Merry Christmas, Marunouchi

Merry Christmas, Marunouchi is my theme for Christmas in 2009. It is different from the previous Christmases in certain senses. First, it will be the first I spend overseas since I began working. Second, it is a themed Christmas and it goes with a purpose on top of its being Christian – secular, hedonistic or epicurean, you may name it, and focuses on a particular space. Thirdly, it will be religiously serene and devout. Well, Christmas, for namesake, should be Christian (some created the so-called substitute Season’s Greetings for the secular minds but I guess if they’re not into Christianity but only think of taking advantage of a few days holiday, at no cost, for example, spend 1 ½ hours in a church, I suggest they do a bit of other good work for the sake of humanity). Yes, I mean true good works not those that pave the way to hell.

Although the theme Merry Christmas, Marunouchi does not sound religious, it elementally consists of the fervour of religions. It will be religiously transfixing to see the best architecture in Asia, from a veneration point of view, – yes, when I say 'best', I do include in the sample those Babel towers, hanging gardens in the Middle East. I expect the architecture in Tokyo more than just Babel towers that point to the sky and a 800-metre tower does not mean anything for me. For man-made islands, alas, Japan is a pioneer (Zerotester, a Japanese animation series, showed a mobile man-made island in the early 1970's when China was still in chaos at the height of her Cultural Revolution). I do not scream at the Palm Island in Dubai but I should at the Chubu Airport in Nagoya which managed to be built at half the price of the sinking Kansai Airport (both physically and its debt) and is run efficiently by its builder, Toyota Motors Corp.



Marunouchi, the financial district of Tokyo, is still glamorous. The industrials and trading houses and banks in Japan are still global heavyweights that enable Tokyo Stock Exchange to stay as a runner-up in the league table, after a 70% fall in capitalisation from the peak in the late 1980's and despite those small-eyed Westerners' scorn and dismay. There is something to talk about and I am not religiously blind to pay tribute to the industrial champions of this nation without knowing the cruel fact that their no. one's are shrinking in size. But the overhauled Marunouchi district appears to show that Tokyo is a grand dame of Asia head and shoulder above all other cities - those of the parvenus - Shanghai or Dubai; those in lack of colour and dignity such as Hong Kong, those subtle but falling short of glamour - Taipei and Seoul to name only a few. After all those years, these established cities cannot come close to Tokyo no matter in which standard you rate them. Here lies some religious elements but I say it is not totally irrational.

Plato's Apology

'The unexamined life is not worth living.'

Time magazine chose Plato's apology to be one of the top ten of its kind. Perhaps unlike the others, which are mainly contemporary, Plato's lasts forever.


It was the 'apology' that started it all. Written around 360 B.C., Plato's famous essay (from the Greek word apologia, meaning 'defence') recounts how Socrates defended himself against charges that he was corrupting Athen's youth and blaspheming local gods with his philosophical musings. As a witness to the trial's proceedings, Plato recalls how his mentor refused to express regret for his lifestyle, even going so far as to liken himself to a 'gadfly' trying to arouse a 'lazy horse' (read: Athenian society). But while Socrates' speech would go on to shape thousands of years of Western thought, a jury of his peers remained unconvinced; at the age of 70, he was found guilty of impiety and sentenced to death by hemlock poisoning — a verdict that, according to Plato, did not surprise the sage in the least. 'The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways,' Plato quotes Socrates as saying at his sentencing. 'I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.' So much for saying 'I'm sorry.'

The Era of Transubstantiation

The use of the technical term 'Transubstantiation' in the context beyond Roman Catholicisim is perhaps historically unprecedented. I do not wish to explain such usage in a simplistic manner, for the whole idea of such usage is indeed per se complicated, let alone the technical ramification we need to encounter in the deduction in between. Let us try to decipher one paragraph:

'2. A society of peoples or of an entirely heterogeneous people, given its advanced state in contemporary standard, is bound to go anarchic. By which I mean that the advancement in science and humanity flies so swift that the development of human intelligence lags so far behind that the complexity of the society becomes Greek to most of people domiciling or as parasite in the society. If our children are addicted to the liberal, pluralistic drugs that only allow liberal, pluralistic abuse, then it would lack the perspicuity to express in a clear manner how a society can continue to advance or progress, for the liberalism and pluralism have reached the most high of humanity – for different peoples may be welt together without difficulty and for confrontations are only the result of constructive disagreements. But only the fool believes the fact is so. Only fools believe the world is filled with the just we dream of; and only fools believe such a world, despite its non-existence at this moment, will be existent sometime in future. Only fools believe the world today will progress to that of morrow, from which we point to learn as much as we see from our history, a discreet world of suspicious existence. Why do fools so succumb to the delusions of progress when as a matter of fact they have been in for a dying plight in which they see without obstruction their own death bed near at hand, and touch it without any difficulty? It is so I declare war to ignorance, thence the lack of cognition of their own plight, leading to the phenomena that they continue to live on and sneer at the possible advent of an imminent Death, will subsequently disown such prodigal species or members of such species. Can this be scientifically verifiable? Yes, but what good a scientific verification to the species if the result of it would only mean a probability of their death rather than marking a certainty of death? A probability of eradication of a species means only a probability of survival. Fools undoubtedly with their indolence in their mind can only opt for survival in an easiest manner, and for death should survival mean a slightest form of hassles to them. They are immune to despise and, in Darwinian interpretation, speak of survival of the fittest – such fitness only prevails in undesirability.'

