District 9

Definitely one of the best movies i've seen this year with substance. of course the explosions and alien guns and mechs really help, but look beyond that and see the "allegory for apartheid, xenophobia, corporate malfeasance, gentrification, and the dog-eat-dog nature of living in poverty under hostile and oppressive conditions" (askmen.com)

I love the viral marketing strategies, from the websites to the "humans only" posters to the (one of my personal favorites) "humans only) bustop and benches stickers. i recently found this "blog" written by "christopher" (one of the aliens in the movie, human given name of course).

check out this post quoting "rules" for alien behavior

http://mnuspreadslies.com/post.php?id=354

Sounds familiar? easy to say that they are disgusting looking aliens, but then again, can you think of cases where people have been treated in similar fashion (forced labor, segregation, population control ... hell, "human" names?).... nevermind the past, think nowadays. i dont think you'll have to think too hard

we are all stars

we are all stars

i dont mean in a corny american idol or a you can be all that you can be sense

we are all stars, we once were and someday will be, stars
or planets, or nebula or what have you....

no i havent finally lost it. and neither have i joined a cult.

someone asked me the other day, being a godless sod (ok maybe not in so many words but thats a good summary of everyone who's ever asked me that question or something similar over my lifetime), how do or would i find comfort someday on my deathbed, what would give me hope that everything's going to be ok, someone's watching out for you

well first off quite frankly i dont fear death, at least not right now, as far as i'm concerned when you die you cease to exist and along with that you cease to feel, yearn, think, long, desire, fear or any other inherently human sensation, in which case the point is moot, what is there to fear, and in fact wouldn't that give you a fresher perspective on the temporal nature of this lifetime, and thus evoke a corny "make the most of it" inclination?

i suppose the worse case would be i turned out to be wrong and i end up standing before some god-head, in which case my best defense is that i have been true to my inclinations, which quite frankly were as a result of how i was created by this god-head anyway.

that aside, i think when we die, we all become stars

current astrophysical theories tell us that matter that originally came from the energy that came from the big bang, was made up of nothing more than basic single-proton/electron Hydrogen atoms (and perhaps some other weird stuff, whatever i cant remember). astrophysics also tells us that all complex/heavy metals, including carbon, the building blocks of our life, were born in stars, formed out of nuclear fission in these factories of the universe

so all matter that is us, all the complex atoms that made up the complex molecules that make up our flesh and skin and bone and neurons, were once part of a bright shining star, perhaps millions or billions of years ago. and all the energy that is us, our consciousness, some may call it our soul, was born billions of years ago in a brilliant flash of energy in which everything came to be

and when we die, our matter and our energy 'returns' to the universe, although technically it never left it, and becomes part of whatever will be and is to come. we will become stars again. perhaps not immediately, perhaps only after millions or billions of years will some fraction of the atomic particles or energy that was once us will go beyond and become part of another bright, glowing, magical orb of energy, but id like to think that someday some of what is us (or was us, since technically the actual 'matter' in us changes repeatedly over our lifetime), will eventually be stars.

yes, i think our "soul" is just energy, that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon as an outcome of complex interactions between energy and matter in the system that is our body. emergent behavior doesn't need central intelligence or intent to form, it can "emerge", the "whole" being "more" than the "sum of the parts". emergence and systems theory is a long story that i'm not going to get into, although you can check out Steven Stogatz video on TED on sync in nature, e.g. bird flock and fish school swarms in reaction to the environment may seem like they are controlled by a central intelligence or a pack leader, but are in reality "emergent" from very simple rules that each individual follows, ie (something similar to)

1) if the birds right next to you turn left, go left
2) don't hit any other birds (or keep a safe distance)

just because we don't understand complex interactions and can only perceive them under the notion of intelligent design, doesn't make it true. reality doesn't follow our perceptions just because they make sense or give us comfort. we aren't the center of the universe.

we are all stars
we were once those bright orbs of light in the sky, that which inspired, guided, aroused all manner of dreams, hopes, fantasies, from ancient mariners seeking stellar navigation to their destination, to the lonely sheppard in the highlands or bedouin in the desert, keeping them company in the night sky, to the child who longs to be an astronaut, to the cheesy pick up artist with his line starting "your daddy must've been a theif, cuz ....".

