How to refuse good money even if you get lousy customers?

If you read me a couple of blogs ago, I was writing about the peace I have made with my sense of being incomplete for not having chosen an academic route. I remember, years ago, I was asked, "Why not just complete a few more units and get a degree in Australia?"

The allure of overseas or local universities has never appealed to me. It's not a superficial rebellion against authority; it's just that I've always known that the sort of knowledge I want to gain, the sort of insights and discussions, must be worth the price and time I'm paying. I've just never found any incentive great enough or the idea of something tantalizing enough for me to want to risk the time, money and effort pursuing that.

Fast-forward 10 years and universities everywhere, especially Australian and non-ivy league American universities, apart from Malaysian ones, are riddled with scandals of tampered passing marks, doctored results, plagiarism, etc. Anyone who's been keeping up will know the full monty - otherwise, consider this a course assignment to read up on education crisis in the past decade. I've always suspected that a good number of Malaysians who are applying for jobs with 'degrees from overseas' actually got theirs from paper mills, coz it is simply not possible, based on their (lack of) eloquence, vocabulary and research/writing skills, critical thinking and ability to think maturely nor solve problems efficiently that they are 'graduates'. And now we know that a good number find their way home with a doctored degree or transferred to 'colleges' with lower academic requirements in order to get that piece of paper.

I say the problem is three-fold : Parents who think degrees guarantee a good life without ever understanding the merits of what an education was supposed to provide (I'd have to write another blog specifically dedicated to my belief of what education is supposed to do for the student) are at fault. Yes, it was an honest ambition, but it is a symptom of the destructive ambitions of human beings (had I already written a blog about what I think is wrong with ambition?. Speculations like that created false demand that, needless to say, exceeds supply. When funding and hiring (or keeping your job as an academic) depended upon the number of enrollments and passing rate, academics are served a dish they have to swallow, however unpalatable it is.

I had a conversation like this with an academic friend when I told her how a former student of mine, had, out of a sense of moral obligation to the sort of ethics I preach, asked for my permission to plagiarise. I said I cannot believe a top student, a clever one too, would consider plagiarising! My friend then tells me of one episode where she argued with a student over the legitimacy of his work - he argued it was his original work and she opened up a book where she had highlighted the whole chunk he had tried to pass off as his own. This was in Australia.

It's happening all over the world - this blind ambition of 'wanting my child to go to university' - what sort of a romantic dream is that? So what happens? First, we have students who would have otherwise taken a different route in life, force-fed into an education system that purges them out on a conveyor belt that carries them en route to universities. The social pressure from parents keep them under-pressure to stay on a course not best suited for their souls.

And when these fees-paying students backed up by either their parents' hard-earned savings or their mortgages and bank loans, arrive at the door of universities and colleges around the world - what happens? Universities don't pay for themselves and their research and lecturers didn't slave that many years earning their academic mettle just to live like a pauper. The money has to come from somewhere - and who can turn good money away - even if it comes from bad students?

If I were an academic, I'd of course blame A-level teachers. And if I were an A-level teacher, I'd blame the whole gamut of high school teachers. And if I were a high school teacher, I'd blame primary school teachers, who in turn, blame the government and parents.

Wouldn't it be really, really simple to just stare a bull in the eye and take it by the horn? When you go down the rabbit hole - even students themselves pin the blame on parents.

Interview with the parent :

Why do you put so much pressure on your children and create this chain-reaction?

Parent : It's not me! What if they can't get a good paying job? Nowadays, everyone has a degree! No degree cannot get a job!

So what happens when everyone has a degree?

Let's just go to the root of the problem : Greed; which is cultured from Fear, which is rooted in Ignorance. (also known as lack of awareness.)

Human beings are greedy. They've always wanted more. What was this line I heard in a movie or came across in a book once : "Humans have an insatiable hunger for things, like hungry ghosts, never enough, and they will destroy everything and yet not be able to fulfill their cravings and lusts and desires."

They want more money, more status, more prestige. More than any other person they can compare themselves to, and if they are forced to concede defeat, at least not less than the other person.

Getting a 'degree' is just another way to legitamise their greed, their ambition for more. YES - that is it! TO LEGITIMISE (this time, I spelled it correctly) their greed, ignorance and sheer stupidity. It is simply another pattern of Man's destructive nature in his lust for ambition and greed. It is that greed which has eroded the excellence of thinking, the credibility of academia and coming down further, schooling, learning, etc. Everything that we could've excelled at, in the end, gets destroyed by this insatiable greed. Nature is destroyed, creativity is manipulated to create more illussions, technology becomes weapons of mass destruction....etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Now look what they've done. Once upon a time, humans created an ingenious method of proliferating knowledge and ideas through exchanges that can be reviewed by peers and where checks-and-balances are in place to legitimise the ideas and thoughts that would most benefit mankind and society. This method created a genuine proliferation of value for society by maximising the intellectual capacities of the most able, creative and sharp minds in a society. Going to university, or school, really meant something.

Let's stop the stupidity. Let's just pull out all the clogs. It's really not that hard. I did not have to sit under a banyan tree for one score and a decade to be able to arrive at this. Let's simply not let greed, fear and ignorance rule over us and call all the shots and be Masters of our destiny. Who or what is this imaginary power over us that makes us conform, feel like we have to, or would be left out? That is the collective power of Illussion - and illussion that everyone makes real by subscribing to it and conforming to one another.

Hey, who knows....one day?

I gotta say, the one thing I love about blogging is that you can have absolutely no talent in writing and yet produce a piece of writing for possible mass consumption - albeit selectively, here in cyberspace. It's like writing a diary you want people to find - and I've had a tendency of doing that. I remember this one time when I was a teenager, and I let a friend 'read my diary' - which was, of course, embellished with timelines that extended beyond my actual age at that time. She said I reminded her of Anne Frank blah blah ....until today, I have not read that diary though I have come across the knowledge that she was some kid stuck in an attic during the Holocaust. Now, to my point...

Now, blogging adds this aspect of being able to spin fantasy, real-life drama and opinion in a diary-form which can be selectively public. It marries all the issues I have about writing; on one hand, I can only ever write from a voice that is very me, very personal, which would make it sort of like a diary, wouldn't it? However, a diary isn't sexy unless it's read by people who are anonymous to you at the point of them savouring the fruits of your writing ;).

This blog is going to be the witness to the birth of my published-self. ...even if my blog is self-published :).

Akademik di laut, orang biasa di jalanan...bilakah akan bertemu dalam kuali?

Have you ever tried gleaning insight and knowledge from selecting the freshest fish in the market for ideas and strategies? With so much information being made available, we would think that the answers to solve all of humanity's problems and elevate all of us to self-actualization would've been found, correlated and delivered.

