Monday 26 November 2012

Karma for postmodernists

I often think about the popular saying 'What goes around comes around'. Take the supernatural elements of Karma away, and you're left with a very basic principle: The kind of energy you send out into the world affects the kind of energy you will receive from the others around you. If you smile at a stranger on the street, you're likely to get a smile back. If you glower and shake your first, people will mimic you as a way of relating. Your kindness/anger inspires their kindness/anger.

When you seek to hurt someone, you are operating from a place of hurt. The negativity which you wish to transfer onto someone else is already festering inside, wreaking all sorts of havoc on your system. You think it'll be better once you're done hurting your target, but you actually make it worse. Others' happiness, or lack of it, impacts our own. It's a vicious cycle.

What's better than two people who reinforce each others' hurt? People who reinforce each other's feel-good tendencies. To love and care for another person is to love and care for yourself. Altruism is a most 'selfish' act. If you receive hurt, try not to pass it on. Draw upon your reserve of good feelings instead. Tell someone how much you appreciate them. You're likely to get the sentiment back and more, thereby ensuring that the chain of hurt ends with you, and you've begun something entirely new to counteract it (either directly or indirectly). The lucky person who was treated nicely by you will go out into the world with renewed purpose to pay it forward.

A win-win situation is always around the corner.

There has been a lot of research on how societies with a comparatively low level of income inequality make for happier, closely-knit communities where there is a high level of trust between the citizens. It turns out that, even if you're part of the 1% (of people who own the highest degree of wealth) in, say, Chicago, you are still as affected by the same high level of crime and low level of community spirit as a homeless person. You can't insulate yourself from the rest of the city, because we're all interconnected. Your extremely high level of economic privilege is the result of someone else's extreme disempowerment. But what if you are both on the same socio-economic level, on even footing, sharing the resources as equals? The walls collapse and you become free to connect, knowing that you share the same values: a dedication to the collective well-being. 

Sunday 25 November 2012

Lea and I (5th Sept, 2011)

“Okay, so here I am! Tell me all about your book idea.”

“To be honest, I don’t really know what I want to write about anymore… my ideas keep proliferating, to the point where I am overwhelmed by options, intimidated by perceived reactions to my own outlandishness, and afraid that, for all my supposed genius, I’ll never be good enough to attract the reader I want the most.”

“You’re thinking too much – just start writing!”

“Start writing… as always, that’s a brilliant idea, however I’m getting sick of hearing people tell me not to “think too much.” I like myself the way I am.”

“Alright, alright: I’m not trying to change you. That has always been pointless. I apologise. I do however see great potential in you, and I want to help you find your way.”

“If you want to help me, help me change the world.”

“Maybe you can change the world... through your stories.”

“To change the world… I used to pity the people who ever fell out of love with the notion of changing the world. But now I don’t know if I can even light a match to that adolescent fervor. The best I can hope for now, is to make minor alterations to the overarching global storyline.”

“You never know, what if you get incredibly famous?”

“Highly unlikely as I’m a postmodernist. The vast droves of people that doesn’t elude through ignorance, it alienates through antipathy.”

“And yet, many people thoroughly enjoy your work. They think it’s ground-breaking, revolutionary… they might call it avant-garde, or unconventional. ‘Postmodern’ is just one possible label, but as you yourself would say, labels aren’t important. It’s the story you weave together from those disparate influences, in the end.”

“I see your point. Well, luckily for my would-be publishers, I have given up on marketing my work as postmodern… just gotta keep thinking 'outside the box', I guess.”

“Well? I’ve got thirty minutes. I know you’ve been sitting around basking in your own sense of futility, and I’m here to get you away from all that: I want you to tell me a story. Any story, my dear disgruntled artiste. It could be underdeveloped or full of blemishes – but I want to hear it.´

“Guess there’s no turning back now…”

*

It’s all very well to make a list about your ideal guy – until the girl who would be your better half for the next few years walks into your life and it’s suddenly made clear just how much your notions of an ideal were lacking.

It wasn’t her gender that made me rearrange my gaze – it was that her personality was so different from anything I could have dreamed up myself.

In order to reach the desired seat, in the middle of the lecture room, Lea had to give non-verbal messages to the other students, which she did with as little eye contact as possible. It was when she sat down that her eyes became alive – it was as if her eyes were dancing in response to the lecturer’s presentation, going all over the place, and then back to the podium, made all the more attention-grabbing for the calm and steady demeanor of our classmates. This Asian girl was one a different plane, in another world. I noticed that something about her made me feel slightly uncomfortable, like she was hitting notes in my psyche I hadn’t accustomed to resonating with. I focused instead on what of her playful deconstruction of the lecture I could find across her face, letting her games inspire my own. I, too, was scarcely in need of inspiration – I hoped and feared I had found a friend.

When I finally talked to her it was as if she could see parts of me I’d been struggling to consciously understand for years. And yet she was surprisingly blind to the obvious.

Our conversations always operated on multiple levels – that which was subconscious shifted into consciousness, and vice versa; we tied up loose ends and flew into new topics with but a single phrase; we were always running off on tangents, yet the underlying themes of our connection stayed much the same.  We were much like any other couple, off in our own little world. Yet there was one variation on the typical Aussie couple that nobody would let us forget.

