Beginnings and Endings II

Confucius spent virtually his entire life wandering from state to state with his disciples in the hope of finding an enlightened ruler who would give him a chance and employ him, and entrust him with a territory, no matter how small, where he might establish a model government. All his efforts were, however, in vain and he died frustrated.

The Wanderings of Confucius chronicles the continuing quest of a hopeful young man searching for a place to call home and seeking a greater purpose in life. One hopes he will find greater success than The Master.

Confucius has departed from Oxford.

Sport Or Not Redux

Last summer I wrote an entry about what I consider sport. An excerpt:

Obviously, to be a sport you need an organisation and a set of rules which allow the same sport to be played anywhere in the world. You also need an element of competitiveness. You also require physical ability, beyond a normal non-trained human capacity. Not many people would quibble with those points. There are probably other factors which we can consider.

However, I would like to focus my discussion on a rather controversial belief that I have long held: that a sport is not a sport without an objective standard.

That's right: if you need a judge to decide who the winners are, it's not a sport. No less an authority than ESPN.com's Sports Guy himself, Bill Simmons, has come out and agreed with me . His rules:

1. If you can smoke and/or drink while you're competing, it's not a real sport.

2. If you don't need to shower after you're finished competing, it's not a real sport.

3. If judges are deciding the winners and losers, it's not a real sport.

4. If competing at a world-class level means you have to give up your childhood, as well as eating three times a day, having a menstrual cycle, having body hair and breasts, and being taller than 5-foot-3, it's probably not a sport.

5. If you're wearing a shirt that has your name written on the front pocket in script writing, it's not a real sport.

6. If one of the announcers for the sport spawns questions from viewers like, "Hey, is that Ant from 'Last Comic Standing'?" and "Wait a second ... is he crying?", then it's probably not a real sport.

In addition, a (female) reader declares it's not a real sport unless a sports bra (or swimsuit or some other form of athletic support for the breasts) is required.

There you have it, everyone. The Sports Guy says it, so it must be true!

My Case For Remerger

[NB: This has been floating around my head for a while, and I thought I'd get it out here now, because I'm really going to be busy for the next couple of weeks. Consider this a work in progress; Many of my thoughts are half-formed and unresearched; Some are just thrown in because they occured to me while writing. I'd welcome all comments and suggestions. Yes, that means you, Wei Yi. Go ahead, you know you want to!]

My position: I believe eventually Singapore and Malaysia should re-merge. I'm not saying they have to, or that it is inevitable, but that they should, eventually. How long a time frame we are looking at is debatable.

Put one way, Singapore has 4.5 million people, and we are one of the world's most prosperous countries with one of the world's busiest ports and airports, and a per capita GDP equal to leading countries of the world. Yet we are not, and never will be, a world player, because we are simply too small, too dependant on trade and imports, and have too few people to truly be significant.

Malaysia, by comparison, has 24 million people and is 330,000 sq km in size. It has natural resources in abundance- tin, petroleum, timber, copper, iron ore, natural gas, bauxite- but remains a middle income country, despite having the size and vast resources. One reason for this would be her politics, but we'll not go into that here, suffice to cite it as a limiting factor. Another is the limitations oher economy, as well as her being cut off from the best port in the region.

Both countries clearly need each other. Malaysia has the resources and the people. We have the infrastructure, technology and location. Both countries have highly educated workforces, cosmopolitan and progressive, and are culturally and ethnically similar.

A remerged Federation would give us a country that could compete with the largest in the world, in terms of both size and population (28 million, 331,000 sq km). By comparison, the United Kingdom has 60 million in 245,000 sq km, Germany has 82 million in 375,000 sq km, and Australia 20 million in 7.7 million sq km. We will never have the power of the USA, China, Russia or India- those behemoths are alone in the first tier of the world. But we would have the size and ability to compete with the leading countries of Western Europe.

The problems as I see it (apart from the inertia of history) are the recurring issues of race and politics.

I've discussed race before. As I asserted, race is a false conception of human genetics- we are all genetically similar, and what we term race is merely the expression of recessive genes that have been passed within a population limited by geography. What does exist is ethnicity and culture, which are not immutable. However, I don't believe we are that different on both sides of the border- honestly, there were bigger differences between the indigenous peoples of Sabah and Sarawak vs. the people of Peninsular Malaysia than between the people of Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. But that union has survived.

