#191 - Toa Payoh at 33 degrees

Char Siew and Seow Bak

Ghin post haircut

Smile!

Ma at the stall

Wan ton and Char Siew noodles

All that food

See where Ghin gets it from

It is ridiculously hot these days in Singapore. Everything is boiling. The humidity has got to be less because of the deforestation in general. Despite everything Singaporeans say about loving nature there is a disconnect - just like the way people claim they are Christian and actually have no idea what Christ stood for.

I did wonder, don't people understand the contradictions, can't they see the clash between what is said and what is reality? But then, I began to really study the faces of people. Because people don't look at people anymore, they look at their phones, and therefore ultimately are completely unselfconscious, I have noticed two looks: gormless or suffering. The gormless ones are the ones who no longer process anything - they just go along with the flow. So you get the Comfortable Entitled or the Happy Idiot. I really hate to put labels to them, but there they are. Both completely believing that this is the way the world should be. There is an episode of Black Mirror which captures this perfectly - the one which looks at the talent show world. And then you have the Suffering. Both of these categories are incapable of creating a higher narrative - you cannot escape the Matrix because it is invisible. Maybe you see it, and then you have the Constant Complainer. Quite often you have the Mix. 

If you look at the faces of Singaporeans, you see this. In all four faces there is no real desire to actually relieve themselves of these positions, as dangerous as they maybe, because they would much rather be in their pain or sated by the numbness of consumption than do anything real about it. This is possibly because the part of their soul where thinking and feeling should reside has been shrunk to the size of a pea. Perhaps it has been lobotomised. In any case, creating anything new or resisting is a lost cause. The rewards are just non-existent. And even if they did exist, it would be like trying to tell a fish that the bicycle is its prize. What would they do with it? Lead richer inner lives? For what? It is really quite awful when you are faced with that reality. 

Having benefited from having an inner life, but not an awful lot of money personally, it is obvious of course to me. But for many the effort, the sheer fucking effort isn't worth it. That's fine, of course, except everything is maya. And one day, ONE DAY, if you aren't at least PREPARED for it, or at least have ACKNOWLEDGED it on some scale, then there is going to be not just hard rain, but also a rude awakening. At the time of rude awakenings, things can go one of two ways - realisation and then adaptation - but my experience of rude awakenings is that people go into shock... and everything which follows in the wake of the shock.

So here I am always, dragging myself back to the middle. When we were in Toa Payoh I said to Oisin this was Singapore's first public housing project. Singapore is socialist, said Oisin. I said, yes. It is easy to be socialist when you have nothing because in socialism everything moves to the middle, not the bottom, as some people think. However once you have a teeny weeny bit, you are then afraid losing something, then it is harder to be socialist. It is harder to ask people to give things up for the greater good. 

Well it has only taken me four days to start doing this. I honestly did not think I would be doing this so soon. I am not angry this time though - just resigned. I wonder how intelligent people like James Dyson are, and how blind, or protected, that they don't understand all this is maya.

I met with Joan yesterday and talked about the education system and Forest School. We covered everything from the press in Singapore to the divine in nature. Increasingly I am finding allies. People who have started to make that journey. We discussed the issue around conservation and its problem: the scientists who have set themselves up as a new priesthood - and one which has outlived its purpose - because the charade, the pretense is over. The lie has been laid bare. Science will not save us, only love will. If love is absent then there is no point in doing anything at all.

Today we are heading into town. When I say town I mean Orchard Road. Singapore is now like a second home.