The quest!

The Trap, What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (BBC, 2007)
#1. Fck you buddy
#2. The lonely robot
#3. We will force you to be free
Like an ant perched upon a dry leaf being led by the whirling currents of water on rainy day and trying to make sense of the twirling world around it, I fall in the same predicament. More and more I discover that the world is neither flat nor round and solutions of the world are neither black nor white!
An intriguing documentary by BBC on profound theories that makes us wonder whether mankind is doomed for annihilation. It paints a very pessimistic view of the world around us. It is narrated from the UK perspective. The world leaders advocate freedom and the breaking of barriers of class and inequality in society after the end of WW2. The ill-effects of uncontrolled capitalism was seen with the aftermath of the 1930s Great Depression - WW2. This mantra was chanted all over breaking down caste system and age old social system of the East. However, we have only created the biggest inequity and classes amongst us. The divide between the haves and have nots stays apparent. The 1% of the world population own 99% of the world wealth.
It now appears that the Western concept of freedom is not universally accepted by all. They use the word of freedom to trap us into an empty world.

Frederick Von Hayak a thinker of the 40s theorize that the use of politics to plan society is far more dangerous than any part of capitalism. On the other end too, the Soviet model type of control had led to tyranny and its demise. He suggested that citizens control free market. Man is always greedy, his conduct, social interaction and behaviour is all based on self interest. Steady state will finally be reached. Altruism doesn't come in the equation.

John Nash

Another bleak opinion on mankind comes from John Nash, (of Beautiful Mind), the paranoid schizophrenic who suggested that everybody is suspicious and distrustful of each other. We strategize our every move by watching each others' movement and actions. How one responds to a scenario is called 'Game Theory' - how one would think in game of poker. The player would make a move based on how he thinks how the other would think. Nash even came up with a mathematical equation, which earned him a Nobel Prize, in the height of nuclear stand-off to predict what Russian would do and how they would respond when both sides put their fingers on the launch button. Equilibrium is reached when everyone is selfish. When the individual cooperates, the result is unpredictable and dangerous.
Prisoner's Dilemma: Like the blackmailer with a prized diamond who is asking for a ransom would find it more worthwhile to be dishonest, thinking that the other would cheat. By being dishonest, the crook tend to gain possibly have in possession both the diamond and money versus losing all by being truthful. This same scenario was applied to the Western and Eastern blocks. Equilibrium is achieved not by disarmament but rather to arm to the brim! Coming from a person who had to combat paranoid schizophrenia whilst proposing this theory, one wonders how much credence should be given to it!
JD Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist, while treating schizophrenics, proposed that family is a pressure cooker that propagates the dominance of one family member over the other. Love is conditional and makes one conform to mould to the direction of the family and indirectly ensures uniformity in society. Nobody seemingly seem to care for you actually do. They are just trying to control you, just like the people of power in society. This argument brought in counter culture in society. There is no such thing as 'public interest' but rather 'self interest' and everybody started building a distrust to people in authority.

J D Laing

JD Laing, in spite of being a psychiatrist, advocated that psychiatry was not exact science. To confirm his theory, he sent 8 normal and sane people to different mental hospitals in US with only one similar symptom - hearing a thud sound. They were otherwise told to behave normally. All of them were institutionalized; 7 for schizophrenia and 1 for manic-depressive psychosis. It rocked the medical world.
Different labels were now given to different behaviours - personality disorders, OCD, etcetera. After a big fiasco in the American psychiatric fraternity, it hit another wall again when psychiatrist in US claimed success in picking out malingers alleged sent by Laing's group. The only trouble was Laing did not send in 'patients' this time!
A check-lists was created to allay psychiatry biasses It became so simple that everybody became diagnosing themselves of diseases. Society then decided how one should act in society, hence putting a lid on individual expression and freedom.
In UK, the rocky 80s called for drastic measures. To stimulate the economy, productivity in the public sector was increased as people were rewarded with incentives. Civil servants were no longer working for the betterment of society or altruism, but rather for personal interest as Nash predicted in the 50s.
In the early 90s, public service was liberated in line with the free market. The old bureaucratic tradition was challenged. John Buchanan suggests that public servant working for the public is an illusion. Everybody work on own self interest.
The market forces and economy is a better gauge of people's need than politics. Market should be liberated.
So politicians left the economist and free market to have a free rein in spreading the country's economy to its people - market democracy and giving freedom to people.
This failed as human's greed led to crooked accountants and auditors cooked up figures to give a false sense a bull run. Liberal economy only make the lower strata of society poorer and the super rich filthy rich.
Numbers and statistics dictated productivity of civil servants were also shrewdly maneuvered to paint a pretty picture of their performances, which was far from the truth.
Geneticists of the 70s offered another way of looking at life. They suggested that genes use our body as a vessel to control the evolution of species.
New modality to control this machine to conform to society by introducing 'mental illness' and auditing to push man in conformity. SSRI were introduced to make life more predictable.