for millions and billions of years, parts of us traveled the universe, perhaps becoming planets, asteroids, beautiful giant glowing clumps of gas or plasma, nebula, any one of those wonderus things Hubble shows us, perhaps even being part of some other lifeform somewhere in the universe. and at some point the parts of us ended up here and became part of this planet, going throught the millenia until assembling today with other such particles to become what we are right now, this instance.

now i dont know about you, but that inspires me, gives me hope. someone else once said to me that your "religion" is not about god or church or fasting or whatever, it is what inspires and gives you hope, gives you a frame for the world.

we are all stars
i think that is very romantic :)
who says science has to be dry?

enlightenment

i am often asked what made me turn atheist, in the conceptual sense, e.g. why, notions about belief, religion, divinity, etc, which i'm not going to go into in this post, suffice to say its a nonexistence of faith - incidentally i prefer this term (for lack of a better one) over others such as "lack of faith" or "not having faith", which seem to have negative connotations, implying a want or a need but not having it. if anything nonexistence of faith for me is a liberating notion. but anyway, stuff for another discussion..

..and also from a notion of "turning points" or some dramatic event that caused me to take an abrupt change of view. in reality its nothing like that, rather than an abrupt change it was an eventually progression and development or even evolution of conceptions of (my view) of reality, of a weltanshauung, if you may. everyday (figuratively of course) i continually develop, expand and deepen my views of reality, realizing if anything that it is an evolving conception, a neverending process of learning (some may find this 'lack' of overarching truth disconcerting, i on the other hand find awe in the mystery and pursuit of my constructions of reality, which needs no divine element or inspiration)

but i digress again. when i was young i tried hard to be a good muslim, trying to pray, fast, recite the qur'an and talk to god before sleeping, but of course that didn't work out very well. thinking it was simply the wrong religion, i tried christianity, going to church, reading the bible, adopting symbols etc, but again that didnt work. but in both scenarios what i did enjoy was the sense of community it entailed, the sense of belonging (although i didnt realize it at the time), e.g. being able to walk into the mosque or amongst fellow christians and think, i'm one of you, we have something in common.

its only when i stepped outside of the bubble that was my life and went to college did i really come to accept my deeply inherent though process and the consequent world view that is at complete odds with any notions of divinity or religion. of course this was a complicated journey, enabled by many things, including the very personal, experiences with different religions (so btw no one can say i didnt try :p), openess and exposure to different POVs in a new environment (and more importantly, acceptance of a culture of alternative POVs, granted this was the US, not exactly the epitome of free thought, but then again we're comparing with M'sia remember), and so on, all equally important.

here i'm gonna talk about the affect of a community of peers, if anything it was being able to be around others with similar worldviews, and here I dont necessarily mean only other atheists, but others who share a common paradigm and analytical approach to reality, even if the conclusions are different. the sense of need for community of the likeminded, or peers, is (in my view) of course genetically programed in us as social creatures, our survival depends on social relationships (or, more accurately, genes that promote affinity to like-minded individuals will propagate better in a socially-determined survival environment because we will tend to help each other survive).

In other words, the paradigms or belief constructs that i attempted to try out and explore in the beginning was really not about belief or the meaning of life per se (although related), it was really about finding a sense of belonging. so being able to gain acceptance into an (informal) "community", or rather finding an (informal) community of the likeminded to which I can attribute a sense of belonging, was an important factor in allowing me to shed these attempts at belief constructs, which were really nothing more than baggage, dead weight that masked itself as something else and really had no purpose (the radical humanist emancipation?). this allowed me to open up and freely and fully explore my views and conceptions, without worry of being ostracized. because in reality you never really belonged anyway.

