Friday, October 18, 2024

Winning Orang Asli Votes (updated)


Just before the by-election of April 2010 I received an email from the political secretary of one of the candidates asking me for suggestions on how to effectively campaign among the Orang Asli of Ulu Selangor. I was happy to provide an overview of how things stand with my indigenous kinfolk from the perspective of someone free of tribal imprints. The following is extracted from my email response...

Siama anak Penengah (died 2012)
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to delineate the key issues confronting the Orang Asli in general - and the Temuan community of Ulu Selangor in particular.

1. As with all indigenous peoples the most crucial issue is permanency of tenure on their ancestral lands. Without a sense of belonging to their tanah pesaka (customary lands), Orang Asli tend to become dispirited (and seek to numb themselves with spirits out of a bottle). An important case in point is Kampung Pertak, situated within a few kilometers of Gunung Raja, their sacred mountain which they call Pusat Negeri. In February 1965 the Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli and the Selangor state government approved for gazetting as a permanent Orang Asli Reserve close to 300 hectares of forest reserve, stretching from Gunung Raja to Sungai Luit which flows beside the present Kampung Pertak.

However, in 2004 the Land Office issued 99-year leases on an individual basis to the residents of Kg Pertak, effectively denying their claim to their tanah pesaka, and reducing their land holdings to a tiny fraction of what was promised them 45 years ago. [Dr Colin Nicholas of the Center for Orang Asli Concerns can supply you with the documentation for this.] Other Temuan settlements in Ulu Selangor are faced with different problems: those in Kg Tun Abdul Razak and Gerachi Jaya, for example, have been living in fear of being displaced by developers working in cahoots with the JHEOA and the Land Office. Kg Orang Asli Kolam Air, KKB, still has no electricity supply even though it is located less than half a kilometer from the nearest power line.

Amran @ Kuku
2. The feudalistic and patronizing attitude of the Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli (JHEOA) has effectively infantilized the Orang Asli, keeping them timid, intimidated and unsure of their rights. In Kg Pertak, for instance, the Batin doesn't have the authority to convene a majlis (village council) - only the JHEOA can call a meeting in the village. After more than half a century the JHEOA apparently has only three agendas: (i) forcing the Orang Asli to abandon their traditional ways by systematically destroying their forest habitat; (ii) cajoling them and offering them material incentives to embrace Islam; (iii) ensuring that the Orang Asli remain powerless and lacking in self-confidence so that the JHEOA can justify its continued existence.

What the Orang Asli urgently need are representatives in parliament and non-governmental agencies who can articulate their desires, bypassing the heavy-handed, short-sighted and self-serving JHEOA. Sincere and independent NGOs like COAC are underfunded and understaffed - but with regular funding and more staff they can do a far more effective job of bridging the gulf between the Orang Asli and the bureaucracy.

Koi
3. On several occasions I have helped Orang Asli widows, accident cases and the elderly to apply for financial support from the Welfare Department (Pejabat Kebajikan). In every instance I have been disgusted by the snail's pace at which the Welfare Dept staff operate. Sometimes it takes more than six months from the date of application for financial aid to be granted. Such a lackadaisical attitude cannot be tolerated as it can mean the difference between life and death for some Orang Asli.

What is urgently required is a special fund set up for the Orang Asli at the district level which can be used to provide immediate financial aid to those who cannot fend for themselves owing to unforeseen circumstances, e.g., accidents, ill health, old age, loss of family breadwinner. Red tape needs to be minimalized so the Orang Asli are not daunted by the process of requesting aid. This fund can also be utilized to help enterprising Orang Asli set up food stalls or build riverside chalets, so they can learn how to do business on a modest scale and remain their own bosses.


4. Before the construction of the Selangor Dam, a few Temuan from Kg Gerachi and Kg Pertak were earning good money working as river guides with whitewater rafting companies. Regular contact with tourists has made these Temuan conversant to a degree in English and their natural aptitude for the sport has given them a big boost in self-esteem. Unfortunately, the dam has severely impacted on the water level of the river, making whitewater rafting almost impossible. The Temuan river guides have repeatedly sought the cooperation of Splash Sdn Bhd (the dam operator) to release water every time they have rafting clients - but I'm told that Splash has simply ignored their petition. This is one instance where the JHEOA ought to take up their cause and negotiate with Splash, but the Orang Asli have long learnt not to bother asking for help from the JHEOA (whose officers tend to be malas and tidak peduli, unless there's money to be made, as in logging commissions).