Anyway, I'm speaking specifically from the context of reading drafts and papers presented at conferences ............well, one has to speak Academish to appreciate its literary and entertainment value. In order to make ONE point,it seems like one has to sift through endless drones of references and names and abbreviations and annotations et al to arrive at a mind-blowing point. But no. Maybe it's me, ....I don't know.... but I never seem to arrive at any conclusive, mind-blowing point without having to read a few hundred pages of text. Sometimes that never happens at all. I seem to find more answers from doing nothing but observing life than I do going through the sea of academic papers.

I don't want to sound anti-intellectual or anti-academic and it's perfectly easy to accuse me of that because mah no-ledge nevar went to kolej. OK, maybe I was being self-deprecating but that's not the point. I often wonder, how long does it take information to get distilled and distributed to the people its life would impact and change? Everything I've been reading from financial management to investing to economic development and sustainable economies, psychology, etc seems to be providing a coherent theme the Everyday Person can utilise.

For some reason, the role of academia was supposed to provide insight to regular folk........ like, ...me. It's either academics and their inner-circle have some kind of screening procedure keeping the public out and their friends in or there's a really big gap no one is addressing. Understandably, academics stay in their ivory towers to write peer-reviewed papers. And Gurus sometimes give talks in academic settings and spend their free time writing books; books that the ordinary folk might not get to at all, often.

Being free without a license

How useful are academic qualifications when it comes to actually solving the problems on the ground? I'm talking about academics in general and the problem of declining English-language proficiency in Malaysia in an age where English has become the medium for science, math, technology and just about everything else. It's a chicken and egg situation : If you're not an academic, what you say must be not valid, and is unsubstantiated and its insignificance highlighted by the fact that it's merely anecdotal evidence. If you become an academic, the years of having to conform to the rules of academia in collecting, analysing and interpreting information ends up muddling the distinction between what is your insight and awareness, thus, practical and applicable versus what is the sum of the addition of other people's ideas and opinions.

Have you ever realized though, how in writing an essay for academic purpose, half of the word count is attributed to quotes and annotations? It seems that an opinion can only be valid if it is based on evidence from an existing and accepted thought or opinion. Then how is one to remain fresh? How is one to separate and validate one's own opinion from the conglomerate of third party observation, information and opinions?

The years that it takes, the eating, breathing and drinking a certain code and environment en route to becoming an academic alters the intellectual DNA of a person. It is a widely held belief that an academic route makes the mind sharper, more brilliant and more superior. But how many academics really drive the direction of society and creativity? The divide between the world of the academics and the realities of society at large is so huge - no wonder the term, ivory tower.

So, it begs the question : In order to make a significant shift in thinking, does one need to first be an academic? But how can one still retain that fresh, creative thinking after a process of adding and quoting and referencing and validating others' opinions over yours? Who would want to be unconformist in an area notorious for its conformity by suggesting a revolutionary-type theory? If the theory catches on with enough peer support with the correct timing and momentum, it becomes a valid opinion that might be able to ride the wave against the current of objection and counter-argument by other academics. If it doesn't, all is wasted. Then one is labelled with negative opinions. If one had to go through academia just to be shot in the foot, one might as well spend the same amount of energy being a Dale Carnegie type.

When resorting to writing a paper with an opinion, in order to present at a conference, it cannot escape the structure and decorum conference papers must adhere to. Such a voice is not the most appealing to the general public - the same public one is supposed to benefit by being an academic.

There will be mavericks - those who have successfully married academic achievement with what seems like rogue behaviour. And if the stars and planets are aligned perfectly, you win a Nobel prize.

Can we pursue and make change without the stamp of approval from academia? Is it worth being a Dale Carnegie instead of being a paper-chaser? And especially so, can we pursue and make change from within ourselves, from within the context of the circumstances we find ourselves in amidst our very own society, instead of pursuing the lingua franca of those in ivory towers in order to get permission to make those changes?

The same way becoming a self-made millionaire belies a blueprint that has been altered through the course of time, becoming an academic also changes the core person that embarked on that journey. Maybe at first it seemed like the most rational thing to do, to exploit the scholastic aptitude one innately possesses and to benefit from the status and luxuries an academic life can offer. And 7 to 10 years later, the person who lived in the shadows of society behind the shiny shade of ivory towers eventually find themselves a prisoner of their own cleverness. And this is my argument against pursuing an academic route all these years.

It is possible to argue that in truth, i simply do not possess the capacity for graduate and doctorate studies - that i simply do not possess the faculties of designing, observing, collecting empirical evidence, referencing and interviewing and adding and adding knowledge to oneself or the reading skills to deal with tonnes of dry, academic reading and their jargon and semantics. And add to that the lack of discipline of denying oneself the freedom of partying as a young person, being employed in a diverse selection of jobs in the open market, living frugally and being dutiful in meeting budgets and assignments and protocol. I do not deny the possibility of all of the above.

At soon-to-be 32, I have managed to convince myself that whatever the path we have chosen to take in order to achieve whatever we set out to achieve - the journey in itself alters us permanently. That has always been my argument against fatalistic people like my father who believe that money, duty and narrowly-defined traditional responsibilities have to come first while he puts his dreams away in a lockbox. As we know by now, my father expired before he could even find the map he stowed away which showed him back to the place he put the key for his lockbox!

I believe that putting our dreams and hopes away makes us into that person, someone who is not someone we wanted to be, the same way pursuing our dreams makes us that person we dream about. I think, therefore, the Universe is very neutral about our choices; It neither condemns nor celebrates our choices, which gives a new meaning to the personal responsibility of Freewill.

I grew up in a society which demands academic endorsement to validate any opinion. A society that created in itself the loophole for doctored endorsements and a mushrooming of paper mills to certify anything under the son. For over a decade and a half, throughout times which seemed to make the choice of pursuing an academic route even more difficult and necessary at the same time, I had battled with the arguments for and being neutral about the necessity to validate myself through academic endorsements. What makes the decision harder was the fact that I knew, even at the most modest estimates, that I would be able to hack it, aptitude wise.

But Krishnamurthi was spot-on when he questioned why we pursue our degrees so. It is either for material or intellectual ambition. It is for the ego, the self-identity which can be found and strengthened by such endorsements. It might sound like I am anti-academia, but no. I think the pursuit of knowledge in itself for the sake of itself is perfectly fine. But along the way, the temptation to escape into the shrouds created by the additive process of information and knowledge and to cocoon ourself in an ivory tower overcomes a person, overtakes the freshness of mind that one first entered with, over-ridden by the general ambition of society at large as we wear out our own innocence and naivete within the structure of academia.

