Love and other disasters Part 2

If you'd like to read Part 1, go here. Part 1 is for those who prefer to keep life "positive." Part 2 deals with the darker side of the topic.

As I said in Part 1, if you are a talkative dude or dudette, you'll naturally gravitate towards a companion who's a listener, or someone who you think can be persuaded to become a listener. Similarly, if you can't speak to save your life, you'll find comfort in a friend who can speak his mind.

People seem to have this radar that seeks out people who complement their own behavior, people with the "chemistry." These are clues why I think people are wired to do a balancing act.

Maybe that's what the yin-yang theory is trying to tell us. We instinctively know that one dominant attribute without a counter-balancing one is bad for us so we are quick to pal up with someone who will make us feel whole. Nothing bad about that in my opinion.

But everything has a bright and dark side and in this instance, the dark side emerges for unfortunate people who grew up in abusive conditions. A spouse beater ala the Rihanna-Chris Brown affair for example. Brown apparently grew up to see his mother suffer in the hands of his abusive father and somehow felt it was okay to beat the crap out of his girlfriend.

I won't comment on Chris Brown but if you've ever been pissed at someone at work or wherever because of their sadistic tendencies, you could be staring at exactly that - a person who's trying to do a balancing act. As a sadist, he or she needs to find a willing victim to play his/her role in order to feel whole.

It takes two to tango so there's always the willing complementary player. When a person grows up being told, "I beat you because I love you," then as an adult he/she may find himself gravitating towards an oppressive employer or spouse to nip that empty feeling. They just can't help but seek that relationship - bizzarre as it sounds - to feel whole too.

This is what I call the Tom and Jerry relationship. It's grotesque but Tom can't be Tom without Jerry, and Jerry can't be Jerry without Tom. They came together for a reason.

So in the same manner, battered spouses will always go back to their tormentors. Bullied employees will keep finding oppressive bosses to work for despite all the complaining. They are like magnets attracted to each other.

Time to change

50 years - The passing of 1st generation supporters, assuming present ideals are enforced by core supporters aged 30 years or more. This represents the group upholding the status quo who, minds already set, will not give up their ideals under any circumstances, but may sell out their principles for enough money.

60 years - The passing of supporters of the previous generation's ideals. These are today's kids aged 10 years and less. They are conditioned to carry on present ideals albeit in diluted form. The biggest reason to continue the tradition - that's the way of the forefathers and that's how it should be.

8 years - Transition period where old ideals are demolished and new ones built. 4 for internal struggle and remorse, 4 for acceptance.

Total time to completely change beliefs by attrition: 50 + 60 + 8 = 118 years.

This is the time it will take, in earth years, to effect visible change in society.

This applies to lifestyle, culture, political ideology, and any social institution you can think of with the exception of religion.

My theory anyway.

One thing arising from this.

Every institution hails the words of its forefathers as holy, immutable and carved in stone.

People seem incapable of believing that the forefathers may have actually been mistaken, ill-advised or short-sighted when they created an ideal. The freedom to bear arms as guaranteed in the US constitution is an ideal which was necessary during the Civil War era but in the 21st century have brought more pain to grieving families than ease of mind.

By making the words of forefathers inviolable, man has elevated man to the status of gods. No, higher than gods. You can violate the 10 commandments but you cannot violate the constitution of a country.

My thoughts go to yesterday's victims of the shootings in Alabama and Winnenden, Germany.

The red pill

Last weekend when I was in Singapore, a friend of mine remarked,

"There's lots of political news going on in Malaysia. You spend a lot of time there. How come I don't see you talking politics on your blog?"

My friend was pulling my leg. He knew what my answer would be but I had to say it anyway. There are two things I don't write about. People's private lives and Asian politics. Okay, on private lives I make an exception for Octomom's case. She made her choice to lift the privacy of her life on national tv and I'm just adding to a pretty noisy public discussion.

Although I don't comment on politics, it doesn't mean I am unaware of it. On the contrary, I am painfully aware of it in all its gory detail. Awareness is a basic training of any good martial arts school. In my school, we were trained to notice things ordinary people wouldn't. The wind, the sun, the terrain, ambient sounds, the physical and mental states of people. We'd sit in stillness for hours learning to "be" with the surroundings. We could sit in a packed subway and tell you what we saw in detail. These observations tell us a story about the balance of forces surrounding us.

If it sounds like meditation, that's because it is. Many people think that when you meditate, you shut down your faculties and get lost in a dream world. Actually you don't. Your senses heighten and you notice every itch on your body, every smell, every sound. You just don't get attached to them. They come, you note, you let go.

Politics tell a story too - one about the state of your non-physical surroundings. If there is one thing politics is useful for, it is to remind me that nothing is forever. It doesn't matter which side of the divide you're on. The unstable nature of existence guarantees that no single side will endure. What you see today is a mere screenshot of a never ending movie which had zig-zagged through time and will continue to zig-zag to eternity.

In fact personally, the more I observe politics, the clearer the great truths of life seem to be. One of them is that no matter how wealthy or influential you are, you cannot escape dissatisfaction. Accumulating more wealth and power will not do anything to eradicate it. Neither will clinging to any ideology, tradition or dogma, no matter how right or fulfilling it might seem to you at that moment.