Sir Isaiah Berlin

Inequility led to politicians who failed people. They gave it to market which also failed. Market is no more an efficient system. Behavioral economics believe that only two type of people behave rationally, the economists and psychopaths.
1956 is seen by social scientists as a turning point in the history of mankind. The Hungarian uprising saw the Soviets severely squashing their subjects with brutal force. The world was surprised that a system which arose as means to liberate common people from the tyranny of tyrants have turn into violence themselves to maintain the status quo.
In Oxford, Sir Isaiah Berlin, a thinker, toyed the idea of two types of liberty - positive and negative liberties. Positive liberty arose after a group of suppressed individuals start a revolution to free themselves from oppression (e.g. French Revolution). People will be free but the general public will not know how to handle the freedom. Only the leader would have an idea of how utopia should be. In order to the tie the line for the non conformers to follow, the leaders would resort to violence and freedom would fail.
Negative liberty allows people to do whether they feel with the people themselves have low ambitions. Everyone is more interested in self indulgence. The law is needed to ensure that each person's freedom does notdisturb the other. This type is also not healthy as people can be coerced with disastrous outcomes.
The 70s also saw a group of revolutionists influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre who believed that a violent approach was needed to liberate the working class from the clutches of the bourgeois. The middle class seem to be a hurdle for free liberation of the public, prompting criminals like Pol Pot to brutalize the middle class to avert opposition to his rule.
The Americans in the height of the Cold War, tried to back dictators to ensure their influence and promote their kind of liberty. Economics was more on their agenda as they also supported the enemy of the state when situation warranted. The neo-conservatives too went to great lengths to hoodwink the world to justify wars to exert what they believed to be freedom to the world. The Western kind of  liberal democracy triumphed when the Soviet Union collapsed. The end seem to justify their agenda.
The world seem to be toddling along wanting a progressively free society. At it stands now, since by nature, Man are greedy, selfish and self centred. The model of society based on free market over the last few decades seem to be the choice of society structure. Again, the rich 1% hold the remaining 99% by their jugular and trap them into a materialistic world where money is King.

Soon men will be wiped out?

There was a time when members of the fairer sex were expected to stay that way - stay fair skinned, at least for the high heeled, away from the melanocytic activity enhancing UV light and powdering themselves smoothly pretty. They confined to the spectator pen to add splendour to the event but not as contestants. Their participation in international sporting events were only sanctioned by the governing bodies as late as early 20th century.

From then on, female contestants competed amongst themselves till some of them actually perform better than their average male counterpart. In 2012, the number of female contestants equal that of the male in the Olympic Games.

Fast forward to the 21st century...

A new breed of reality based competitions have emerged. A competition where men and women can compete as equals without any handicap given. One competition that I had the chance of viewing was Wipeout. It is a very outdoors physical intensive kind of competition which involves hard knocks, thumping falls and slippery poles. Despite all this hurdles, the ladies still come up tops standing tall above the men!
But of course, we all know that reality TV is anything but real. After the game show fiasco to improve rating and advertisements, it is hardly surprising that the TV would stoop low to anything and everything to sex up their shows!

A Civil War will be anything but civil!

Lincoln (2012)

Director: Steven Spielberg

In a recent research done by a TV station, Abraham Lincoln was voted as the most liked President of USA. Even though portraits of him show him as a serious person, it is because of the olden day imaging technique where prolonged posing in front of the camera is needed for a good picture. He was supposed to be a jovial chap, as seen in this movie where he is seen cracking jokes and telling stories to his subordinates.