So this is my declaration. This is my acceptance. That i do not need to seek acceptance and validation for my opinions. It was my own demons seeking recognition and face. It was my own demons telling me my validation and endorsement can only come from putting my energy and creativity on hold and pursuing an academic route to its end.

The Gift of Madness

[consider the lunacy of our world]. To not participate wholesale in that lunacy is a form of madness.

And in this case, madness becomes a gift - a gift to the world. One has to step outside the confines of set rules and norms to be able to create - or be creative. To half subscribe to the traditions and inhibitions of lunacy yet wanting to thrive in creativity, to make a difference while being confined by the same, is another pattern of lunacy. Outright rejection of the major norms, not for the sake of rebellion or being different, but to own the freedom to create and be is labelled madness - and perhaps that's really what the world gone looney needs this Christmas.

Creating a model of business not for the end-all goal of profit but to benefit society. Not to create more lust and desire but to create a platform where awareness and consciousness can flower in learning, so that those lusts and desires are turned into introspection which will, hopefully, fan the ember of insight and self-awareness.

What is business today? A cold, mechanical method of meeting bottom lines and a superficial attempt at bettering livelihoods by creating 'jobs'. The aim of business is not faulty, it is one particular element of humans that gives it the energy and moementum to wreak havoc on earth and on human souls. Greed. If the entire system of doing business can be replaced with concepts which still operate under the same methods of meeting bottom lines, increasing efficiency, creating jobs, etc but not in a cold, mechanical way - in an empowering, creative way. The value generated towards the economy remains, the profits of enterprise harvested through jobs created, the benefit of proliferation of affluence, skills and knowledge inherited by the next generation.

Makes no sense that a person possessing the knowledge, skills, on both sides of the technology, product, distribution channels, marketing would not want to increase capacity exponentially and profit from it. It makes no sense only to the looney world we're in, but makes perfect sense in meeting the ideals and ethics of a better human race, of an economy that genuinely guards the physical environment of human beings and the spiritual environment of mankind.

Argument that those who can't refuse to compete. But the premise and spirit of competition in itself is flawed. What is competition? And what does it lead us to? What does it etch and carve into the values of society and eventually, creating the lust and the drive that thrives on such competition? Does competition in itself creates the value of a thing? Conventional business studies cloaks the word competition to mean a kind of rivalry that creates a market force for producers to improve on their goods and services. But would it not be a higher motive if producers create the highest quality product for the sake of the creativity in it and the benefit for others? What happens if producers are only motivated to improve based on fear of losing market share? Would it also mean that they will withold technology, knowledge and other information that can immediately improve on their product/service until they lose some market share before releasing the benefits? Would it not mean that producers would in a way, 'cheat' consumers to pay premium prices for products they know will be made outdated and obsolete, to cheat consumers of the same dollar that could buy the improved product, to cheat consumers of the time they spent using the old product at the same time they could've already owned the new one?

That is the way businesses are currently operating. Example, the electronics industry which contributes to tonnes of e-waste in the end. It makes the producers complete winners; they withold technology until the last model loses market share, launches the new one and in that creates a never-ending cycle of desire for more, newer and shinier.

Argument that that is what makes the economy (and the world) go round, that conservation and prudent spending will cause these industries to contract and the loss of billions of dollars, not to mention jobs. But take a look around, the current models for business has created this exact nightmare and hellish experience on a global scale. The anxiety attacks, dog eat dog situation is pandemic.

Understanding economics helps you understand that it is how people actually behave based on incentives. If more people see the incentive of creating a unified world instead of a fragmented one, to gain more self-respect and self-esteem in helping to heal instead of to divide, etc.....that is how the world will be. Creativity generates value and collective production of a set value creates an industry and industries creates economies. It is a simple matter of replacing a wasteful, destructive way of manipulating creativity with a sustainable, empowering form of economy.

Falling between the cracks

I think by now we've established the fact that I believe school is a good idea only for a minority of individuals who are born so well-adjusted and scholastically gifted but to parents who are incapable of providing them the kind of guidance they crave for. If we'd only recognized this fact, it would instantly dissolve the need for the tens of thousands of underqualified teachers we currently 'urgently need' to fill in posts in overcrowded excuses for cram schools. The school population would be reduced by at least half and the social crime index will begin to fall, hopefully.

Speaking of which, I would not have been one of those people who would've benefited from schooling : Schooling as we know it in the past century is fertile ground for characters who find comfort in conformity, the sort of people who are most likely to rebel one way or another in the end. I, on the other hand, was meant to use my flair for words to humour myself and those who share the same brand of humor I do.

Now, to the point I was going to make; Today's Star newspaper in the section, Focus, features an article about second-chances for juveniles to pick up the 3Ms. It highlighted some aspects of learning which I always knew to be some of the reasons why students are falling behind, suffering low self-esteem and eventually resorting to misbehaviour and social maladjustment as a consequence.

There are simply too many people who cannot perform in even a few rudimentary subjects who are subjected to the torturous, maniacal routine of schooling. You can add an unhealthy learning environment and unnatural social order into the mix and you get the dangerous concoction called schooling.

Because of a system and world we've found ourselves in which measured achievement and worth with words and numbers, so many individuals who could've led a successful, meaningful life are bound and gagged by labels that cause such great conflict with their nature. That is why I believe the work of Howard Gardner is so important in putting the foot in the door in acknowledging the validity that there are so many other forms of intelligences apart from the conservative belief we now hold.

When you have too many students in a burgeoning system and not enough professionals, you have no choice but to lower the standards in engaging teachers - and because of the low incentives and the nature of high demands and accountability in the profession, the most qualified have been magnetized to the draw of incentives in the concurrently growing private sector; which left only the mediocre but most sincere students finding steady employment through teacher colleges a rewarding incentive.

Enrolling thousands of people into a system which promised a 'better tomorrow' and measuring these new thousands using a mold that only suited a few is a sweeping task in breaking the spirits of people and destroying their compass of discovering their purpose in life. Somehow, nobody ever noticed the paradox that when everyone is gunning for the top paying jobs the decade before (engineers, IT people, managers, accountants, lawyers,etc)it will eventually create an efflux of 'qualified' people into the market causing decline in demand and payment, or, alternately and synchronistically, the rising costs of salaries demanded by these 'qualified' people will automatically lead to an inflation that eats into the disposable income anyway. More affluence but less wealth in the end.