thought for the day

Laundry is about balancing between haves and have nots. Its finding the equilibrium between having lots of spare coins and not having any clean underwear

a bizarre land

you know as much as I love London and as much as they are supposed to be an advanced civilization, there are certain (legacy?) things that I find completely bizarre, mostly related with English bureaucracy. take for example banking. now in our little sorry excuse for a nation i can still walk into a bank and get an account in at most a couple of days. here, they tease you. first it takes a week to get your account. and then another week to get your card. and then another week for a pin number (which may or may not work). and somewhere in there you'll get one letter with your internet pin, another with your customer number, another with the policy booklets. its like dealing with a well seasoned stripper who knows how to tease you and prolong your pleasure. except in this case its not pleasure but A BLOODY PAIN IN THE ASS!

oh and then there's the fiasco with the TV license. for those of you not in the know, the moment you have a TV in your room/house/box under a bridge by the Thames, you need a TV license, which is like 130 or so quid. and they're really anal about it too. Now I am fortunate to not have had to deal with this, but I was just speaking to two people who had a run-in with the TV licensing people. they both got letters saying "you do not have a TV license. if you do not have a TV, please call us." ... with all the usual threats of fines and shit. so one of them diligently calls them up, and from what i gather the conversation went something like this:

a: I don't have a TV
tv peeps: what do you mean you dont have a TV?
a: I just don't have a TV
tv peeps: how can you not have a TV? everyone has a TV
a: well i dont have one, i dont have money for one
tv peeps: are you planning on getting one?
a: well if you'd be kind enough to make a donation i might consider it
tv peeps: ok fine. but i'll be stopping by to inspect your place

the other guy was even better. he lives in a dorm and his letter said "your ROOM xxx does not have a TV license ....

oh yeah and this isnt just limited to TVs. anything that can get a TV signal needs a TV license. so if your laptop has a TV tuner, you need a license. Heck, if your bloody refrigerator could get a TV signal, you'd need a bloody license. now, we figure that the cost of maintaining that bureaucratic structure to track and enforce these things, is most probably much higher than the actual revenue from the licenses. i mean, where else in the world do you need a tv license? even in our sorry little nation we dont need one.

legacy

i have to say this trip back for the funeral has opened my eyes and has me looking at my family and my grandparents with greater awe, with the legacy that they have left behind. i think i can say with confidence that i consider my family to be truly embodying the concept of racial "muhibbah" or harmony that Malaysian's tend to go around telling the world they apparently adopted, with chinese, indians, malays, muslims, christians, atheists all as one big happy family (out of 8 children, 2 married indians, 2 married malays and converted, 2 married chinese, one married a foreigner). my cousins and nephews/nieces are just one big mish-mash of all kinda of races blended together, chindians, chinese-malays, chinese-malay-caucasians. this is the legacy my grandparents are leaving behind, and this is what has driven who i am (and the rest of my family) and did away with our prejudices against our petty differences of culture or religion.

my muslim relatives don't shy away from having meals at my grandparents house despite knowing you'd find pork there, neither do they cringe at going to the local church to celebrate my grandfather's life and mourn his death. neither do my christian relatives avoid going to my aunt's funeral in a muslim cemetery. we often say that racial and religious prejudices are inherent to human nature, but this family is testament against that, isn't it? prejudice against differences may be inherent to our nature, but the fact is race and religion is really just used as an excuse to act on our nature.

my grandmother said to me today, "bila cari bini, jangan kira bangsa, kira pangkat", directly translated she said "when you look for a wife, dont look at race, look at her 'stature'". the word "pangkat" here literally means "rank" (as in military terms), but what she is really saying is more along the lines of 'status' or 'stature' in life, not in the sense that eg you are a rich man's son or a sultan's nephew, but what have you achieved in your life. i know this because the husbands of her 5 daughters whom she proudly says have 'pangkat' were not born great, but rather came from nothing and made something admirable of themselves. what she is trying to tell me is when i look for a partner, don't bother about race, or religion, just care about who they are.