*

“So you’re Jewish and she’s Chinese? Interesting.”

“If you think about it, it will be to be old-fashioned a hundred years from now when we’re all mixed race and all in inter-ethnic relationships.”

“Could be, but I’ve always been one for being in the moment. And at the moment, I don’t envy you: cross-cultural relationships are just not easy.”

*

What people didn’t understand was that there is no universal, one-size-fits-all Jewish or Chinese culture. Despite the mainland Chinese fervor for assuming all Chinese citizens shared common values and an essential Chinese-ness, and the Jewish superiority belief over the inferiority belief I had been gotten to know so well at home, I was firmly of the belief that every person had a culture of their own.

“We are all a community of selves,” Lea once mused as she stroked my hair. “I don’t know where the next part of me to establish itself will begin or end.”

Besides, there are points of commonality between any two cultures. For instance, Chinese and Jews, both drive their offspring to aspire to become well-off in life, determined to triumph in their new circumstances, despite discrimination and the fight to establish a space of belonging in a new culture.

Both Lea and I had decided we didn’t want to belong to any traditions which forced us to deprioritize our dreams. Thankfully my parents had long since abandoned their hopes of me pursuing a psychology degree, and hers had eventually come to accept that her communication skills wouldn’t flourish the way she wanted them to if she had become a law student. I, the poet, and she, the storyteller, were no worse or better off as a couple for our ethnic differences – it was our personalities which demanded the other’s attention; which got in the way of ever writing the other off as too foreign, and which inspired me to challenge myself in ways I couldn’t have previously imagined.

*

“So after all the indecision over names, you came up with Lea. Were you thinking Star Wars?”

“Actually, I was thinking that my character really loved the surname ‘Lee’, and turned it into a first name by adding an –a at the end, as per the Western tradition.”

“Ah. What’s her last name?”

“Right now? Couldn't tell you. You'll have to wait till inspiration strikes.”

"Okay... So, well, then, keep going..."

*

Wednesday 7 November 2012

O happy day!

There's nothing like the prospect of the name 'Mitt Romney' rapidly fading from public discourse to turn a girl's frown upside down! :oD I know that just because the Democrats have emerged victorious doesn't mean that I've heard the last of the Republicans, but it's very consoling to know that Obama and his administration will be the dominant voices coming out of the States. I am imagining an US Politics Word Cloud where the size of the Romney tag is ever-decreasing... soon it won't even be visible to the naked eye.

My dad and I watched Obama's victory speech live on CNN, and were both moved to tears, even though neither of us buy into American exceptionalism. The kind of soaring rhetoric which would be dismissed as overly idealistic in Australia touched on some resonant notes for us, and I was left to wonder what might have been if Obama's race wasn't demonised by a large section of the American population... what kind of policy and personality development he would have been allowed to develop if he were viewed as white. But it doesn't do much good to get lost in a hypothetical universe. No amount of wishful thinking can change the current realities I perceive. Envisioning an Obama leadership free of constant stigmatisation from racist hysterics does however allow me to imagine that Obama could have been a more effective, charismatic and powerful progressive force, and puts things into perspective. We all do the best we can with the circumstances we find ourselves in. Obama has managed to stay in the white house, keeping the politics, if not left-of-centre, then not as right-wing as they would invariably become under Republican governance.

So let's hear it for four more years of America's first third culture kid president! *clink*

Friday 2 November 2012

Girls, get your misogynist today!

Hey girls, feeling alright at just this particular moment? Tsk tsk. What you need is a man to subtly undermine your self-esteem and subconsciously manipulate you into submitting to his gaslighting and demands. Make haste and become attractive to these people - they can only be nabbed if you sufficiently hate yourself. Remember the rule: Look good on the outside, let society corrode your self-esteem on the inside. If you're appropriately insecure you stand a good chance of catching their attention. The more you hate on other women, the better. Slut-shame with the best of the men to earn extra points. Regularly identify women as ugly or homosexual and that previously aloof misogynist will regard you with a vaguely vindictive glow in his eyes.

The good news is that the world is on your side. Contrary to popular belief, misogynists are not in short supply. Ubiquitous, they are. You're conditioned to hang on their every demeaning word and offer up the remains of your self-confidence for merciless slaughter.

Isn't heteronormativity brilliant? Conform, conform now. Good girl. For god's sake, don't become a feminist. You might do things such as not regard your body hair as hideous, speak your mind and be labelled a bitch for your refusal to be constantly considerate to male concerns. You will develop a distaste for the misogynists, and other female misogyny connoisseurs will shun you. No longer will your sense of self-worth be regularly depleted. Your rejection of mainstream male behaviour will effortlessly alienate the grand majority of the populace. Why do this when you could be just like everyone else and submit to being physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually abused?

Everybody loves a bit of humiliation in day-to-day life. Being female means you'll be on the receiving end of it. Clearly you need to accept that reality. To do otherwise means misogynists who would've happily dismissed you previously might reconsider the efficacy of their woman-hating ways. It's not for the weak-hearted. You might pick up things like courage, self-assurance and a healthy self-love along the way. Once again I must stress that you can't survive without becoming a victim to misogynists. Conformity may not be empowering, but it's instrumental to retaining the status quo. Don't abandon it now...