Doesn't this kind of world create such great conflicts in a human? To be born a certain nature with innate qualities, but forced by fickle traditional expectations to race inside a machinery that will press and repress, mold and shape you into something you are not. To shape one according to a model which was pre-determined by a flawed society a couple of generations before, with flawed motives behind its visions which has now erected a destructive mechanism enforcing a societal structure which it will defend for as long as it serves the economic advantages of the powers that be. Is the purpose of being born to be fed into the machinery of economic civilisation dictated by a few? A model of economics designed before we were born which we fuel with a misplaced sense of duty dictated by misguided tradition and loyalty and obedience to that tradition?

The really bad good idea of edumacating a future pool of human resources (that's beginning to sound like a dressed-up version of subtle slavery) through a fixed type of learning has generated a whole new science of addressing learners with 'learning difficulty'. (Could it also be a case where it is the method of teaching and not the learner himself that is inadequate?)Fortunately for these juvies, incarceration's silver lining is a second chance at learning where the factors that cause failure in learning usually found in our schools have been removed. It was encouraging to see Malaysian Prisons' Department Academic Sector head Shamsuddin Mustapha make this statement : "When we first started four months ago, we only planned for normal education like those you get in government schools. But we noticed many of them could not read or write. That was when we started 3M classes."

Now why the heck didn't anyone think about that? What with all the automatic promotion of students, and revised textbooks and millions of dollars and environmental damage caused by workbooks and copyright-infringing tuition centre drill worksheets? So much time and resources is wasted on tuitionmania, preparing and competing in school and national exams (right up to the decimal point), UPSR, PMR, smart schools, vision schools apa-pun-ada schools when the solution is simply providing children with the rudimentary stuff, investing in the time and effort it takes for each learner to grasp the material before they move on.

Learning is not a race, it is in the act itself that gives them the fulfillment and self-esteem they are seeking from the idea of learning. If they can deny Time as the determinant of learning and to leave that push-ahead mentality outside and embrace language learning as personal development, there will be no such thing as failure in learning when looking back 6 months, 12 months, etc ahead.

For the full article, do read

BACK TO BASICS BEHIND BARS - http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/11/9/focus/2491471&sec=focus

and SLOW LEARNERS NEED HELP - http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/11/9/nation/2489945&sec=nation

Crime and Punishment

Last Friday, I visited a German friend who had been a German language teacher in Penang in the last 10 years. Those 10 years saw her using an environmentally mode of transportation around Penang - a bicycle made for 1. 10 years went by with annoyances big and small albeit without major incident until 1 month before going back to Germany for good. After many near misses, she had her farewell encast with the most prominent features of Malaysian life - hurried motorists with harried minds and kiasu mentality. Suffering a broken leg, she sits in her front porch eagerly welcoming visitors. She might as well be watching a drama on a TV she doesn't own, for the day before, right in front of her, her German friend had her handbag snatched by 2 motorists pretending to be asking for directions. (Which, ought to raise a red flag, considering the fact that the lady had just alighted and it was a quiet neighborhood).

It has become a weekly affair to hear of snatch thefts victims among the expat families in Penang. Instead of the usual, "Why are people getting worse these days" question, I asked myself, "What's the difference between the people who will and who will not commit a crime, any crime."

I might sound a little fatalistic when I say that all crime is motivated by the dualistic element of incentives and punishments. I remember in one class where we had a topic about whether crime pays, I had said that none of us are as moral as we'd like to think. What becomes our moral yardstick is the programming we had growing up. Morality is not some innate thing which makes us more superior or righteous than another 'outright criminal'. Some people insist they will never steal, cheat, rob........ the way I used to insist that I would never resort to abortion or prostitution. Which is not to say I have, but the reason I haven't has little or nothing to do with a perceived standard of morality.

My motivations based on the scales of incentives/punishments just never reached a tipping scale where I had to resort to crime. I grew up in a society where there was genuine economic activity and I was raised in a family where everyone could read and write and where my father and the grandfather who raised him were professionals. From an early age, I had always had options to obtain gainful employment. And since I am a fairly educated, independent woman not bound mercilessly by the shackles of tradition and narrow-minded society, I had the education to be aware about sexual activity and its risk, as well as the ability to raise a child that would be conceived through any relationships. Not only do I know what I'm doing, I'm capable of figuring a way towards upwards mobility.

And if all these options which are products of my programming were not available to me, the probability of me being a crime statistic is about the same as anyone who's already made it into this year's index.

All of us tend to have a misplaced sense of righteousness about ourselves. That explains the incessant complaining and whining about crime and people who are more 'evil' than we are. The reason they are labelled 'evil' or 'criminal' is simply because we have another label where we are 'superior' and 'righteous'. It is the burden of the haves to take on an aware and engaged sense of social responsibility - and it is because of the "I take care of me" mentality those who have subscribe to which lends to the deterioration of society. All of us are comfortable in our jobs, meeting mortgages and loans and rent and bills and all the other activities that's making the world go round. We never think about the implications of the social and economic cocoon we live in, benefit from and the pedestal of moral righteousness we place ourselves on.

Why should we anyway....it's too inconvenient to care about anyone once we've labelled them "evil" and "criminal". The fact that people are "stupid", "criminal" and "evil" automatically negates our civic responsibility to look into the ways we could have created equitable treatment of all members of our society.

Given, there are simply those people with massive egos who think the world owes them a living - these are the grey-criminals, the leeches and parasites who also label themselves a class better than outright criminals. We cannot always justify someone's criminal act by saying it is the comple responsibility of society, eventhough I believe, a lot of the time, crime is a symptom of the inequality and decay in society and not the cause of.

Do I look like the kind of person with a plan?

Plans sound like great things to do when you are a Business/Marketing/Management student. They tell you, failing to plan is planning to fail. But have we asked on what yardstick are they measuring failure?

The symptoms of why we're so fucked now in our world is because we have not evolved - we think with all our technology and cleverness and knowledge explosion, we have become pedigreed versions of the human race. But pedigree or not, the shit stinks the same. We're accelerating and burning rubber with no brakes and no sensibility in direction. We're headed for a crash.

Just because we've evolved technologically doesn't really make us smarter, better. And that's where the problem is - we think we're smarter and better, and so we deserve MORE, more and MORE of this and that and everything else. We consider ourselves civilised and advanced when only one side of our humanity progressed - the technological side. The spiritual side has been relegated to less than a sideshow; the scientific community, which is essentially on the payroll of Businesses and corporations, has reduced the place of spirituality to that of a freakshow.

The cleverness in us grows and multiplies while our intelligence is diminished. Is that what we call, progress?

Plans and more plans is the vocabulary of the insatiable world of business. There are always plans. Even wanting to do good needs a plan. We're so used to the idea of having plans and ideas that we have reduced ourselves to machines that can only operate within the scope of an operating manual - the Plan.

