COME ON YOU REDS!

Season starting soon. Another 9-month long slog that will hopefully yield some rewards for my beloved Liverpool. Today, I keep going back to this game: the defining moment in my life as a Liverpool fan.

COME ON YOU REDS!!!

Me and my nation

Have been musing periodically about how I feel about my country lately. This year I continued my not-giving-a-shit-about-the-ndp-parade streak. I haven’t enjoyed it since I actually wore blue and green sequinned costumes and performed in it. The parade seems to embody everything crass and artificial about being Singaporean and being patriotic. It is patriotism built on exceptionalism. It is aimed at inspiring people to march together in lockstep to war against the latest foe, be it an identifiable entity or some nebulous concept like ‘terrorism’ or ‘hard times’. Furthermore, I have grown to think of the very notion of a nation-state as evil. Most nation-states have been formed by the mass murder or expulsion or demonisation of the different Other. A look at post-WW1 Turkey or even modern Israel aptly demonstates the kind of cruelty needed to create a nation-state as we understand it.

However, whilst that is what my brain tells me, in my gut there is still a certain pride. Pride at being Chinese and pride at being part of a country that is so capable of achievement. This pride is entirely unwilled. However, I would like to believe that this patriotism is entirely cultural and apolitical, and bereft of the vulgarity and exceptionalism that makes political patriotism so unpalatable. The true test, I guess, is whether this blinds me to the common worth of everyone outside of my cultural group. I hope I pass that test.

So I guess I have made my peace with the fact that I am proud of my roots, while still refusing to partake in patriotism as defined by the authorities. That is why I love Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is My Land” so much. It is the one patriotic anthem whose focus is entirely based on inclusionism and improving the lot of ones fellow man. It is a mature, comfortable patriotism that does not require blood or hubris. And that sort of patriotism is indeed beautiful.

Tabula Rasa

I’ve never been a big fan of kids. Sure there’re moments where they tug at my heartstrings, and I recognise the sheer necessity of their existence in perpetuating our wretched species.  But they have a major drawback – moreso then adults, they are incomplete people, with a large part of their minds still blank slates.My primary stimulant is the human brain. Give me a well-informed and well-adjusted adult over a cute and troublesome kid any day. Today forced me into something of a rethink.

I was asked to give the sec 1 debate kids in the alma mater a brief lecture about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and introduce concepts like ‘Zionism’ and ‘Right of Return’ and ‘massacre’ and ’suicide bombings’ to minds that have the right to still remain ignorant about them. My bias on this issue is well known, but I nonetheless tried to present a holistic picture of how both sides’ intransigence came about. I portrayed the bewildering sequence of events that constitute the conflict as a series of injustice and atrocities that kept compounding the hatred and mistrust. I recounted the various massacres and acts of terrorism and the ill-effects of occupation and extremism on both sides (naturally tilting the emphasis towards one side). As one act of obscene cruelty followed another, I became increasingly cynical in tone. Then, the kids, in that precocious way young debators speak, began asking questions.

“Isn’t it counter-productive for Hamas to keep sending people to die?”

“Why don’t they just talk to each other?”

“Why do the Jews go and oppress another race after they have suffered so much themselves?’

At first I was bemused but encouraged by their curiosity. Don’t they understand man’s staggering ability to dehumanise other men to justify cruelty? Do they not grasp that in pursuit of ideology human life is far too often expendable? Afterwards, something inside me snapped into place – Of course they don’t. They’re kids.

Within that blank slate that is a child’s mind lies not just incompleteness, but innocence and purity, unsullied by the depravity and evil that the adult psyche can so easily accomodate. Sure, most of these kids I was talking to will probably eventually develop that cynicism and insight that many adults (me included) see as second nature. They’re aspiring debators after all. But for these brief few years, their minds  are still inestimably precious. And that is why the children deserve the best possible future we can give them. I guess I have more to learn from kids then I thought.

I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.