One Week's Worth

Bleh been really unconscientious about writing here. I've been intending to for some nights now, but my time's always been hijacked by university deliberations and work. Hmm...shall take things one at a time I guess.

First off, decided to go for SPS at Cambridge after all. I don't really know how to quantify what I feel about it. I wish I'd made my decision earlier, so things wouldn't be so complicated. As it is, it's an awkward compromise between two warring viewpoints. One is the one that tells me that I really want to do SPS (and I really do, after looking at the course options, which are all so intriguing as to be almost decadent!), and now my evanescent desire to find a course I want to do and a university I want to do it at has taken concrete form, and I should go all out for this objective, now that it's been clearly defined. The other one says that what I'm doing is unfair, because I'm undermining the chances of the four others who've already applied (and indeed maybe the chances of all other applicants), and my late entry into the race will have ripple effects on who wants to apply where and ultimately on the already dangerously stressed Mr. Purvis.

How to say this without sounding arrogant? The fact of the matter is that my application will worsen the others' chances, and they made the choice at the first instance, while I only decided to enter the race on Tuesday. I would feel better if there were a way to submit an application without affecting the chances of the others. But conditional probability plagues me. To be sure, the other side of the debate hints that it really is quite arrogant of me to think that my application matters all that much to the others. But there's still a sense that I owe something to them, now that I've done it. Something to compensate.

Hmm...but in a way, it really is a pressure off my back. After telling him on Tuesday, immediately I felt better. I guess it's because now I have something definite to work towards, and to have something to look forward to is always a booster. But now that the process has been set in motion, there are whole new pressures. Writing the personal statement, filling in those forms, choosing a college. I wanted to go for St. John's, then Pembroke, then Emmanuel, but they've been filling up so fast that I'm afraid we'll run out of places before I can confirm my choice with Purvis. There is also another consideration...not to choose the colleges that the others are already applying to. It's tricky, and a part of me wants to give control to Purvis. But that means more work for him, and perhaps a mismatch for me (I realise that architecture is a really important factor in my choice...).

* * * * *

Been trying to study concurrently when all these things are happening. Not very successful...three weeks before the bulk of the exams start, I've still to start on Lit, Math and Econs revision. Most of the time has been devoted to the S papers (particularly obtaining enough of a bank of poems so I can do the Lit S paper properly...to that end, increasingly I'm glad that I chose Sharon Olds and her powerful verse, what a critic calls "fire in the hand") and Hist, which entails a heck of a lot of reading. I want to start on Lit soon though, especially Antony & Cleopatra and Silas Marner.

Having finished the analysis of Virginia Woolf, we've now started to discuss the themes and issues of the play, which is a grand time of throwing about ideas. Heh, particularly fascinated with Albee's modernist and absurdist themes, particularly the problems of communication and reality. Seems to me that Albee is offering a critical commentary on the process by which people construct realities around them to further their own ends. The child-game is distinctly a sort of consolation prize for George and Martha, while Honey blatantly asserts self-delusion in her forcible forgetting of the whole night. But I don't see it so much as a play that cautions us from stepping entirely over to the "dark side" of delusion and forget our grounding in reality, but rather a play pointing out that we need always to be aware that we are living constantly in pretense, and that we should not pretend otherwise.

Reality as a construct, a function of habit, assumptions and preconceptions, a set of common rules that enough people agree with so they can function as a common foundation for social interaction. Thus, reality is essentially a tool, a useful structure through which one can have a common grounding to communicate and interact with other people. And the thing is that reality, as it is, is a product of consensus, rather than any intrinsic logic in itself (there are arguments that assert that even science is a construct, but one doesn't need to go to that extreme). Which is why the son seems so real; everyone agrees to regard it as real, including Nick and Honey and the audience. And that is also why George decides to put an end to the son; because by breaking their secrecy rule, Martha has elevated the child to a new level of reality, as now he exists in the minds of the visitors too, minds that are dangerously not bound by the rules of the game that govern George and Martha. And when George kills the child, for me, he isn't dragging Martha back kicking and fighting to ground her in reality, but demonstrating the power of consensus - the child-game is destroyed only because the weight of the consensus between Nick, Honey and George overpowers Martha's delusion. To be sure, the illusion constructed by the child-game is destroyed. But I think that what Albee is highlighting is not that the couple returns to reality, but instead the child-game illusion is merely supplanted by a more convincing, more acceptable, more widely agreed construct, the construct of normal life in which we all operate for convenience and out of habit, if for no other reasons.

And that's not even touching on the communications problem. If daily life is a social construct, an illusion independent from any inherent logic, then language itself is obviously a construct, whose functionality relies on the tenability and common foundation of the reality-construct of daily life. But then, how can I know that what I regard as reality is actually common with what others regard as reality? Misunderstandings and miscommunication occurs when the underlying assumptions about word meaning and implication differ too much.