When asked by '2-face' maverick DA what his plan was, the Joker replied, "Do I look like a guy with a plan?" Do you see from this, the virtue of someone without a plan? It is someone who does something for the sake of doing it, not really because it is part of a process or a plan for something else, some bigger pay-off or benefit. When a person has an ability to do something for the sake of doing it and for the mere purpose of believing in what they are doing, the intensity of the creative power to achieve something is incredible. That is the power of not having a plan. It frees you from the crippling fear that projected expectations tends to weigh down on you. To have a plan means to operate within a fixed context - sterile ground for the quantum power of creativity.

A person without a plan is a person who has not set themselves up for something they will potentially lose. They are free from the fear of failing and free from the judgment they face from themselves and others from 'not fulfilling the plan'. The person without a plan simple "is", simply "to be" and allows themselves to be carried by the creative energy within, riding the state of flux we are all in. Perhaps that's what Eckart Tolle means in his "The Power of Now" - to be able to do something for the sake of doing it and not as a pre-emptive measure or projected gain.

I am a person with many plans, and thankfully, 99 out of a 100 fail because I never see to them. It makes me feel like a failure; a clever and talented person with so much potential and never being able to realize them. But that's only because I had a projected expectation of the material rewards of the 99 other plans. I say thankfully because the proliferation of my other 99 plans spins around me a web of material, tangible benefits which cocoons me from the more important thing I'm after - ethereal realia. I'll keep my mind the way it is - a mind that is able to generate 100 ideas, instead of a mind that is dulled by the material pursuits of the 99 plans.

Having plans really holds me back from what I can really be. Plans for holidays and trips. Saving plans, insurance plans, investments plans. All those keep me present in the future or anywhere else except now. All those things rob me of the ability to enjoy the intensity of the living, present moment. Mortgage plans keep me rooted in my commuting routes, or worse, in a particular neighborhood. Planning to pay off a car keeps me anxious about being able to make repayments. Planning for Thea's education makes me anxious about whether what she's doing now will be able to provide for that future 'education'. Planning for my own further education invalidates the everyday learning I'm doing and makes me think that I am incapable of discovering the knowledge and experiences an undergraduate/graduate programme will provide.

The idea that we cannot live our life without a plan is a product of the traditions and conditioning we're accustomed to. The idea was once an idea of some other authority. When people stick to plans, the masses become more predictable. It makes the jobs of social analysts and psychologists much easier when humans feel falsely secure in routines and patterns. It makes them easier to sell to - it makes it easier to figure out how to cream that 'mindshare' we have. Brillian, actually. But is that all you are? A commodity that helps big businesses and corporations grow and profit materially? Isn't the destruction of intelligence and creativity and our own humanity a price too high to pay for this social experiment?

When watching movies like I-robot and Eagle Eye, it reminds one that there is something computers (and clever analysts and psychologists who key in data to these computers) cannot extrapolate, plot and predict : the human element. The unpredictability of the human makes them human. People always say I am unpredictable; like that is a really bad thing. It is a really bad thing; because it is that one anomaly that really breaks the pattern, whatever pattern you've been working hard to build. But to be unpredictable, to not be a pattern or an anti-pattern, to not conform, is to be Free. And to be free is to be fresh. To be controlled and regulated is to become dull and mechanical. That is not being human.

I planned to go back 3 hours ago...and I also planned to do a lot of other things. The best things in my life happened without a definite, clear plan. In place of a plan, I had a dream. And when my dreams come true, I'd like to say it as if I had known all along, "My plan worked!". - The Halo Effect :)

Sloane, Alone.

Many, many years ago, in a Bahasa Malaysia SPM tuition class, the Cikgu noticed this person you shall now know as the author of this piece, always sitting alone. Well, to this person, tuition classes 2 months before your SPM is an emergency guilt-insurance you take out, in case you really did as badly as your forecast results, well, foretell. I didn't notice the significance of what the Cikgu noticed - that I am a lone ranger. Later on in life, I have been 'labelled' other things; the peg that will eventually find its hole, spinning on the same axis but in the opposite direction, a free-spirit.....They were trying to sound positive, of course. 

Being so connected with the cause, pains and hopes of others while liberatingly alone has been a feature up til now. And it doesn't look like it's going to change. I will in the end,  belong in a club specifically for people who thrive being without associations. A few posts ago, I deliberated about why I do not belong, not even when my current profession allows me to be a member of a proliferating association. I cannot do any of the things I do best and delivering it to the masses without belonging to a group - I cannot write screenplays, songs, act, sing and gain some degree of popularity condusive to earning an honest living, without actually belonging to some troupe or other. I cannot preach at a pulpit, be a published columnist or an online community.....not cannot, would not. 

And now I know why. I thought it was me all along, me and my brand of stubborness. As a child, I often consoled myself that 'Some day, my fit will come'. But I'm not the weirdo. The others are. For how can any of us function as original versions of our selfs if we have to constantly abide by the rules and conformity of others?

I know now that people join groups and associations not so much because they want to help, but because they're unsure about what they're supposed to do. They're looking for validation and confirmation, mostly. There are always the few, the pioneers, especially, with the noble intentions of spreading a cause, creating a platform. But within a generation, the order of the day deteriorates on its own. 

Freshness of mind and action upsets the equilibrium in group dynamics. I am not advocating solitary confinement. I am saying that I understand now that me being alone was necessary for my freshness in thought, my originality. We are all products of programming. Yet, the less programming and the more original thought, the better. And thanks to a lifetime of unconformity, I withstood quite a lot of programming and the liabilities that programming can cause in a person's choices in life. I did not conform to infatuation-laced nor tradition bound marriage, the stereotype of the single mother, the stereotype of the orphan, the teacher, the rebel, the Muslim, the non-Christian, the Buddhist, the this or that. 

I have no form. I have no spiritual or creative form. Long ago, I asked God if He would be angry at me if I chose only a way of Life that encompasses the things I find logical and helpful and which I understand and excluse the traditions which would require me to know only the labels but not the thing itself. I said He could strike me dead anytime soon or take away the gifts that He knew I most cherished - my ability to love and be kind, and my ability with words. I offered them up to Him if He is a God which requires obedience and not thought. I said, because I loved Him and the Life He has given me, so much, I am willing to take my chances, Heaven or Hell, and I will still Love him there. 

During those times, I had a strange dream. I was in a sort of Western town, in the first floor of a building, by a window. The moon was bright. Several buildings were aflame. A group of religious fanatics were going around scouting for non-Muslims to murder or force a confession from. The full moon cast a bright light through the window. They were approaching and soon will be upstairs. I told God I am keeping my promise - that I will have no religious form. The arabic words for "Allahuakbar" was suddenly cast like a shadow into the moonbeam, on the floor. There was nothing on the window. In the moonbeam were written those words. God told me, in His own way, that His presence in me and mine is His, is above anything a human can force out of me. They burst through the door......and I was invisible to them, they could only see the words, "Allahuakbar" on the floor in the moonlight through the window. 

