Assorted Notes

MONDAY, 14 MAY 2012

Earlier tonight I wondered how it would be if everyone thought out loud about the big questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? What happens when I die? How did the earth and everything come about?

After thinking that I had answers to most of these questions up to a point in my early twenties, I realised that religion is like having access to a search engine loaded with a particular ideological database. You type in a question, and within seconds you have an answer.

Each religion, of course, has its own database with different answers. There are similarities between the databases of all mainstream Christian denominations, and some more obscure sects have databases with completely different answers.

The point is, it’s fantastic! Can you imagine it? You type a question – and boom! – there’s your answer! Another question … another answer.

The problem kicks in when the search engine breaks down, when it becomes increasingly clear that the database is corrupted, or that the answers are not credible.

This is when the real work begins: to build a database from the ground up.

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TUESDAY, 1 MAY 2012

I just read through the 2004 piece, “I own seven pairs of underwear …”. Again I found the idea intriguing: What would happen if someone – maybe in his teens (younger is too early, later may be too late) – should say: “I see what’s going on here. And I’m not going to play along.”

This person then denies his given name, and refuses to accept any other name. He refuses to answer questions about where he comes from. He does not profess any faith. He expresses no ambitions or dreams. He owns nothing; not even the clothes that cover his body (he would have walked around buck-naked, but he got tired of being arrested). He never utters any words, seeing that almost anything he might say would identify him as part of a particular language community.

Is it unavoidable that he will be locked away and be certified as mentally disturbed?

How would his life unfold in the decades after his revolutionary decision?

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FRIDAY, 27 APRIL 2012

I do not call myself an atheist, for the simple reason that the onus will be on me to define what I do not believe in.

If I were to call myself an atheist, I would be arguing that I do not believe in something, that I reject the existence of all gods, including “God”. The question is then: What exactly do I reject? What exactly do I not believe in?

Seeing that I will have to rely on other people’s descriptions of their gods, other people’s definitions of “God”, I would only be able to say that I do not believe in one specific person’s god.

Will that make me an atheist? Then a Christian is an atheist from the perspective of the Hindu or Muslim! Then one Christian can even call another Christian whose concept of God differs slightly from his own an atheist!

Fact of the matter is, people only think everyone in their group believes in the same god because they recite the same confessions. But if one person refers to God as “my dear heavenly Daddy”, I can almost guarantee you that their god is not really, deep in their subconscious, the same as the god many of their fellow believers profess to believe in.

So if I say I am an atheist, in whose god do I not believe? Whose god do I reject?

* * *

What is the alternative, if I have to categorise myself for the sake of identification?

According to Wikipedia, agnosticism is the view that the truth of certain claims is unknown or by nature impossible to prove. These claims include metaphysical claims relating to theology, the afterlife or existence of gods, spirits, or even ultimate reality.

This, by definition, does not mean I do not believe in gods, spirits or a specific ultimate reality. It does mean that I do not believe I nor anyone else can prove the definitive truth of these statements.

Of course, many Hindus believe this to be nonsense: they can point to the personal experiences of millions of people that prove to them that Krishna really exists. Same with followers of any other religious tradition. The ability of any person with a firm intention and an established interest in a particular view to find evidence for something that they believe can never be underestimated.

As for my own position, I can say without thinking twice that I find value in doubt. I find value in asking questions. I consider it worthwhile to wonder rather than to claim that I know, and to declare the discussion over when I’ve said my piece. Lastly, I place too much value on intelligent discourse between reasonable people to reject outright what anyone says.

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THURSDAY, 19 APRIL 2012

Earlier this evening I pedalled away from the language centre where I’ve been working for over thirteen years. I wondered what it would be like riding away knowing it would be the last time. A mile or so later I thought of how I’ve developed this habit of thinking about my life in Taiwan while riding home after teaching a class at this particular centre – the big, broad theme of my life in Taiwan, not specific issues only relevant to that day or that week.

I then worked out that I must have ridden away from that place more than 1,500 times since early 1999, which means I have probably contemplated my life in Taiwan around a thousand times after spending a few hours between those walls.

That this particular language centre has been the most stable, consistent part of my life in Taiwan for more than thirteen years was the next step in the thought process. Nothing, not place of residence, mode of transportation, what and where I eat, with whom I socialise, what I do at night, what time I get up in the morning, the amount of money I earn, my financial obligations, or my relationship status have remained the same during these last thirteen years. I have even gone through four different computers! No wonder I tend to go deep after once again punching my time card at this particular location.

What this type of consistency gives you is a measuring tool.

If a man is still doing the same job in the same office and earning the same income – adjusted for inflation – after thirteen years, he will probably be correct in thinking his life has stagnated, especially if he sees how his children have changed during the same period from toddlers with crayons between their fingers to teenagers with iPhones in their hands.

With the language centre in question, I would appreciate stagnation. The reality is that my situation at this company progressively deteriorates as one year keeps plastering itself over the previous year. I started with at least fifteen hours per week, which gave me an income of about NT$30,000 per month. I now teach two hours a week at this place. That puts about NT$5,000 per month in my pocket. (I do teach at one or two other places as well, as was the case thirteen years ago.)

If I look at the most consistent part of my life in Taiwan and use that as a tool to evaluate my life here, my life is not stagnating, it is going backwards.

I can say it’s unscientific to measure your life according to a single criterion. If everyone were to measure their lives according to the one thing that has remained a consistent part of their lives for a significant duration of time – whether they like this thing or not, more people might feel like failures. Others might, to their surprise, realise they’re not the big failures they’ve always considered themselves to be. You may also wonder according to what people measure their lives if there is little or nothing that has remained constant over the last decade or so of their lives.

Fortunately for most of us, the puzzle of our lives consists of dozens of big pieces, and hundreds of smaller ones. Some of these pieces may have stayed the same over many years; some may already be faded; other pieces might be shiny and new, made from the best type of material puzzle pieces can possibly be made of.

So it is with my life.

I will nevertheless admit, judging from my situation at the place where I’ve been working since my first week in Taiwan, that some aspects of my life in this country have indeed deteriorated.

I guess if I stand back for a moment, I will realise that this is just the way it sometimes is with life.

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TUESDAY, 10 APRIL 2012

I have been annoyed for quite some time with my system of “Official Notes” – my title for Word documents containing plans and ideas about some or other way of making money. These “official notes” get filled with page after page of thoughts on the subject, bullet points, lists, tables, and explanations. It has become abundantly clear that I spend precious hours filling these documents with notes that are supposed to facilitate a process so I can finally advance – without actually advancing on any front.

My new approach is to just start with a basic idea of what I want to do, and to do some elementary planning, without wasting too much time on “official” paperwork. Just do – let the notes be, is my advice these days.

Then, a few minutes ago, I realised something: Most of my writing over the years has been “official notes” about my life. Instead of just doing, I kept to myself a lot of the time and made notes about what I thought I needed to do, why, why maybe not, what the alternatives were, what made more sense, and what held more value for me and even for others.

I collect information. I take notes. I compile lists. I come up with ideas – some of them a waste of time, others decent and potentially profitable. I do take action, but is it necessarily bad that I have not applied more what I’ve thought possible in theory?

If you spread open on a table before you a roll of cloth to make yourself a pair of trousers or a shirt or a dress, I believe it’s better to measure twice and only cut once.

Having said that, if you continue measuring and never get to the cutting and the sewing parts, you’d better be happy appearing to the world naked, with no fruits of your labour – or in this case, no garment – to show for your time.

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