Epicurus (341-270 BC)

The Greek philosopher intended to show mankind that it is possible to live a life of undisturbed happiness (ataraxia), devoid of fear and worry, through right knowledge of the way the universe works: the main objects of fear, divine punishment and death, need not concern us, as the human soul does not survive death and gods do not govern events, which are ruled by natural laws. The universe and everything in it including ourselves and our souls consist of atoms whose motion is governed by natural causes; nothing composed lasts for ever as the atoms move around, and their motion, temporary conjunction and ultimate dispersal the generation and dissolution of all objects including living things. Epicurus described the gods as perfect and eternal beings who live a happy existence untrammelled by the activities or sufferings of humanity. It puzzles many others that Epicurus added the element of the gods in a philosophy which appears self-sufficient without them. Obviously there was a practical reason. I personally love Epicurus' attempt to create a philosophy that rids humans of worry and enables them to live in happiness. What I approve of the most is that happiness does not come from glory, power or wealth but it can be had from little things such as good food, the company of friends, etc, which, to some extent, is hedonistic in that we enjoy the corporeal now-ness, for there is no future of ourselves when we die. There I believe has nothing wrong to hold such a belief, for, obviously, any coming life deprives oneself of memories of the former life. Some claim knowledge of the former life but few can establish such claim with convincing evidence. But Epicurean living is quite enjoyable. It has, to me, a spiritual element that occurs when you enjoy your company of friends, the good food or simply a walk in the garden.

Having said that, we do not have every reason to refuse to accept the premise that the soul survives our own death. But this does not weaken the happiness of ataraxia and his living secretly - when I think of it, I feel happy.

Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown is of course no Winston Churchill. But some temperament of a prime minister of Great Britain appears the same. In the annual foreign policy speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet in London, Mr. Browns said,

'When Britain is bold, when Britain is engaged, when Britain is confident and outward-looking, we have shown time and again that Britain has a power and an energy that far exceeds the limits of our geography, our population, and our means.

'As a nation we have every reason to be optimistic about our prospects: let us be confident in our alliances, faithful to our values, determined as progressive pioneers to shape the world to come.

'I believe that Britain can inspire, challenge and change the world.

'And to do so we must have confidence in our distinctive strengths: our global values, global alliances and global actions; because with conviction in our values and confidence in our alliances, Britain can lead the way in this construction of a new global order.'

Epicurean Living

Epicureans showed little interest in participating in the politics of the day, since doing so leads to trouble. They instead advocated seclusion. Their garden can be compared with present-day communes. This principle is epitomised by the phrase lathe biōsas λάθε βιώσας (Plutarchus De latenter vivendo c. 1128; Flavius Philostratus Vita Apollonii 8.28.12), meaning ‘live secretly’, ‘get through life without drawing attention to yourself’, i. e. live without pursuing glory or wealth or power, but anonymously, enjoying little things like food, the company of friends, etc.

Furusato

This is a Japanese folk song. It is one of my most beloved songs. Furusato literally means your homeland. The graceful melody and the simple, direct yet meaningful lyrics trigger my nostalgia. Deep within the palpable beauty lies something that makes this song immortal in me. Why some place is your homeland is essentially destined by the fact that you were born there; that your parents live there; and that your friends have been living there with you since childhood. These attributes cannot be changed because they are elements embedded in your history which are not erasable. However, there are some more factors, more subtle ones that define furusato. The lyrics go, after talking of the parents and friends,

Some day when I have done what I set out to do,
I will return to where I used to have my home.
Lush and green are the mountains of my homeland.
Pure and clear is the water of my homeland.

This is the part where the essentiality is. And only if a place essentially bears this capacity that it can be called furusato to a certain person. If you were born there, your parents lived there and your friends worked there but you shall not return after you have completed what you are required to do, and you do not feel the mountains and water are beautiful and worth your treasure, then the place that is called your homeland is indeed deficient in the aspect that it essentially is your homeland, your furusato. I should say, perhaps it is your homeland, but it is not your furusato.