The film shows a time after his re-election when he is trying to cajole the House of Representatives to approve the 13th Amendment which approves abolition of slavery. He is worried that as the 4year old Civil War is drawing to an end, he is worried that the free slaves may be re-enslaved. Even though, the film pictures Lincoln as an undying fighter for emancipation, some quarters claim that he himself was a racist. He only did what he did because of the sheer numbers of slaves and the harsh treatments they were exposed to. He did not forsee himself as much as dining in the same table with a slave. His real intention of abolition of slavery was to get them back to their country of origin!

This film may look like a romanticized version of a man's undying fight against a system which was not ready to end slavery, listening in between the dialogue may reveal the true double tongued speak of a true politician. Hats off indeed to Daniel Day-Lewis for a stellar depiction of now people would use as a yard stick of how Abraham Lincoln would have talked and walked. Medical journals say that he had a medical condition called acromegaly (overproduction of growth hormone) explaining his 6ft 4in stature lean physique. The dialogue in the film is in keeping with the flowery language that is associated with Lincoln's speeches.
Besides dealing with the hostile politicians to steam roll his proposition, Lincoln has to fight a war as well as deal with plethora of problems in the family circle. Even though his wife (Mary Todd, excellent depiction by Sally Field) is a pillar of strength sometimes, she is also a nervous wreck who has not got over the loss of their middle son. After his death, she was inflicted with a severe bout of depression which almost got her institutionalized. The high strung Mary also goes ballistic when their eldest son is adamant and finally leaves Harvard Law School to join the Army. 

Tommy Lee Jones plays an a major character in the movie as Lincoln's opposition who mellows down later. Historians claim that there were many inaccuracies in the depiction of his role. 

This movie lasts a good 2 and half hours, draining much of your cerebral energy but is a boon to lovers of history and flowery delivery of dialogue in the English Language...

Relevant even in 2013?

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/12/11/amelia-earhart-on-marriage/

Amelia Earhart on Marriage

by Maria Popova

“I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage.”

Charles Darwin gleefully weighed the pros and cons of marriage, ultimately deciding in its favor, while Susan Sontag called it “an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings.” But marriage, of course, is like most things in life — all else being equal, you get out of it exactly what you put in.
Amelia Earhart — pioneering aviator, bestselling author, and one altogether fierce lady — must have known that when she sat down on the morning of February 7th, 1931, and penned this exacting, resolute letter to her publicist and future husband, George Putnam. Found in the out-of-print volume Letters from Amelia, 1901-1937 (public library), it spells out (typo notwithstanding) exactly what Earhart wanted — and did not want — in a marriage, a bold testament to her independent spirit and liberal mindset just before the golden age of the housewife and shortly after the era of Victorian sexism.

The two married that afternoon. Putnam had proposed six times before Earhart finally said her highly conditional “yes.” She kept her last name and refused to be called Mrs. Putnam, even against The New York Times’ insistence. They remained together until Earhart’s tragic disappearance in 1937.

I come from the land of plenty

Yet another meaningless record has been broken in the Malaysian Book of Records, this time for the longest ensemble of Yee Sang. It beat last year's record of 888m by 111m to 999m. And what happened to the effort of 99 chefs and kilogrammes of fish, vegetables and the accompaniments? Well, 80% of the dish was dumped into the dustbins.
It is ironic that the concept of yee sang originated amongst the poor Teochew fishermen who did not want to waste the leftovers from Chinese Lunar New York and decided to throw in their fish strips, turnips, carrots, vinegar etcetera and toss it high in the spirit of festivity. (and eat it, of course)
Some smart alecs suggested that perhaps the leftover yee sang from the Malaysian Records endeavour should have been put to good use, like feeding the orphans and the underprivileged. Perhaps, the armchair critics are out of touch of the practicality of things around here. Yee sang, being a relatively uncooked mixed delicacy in the open air by the dirty streets would not last longer than half a day in our humid warm weather. And do they know just how difficult it is to get orphans to partake in a charity event? Their itinerary is so full that they would just turn down your offer. There go your charity events without recipients! Some caretakers of these charity concerns, who themselves may have BMI >40, would not be too keen on food tossed around for fun and frolic and strewn by the roadside!

The longest yee sang in Malaysia at 999-metre is laid on 1,000 tables joined together along
the streets of Jalan Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur.