Assorted Notes

WEDNESDAY, 19 JANUARY 2005

“Look at how they dress! This is the seventies! Somebody should tell them. It’s no wonder they get pointed at in the streets, if they go around looking like that!”

“Maybe. But they don’t complain about it, do they? They endure everything – mockery, hate, even disgust. That’s the price they’re willing to pay to remain who they are.”

Conversation between a young woman and an elderly Jewish man regarding ultra-orthodox (Haredi, or more specifically in this case, Hasidic) Jews in Antwerp, 1972 (in the film, Left Luggage).

My question: if “ultra-orthodox Jewishness” is a source of identity in the primary sense of the word, something that enables people to function in a particular environment and at a particular time (albeit in a relatively isolated area, and in clothing that reminds of an earlier time), does it have any more value other than functioning to be an “ultra-orthodox Jew”?

Is that the only function of identity?

And if particular religion is to a greater or lesser extent a determinant of identity, and the value of identity is linked to the functioning of the individual at a particular time and place, what can be said about such extreme sources of identity as Hasidic Judaism or fundamentalist Islam, or a similar version of the Christian religion?

I do not necessarily shoot down the idea of conservative uniformity at all times and in all places, but I would like to once again ask: can a source of identity be wrong? When does religion as an important source and determinant of identity and prescribed consciousness do more harm than good?

[Particular Identity X works well in Particular Place X and at Particular Time X. If Particular Identity X fails to enable the individual to function in a particular environment and at a particular time, the individual should either modify their identity, or move to an environment where that particular identity would be a better fit. If time travel were an option, that could also have been suggested.]

* * *

We need to love. Does this make our love any less sincere?

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SUNDAY, 16 JANUARY 2005

In the movie, Life As A House the main character says, near the end, something to the effect of “I’ve built myself the house that I wanted to be.”

* * *

“I will not get lost,” says Thibault in the film, Just Visiting. “You can only be lost if you have no purpose, and I have purpose.”

MONDAY, 17 JANUARY 2005

If you lose your passport, your identity document, your bank cards and all other personal documentation, there is no way you can prove your identity – except of course through other people who can verify who you are, and even to some extent what you are – good person? bad person? reliable? unreliable? criminal? swindler? teacher? artist? dentist? bank clerk? person of faith? liar? truth teller? friend or acquaintance? brother or sister or cousin? If you are in a place where nobody knows you, or where no one can be asked, you are nobody … you are who you say you are. And nobody – can have a fresh start.

[Even if you have a passport, identity document, bank cards and other personal documents, if you are in a place where nobody knows you, you are still nobody.]

* * *

Tom Cruise’s character in Vanilla Sky: “What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions? Money.”

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FRIDAY, 14 JANUARY 2005

10:13

Imagine your head being sliced off from behind with a sharp sword, whilst you were in the middle of a thought – and you had no idea that there was even a possibility that it could happen.

11:42

“Private property is the root of all evil! Abolish all private property, and you will have started on the road to a more just, classless society” was also quite possibly an epiphany – a sudden striking understanding of something.

14:39

The writer stands at the antique cabinet and scribbles words with a blue ballpoint pen in his notebook. He is aware of the fact that his current self-consciousness includes the … idea that he regularly stands at the antique cabinet making notes.

He recognises the handwriting in which he now forms words as similar if not exactly the same as the handwriting in which he has made notes in the past.

The reason why he is standing here – and if the neighbour across the alley would stick his head out the window and pretend that he’s just perusing the neighbourhood, it would also appear to him that the writer is standing here doing what he always does – is not to jot down an insight. Hell, he’s barely aware of himself as the Great Amanuensis, the self-appointed Secretary of Insights! (He is, at the present hour, Friday, 14 January 2005 at 14:39, aware of only a few things – that he is a human being; that he’s slightly cold; a little hungry; keen for another cigarette; and not in the mood for three hours of teaching later today.)

What has forced his hand on this notebook, the prime motivation for leaking ink all over a page unstained until mere minutes ago, the cause of this act not altogether sane nor noble – and surely the reasons for this will be interesting to sort out later – is the fact that he has absolutely bugger all to say right now.

19:11

The big problem with “truth” is that the largest source of truth, traditionally speaking, is religion – and religion is also one of the primary determinants of identity. How can religion be both a carrier of universal truth, and particular identity?! [Is that why missionaries believe that identity should more or less be universal? Why, when for example a Hindu converts himself to the Christian religion, he has to westernise to a large extent?]