After the funeral my uncle was retrospecting on my grandfather and he told me how my grandfather openly accepted him despite the fact that he was from a different race and religion altogether. we often say that people from mixed parentages generally have more liberal views about race and religion, which makes sense for my generation and beyond, but for a conservative, chinese couple bringing up a family in the 1950s/60s in a small town such a Kuching to demonstrate such liberal thinking is quite progressive of them.

so my grandfather did not die a rich man, he did not leave behind empires of business or mansions or bank vaults of cash or such. his legacy is the family he left behind and what he made of them and the values we carry in our blood, the values that are inherent to us that we may take for granted. if not for the values he instilled in his family, would I be the way I am or think the way i do today? its very likely I may be another narrow-minded bigot.

so Ah Kong, I salute you, to the long and full life you lead, the legacy you left behind and the values you pass down to me through my family, that has shaped a crucial part of who I am, how i view the world, how i see people, in seeing past the superficiality of race and religion and seeing them for who they are. may you rest in peace

is it really so bad?

i found this interesting quote in Richard Dawkin's latest book (which btw is full of interesting things), who in turn was actually quoting the Shorter Oxford Dictionary (i may be too lazy to look up citations but at least they're correct ... convoluted as they may be) under the definition of "Consolation"

A philosopher points out that there is nothing special about the moment when an old man dies. The child he once was 'died' long ago, not by sudden ceasing to live but by growing up. Each of Shakespeare's seven ages of man 'dies' by slowly morphing into the next. From this point of view, the moment when the old man expires is no difference from the slow 'deaths' throughout his life.

and another (Dawkins quoting Oxford quoting Mark Twain)

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before i was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it

and finally, quoting Bertrand Russel, "What I Believe", from "Why I am Not a Christian"

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting

There was a recent case where a couple of boys were expelled from school for refusing to remove their "serban" (type of turban), their father argued that being forced to remove the serban infringed on their right to religious freedom.

I like what Justice Abdul Hamid Mohamed had to say on the serban and Islam.

“As far as I can ascertain, the al-Quran makes no mention about the wearing of a serban. I accept that the Prophet (PBUH) wore a serban. But he also rode a camel, built his house and mosque with clay walls and brushed his teeth with the twig of a plant.”

“Does that make the riding a camel a more pious deed than traveling in an aeroplane?"

“Is it preferable to build houses and mosques using the same materials used by the Prophet and the same architecture adopted by him during his time?”

" It is not everything that the Prophet (pbuh) did or the way he did it that is legally or religiously binding on Muslims or even preferable.”

"The question is whether the wearing of turbans by boys of the age of the appellants is a practice of the religion of Islam. The pagan Arabs wore turbans and kept beards. It was quite natural for the Prophet (pbuh), born into the community and growing up in it, to do the same.”

makes a compelling point about knowing the difference between religious teachings and cultural norms

madness

Our Prime Minister was in he papers commenting on the reactions to the commotion from the recent umno general assembly (keris waving and bloodbath inciting and all), according to him there's nothing for anyone to be alarmed about, instead we should all take lessons learnt, ie that "all of us have to be careful in dealing with issues concerning race and religion"

kinda missing the point isnt it? if our people's representative go around thinking such garbage, we've got bigger problems. try addressing the issue directly. if a bunch of people got on a stage and waved a katana or kung fo sword in the name of non-malay rights, i doubt our leaders would be tip-toeing around the issue like this one.

whats worse is the post-event responses from umno officials claiming that (while this year's was a little more fiery), there's "nothing new" in this year's congress, and if Malays did not have this opportunity to vent it could get a lot worse. Of course, ignore the fact that a) this points out an even greater problem of the current mindset and sentiments of the umno delegates (reps of the people no doubt ... how is saying "oh its nothing new that they would go up and yell for blood" supposed to be ok?) and b) frankly doesnt make the Malays look very good, if anything, makes them sound like a bunch of whiny babies. The fact that there is something to "vent" contradicts our PM's statements that we have a "society based on racial-harmony".

there was another article about how it seems that Malaysia's Chinese have recently upped their demand for foreign currency, cashing out ringgit in the millions. unrest and anxiety at recent race-religion related events (the umno assembly really just being the pinnacle of it) and are looking (those who are able to anyway) overseas for alternatives.