Sibin Aus (died 2011)
5. After living among the Temuan since 1992, it has become obvious to me that the Orang Asli would swiftly regain their self-esteem if given the opportunity to excel in what they naturally do with ease, viz., "right-brained" activities like sports and the arts. I doubt the existing school curricula can encourage and foster such talents. What might be effective are informal programs to stimulate and inspire the youngsters on several fronts: (i) helping them access the Internet, thereby improving their language skills and exposing them to a far wider world of possibilities; (ii) providing them access to arts workshops (music, dance, acting, woodcarving, painting, and so on); and (iii) granting scholarships and sponsorships to Orang Asli kids who show promise in athletics and cultural activities.

A viable long-term project would be to fund individuals and NGOs who can set up regular learn-while-you-play programs in various villages to broaden the outlook and increase the knowledge pool among the youth (who tend to get into mischief when they are bored).

Apin
Recently I met a few Temuan in their mid-20s from Bukit Lanjan and other settlements around Selangor who impressed me with their excellent grasp of English and their facility with digital tech (they have their own websites and blogs and have been shooting and editing their own documentaries). At the same time these new generation Temuan displayed great pride in their own mythic traditions and have published books and comics in their own Temuan language.*

These are the way-showers and bridge-builders between the past and the future who will lead their people to a new era of self-respect and self-determination, free from the suffocating clutches of the JHEOA.

Antares
~^@^~

Note: Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli (JHEOA) was renamed Jabatan Kemajuan Orang Asli (JAKOA) in November 2010 - but apart from the change of logo, very little else has (except the disturbing fact that JAKOA appears to be working closely with Jakim to embed Muslim missionaries in every Orang Asli community).

*One of these Temuan youth, Shaq Koyok, has since made a dent in the art world and become a de facto cultural ambassador of the Orang Asli, receiving cultural awards and invitations to visit galleries and meet with other indigenous peoples around the world.

[First posted 29 January 2015, reposted 9 December 2019]


Thursday, October 17, 2024

Happy 108th, Aunt M.Y. ~ Your stories live on in cyberspace!

Aunt M.Y with my mother Moon Loy in Johore Bahru, 1982.

Sometimes it takes a while to register that somebody you dearly love is no longer around - at least not physically.

My Aunt M.Y. - better known to her friends and fellow Wesleyans as Grace Lee - was born Dai Moong Yang on 18 October 1916. She spent her final years at the Lentor Residence nursing home in Singapore, gradually succumbing to senescence, and died sometime in February 2009 a few months after her 92nd birthday.

Those are but the barest facts of her life. What does it mean when you see the figures "1916 ~ 2009" engraved on a commemorative plaque in some airconditioned columbarium? Nothing much, really. Every human existence is essentially a multi-layered jigsaw of memory fragments stored in a multitude of contemporary minds. It takes a storyteller to assemble and reconstitute each life that has come and gone. To me that is what resurrection means. Each of us is a story unfolding in time and space and when we no longer inhabit our physical forms, all that remains are anecdotes.


I have only a tiny fragment of M.Y.'s story. I'm sure there are a couple of faded sepia photos of Aunt M.Y. tucked away somewhere in the appalling clutter of my study, salvaged from silverfish-eaten photo albums that survived a series of floods and stuffed in a manila envelope or two, but I have yet to locate them.

Fortunately, M.Y. was a compulsive storyteller and took pains to record a bunch of anecdotes typewritten on double-spaced foolscap sheets. She handed me a collection of her stories sometime in 1991 and asked if I could edit them for publication. I spent weeks hunched over a manual typewriter retyping her manuscripts, tweaking her syntax here and there for ease of reading - and, occasionally, adding a few literary effects to make her enchanting stories more vivid. I suggested she commission my then 19-year-old daughter Belle to come up with a few cartoons to spice up her stories.

She liked the cosmetic changes I had included and subsequently passed the material to her granddaughter, also named Grace, who owned a word processor and knew about preparing text for publication. Finally, in 1995, a thousand copies of a slim, self-published volume titled In Those Days... were printed and distributed to her friends, colleagues and relatives.

On one of my last visits to Aunt M.Y. in her Singapore nursing home, I was pleased to hear that a new edition of In Those Days... was in the works. M.Y. had just celebrated her 90th birthday and I thought it would be wonderful for a spruced-up version of her one and only book to appear as a celebration of her seemingly ordinary - yet in many ways extraordinary - life. I offered to proofread and help with the book design, as I had plenty of time on my hands and had since acquired some facility with computers.