Of course I don't believe I am some spiritual messenger. It is our subconscious showing us what we want to see. Divinity lies within ourselves. It is the divinity in me that gave me that dream. That is why anyone who is sympathetic to any cause will find themselves dreaming of that and making that a prophecy or sign. The only signs we're getting are the ones our own divinity is sending us. The fact that different people get different signs is because we believe in different things - and the fact that they are different does not matter. It is the love and conviction behind the need to believe that drives us to take whatever form that can help us get there.

But Form is a two-edged sword. It is like training wheels. There comes a time when you need to abandon the form without feeling angry towards it nor feeling like a traitor to it. The form is the material world's way of taking us where our subconscious wanted us to go. Our Divinity wanted us to go. When it's time to get off the trainers, we will find ourselves tripping over and being in conflict with our form. Time to get off the training wheels, take them off and getting back on the rest of the journey - without form. 

Actually, to be a lone ranger is in itself another version of a type of form, except that it is a less restricting form. I know I will be branded an eccentric sooner or later. A question I've always wanted to know is - are the people we call crazy really crazy, or is it the rest of us that lives in our own lunacy? I suppose I will be able to find out in this lifetime. 

From where I'm standing right now, it is the rest of humanity that is crazy. They plunder and destroy and find this and that disgusting as long as they get a sanitized view of the really disgusting things. They complain over the same things they created for themselves. If only they stopped and listened - every single human in the most destructive civilisations, stopped their patterns for a week - the skies would clear like it did the week Beijing hosted the Olympics.....we could hear the birds and smell sweet scents. We would find the beauty in nature and our loved ones. We will see the beauty and coolness of water or the qualities of a rock or life-giving soil. 

When you come up with a few novel ideas for life or things, people call you smart, a genius. They applaud you. Then you come up with more, they think you're a maverick, then a revolutionary. And from a line in The Dark Knight, you either die a hero, or you live long enough to become a villain. In our case, an eccentric, or branded a lunatic.

That is the price we pay for not deteriorating like the rest of humankind. As you move further and further up the top in any evolution or hierarchy, the view gets better and clearer, you can see further, it becomes quieter and then.....you finally realize, you're all alone.

It seem that the road to salvation does not lie in group hugs, associations nor states and religions. It lies in being able to shed the layers of conformity heaped on by collective order. There is a difference that is often overlooked when talking about non-partisan views. We live in a world so used to the doctrine of solidarity and its definitions that we do not think other forms of collective can exist and be, in fact, even more effective. 

There is another form of collective - the Collective Consciousness, which does not rely on conformity and associations. Like a powerful legendary Pokemon, each entity can function on its own but finds SYNERGY through the same frequency. They do not set out to gain an advantage by having a structure or team but come equipped with the same awareness and knowledge that each is able to decide on a course of action for each one of themselves which they can collectively act upon without conflict arising or egos obstructing. 

Being alone doesn't mean I am anti-social............I need to keep my thoughts original and fresh, for only then do I have the strength of conviction and passion for my purpose. I will not be as much confused whether those convictions were mostly mine or mostly inherited, dictated, instructed, obliged. I will not face that conflict once I'm deeper into my involvement with mankind. I am alone not because I hate society or am against the status quo for the sake of rebellion - I do not conform because the only way to get out of the mess we're in is to be able to explore the options outside of the systems that had entrapped us. 

Arising from destruction - Part 2

I just ordered a McDonald's. Because of such an act as a consumer, I contributed to the existence of this destructive corporation. McDonald's is destructive because it deliberately pays very low wages in a country without minimum wage so that their franchisers can gain obscene profits. We know the equation. The cost of me sitting here writing is not in terms of hours and electricity. The fact that I did not prepare in advance made me choose between breaking the creative flow or ordering delivery. If only they had local-food delivery. Why can't the creative forces also set up a catering service that charges $3 for delivery? At least I'll be getting fresh food, vegetarian even maybe, instead of this junk I'm eating now just to keep my sugar level up. There are other costs to me writing apart from the physical, mental energy, the costs of physical instruments to facilitate writing (space, electricity, internet)...........I'm spending precious time away from Thea.

I might very well one day, when Thea is old enough to want to go by another last name, go around begging for alms so that I may write my brains out and spend non-writing hours meditating under a hundred year old tree. It's true that we need money to eat - and since I have no land nor talent to cultivate my own food, I must cultivate simple tastes and the humility to be able to beg for food so that I will not be thwarted from being the vessel to deliver this burning desire to write. 

When imagining this scenario, I remember how in my younger days, I was thwarted from pursuing writing because I was afraid I would go hungry. I was afraid I would not have a home, a car, a calling card, a job title, etc etc. But I'm giving myself only a few more years to live. The things I will not be able to bring with me, I will not accumulate. Only my deeds and my loves will gain my devotion. 

It's not so easy for the next person to say, "I'm going to quit delivering meals for McD's and go and find the purpose of my life." And in acknowledging that, we acknowledge that the problems of our destruction lies in the hands of, not so much our unwillingness, but our unconsciousness to let go of our illussions.  If there is only one thing I can do before I die (apart from making sure Thea grows up to be a braver and greater warrior than I) is to be able to leave behind a series of materials which will help people to wake up to themselves, to shed away the layers of fear which bred that thick crust of conformity that is shackling them to those destructive forces and uprooting them from their dreams. 

Whether or not you call it 'fortune', I have arrived, halfway through life, at a point where the choices I had made have helped me make more and more of the sort of choices I would like to have. At 32, I am not overly-concerned about my maternal options, nor mortgages and loans of things I don't need. I don't have parents whose expectations I have to live up to. I am not intoxicated  by romantic and sexual inclinations which would make me overly concerned with love and/or sex. I have no 'career' nor any of the titles and entitlements which would traditionally oblige me otherwise. I understand that it took me 32  years of struggle to arrive at this point of freedom, the same way it took others X-number of years to arrive at their own version of their freedoms and entrapments. We are, ultimately, the product of the choices we have made. And it is never too late to start choosing....except that it gets harder psychologically, because we're more deeply encrusted in our own make-believe realities. 

How many others will be able to see 'reality' as it is and start informing themselves in ways that will help them create the new world? How many can arise from destruction in this lifetime? To arise from the monotony that besets our own deterioration and ultimately, contribute to this destruction we're in?

