Repression management
One of my friends asked me whether the Association has matured me or not. I wasn't very sure how to respond to that, because I wasn't sure whether did it or not.
I did learn a few things though.
1) The impotence of anger. The top-down approach doesn't work, because the people with power don't care about abstract things like "emotions", they only care about "accountability". There is no bottom-up approach either, because no one at the bottom dares to make noise--they know it's pointless anyway.
We can only simmer with anger and smoulder in chagrin, and pray for enlightenment over our suffering.
2) Leadership is just a feel-good word. If every person is a leader, why is everyone treated like they cannot take care of themselves? In the Association, what they really need is total control. It does not leave any room for individuals.
3) The importance of money. The Association outsources certain areas of training to companies outside of the Association itself. The Association thus becomes a "boss" of its own right, and it doesn't treat the other companies with respect.
I was talking to a rather high-ranking person once, and he said "That company fucked up one, they are the worst. They try to be like the Association, but they fail at it. I pay them so they should just work. I sacked 2 of them before."
Or something along those lines.
4) The power of games. Give angry people games to play and they'd forget their anger. They will be able to channel their anger into something other than the source of anger itself. People do not forget things easily, but if they find out that there's an alternative, if there's a way to make themselves feel better, to waste their time on, they will take it. And they will still be angry, but no longer angry enough to outwardly express it.
Gaming can control our lives in many ways, and making us apathetic to our very own environment is a very sinister form of control. To fight this, I've decided to download more games before I implode from the stress of not being able to do anything to improve my situation.
There is so much repression and anger I don't even know how to begin to express. Once you start work in the Association, they control your life. And you can't do nuts because you're bounded by the law to comply with whatever shit they want you to go through.
This whole fiasco which led me to the aforementioned conclusions also reminded me of the term "pigeon superstition". Simply put, pigeon superstition simply means that any action of yours can result in a slight cosmic shift that would result in something that is of your favour. Let's say that you're playing card games, and you get a good card immediately after digging your nose. The next time you dig your nose and you get a good card, you'll think that digging your nose would result in getting a good card.
I was tempted to wear red underwear, or avoid wearing certain "known" unlucky underwear. But I realized that I don't want to pin my successes of failures on something so casual as "underwear colour". I can't help but feel that my failure in changing the situation is attributable to the fact that I didn't wear a good underwear though.
Today, I went out with my JC classmates. I went out without 2 things normal humans cannot leave home without.
1) I forgot my handphone. I really don't know why, I remembered to bring my NDS, I remembered to bring my Pokemon Black, I remembered to send my R4 for repairs. But the handphone simply eluded me. I really wonder what's wrong with me sometimes. I got worried because what if they changed the venue?
I found them anyway.
This never happened before. I'm just glad I didn't freak out.
2) I went commando. That is, I didn't wear my underwear. No, this one is planned (;
So I was thinking, if I didn't wear my underwear and the MRT was crowded, would it be considered grinding? If it were, I'd be glad to just participate in this kind of grinding, because I'll be damned to pay to go clubbing when I can get off in a mode of public transport.
The faces you see in dreams are supposedly faces you've seen before. We meet thousands of people everyday (when we step out of our house and go clubbing in the nearest MRT), and any of those thousands of people could become part of your dream. This is quite scary actually. I don't really want to know this fact.
What if a face keeps coming back to me? Wouldn't I feel very helpless when I'm unable to put a name to that face? Wouldn't I want to know that person in depth if he/she is a recurring theme? Wouldn't I become fixated and keep trying my luck to meet that person?
Reminds me of the movie "Next", in which Nicolas Cage kept going to the same restaurant at a certain timing to see whether the girl he'd seen in the future would appear or not.
Last Friday, the one that just passed, was the first book out of the JC batch from Tekong. I was bored and in the vicinity, so I went to see the new recruits. It was an interesting sight, with all of them exclaiming amongst themselves the fact that they managed to survive 2 weeks of BMT, of civilian-deprivation, of everything that makes civilian life worth holding on to.
Kinda reminded me of my first book out, when even traffic lights was a welcome sight.
-- 2/19/2012 04:40:00 PM