However, as with so many good intentions, nothing transpired in the end. With my aunt's passing in early 2009, only a tiny handful knew of her humble collection of short stories. Family members are funny that way. I remember asking my own mother, M.Y.'s middle sister, whether she had finished reading In Those Days... and what she thought of it. "Oh, you know your Aunt M.Y. She loves telling tall stories!" That was all I could get out of mum.

Years later I realized how fortunate I was to have at least one storyteller in the family. Nobody else seemed interested in recording the everyday occurrences of their lives or of their ancestors - though my mother religiously kept a diary for many years. But after she died in July 1995 and I finally had access to her diaries (she had agreed to bequeath them to me after I pestered her), what I found in them read like a series of Facebook status updates: "Bad cold since Monday. Took some Aspirins but that didn't help much." Mundane stuff like that, apart from a few more intense entries whenever there was a bit of domestic drama. Truth be told, I still haven't read all my dear mother's diaries (there were at least half-a-dozen leather-bound volumes). She wasn't a natural-born storyteller like her big sister M.Y., who had a gift for narrating juicy sagas with genteel discretion.

When my affable and jocular Uncle Kong Beng (affectionately known as K.B.) died unexpectedly of a heart attack, leaving his beloved M.Y. an attractive widow in her late 40s or early 50s, a few tongues began to wag, just because she began spending a lot of time in the company of Uncle Ho - who had been best man at their wedding. In 1970 I got a job in an ad agency and moved in with Aunt M.Y. She kindly let me sleep in a curtained-off portion of her kitchen and often cooked wholesome meals for me.

Uncle Ho would drop by almost every day and that's how I got to know and like the man. He had worked and lived in Singapore for years and had raised a family there. Now he was estranged from his wife and found M.Y.'s company far more appealing. In turn M.Y. found Ho mentally stimulating because he was a well-read man who enjoyed discussing politics, philosophy and literature with her. I thought they were a perfect match for each other and was delighted when Aunt M.Y. bought a house in Bangsar and invited Ho to move in with her.

I often visited M.Y. in her cozy Bangsar home. She invariably insisted that I have something to eat and would busy herself in the tiny kitchen preparing a good old-fashioned meal while I tinkled on her antique upright or discussed current affairs with Uncle Ho. He struck me as essentially a pragmatist, torn between socialist ideals and a conviction borne from bitter experience that a great divide would forever exist between theory and practice because of the damnable recalcitrance of "human nature."

On one of these visits I learned from M.Y. that not everyone "approved" of her cohabiting with Ho, who was still legally married to his Singaporean wife. I didn't wish to poke my nose into other people's affairs, so I never asked Ho why he didn't obtain a formal divorce - and in any case it has never once occurred to me that couples who opt to share space must first apply for a licence from any government or seek approval from some priest.

Ever since I found out about these artificial constraints imposed on human behavior I have felt nothing but contempt for those who actually believe God personally laid down those rigid rules and regulations. As a kid I had come to my own conclusion that if a God truly existed, he or she or it would most certainly be completely free of the mental shackles of society's Caucasian chalk circle taboos.

Aunt M.Y. had been a dedicated Methodist all her life. Indeed, she told me her grandfather had been among the pioneer Foochows who migrated to Sarawak at the turn of the 20th century and established the first Methodist church in Sibu. Yet she never once presented herself as a prude, and always showed a profound empathy for human frailty. To me, if one insisted on professing Christianity, the ultimate exemplar would be my Aunt M.Y., who was well-known as Mrs Grace Lee to all Wesleyans in Kuala Lumpur because of her vigorous efforts in community service. Indeed, she was perfectly comfortable sharing her modest home and her widowed life with her old buddy Ho, a lifelong atheist and pragmatist.


My Aunt M.Y. and I were, in many ways, kindred spirits, despite our generational differences. She told me about her adventures in the astral realms, revealing how she often found herself floating out of her body and moving around with utmost freedom and facility. For months after her husband K.B. died, M.Y. would encounter him in the astral. He apparently missed her greatly and she him. The last time she visited her departed husband in the astral zone, she saw him happily remarried. He was now a simple farmer, working his fields in an idyllic valley, where life flowed in harmony with natural rhythms. She was finally able to put closure to their previous life together.