on another note, i've found my favorite blog to read check it out
http://ktemoc.blogspot.com/

followup

Had an interesting discussion on the quote from Einstein i posted previously, this certain someone claimed that the sentiments Einstein expressed on the concepts of the mysterious and of those beyond our comprehensive is in fact a religious one, ie the traditional concept of a omnipotent, omniscience, all seeing, all dancing, one with everything and everything is one yada yada yada deity, and that the notion of acceptance that there are things beyond our comprehension is contradictory to science, which is all about seeking for answers to understand everything around use.

i disagree. on the contrary, i think religions (specifically mainstream such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Jain, Baha'i, etc, and to avoid repeating myself when I mention “religions” or “mainstream religions” I’m referring to these) are actually a human attempt to avoid the notion that there exists the mysterious that is beyond our comprehension (I know, quite contradictory do how mainstream religions are commonly viewed). Or more specifically that there are things we haven’t understand that can be explained by the same physical laws of our plane of existence (and hence we should be able to figure it out, but haven’t been able to). The only way humanity's ego and anxiety are able to accept that there are things that we cannot understand is to make them utterly incomprehensible, ie placing it on an elevated plane of existence, and that makes us feel better about our own inabilities to comprehend. Because hey, how could we ever comprehend an omnipotent deity who exists on a divine plane that’s completely beyond us? There’s no shame in not being able to understand a god. So its not that we haven’t been able to figure it out, we just can’t.

It is our misguided obsession with our own greatness (as far as this plane of existence is concerned) that does not allow us accept that there are things in the universe that occur based on the same physical laws that we are governed by, but we just haven’t been able to figure out yet. Just look at how mainstream religions tend to place man on a pedestal as “god’s greatest creation”.

Personally I’m of the opinion that this mindset has the danger of hindering progress. Put it simply, if the answer to all things is “created in the wisdom of god”, what drive is there to learn and discover. And how do you seek to truly learn and discover when you’re already fixated on a particular opinion of all things.

There is no compulsion in religion - 2:256, Sura Al-Baqara

its the holy month of ramadhan again. i often get the question from people, as a muslim why don't I pray? Why am I not fasting? I generally respond by asking "do you know why you pray? or why you fast?". Your religion tells you too, your ustaz (religious teacher) and your parents tell you you'll go to hell if you don't, but do you truly know why? Do you truly understand what it means to submit yourself in prayer to your God and sing praises to God's name (do you even know what those phrases mean?) for most people, the response essentially comes down to because my religion tells me to.

that said i know the verse from Sura Al-baqara above generally applies to conversions of non-muslims, but i think there is a deeper meaning that true religion cannot be forced. religion is about faith and will and in the end your God knows the intent and the purity of your actions. and what is prayer without sincerity of your actions? what is fasting without the proper "niat"? and when you take someone who doesnt fast and get him in trouble or try to force him to, he may fast (or pray, or pay zakat etc) but what good is it if his intention is not pure? i doubt your God is so superficial as to want these actions done without the ummah truly meaning it. In fact i'd think it would be a bigger sin or insult to pretend to do something when they dont mean it (just to not get into trouble). and by trying to force them you're being a conspirator in their deception, do you carry their sin then?

and is prayer or fasting that is done so you dont go to hell, without the true niat of submission to God, any different from prayer or fasting done so you wont get into trouble?

so to answer the question of why i do not pray or fast, it is because i do not believe, and nobody can make me believe, if i ever do believe it will come from within. and forcing me to fast isnt going to change that.

preceptions of mystery

found this quote from Einstein, i think its rather beautiful. some have tried to use it as evidence of his believe in "God" (in the sense of a monotheistic deity as per Christian, Muslim and Jewish beliefs) and taken as is it can seem that way but what he's really referring to are concepts related to the underlying laws and structures that govern our universe (hence "lofty structures"), much of which we do not (and may not ever) understand. and instead of allowing these uncertainties to get the better of us (which in the end is the root of most belief structures, ie an attempt to understand the universe), he embraces them.

"Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntary and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore. In our daily lives we only feel that man is here for the sake of others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own." ... "The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is." Einstein's speech 'My Credo' to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, Page 262