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TUESDAY, 11 JANUARY 2005

[train to Kaohsiung ± 08:45]

The newspaper says Taiwanese men are not so keen to produce offspring than Taiwanese women.

I know the following thought is rushed, and certainly not currently supportable by scientific study, but … my guess is that the lack of keenness amongst men to have children is caused by the same phenomenon that causes eagerness in some women: in both cases the childless person feels like a failure.

Men are wary of the extra responsibility, the extra pressure on already thin resources (namely, themselves) and are afraid that a child (or more children) will accentuate their failure, or that it will worsen their current status because not only will they be failures as adult men or husbands, but also as father figures.

Some women, on the other hand, also feel like failures, and/but see the role of “mother” as one that would make them appear better to themselves, their families and to the broader community.

14:02

Arguments about “good” and “bad”, the attribution of guilt and responsibility, and the concomitant characterisation of “agents” of Good and Evil bite the dust in many cases due to one thing: nobody is 100% good or 100% bad. The moment the greyness of truth is overlooked is the moment the ground gets slippery.

* * *

The “truths” to which many people commit their lives, with which they identify themselves and according to which they lead their lives can all be traced back to so-called awakenings, or epiphanies individuals had experienced.

Examples: One God, reincarnation, Ying/Yang, the Five Elements, the Eternal Soul …

20:10

You must keep believing. You must continue to believe that people can change, that they can be transformed into people who do good rather than bad, who can clean up rather than pollute, who can build rather than destroy. If you stop believing this … what do you have? What are you? And what are the alternatives, anyway?

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SUNDAY, 9 JANUARY 2005

15:18

“Why should there necessarily be a purpose to human life?” someone may ask.

Looking at the natural world, everything from cloud to water to air to the antennae of a cockroach, it seems that everything has a purpose. Why on earth would the entire planet be filled with purpose and reason, yet there is no purpose and reason for a human being’s existence?

For me the question is rather: WHAT?

[05/01/12: The legs of a chimpanzee serve a clear purpose. But what is the purpose of the chimpanzee? Do each animal and each species really serve a purpose? Mosquitoes spread viruses and parasites that keep the populations of certain species in check … yet mosquitoes and the cargo they carry are regarded in the modern world as an abomination that must be eradicated.

The demand for purpose is certainly hot for contemplation and discussion. I am fully open to the possibility that we simply attach purpose and meaning to what we observe in the physical world, including our own lives. Yet it seems the whole world is pervaded by this-thing-do-this and that-thing-does-that.

My intention is not to end up with a theological argument. For me it is rather a case of an assumption that if a pattern can be found throughout the whole visible world, that human life must certainly also serve a purpose. [[25/05/15: Can a human life really be compared to something like the paws of a chimpanzee or a human eye? Is the former not too abstract to have a purpose?]]

And just to complicate things, one should perhaps also wonder whether individual chimpanzees serve a unique purpose they unknowingly pursue …]

[26/12/12: It is like a hierarchy: this cell serves a purpose; this collection of cells serves a purpose; this collection of several groups of cells forms a “foot”, which serves a purpose; the “foot” is attached to a “leg”, which serves a purpose … but the overall organism to which the foot and the leg and the eye and the head and the hand etcetera are attached serves no purpose? Or “purpose” is just a figment of our imagination?]

16:11

For the record, what do I mean by “conventional life”? I mean income-generating work (full-time professional career, or something else), finding a partner, starting a family, pursuing a stable life, doing things in your “free time” that make you happy (or happier in some cases).

If someone proposes to me, now, after all these years, that I should simply dedicate my life to that, I will be very sincere in asking the person, “Are you out of your mind?”

* * *

“Families have been torn apart. Whole communities have disappeared. In countries where religion, spirituality and culture lie at the heart of human existence, places of worship have been wiped out. The very things that define people’s identities and values have been swept away.”

Kofi Annan, at the Tsunami Summit (from the China Post, Friday 7 January 2005)

* * *

Says the sixty-year old woman in The Shipping News:

“Thought I’d never come back here [to Newfoundland] but the older you get … there’s an ache, a pull, something you’ve got to figure out, like you’re a piece in a puzzle …”

What? You do that only when you’re sixty? What do you do then between the ages of 18 and 33?

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