Quite often she was asked to clear stagnant ectoplasm and poltergeists from haunted houses. She described how she would get goose pimples upon entering certain areas and that would indicate the presence of discarnate entities or lost souls. Often she would be accompanied by a clairvoyant friend or two and they would simply acknowledge the cobwebs of psychic distress and pray for the release of the unhappy souls. The simple fact that she entrusted the ritual cleansing to Jesus and the Archangels made her unquestionably a disciple of the Christ.

Before she moved to Bangsar, M.Y. underwent surgery for a thyroid disorder. She reported to me, a wee bit regretfully, that she no longer astral projected after her thyroidectomy. Instead, she caught the physical travel bug and relished her speaking tours of the United States, representing Southeast Asian women at Methodist World Conferences. Back home, she devoted a great deal of time to serving in various church committees and providing free counseling to all and sundry.

Many a time when I visited M.Y., she would be dispensing sage advice and spiritual succor to distraught young women or friends undergoing domestic crises. She also began to upgrade her mastery of Mandarin and try her hand at writing articles and short stories.

In Those Days... has yet to be resurrected in print - and I can understand why, because publishing books involves not only money but an enormous expenditure of time and effort. Besides, very few publishers are prepared to invest in unknown quantities like a humble collection of personal stories written by a rank amateur, especially if there is absolutely no sensational content to be found - just a frank and sympathetic documentation of memorable episodes in a fairly ordinary human life.

After giving the matter considerable thought, I was convinced that if my Aunt M.Y. had been introduced to digital technology while her faculties were still acute, she would inevitably have become an ardent blogger or at least a ubiquitous commentator on a variety of social-political forums. Indeed, I would go so far as to visualize M.Y. getting her first whiff of tear gas at the Bersih 2.0 rally for clean and fair elections on 9 July 2011.

So I created a blog on her behalf, called... In Those Days... and when better to go public with it than on what would have been her 95th solar orbit? I have had to retype every single page, beginning from the end, so that when I finally complete this labor of love, the blog will be an online version of her first and only book. I've only managed five chapters to date, but will shoot for at least one more after I upload this post.

To any member of the family who may be displeased with the liberty I have taken by making M.Y.'s stories accessible online, I humbly apologize for disagreeing with the notion that it's best to "keep it in the family." I sincerely feel that my Aunt M.Y.'s stories have a charm all their own and provide an invaluable record of what life was like if one happened to be the granddaughter of a Chinese immigrant in British Malaya, born just after the First World War. I feel a deep enough spiritual connection with my Aunt M.Y. to assert that nothing would please her more than for her modest contribution to literature to be preserved and shared with the world at large - the world she has left and which she so unconditionally loved.

Last photo taken with my Aunt M.Y. in Singapore @  February 2008

The fact that my Aunt M.Y.'s stories will now be floating around in cyberspace may indeed catalyze a hard-copy reprint of her limited first edition - and I think that would be the most appropriate way to celebrate her 108th birthday!


CLICK TO READ!


[First posted 18 October 2013, reposted 18 October 2017]


INTERVIEW WITH MYSELF (FROM MARCH 1996)


Malaysian author/cartoonist/musician/poet KIT LEEE says he is a "walk-in." To be more precise, his multi-dimensional self - ANTARES NUMl*ON - recalls arriving on planet Earth on December 25th, 1968, as "an illegal immigrant" by "walking into and waking up" in the 18-year-old physical body operated by an Earth native born as "Lee Kit Fong" (pictured left). 

X-Fileophiles will have little difficulty accepting this as a fairly common occurrence. Apparently a large number of humans are waking up to the fact that they are actually "star-borne entities" on a special mission to reconnect Spaceship Earth with the rest of the cosmic community. But how will the Proton-driving, condominium-dwelling, cari makan-ing Malaysian rakyat respond to this news? To help shed some light on the matter, JOURNAL ONE invited Kit Leee to conduct an in-depth interview with his own "higher dimensional aspect" - Antares. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen!

 

K: How come I don't remember inviting you into my body?

A: Do you remember how many times you've lived on this planet? You could call it protective amnesia - it's essentially a multi-tracking phenomenon - you don't want cross-talk from your other dimensional aspects leaking through and distracting you from the tasks at hand. However, you can be sure of one thing: you agreed to this sharing of neural circuitry. Without your full consent it would have been-a transgression. There are cases where weak-willed personalities have been hijacked, taken over, possessed by some criminal entity. That isn't halal, as they say in this country.

K: Are you a figment of my own overactive imagination?

A: Well, isn't everything? No, I don't mean to be facetious. At the end of the day, so to speak, the Imagination is what creates all realities. Entire universes spring from the Cosmic Imagination. Hindus say it's only Vishnu dreaming. 