In any event, both change and evolve. An example would by how nation building has proceeded in both countries to the extent that we conceive of a "Malaysia" and a "Republic of Singapore" where fifty years ago we had neither- a Malaya and a Crown Colony of Singapore, governed by the Her Majesty's representative.

The big demographic problem was that Malays would be outnumbered in thier own country by the combined numbers of other races if Singapore was part of the mix. And this, of course, would still be true today, and remains the biggest obstacle. One has to ask- why are Malays threatened by the Chinese? What are both sides doing that we view the other in negative terms?

Politics is the other barrier. How do you reconcile within a Federation a state whose economy and population would dwarf every single other? Perhaps we could ask London, which effectively subsidises the rest of the UK. Or New York, which might as well be the entire state of New York in economic terms. Compromises can be made- and were made, in 1963. Singapore's representation was disproportionally small in the Federal government. Solutions could be found.

The big tragedy, it seems to me, is that 200 years ago Singapore and Oeninsular Malaysia ("Malaya") were the same country, and it was the British who came along and detached our island from the mainland, buying it off the Sultan of Johor, and making it into the world class port it is today. I'm not saying British imperialism was bad- on the contrary, as a historian and a Singaporean, one has to ask where we would be today without the British. But they instilled artificial boundaries into the hearts and minds of the people of a single region, and crippled the ability of one poeple to be truly influential in the greater world.

Email discussion of the week

From an email discussion with her Majesty, reprinted with her permission:

i have very little to report, since very little has happened to me since i got off the phone with you-- so instead i'll bring up an annoying concept that has bothered me for years-- honesty. what are your thoughts on the idea? for so long people have always told me that the most important thing is to be honest-- friends tell me that above all they "value" honesty, exes inform me that it's the only thing that matters. but too often i find the same people who champion honesty, do so because it gives them the carte-blanche to say whatever hurtful things they have in them. it's okay to tell someone straight to their face that you think they're the most hateful human being on the planet-- after all you're only being honest.

but i think that's bull-- we lie all the time and to everyone, ourselves included. and we have to-- if we didn't we'd probably end up hating everyone we knew and vice versa. so why do we champion honesty so strongly, when it's the little lies we tell, the moments when we keep our opinions to ourselves that successfully bind us to other people as much as the times when we speak our mind truthfully?

i guess it's not honesty in itself that we're so enamoured with, but the idea that if we find the right person whose personality perfectly matches our own then that person will make us honest in a way we could never make ourselves. to a find a person you would never have to lie to-- but that's just dumb luck, i think, as opposed to the honesty that my friends think is a matter of personal choice.

You raise a very interesting and important question. It seems to me that the problem with honesty is that it is subjective. What we perceive as the truth, complete, irrevocable and undeniable, may be as clearly untrue to another person. On a larger scale, that's why we have all these problems of religion and politics. On a smaller scale, it may well be the root of all problems we have in our relations with other people.

I find that because we see the world in a certain way, we inevitably make assumptions that other people do as well. This knowledge, or lack thereof, affects how we deal with other people. For example, you asked me why I'm so reserved. Having lived in different cultures I have such a keen awareness now that people all see the world differently that it takes me a while to open up to people because I spend ages trying to suss out where they stand on issues before I stake out my own position.

This brings me back to your question. I don't think the issue is honesty- honesty is important- as empathy and sensitivity. If people are honest without any regard for your feelings and emotions, then they are showing a blatant lack of regard for you as a living, breathing, feeling, conscious human being. Honesty is but one of many important values we should hold on to and cherish, for these values make us human, but we cannot raise one to the exclusion of all others. So to ascribe an offensive truth and hurting a person's feelings to some ideal to be 'honest' is really to betray other important qualities.

More broadly, there is something that Confucius said that I think may be the most important thing he ever said about how to live your life. Interestingly, it's the opposite of the 'golden rule' (that I believe has its roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition?):

Zigong asked, "Is there a single saying that one can act upon all day and every day?" The Master replied, "Should it not be reciprocity? Do not do to others what you do not wish others to do to you." (Analects 15:24)

This has been dubbed the 'silver rule'. Note how it reverses the golden rule, which is 'do to others' etc. I've always thought the golden rule was silly, because it gives you license to force your ways on other people with complete disregard for how they would like to be treated.