If there is one thing I am going to do before I leave this life - it is to help as many people find in themselves the ability to see through the smokescreen and arise from their own destruction. 

The beginning of our own destruction - part 1

All of us, well,...at least the ones that really matter when it comes to making a fucking mess of this world - conform to a set of rules to living. This conformity fucks ourselves over and over again and we get up and do it a different pattern but the same way. No wonder history repeats itself. 

I don't know why I'm so angry. I shouldn't be. But well, to know the name of a thing and to know the thing itself is a different thing, isn't it? I know why I shouldn't be angry - because it is not their fault that they are so caught up in their petty little existence, glorifying their own morality and misplaced sense of righteousness. I know that we cannot be angry with a blind man that hit us with his walking stick because it's our fault for being in the way or not giving way. I have the name of the thing - the explanation - about why it's not necessary to get worked up. But I have not fully internalised the meaning of forgiving for they know not what they are doing. 

I have all these people I know and care about and  we're supposedly to help make this world a better place. But what I see, left, right, centre...online and offline, in Asia and across the oceans, are people who do nothing but complain and complain and complain. They complain about money they don't have, the state of life, the government, the economy, so on and so on. When is my turn to complain? The one thing that brings me back to earth is my inability to control my urge to complain about their complaining. 

It is so damn fucking easy to just look at the things that we have drawn around ourselves to define our life and to see how these self-created illussions are entrapping us with false expectations and pursuits. No one sits back and questions whether the viewpoint that we're supposed to have a brick home, electricity, amenities and furnishings, car, insurance, a certain lifestyle, schooling, etc even begins to define life. If it doesn't, why spend so many waking and sleepless hours upholding that reality?

We create all these illussions that make us think we have so much to lose - imagine that, losing illussions! We hallucinate about our own self-importance, our own status and prestige, our cleverness and talents, looks and tastes. All that is worth less than shit - at least with shit it becomes fertiliser. 

You know, people used to live in caves and made mudhouses. In fact, I'm sure you've heard about nomadic tribes. They don't even own a brick house with running water and electricity and I don't think that has yet become one of their ultimate goals in life. It's convenient, sure, but we don't suddenly vanish into thin air and become nothing if we don't own it. And even if we do own them, an earthquake and a tsunami can come a throttling and pretty much make them vanish into thin air. Nowadays, a businessman gloats over a piece of land he's just bought. But God never made us sign leases. The entirety of the things we take for granted as 'reality' is a system of man-made devices, ideas that disproportionately benefit the creative directors and unfairly inherited as an advantage. 

The realities of the feudal-system landowners are as significant today as they have been before. It is the claiming of resources and assignment of privileges, unfair distribution of wealth and resources and surrender to authorities that create rules and systems that keep this balance in place. Modern day society is deeply immersed in this hierarchy and are active, sedated participants of the systems that oppress them. 

How stupid humans are. We surrender our authority to modern landowners; banks with their mortgages and loans and we surrender our mindshare to advertisers who are spindoctors of illussions that feed off our greed, lust and desire. 

The entirety of the world's problems throughout history can be simplified into one thing : The surrender of ourselves to another authority. This other authority creates ideas, systems, laws, political ideologies, philosophies, religions, which we subscribe to one or the other,  but they all do the same thing; exploit and make use of our willingness to surrender to authority by dictating to us and making us dance according to their mix of incentives and punishments. 

Conformity is the ultimate show of our surrender. We conform to our class in society, to our traditions and religions. We conform to schooling so that we can continue to conform to the very evil of 'getting a job'. (Why on earth would anyone's ultimate goal in life is to work on a job?). Conforming to the need to 'get a job' facilitates the other systems - mortgages, loans, exploitative corporations and the highly complex and intoxicating consumer culture. I can hear the instant argument of, "What are we going to feed ourselves with if we don't have a job?". That is proof of the powerful conditioning of these systems and their destructive powers to quash a person's quest for the meaning and purpose of his life. 

For most of history, ...in fact, we only have to look at the Amish community, people did not 'need' a job to 'feed' themselves. They did not allow greedy corporations to facilitate business models that took away land which was meant for food to be polluted in a thousand ways through cattle grazing or indiscriminate dumping of waste. If we are serious in addressing 'reality', we can completely replace the current model of economies and businesses with sustainable ones. A job is not a job unless the big boss decides it is a job. And if nobody is willing to work for a company whose enterprise contributes to the destruction of free air, water and land and its beauty, there will be no company. 

But why do people take up these jobs? "For money". And why the need to have this much money? Is there no other more creative and non-destructive manner to 'make money'? Let's just admit it - we don't want to risk a lot nor lose anything, we want convenience. We want to be sedated. We want to be comfortable. We want to be glorified. And corporations and systems take advantage of that very essence of our stupidity. Having a lot of things you cannot afford to be without is a big weakness. Any mafia understands that. Therefore, it also makes it true that the person who has nothing to lose is a very dangerous person - dangerous to any organization and system of systems. 

The sooner we all wake up and own up to our own weaknesses and reclaim back our unconditional surrender to authority, take responsibility for every single choice in our life the sooner we start saving the world. 

Think about it for a moment. All those corporations and governments and systems you complain about is a product of the people willing to work for them. And the incentives for those people who work for them is a fatter paycheck...and the paychecks keep getting fatter until it is enough to buy their conformity. And why do these people sell out? Because people like you glorify their law and engineering degrees and manufacture a collective belief in the superficial value of material things that they can now own to validate themselves in your eyes.All of us want to glorify ourselves. That is exactly what we do when we glorify others. Because if we dont support such a show of glorification, who will be around to glorify us when it's our turn? For that reason, I will always avoid graduation ceremonies, medals and awards of achievements, my own wedding and anything that reeks of self-glorification or glorification of others. 

All of you believe that there is no other costs behind the material things which glorify members of our society; the expensive suits, cars and real-estate. Take for instance, the doctors and pharmaceutical salespeople and people in the medical health insurance industry who have helped create a reality that is the American health system. That 'reality' is not a reality in the rest of the world. But it is a reality that will allow a few to further exploit and bend a whole lot more people to their will because they have to 'pay for a reality, medical bills.'

Surrender to an authority/system/tradition breeds a collective conformity that fuels the ambitions of the destructive forces. All systems that require surrender, that is headed by an authority will find in itself the seed for its own corruption and destruction, and along with them, the destruction of mankind and life on earth. 

Then how can we tell apart the teams of destructive and creative forces?