K: Does that mean my imagination is no different than Vishnu's – or the Prime Creator's?

A: It's a question of scale. In fractal geometry, the proportions are all-important, not the size. If you know the sum of two angles, you can figure out the third - no matter how huge your triangle. It could be an imaginary triangle connecting three star systems – the mathematics is universal. But I suggest we progress from triangles to tetrahedra: they're much more relevant to our experience of polydimensional reality. Think holograms. It’s a holographic universe.

K: Of course, it could also mean I'm schizophrenic...

A: Incidentally, that's exactly how early humans experienced contact with their gods - through auditory hallucinations generated by the right halves of their bicameral brains. The early gods were really a more evolved species with sufficient force of will to project images and, later, commands directly into the psyches of more primitive species. When these gods began interbreeding with the native primates, their progeny became the first monarchs, agents of the gods, and were regarded as the only real individuals - since the rest of the tribe was still a nebulous group-mind. The word "real" originally meant "royal." So much for reality. As for the syndrome labeled "schizophrenia" by psychiatrists, it all arises from a well-meaning but misguided attempt to define ourselves in terms of a stable, static, predictable - and controllable - social persona. The "normal' self is the product of wishful thinking, derived from genetic imprinting and sociocultural programming. Your name, address, occupation, passport and phone number... all that is just a convenient coordinate system to locate an individual within a particular social context. If you view Prime Creator or God or All That ls as the Supreme Personality, you're confronted with the archetypal case of schizophrenia - simply because that's how the One fragments into the Many.

K: Heavy stuff. Let's stick with more magazine-style questions, if you don't mind.

A: Why should I mind? I have no chip on my shoulder. You're the chap with the shoulders - and the chips.

K: Perhaps I'll quit trying to figure out what's happening on this planet and start a shouIders'n'chips franchise instead.

A: Provide your own canned laughter.

K: Right, er... Antares... where do you originate? Can I think of you as an extraterrestrial entity?

A: Everything comes from the One. l appreciate that you may find such a statement annoyingly vague. But it's the simplest and most precise response. l know you'd prefer some juicy so-called facts.

K: How about some nice, juicy so-called facts?

A: Sure. The name "Antares" connects you with stellar frequencies. Antares is also the name of a binary stargate. In Greek it means "counterforce to Mars (Ares), the divider"; and in Sanskrit it mean "interlink" (as in “antara” or 'between"). My most recent education was acquired in the Pleiadian star cluster - of which, by the way, our solar system is part - but I have intimate links with many other stellar concentrations of Consciousness. Being multidimensional means one can tune into several "lives" in several different frequency zones without shorting any circuits, so to speak. Venus is one of my favorite vacation spots in this system, and Satum is almost a second home. Earthbound science cannot as yet access the frequencies where sentient life is to be contacted on these planets. Remember, the present range of human sensory perceptions is extremely limited; and even the most advanced technical devices can only extend that range a little. Some of you are swiftly mutating, however, and are already able to pick up astral, angelic and higher mental octaves. You call such individuals psychics, clairvoyants, seers, channels. Humanity as a whole will experience a dramatic paradigm shift when enough of you let go of your rigid mindsets: that's the only barrier keeping you caught up in a tunnel reality that's seemingly futile, meaningless, and purposeless. In truth no external authority can keep you under post-hypnotic control forever. For most of us, the cage doors of consciousness are already unlocked. However, many have been "jailbirds" for so long, they're afraid to fly beyond the bars of visible reality.

K: Obviously, you can't stay away from the heavy prattle.

A: Heavy? This is light stuff. The annual report of Perwaja Steel - now that's what I would call "heavy."

K: How would you know about the corporate world?

A: Only as much as you know, plus I have access to the larger context in which these limited-objective games are being played. Glad to say, it's just a phase humanity has had to pass through. It's almost over, folks.

K: Would it be correct to regard you as my personal access to the Cosmic Internet?

A: Good analogy. Most of the Universe is already on-line, except for Earth - which is only now beginning to realize the vast possibilities of initiation into the interplanetary community. The Intergalactic Confederation? Not just yet... but let's say it's a matter of Time.

K: I'm editing out your chuckle.

A: That's fine.

K: Do you have the power to operate independently? l mean, could you coax me into doing something I would not do as the personality called "Kit Leee"?

