opportunistic animals acting upon the instinctive need to protect the logic of our slavery, embedded in the meaningless strife for economic growth at all costs. A thinking person does not reject the notion of freedom because freedom to think, in a society bounded by rules of mutual respect, is what shapes him/her from a slave.

Perhaps this is why the U.S. will remain dominant for the years to come, despite its screwed up economy and overdrawn wars. It possesses a robust society that even with an internally torn government, keeps the nation strong and nationhood, alive.

convulated rambling ahead - you've been warned.

I am writing this at 2am in the morning because my poor little space has been neglected for too long. I can't sleep because I'm worried about my impending essay doom and if I can't sleep, my essay is doomed.

So this is it. The last semester of undergraduate life, I hope. There's 2 more breadth modules to go and I hope to heck I pass them. Would be quite a joke if I can't graduate because I can't pass a physics module.

I'm struggling so badly with the last academic essay I'll ever write. I think academia's really not my thing. Why sit on your arse and contribute to scholarship that few will read? It's been a week since my last run and I feel like a total slob. Wake up, type, lunch, type, have dinner, type, sleep. Snacks and youtube in between.

Life really is about swinging between utopia and apology. I want to train incessantly. I want to feel the wind in my hair. I want to swim, run and cycle 3 hours a day without getting injured. I want to comprehend all that I read. I want to do something meaningful. And I also want some money out of it.

But obviously material reality calls for a different take on things. Obviously I can't do something I like and get tons of money out of it. So I'll pretend I never wanted it in the first place. Maybe I'll be a banker in future and tell everyone that's always been my childhood dream. Then drink myself to sleep everyday with ice wine and get some boob implants. Getting all I've always wanted. yay.

No job, no callbacks. Yet this opens even more possibilities, when apology fails and you're forced to look at utopia.

Maybe I'll open a nice cafe. Maybe I'll work in a steakhouse, or a zhi char. I'll learn to cook a damn good steak. Maybe I'll sign up with sembcorp to be a canal cleaner just for the heck of it. Because I like sitting on them little motorised boats to retrieve rubbish from the large longkangs.

And then there's guilt. Guilt that comes from the awful feeling of not reproducing family status. The middle class kid must be so privileged to actually want to work in a blue collar job. The travesty. The waste! all those years of education and upbringing! Only to have no ambition?

And people say the caste system only exists in India. hah. Only one way - up.

So I'm writing this because I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to write a fucking jurisprudence essay in a style so far off from my own. I can't write it in your style because that would be disingenuous. I can't write about something I don't believe in.

The law is unfair. I'm not articulate enough to argue my case but I do know that it can be unjust and should not be disguised as such. The law isn't some marble woman perched on top of justice courts. It isn't faith in the works of Marx that's generating resistance to nicely packaged philosophies that debate about the legality of law. It's the sheer obscurity and senselessness that law should be judged by anything less than justice. And I don't mean justice in the sense of the validity of the law.

So I'm stuck at 2552 words. Most of which are badly constructed arguments trying to posit a case in a worldview that's more or less alien. I've always thought I could pretend my way around, arguing for the sake of argument. But now I know I can't. I can't convince someone else if I can't convince myself first.

The upper middle class kid's supposed to have everything materially. Everything. And at the same time malnourished from lack of thought. It seems to boil down to the same thing - believe it as such, and you will be fine. Why bother about the underclass, the foreign workers, the people propping up the cushy lifestyle you have and should maintain? Humanity cannot bring food to the table and it certainly cannot buy you the latest chanel handbag.

I don't want it and I can't figure out why. My material consciousness is diseased from feelings of guilt lingering at the back of my mind. That I'm a privileged little fucker meant for nice shiny things that my parents have always wanted. The guilt leeches onto things that you see, that you shouldn't see. The weight of injustice and inequality you witness in a system where all are accorded formal equality. yeah. All are formally equal but made unequal by actions that only they are responsible for.

I don't deserve to have the material upper hand, because in 23 years of existence, I've yet to do anything of significance. With the crushing guilt, comes the crushing panic of being torn from commditisation. If I do not regard myself as a unit of production, I have no exchange value then maybe I don't have any value. What is the thing in-itself? What am I, if I become anything less than a white collar worker, a finished product at the end of the education factory line?

If I do not have exchange value, I am spoilt goods. I am not a person, in-myself because social relations are not conducted as such. The crushing, disapproving gaze of the network tied by value exchange.

What should things be like? I don't know. But it certainly shouldn't be this way.

And so this post will end here. My little cathartic exercise full of convulated, unedited rambling. You get a thumbs up if you've managed to read through all that shit.

Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow feeling much better about myself. Then I'll push out more BS to hopefully pass this damn essay.

Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei

Publications of theory have consequences in practice?

hello hello. my blog is here. come dig out all the trash you want.

1 week to ISM submission. Things are getting exciting in the world of counter-constructivism.
And it surprises me that the hardest knocks do not come from the establishment, but from friends and peers who tear my writing upside down.
Still learning guys. Long way to go before perfection. :-)

random.

don't support human rights activism means pro-PAP meh?
ccb. siao.

whack unfair laws means anti-PAP meh?
siao.

no friends on both sides of the political spectrum.

sian diao.

Only because 'you think'

The acid test of whether you truly love someone, comes when you leave and don't feel an overwhelming urge to enter back into the contract.

To me, the contract of a relationship consists of more than two people bound by certain rules. You need to have spontaneous consent to participate in it. You need to really want it in that sense. So when the contract degenerates into a state when one party is merely tacitly consenting, putting subconscious forms of resistance by being sarcastic, rude, passive, and in general, short of being absolutely unpleasant, not really giving a shit about the other party, the contract survives only in lieu of tradition.

What's the point in being passive aggressive, clearly making the other party miserable, when there is a choice to leave?

But I guess sometimes, its hard to make the first move to kill off a dying contract.

Perhaps its fitting then that in a single moment of haste, one could possibly make the best choice for both parties who are better off without each other.

A new life comes with new circumstances and new challenges. Maybe we should both move on.