So I treat politics as the background noise of an unstable dimension, what I call The Matrix. I accept there are pathways that lead out and its not by more politicking and counter-politicking. Its by taking the proverbial red pill. The ancients have done it. With right understanding and right concentration, anyone can do it.

At this point, I admit this is purely faith based. It doesn't have to be, as I should discover when I've summoned enough courage to walk down the entire path rather than turning back halfway as I am doing now.

But as this dimensional upheavel picks up pace, with society and the ecosystem breaking down as they had done in countless existences, I have to say the prospect of not turning back is getting more and more attractive by the week. It is soul searching time.

"The red pill is an unknown quantity. We are told that it can help us to find the truth. We don't know what that truth is, or even that the pill will help us to find it. The red pill symbolises risk, doubt and questioning. In order to answer the question, you can gamble your whole life and world on a reality you have never experienced."

Maybe its time for me to take the red pill seriously.

How bad is bad?

Likely worse than the Great Depression according to this opinion piece from Salon.com.

In a nutshell, here's what it forecasts.

• Skyrocketing hydrocarbon prices
• Skyrocketing food prices
• Stillborn newly industrialized economies
• Massive unemployment
• Massive poverty and starvation
• Massive civil unrest
• Regime threatening instability

Add global climate gone haywire, something the Great Depression didn't suffer from, where we'll be enjoying all this under 50-degree heatwaves and super hurricanes, and we might just witness the beginnings of a great die-off that'll bring world population back to a manageable level of oooh... maybe a billion people, give or take.

Call me pessimistic but I think Salon might just be on to something here for a couple of reasons.

One, that most of us have been conditioned to place personal gratification and conformity over the consequences of our actions. I remember the food fights we used to have at school, the gas guzzlers we drove around in, the number of cellphones and gadgets we would have by the time we were 18, and how we're shunned if we didn't look or act like everyone else.

The story of the resulting environmental and economic collapse, while intriguing as a good scary novel, never really moved us to do much. There's always a reason not to do it. Something about hanging on to our thick wallets, frail egos and stubborn beliefs no matter the cost. We have a name for it. "Reality."

Two, most of us underestimate the power of greed and how it fans the flames of our own demise. Even as things are disintegrating today, the opportunist in us is still abuzz out how to make a killing from stocks and property. Yes, when markets are frightened, get greedy. This is the golden opportunity to be the next Warren Buffet. Never mind that all we've got left is the shirts on our backs.

Clearly we have no desire to change. The good life is too ... good to give up.

If you loved Alien vs. Predator, you're gonna love Humans vs. Mother Earth. One armed with its Wall-Street smarts, the other with her natural resources, ecosystem and time. Guess who will win.

What goes around comes around.

If only we humans actually believed in what we said.

The Butterfly Effect: Redux

"More than 90 percent of major armed conflicts — those resulting in more than 1,000 deaths — occurred in countries that contain one of the 34 biodiversity hotspots, while 81 percent took place within specific hotspots. A total of 23 hotspots experienced warfare over the half-century studied."

"...the hotspots are home to a majority of the world's 1.2 billion poorest people who rely on the resources and services provided by natural ecosystems for their daily survival."

- Livescience.

Sounds logical.

1. Biodiversity due to climate and geological conditions attract more living things
2. Living things attract predators
3. More predators mean less food
4. Less food means more potential conflict
5. More potential conflict means more real wars
6. War in dense population centers mean more casualties

Since predatory behavior plays a significant role in the scenario, I must distinguish between a human and wild predator. A lion, as ferocious as it is, stops eating when its full. Humans on the other hand have no circuit breakers. When they are full, they hoard. When they've hoarded too much, they trade. When they trade, the natural supply and demand system is forced to change and so on.

But doesn't the same cycle of life happen, say, in the ancient frozen Viking lands?

Sure it does, but freezing Scandinavia isn't exactly a mecca of biodiversity. The human population is sparse and a war that breaks out won't see millions dead, unlike in the heavily populated Indus Valley or coastal areas of China.

So it does seem logical that your chances of becoming a casualty of war would be much higher if you were born in a biologically lush place like China, Cambodia or India than a desert or an ice-locked nation, for the simple reason that when a place is teeming with life, a swing of the blade kills a lot more.

60 seconds to zero

In the 80's, the sudden death syndrome killed more than 200 people in Singapore. That's according to National Geographic.

The electronics that drove their hearts simply shut down, leaving healthy young people suddenly lifeless.

It happens every day. Checking out unplanned, I mean. Ironic that the greatest certainty of life is also its greatest mystery. In spite of all our technology, death remains a subject of superstition.

But happen it does. A plane crash, a mortal wound, terminal cancer. Of knowing that the time has come for you to move on.

How will that final minute feel?

Yeah I know, the fear of death is many times worse than death itself.

Its also been said by NDE survivors that the end of life is not horrifying. In fact it was a comforting, warm feeling.

Maybe it depends on what your beliefs are and to some extent, what horror movies you've seen.

Not that physics will bend itself to accomodate what you believe and set the stage accordingly.

But whether you are smiling or trembling fearfully at the departure gate... I think that's gonna be determined by what you believe.

So all the more reason why its very, very important to be careful of what we choose to believe in.

Because what we believe in will set us up for that most important moment in our lives. Not our first job, not our first love, and not our first child, but our final 60 seconds.