I'm still here, don't you worry
So, I've been busy at work, although it's starting to ease up. It looks like my time in Singapore is going to be partly work-related, which rocks because I'll be paid, hoteled and expensed for a little bit of work there. I wasn't even sure I'd know how to completely fill up the days anyways. To top it off, my dad might be in Kuala Lampur around the same time, so there's a fractional chance I might be able to skip over and visit with him for a day or two.
As for work here, It's strange, I have to get up at least once in the middle of the night everyday to put a new tape in the transcribing computer, so I'm getting spooky, vivid dreams from entering REM a second time.
I'm seeing alot of hotels and aeroports in Indonesia, but it's whetting my taste for real travel. I'm hoping to visit Papua and explore Kalimantan the next time I come through here. Actually, I'm channelling my wanderlust by staring at digital world maps and drawing dots and lines on them and making promises for 2008. I get more and more ambitious everytime I look at it. I'll need to get more pages for my passport.
What have I been thinking about lately?
I'm wondering alot about symmetry of opinion. Take any given question, and you can find rational people passionate about one side or the other. Do these kinds of questions, questions that appear defensible from both sides, have any definitive answer? It used to make sense to hold left-wing positions on things, but is it necessary to identify this way? It might be better to simply resolve to handle questions one by one as they arise and try to resolve them in as rational and pragmatic a way as possible. I think there's a place for me in the world doing that.
On the other hand, I miss the days where I could feel idealistic about things. I remember the G8 protests back in June 2002, when I was 16, and lugging boxes around for a Socialist Party display. A year later I was protesting the Iraq War with a big sign that read "No More War for Oil!" with little black cardboard cutouts of oil barrels for effect. The world seemed unspeakably vast, its problems enormous, but it seemed like a correctable place. "If only the government would listen to our collective voices!" we were singing. Those were exciting times. But now the world is small and transversable, its problems seem smaller and more fundamentally engrained, and the corrections often as harmful as the problems. And it's incredible the kinds of things I could defend when I felt so idealistic, for instance "well, it was Stalin who subverted the Soviet Union.. really Leninism might well have led to a worker's paradise..." Watch "The Last King of Scotland" to see where I'm now coming from.
Not all idealism is lost, though. There might not be a single "right way" for the whole world, but you look at some individual problems and there appears to be clear right and wrong. Not everything has to be backed up rationally. One thing I do feel increasingly passionate about is human rights. If you want to improve the lot of the human race, you don't start with the majority. You start with the minority, the minority for whom things suck the most. The people locked up in prisons and trapped in torture chambers. It's a rejection of utilitarianism - even if there are millions in poverty, I increasingly think the place to start is at the bottom. I think I'll try to get reinvolved with Amnesty International when I get back home.
I'm also developing a curious side interest in the War in the Pacific, partly from some of the war sites around here. Everyone knows bits and pieces about Germany and the Third Reich, but the war in the Pacific Theater is terra incognita. It was different than the war in Europe, in part because the Japanese were different from any people in the world. The war itself was a mysterious, dream-like hop from tropical island to tropical island against a martial foe that worshipped a living emperor. Lush islands occupied by cannibals and Stone Age peoples. It was a war of eerie silence punctuated by sudden bursts of violence. It's strange too how the Japanese "woke up" from their nightmare after the atomic bombs landed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and promptly became one of the most peaceful peoples on Earth.
Good night, and Good Luck, as an influential newscaster used to say.
As for work here, It's strange, I have to get up at least once in the middle of the night everyday to put a new tape in the transcribing computer, so I'm getting spooky, vivid dreams from entering REM a second time.
I'm seeing alot of hotels and aeroports in Indonesia, but it's whetting my taste for real travel. I'm hoping to visit Papua and explore Kalimantan the next time I come through here. Actually, I'm channelling my wanderlust by staring at digital world maps and drawing dots and lines on them and making promises for 2008. I get more and more ambitious everytime I look at it. I'll need to get more pages for my passport.
What have I been thinking about lately?
I'm wondering alot about symmetry of opinion. Take any given question, and you can find rational people passionate about one side or the other. Do these kinds of questions, questions that appear defensible from both sides, have any definitive answer? It used to make sense to hold left-wing positions on things, but is it necessary to identify this way? It might be better to simply resolve to handle questions one by one as they arise and try to resolve them in as rational and pragmatic a way as possible. I think there's a place for me in the world doing that.
On the other hand, I miss the days where I could feel idealistic about things. I remember the G8 protests back in June 2002, when I was 16, and lugging boxes around for a Socialist Party display. A year later I was protesting the Iraq War with a big sign that read "No More War for Oil!" with little black cardboard cutouts of oil barrels for effect. The world seemed unspeakably vast, its problems enormous, but it seemed like a correctable place. "If only the government would listen to our collective voices!" we were singing. Those were exciting times. But now the world is small and transversable, its problems seem smaller and more fundamentally engrained, and the corrections often as harmful as the problems. And it's incredible the kinds of things I could defend when I felt so idealistic, for instance "well, it was Stalin who subverted the Soviet Union.. really Leninism might well have led to a worker's paradise..." Watch "The Last King of Scotland" to see where I'm now coming from.
Not all idealism is lost, though. There might not be a single "right way" for the whole world, but you look at some individual problems and there appears to be clear right and wrong. Not everything has to be backed up rationally. One thing I do feel increasingly passionate about is human rights. If you want to improve the lot of the human race, you don't start with the majority. You start with the minority, the minority for whom things suck the most. The people locked up in prisons and trapped in torture chambers. It's a rejection of utilitarianism - even if there are millions in poverty, I increasingly think the place to start is at the bottom. I think I'll try to get reinvolved with Amnesty International when I get back home.
I'm also developing a curious side interest in the War in the Pacific, partly from some of the war sites around here. Everyone knows bits and pieces about Germany and the Third Reich, but the war in the Pacific Theater is terra incognita. It was different than the war in Europe, in part because the Japanese were different from any people in the world. The war itself was a mysterious, dream-like hop from tropical island to tropical island against a martial foe that worshipped a living emperor. Lush islands occupied by cannibals and Stone Age peoples. It was a war of eerie silence punctuated by sudden bursts of violence. It's strange too how the Japanese "woke up" from their nightmare after the atomic bombs landed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and promptly became one of the most peaceful peoples on Earth.
Good night, and Good Luck, as an influential newscaster used to say.
posted by Steve C at 3:28 AM
2 Comments:
We need to go for a beer soon.
Why not start with the problems that are causal, instead of limiting yourself to a particular part of the population? For example, I was reading an interesting article about why African nations are having such a hard time with Western medicine. Mostly it is due to the fact that there were a few Western doctors who did terrible experiments on Africans, and this is now widely spread knowledge there. It's not lack of doctors, but lack of acceptance of them.
The question is, are the decision trees you so question decidable or not...Godel, yeah!
Hope all is well, talk to you soon buddy.
"If you want to improve the lot of the human race, you don't start with the majority. You start with the minority, the minority for whom things suck the most."
I would disagree. I would say start with the people for whom things have the potential to get really sucky. Assuming that we only have a finite quantity of manpower, resources etc., it would be far more practical to direct them towards initiatives that will stop new problems from occuring, rather than fixing old ones.
There goes my totally utilitarian view.
Post a Comment
<< Home