The creative forces do not require surrender of any kind. The creative forces lets you grow yourself through Love; by doing what you Love and which is your purpose in Life. The creative forces does not demand your loyalty nor asks you to sacrifice your principles. The Creative forces do  not require you to suspend judgment and logic or make you a victim of your own convictions. The creative force inspires camaraderie in you - for you all share a collective vision of Love and Hope. The creative forces fills you up so much inside and your contribution is your validation - and you do not need senseless consumerism to 

                                                                                                                               

The Bad Guys are only as bad as their bad logic.

I've always had this notion that if I hadn't curbed my enthusiasm, I'd be a cult leader, revolutioner of some kind, leader of a militia or criminal mastermind. But I've earned myself some liabilities - liabilities I call my anchors in the storm - things that will give me a reason to live and a reason to be patient, a reason to be sensitive, and an antidote to my ambition. There are no villains, just interpretations on which part of the story historians wrote. Thus, Che Guevera, Castro, Hitler....they are great people. 

The most beautiful thing is to have nothing to lose - when you have nothing to lose, or nothing worth losing you can pursue your ambitions with a single-mindedness and fuel it with a creative energy that can penetrate all those walls of doubt ordinary people waste their time defeating themselves over. 

We tend to view moral and virtue in such a dualistic manner. A person or an act is good or evil. We refuse to see the truth that it is incentives and motivations that tame or provoke the nature of unawakeness in us. If I were Hitler, I wouldn't view the killing of millions of Jews as the act of an evil man. Even if I were facing certain death, the objective view is that Hitler is a man of great vision and ambition and he understood psychology well. Is the life of a human over-rated? Hitler and all the bad guys in history probably understood one fact that the regular guy on earth never will - there are people who change the course of mankind and there are the rest, who simply eat, shit and complain. While we need them as labour for our economies and to generate wealth, to have too many of them is unnecessary. 

I profess to know nothing about Hitler but while the rest think this is a man fuelled with so much hatred and evil in him, he probably honestly believes he is doing the world a favour. And what gave Hitler so much potency? It is the regular conformist, the lover of rules and systems who surrender authority to others because they want a convenient life - he understands them well, the things they cherish so dearly which leaves them vulnerable to exploitation. He definitely doesn't feel intense negativity like hatred nor does he see himself in such a low-light that what he is doing is evil.

He is part of a vision of a group of people who understand their own existence better than the many they are about to annihilate. They attract more energy to their visions than negative emotions such as fear, doubt, hopelessness. They are driven by purpose and are ahead of the curve. But the 'evildoers' will always lose because there is one thing so powerful that it can trump everything else many fold - Love. The only thing evildoers lack is to have something or things that they love so much more than their own ambitions. And the one thing the good guys can always count on is the inspiration, creativity and energy that comes from the back of loving, from sensitivity. 

Loving a really good bad joker

I watched Dark Knight on dvd this morning. I couldn't really get my mind off it since watching it in the cinemas. A side of me that I have kept largely repressed in order to function and conform as much as I can to this charade called polite civilisation can relate on so many levels to The Joker. I think he cannot be more right on a lot of his philosophies towards life. Secretly, (well, not so secret now that I've got it written out on my blog) I could not agree with him more. 

Recently, I had a short and abrupt conversation with a friend about the state of civilisation destruction she thinks we're currently in. She believes the state of the world is getting worse and that there doesn't seem to be hope in the horizon.  I always sense her frustration and suspected that her optimism for humanity has been stretched too thinly over the decades. Whether or not her frustrations are a recent thing, I don't know. There is not one proper way to disagree on such a deeply personal and complex subject as one's opinion of the state of the world. 

First of all, we have to realize that none of us see the world as it is - unless you can claim to be a Glass Eye to the world and have perfect clarity which no doubt comes with divinity. - We see the world as who we are. If we are someone who has been frustrated, let down - then that is our worldview of the world as well. 

I am very optimistic about my country and the world at large. The way I see it, no point in time has the good guys had a playing field as level as now. Technology has taken away most of the bad guys' advantage of time and position. Today, for the first time, the good word, the inspirations, the morals and the stories can reach more literate people and to make believers out of people than any time in history. Today, TRUTH is given a fertile ground with the information revolution.

No doubt some are pessmistic and say that the evildoers have equal access to these technologies and weapons of mass proliferation of thoughts and ideas. But lest you ignore the fact, evildoers are enterprising people who, in all times thorughout history, will always be ahead of the curve in terms of psychology and technology of the times. The difference is that, today, there are enough literate people who can connect and form a more cohesive league of their own. No other time than now and the future has the odds look much  better for the good guys.

I was trying to tell my friend that the problem with most people (like her) who consider themselves do-gooders is that there seems to a false sense of superiority or worth they associate with themselves which sets them apart and above others. Just because we choose to do less harm does not make us better human beings. It just makes us less inhumane. And it is because of this false sense of "I'm the good guy", that people like my friend(s) have a false idea that things ought to be perfect and right at all times just because it is supposed to be so. Freedom is fought for and defended, not existing just because it is more convenient. 

I have a philosophy that the reason good guys lose is because we're always two steps behind. On top of that, we don't think like a criminal; we don't have a can-do attitude. A robber looks at a bank with its security and systems and the laws that spell out punishments for armed robbery and he doesn't say, "I can't do it...it's too hard. The walls are too thick, the guards are armed, the police will be on the scene in less than 5 minutes, it's too dangerous, the vault is reinforced..it's just impossible, I'll lose my job, my family, etc."

But that's exactly the sort of attitude most people have. They complain and complain about what other people are doing and not doing. They never think about what it would require them to risk if they wanted to change. They complain about a schooling system which they support by surrendering authority to the schools and teachers. They complain about having to work at a job they hate, stay in a relationship or family that's dysfunctional, so on and so forth. 

But the truth is this : Unlike the bank robber, none of you are willing to risk everything for something you believe you and those you love,  deserve. And as you believe, you create what you believe. So while we have a bunch of people wasting their energy complaining about things they conformed to without being held at gunpoint, the powers-that-be continue with the policies that keep all of you in place, spinning the wheel of life. 

Just imagine 2 robbers holding a room of 20 hostages. What's helping the good guys win? It is the fact that not a single person is willing to risk his or her life for others. If 20 kamikaze soldiers were in that room, those 2 robbers would not have a choice. Like hostage holders, the powers and the systems that are in place are meant to keep everybody in fear. Systems are not meant to benefit people; their very existence was meant to exploit. So there is no  use complaining because that was what a system was meant to do in the first place. 

The only way you're ever going to make this world a  better place is to understand that systems and authority were created, rules were created. Criminals don't play by the rules, which makes them very effective. They only play by the rules they draw up for themselves, a code of ethics, if you might call it, which aims to protect and enhance their functionality and efficiency in performing and delivering their purpose.