Of course, I realise that this may be really self-indulgent. I'm rather delighted that we've ended the Lit syllabus with these more modern works, Virginia Woolf and Heart of Darkness. To be sure, these books speak louder to me because I happen to agree with what they're saying. Or, to go the whole nine yards into the postmodernist camp, I happen to agree with what I'm predisposed to think that they are saying =P And anyway, all this philosophical tract is largely irrelevant to everyday living. The paradox is that even though language is by no means an exact medium, it functions well enough as a transmitter of meaning most of the time. And even though reality is inherently a construct, it is so convincing and widely accepted that its questionability is usually not relevant. Ironically the flimsiest of constructs forms the strongest foundation we have on which we have constructed a very elaborate combination of social, political and economic systems.

That paradox may signal that my theory is wrong. But the main drawback of such theories is that it's based on perception, and everyone's perception is different. Therefore, in the type of circular logic characteristic of postmodern thought, they can't really be proven wrong and usually it's a matter of faith, really =P

* * * * *

Talked to my mum the other day about university choices, and I realise that actually my parents are rather wise people. Such a wealth of experience, and yet, such a scrupulously maintained sense of perspective! One day I must learn how to maintain that perspective no matter what I go through, that connection with a more basic, more commonly accepted level of reality (hmm...that sounds arrogant, but I can't think of another way to put it). A sense of perspective...lately I haven't found anything more useful than that.

Anyway we were discussing the problems of the civil service. I find myself actually believing her, when she says that at the top levels, the civil servants actually believe in what they're doing. And though obviously the promotion and appointment of civil servants is not a democratic or transparent process, the system still manages to put very capable people at the top. The thing is that from what she says, it may be that the system really does want to reform itself and change. Apparently, from her accounts, everyone except the people in charge thinks that their reformist leanings are just platitudes. Which does raise certain complications. With the clash between top-down initiative and bottom-up fatalism, which will win? Is the government strong enough to overcome the inertia and pleasantly surprise everyone with deep reform?

Somehow these people have managed to maintain a modicum of idealism (if what they have actually is idealism). There is a drive in them that I can only quantify as altruism. Of course, skeptical old me finds it hard to picture anyone actually willing to devote himself to the cause of the "nation". To me the stakes are unjustifiably high for a notion so poorly defined. But I guess I can understand a bit of it. The only thing that makes this place my home is, after all, the people. And I will feel obligated to work for Singapore only inasmuch as I want to look after the people that I know here. At the end of the day, after all, it's the people that matter. And, for that matter, I do think there is a sort of case for not defending Singapore against outside aggressors when it does come down to the crunch, if it means that lives have to be lost. Few ideas are worth dying for, and "Singaporean" does not rank among them, unfortunately.

This isn't really a defeatist line, I think. I wouldn't defend Singapore, not because it's not worth defending, but precisely because the people that entirely constitute it are too priceless to risk the cost of defense.

Hmm...there must be a way to unite the idealism and rationality. Civil servants may be many things, but I don't think they're daft. Heh, living with one does do wonders to change one's perspectives. And somehow, they've managed to balance idealistic aspirations with practical imperatives, to unite the two of them and make them complementary rather than contradictory. I wonder what it'll take. Self-delusion? Luck? Or do some ideals really lend themselves to practical implementation in this day and age?

* * * * *

In a few hours, Greg will leave for the airport to fly off to Yunnan. He's going on that Sec 4 trip that my batch had to forfeit because of SARS. Heh, looking at the programme, I recognise some familiar names. I wonder what he'll find there...I suspect the place has changed quite a bit, or at least the capital Kunming would have developed more. Hehheh, and I wonder how his batch will come to like Chinese domestic flights. They are positively thrill rides in themselves =P

Hmm...I remember the green glacier, the first time I touched snow (though admittedly it was really dirty), the village school, the warm hearts of the village folk, the children crowding around me as I wrote a dissident poem (in English, of course) and gave it to them for a present (hehheh, I wonder whatever happend to that poem...the power of words and all that), that sandstorm, that night we were deported to the girls' room, the morning when all sixty-odd of us were huddled around my one heatpack. And that night, when I accompanied JY to the outhouse, and, accidentally looking up, saw the bold arch of the galaxy striping across the sky so full of stars. That sky was the fullest starscape I have seen to date, and me and JY just stood in the outdoors, within range of the outhouse, gaping upwards. Magical times, Yunnan...the first trip abroad without family. It had its own problems. Heh...back then, fitting in was a biiiig problem.

Oh well. I wish him luck. I hope he does have an enriching time over there. Heh, and me, I'll stay ruefully here, reading history and analysing poems and trying to solve the university question. I do envy him his abundance of time, his position on the edge of a new adventure, his lack of pressures.

pondered by phoenican @ 19.8.05