A: We are NOT separate entities. Since you have only recently become fully conscious of your higher dimensional aspects, you're still in the habit of thinking in terms of "above and below," "higher and lower" - which is only true in a very limited sense. The expanded truth is: as your capacity for love increases, so does your empathy level - and that's the interface where we meet and fuse. Soon there shall be no visible splice between our programs: the personal and the transpersonal frequencies will be completely integrated.

K: Does that mean the demise of "Kit Leee"?

A: I have to point out that "Kit Leee" never actually existed as anything other than a form of station identification. Your essential being operates beyond names. It is, to add to the mystery, ineffable.

K: Ineffable? In-eff-able. You mean unfuckable.

A: I am unshockable. Words, words, words. The more the merrier in your case - since this magazine pays by the word. So go ahead and crack your feeble jokes. You've just earned RM1.5O, congratulations.

K: To change the subject abruptly, why are there still moments when I think the hardheaded pragmatists could be right after all? I mean, when l read the papers or talk with people, conditions on this planet appear to be worsening, not improving.

A: Appear - that's the key word. Haven't you heard? Appearances are deceptive. There's never been a finer epoch in Earth's history – by which I'm referring to the last 5,000 odd spins around the Sun. You realize, of course, that the Earth is ready to consciously accept the privilege and the responsibility of birthing the Divine Child – a brand new humanity endowed with the intellectual integrity of a Buddha, the physical agility of a Nadarajah, the compassion of a Christ - in perfect harmony with the Will of Allah (and therefore muslim in the essential meaning of the term, to be at one with the One).

K: Sounds too good to be true, what you say. l meet a lot of people who see life as a scary tightrope walk across an endless ocean of profound shit.

A: A very amusing and graphic metaphor. Gary Larson could go to town on that one. The fact that we find it funny means that it strikes a chord, cuts close to the bone - and, no doubt, such a perception of reality has been the "norm" for a very, very long time. Don't forget the Hindus call such a period of hellish darkness the Kali yuga. The good news is that a large percentage of humans have successfully broken through to higher consciousness, thereby rendering the experience of pain, horror, tragedy, and helplessness merely optional.

K: You mean we're free to change channels, so to speak?

A: Something like that. What has been happening with you, for instance, can be described as such a breakthrough. Your anxiety level has generally dropped to an unprecedented level; and you're no longer feeling chronic hostility towards emblems of external authority. Isn't that so?

K: You're right. But l continue to feel irked by events occurring on the mundane level. You know, Big Business, Big Government, Big Con Games like Wawasan 2020 or Agenda 2030. It's hard to keep quiet and watch ecocidal and genocidal projects being implemented. Look, how can we put an end to horrible scenarios like the Bakun Dam and blaming Climate Change on carbon dioxide?

A: It's all part of your final exam as a species. Humans are still wrapped up in economic and political power struggles - because the direct experience of Spirit has been effectively limited to a handful of holy rollers, hermits, aborigines, shamans, yogis, madmen, and so on. The last 500 years of scientific materialism and industrial development were a violent reaction against the preceding ages of superstition and tyrannical control by various priesthoods. Humans are now ready to find the right balance between faith and knowledge. Looking at it from a cosmic perspective, it's not really a question of who's right and who's wrong - or whether dams or windmills are necessary for your continued development. The key issue is: what are you striving to achieve, how are you using your energy? Are you perpetuating a social and economic system where only a tiny minority attains a lifestyle of unmitigated luxury, while the vast majority continue to struggle blindly, ignorantly, hopelessly, just to survive? If that is the case, then you have a moral obligation to swiftly outgrow the fearful, egocentric mindset that fosters such destructive and iniquitous activities. Just say "Boo!" and the specter of powerlessness will fade away. In other words, empower yourself, locate the spiritual center within, and kowtow to no false gods.

K: Easier said than done.

A: Even easier left unsaid.

K: You realize that this conversation could go on interminably.

A: It does. Isn't it wonderful to have a friend?

K: Damn right. Especially one who doesn't cadge smokes off me.

A: How little you know... oh well, a habit l picked up on Vulcan. Right, time for a ciggie break!

 

19 March 1996 (First posted 29 September 2023)

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

The Golden Spiral & Fibonacci Sequence explained in 4 minutes! (repost)



Published on 3 March 2013

Spoken Word: Alan Watts
Music: Blockhead
Clips & Audio:
Spirit Science - Jordan David
Inner Outer Worlds - David Schmidt

[Brought to my attention by Olivia de Haulleville & Walter Smith. First posted 21 September 2013. Reposted 8 October 2018]