So, to sum, life and people are too complicated to champion one virtue. That's a recipe for disaster. We have to be aware of so many more things than that. Sometimes you tell the truth. Sometimes you tell a white lie. Sometimes you keep silent. You can't reduce all situations to just one truth.

Addressing the second half of your email, why do we champion honesty so strongly? I don't think it is about finding one person who makes you honest. That, again, is presuming too much about the virtue of honesty and its role in a relationship. It is also hopelessly idealistic and irresponsible to burden upon a relationship a single virtue as overwhelmingly important. No, I think we champion honesty because it is so lacking in our modern day. That's not a condemnation of our modern society. Rather, it seems to me that we have so much information to process and we have such complicated lives that it is necessary to filter and interpret information before passing it on- and as such, manipulate it. This happens for both good and bad purposes.

The other, related, reason I would suggest is that it is awfully tempting to simplify our lives by adhering to something that seems as straightforward and seemingly objective as truth. If facts are facts, and we live by facts, then we have a very easy path to follow- we don't need to worry about other people, or anything else, but just focus on this one thing that makes life so easy. Sometimes we want to believe that life can be as easy as that. Sadly, it isn't.

Random Thought

Why is it Americans simplify all the spelling in the English language, but when it comes to the word 'fazed' they spell it 'phased'? I have encountered three seperate instances of this in the last week and I am confused.

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

faze, v. (Orig. U.S.): To discompose, disturb.

They don't even spell their own word right!

Beginnings and Endings I

First off, this entry is dedicated to my dear friend Sarah, who is departing Oxford for good today after a year in which she changed all our lives and made it infinitely more fun and interesting. The first time I met her was during a party: I was drunk out of my mind and sitting on the floor of the Octagon moaning about being dumped by my girlfriend; Apparently someone told her I had a tattoo of the Harvard athletic logo (she went to Yale) and I promptly undid my trousers to show her (it's on my hip). The next day I ran into her in the MCR stairwell and she said, "Hi, P.J.!" and I had no idea who she was...

But that initial encounter doesn't compare to her first meeting with SHP ("Sexual Harassment Pete") The first thing Pete ever said to her was, "May I stare freely at your breasts?" and ten months later, the last thing he said as she was leaving was, "Nice boobs!" In between, there was mostly drool. Actually, Pete's a pretty sweet guy- when he's not drunk.

Last Saturday was my graduation ceremony, and as a service to my non-Oxford readers I thought I'd post a brief pictoral explanation of what happens when you get an Oxford education:

	Pretend this phone booth is Oxford University.
	Mild mannered graduate student PJ hears a desperate cry of ignorance and plea for help!
	He jumps into the phone booth...
	...effects a quick change... (we've abbreviated time here somewhat for the purposes of this demonstration)
	...and emerges, ready to battle the forces of apathy, dogmatism and ignorance with education and enlightenment...
	He is Oxford Graduate-Man! (cue cheesy theme music)

And that's basically what happens.

Nomar gets traded

Reaction to this trade has been uniformly negative, but honestly, I'm fine with it. Quite frankly, I was very sick of Nomar and I'm happy to see him go. His prima donna attitude, his sulking in the dugout, and his behaviour during the winter over the negotiations (when he reacted to a fair appraisement of his value by trying to make himself seem like a victim) has turned me firmly against him. He was an immense disappointment in the offseason last year- he would have men in scoring position in close games and inevitably popup over the infield for the final out. Nomar was a great player- the best SS in the game, in my opinion- but since he got hit on the wrist he's been nowhere near the player he used to be, and this year after he got hit on his achilles he took his own sweet time coming back.

Furthermore, I'm a fan of Mientkiewicz. He had a great 2003 season- I voted for him for the all-star game last year. He plays hard, is a fan favourite, is a clubhouse leader and is a golden glover. He and Cabrera are a definitely upgrade defensively in the infield. You can't win anything leading the league in unearned runs. When Pokey Reese comes back we'll have an ironclad infield.

Finally, this team wasn't going to win anything anyway with the current lineup. Big hitters but poor defense, little speed, and poor fielding.

My only real problem is- what do I do with my Red Sox #5 jersey? I bought it in the belief that Nomar would retire as a member of the Red Sox (also because they didn't have a Trot #7 available).

As always, time will tell.

[Tip o' the hat to Daryl- I wrote him an email in response to his blog post on the trade, and I based my entry here on that email I wrote. Keep it swinging, pally!]