Civilisation and Civilisation...the Sequel

I would like to share with you two of my favourite documentaries - Civilisation, A Personal View by Kenneth Clark and Matthew Collings' This is Civilisation.


Lord Clark's passage of civilisation ended in 1967 with Heroic Materialism when western civilisation was once again haunted by a threat as menacing as the barbarians who trampled Rome when it escaped oblivion, as he started the series by saying, 'by the skin of the teeth'. At the time BBC aired the documentary no one in the West could fail to smell the imminent threat from the Soviet Union.


Four decades on, Matthew Collings presented to us his passage of civilisation (I finally found this article on guardian.co.uk) - This is Civilisation, at a time communist threat was replaced by other problems far more in number but lesser in magnitude. Collings follows the same route but with a pair of different, more secular eyes.


I love Lord Clark's trail which starts from the fall of Rome through the rise of Christianity and the Enlightenment to the maturing of capitalism, for I am a person who shares some of his beliefs (view his Stick in the Mud, you will know); of course, I am not as erudite and gentlemanly as he was, not to mention I am not a member of the peerage or I am unable to be old-school.


If I were 20 years younger, I won't like Collings' revisit of the same trail. I would dimiss as nonsense his comparison of Islamic art with Jackson Pollock. I would not accept his perspective on topics such as Christianity and modern art. But now I am old enough and open enough to 'appreciate' that.


Both talk heavily about art but do not simplistically reduce civilisation to art. Lord Clark's brief introduction, 'I don't know what civilisation is but I think I'd know when I see it, and I am seeing it now' (idea) when standing in front of Notre Dame Paris, adequately summarises what takes a journey of civilsiation to start.


Hope you enjoy both.

The Imperial Hotel Tokyo

I had been thinking whether I should put this entry to The Better Things in Life or Life on The Verandah. Then I decided that it should belong to both but in a different context. There is an outwardly protruding attribute I love to see and feel in and around the physical Imperial Hotel Tokyo, which belongs to a better thing in my life; and there is something subtle and indepictable when I inwardly look at this physical building or this group of physical buildings, that is to say, there exist some attributes embedded inside the physical appearance; or I shall say, the Ideas of the Imperial Hotel, which by themselves are Imperial Hotel, are transcendental to the aggregate of the group of physical buildings such that when I come into them and am in touch of them, I become part of them and they part of me. The experience is beyond the senses - I still feel the front office manager smiling and the chandelier steadfastly hung on the ceiling and the nostalgic elegance that Japan excels in, but it would be impossible to say how these scenaries effuse in my mind - and in this sense it becomes transcendental.

Viva La Vida

There are many interpretations of Coldplay's Viva La Vida. The following, extracted from Yahoo! Answers, appears to be quite plausible though not perfect.

If we analyse the lyrics, the song has obvious biblical references and I think it's a song about Jesus Christ.

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sweep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

All catholics should know that Jesus Christ gave the word and he controlled the seas - I think that the line now in the morning I sweep alone clearly means that Jesus Christ was betrayed and had to endure many things alone! The first verse is talking about a decline from wealth and fame to a nobody, just like Jesus Christ experienced on his life! He used to be a king, but he had to die for all human beings..So on a certain way he turned over his kingship (I used to rule the world). Clear reference of someone giving God kingship over his life.

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing,
"Now the old king is dead, long live the king!"
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt, pillars of sand


The line upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand, possibly is a reference to the sermon on the mount where Jesus speaks of a wise man building is house on a rock while the foolish man builds his house on the sand, only to be washed away.

Those days, there were different kings! Ones thought the king was Jesus Christ himself, others thought the king was the Roman authority and other thought the king was the Jewish priests.

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
Once you know there was never, never an honest word
That was when I ruled the world

Jerusalem bells and Roman Cavalry, it's obvious it's a biblical allusion. I think the line Be my mirror my sword and shield, it's a praying to God for strength. Also, the line my missionaries in a foreign field, has to do with the idea of taking the message of God and Jesus Christ all around the world. Finally, never an honest word, meaning the betrayal to Jesus Christ and his subsequent death.

I know St. Peter won't call my name, referring to the fact that Saint Peter denied Jesus 3 times.

It was the wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn't believe what I'd become
Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh who would ever wanna be king?

This could be a reference to John the Baptist of the New Testament.
In The Book of Mark, John is noted as the one that comes before Jesus to announce His coming to Earth. A lot of people thought he (John) was going to be their Messiah, however he corrected them and told them that it was the One after him that would fill that role. I, also, argue that point because it is said somewhere that John's head was brought to king Herod on a Silver Platter.

Blew down the doors to let me in, meaning when Jesus Christ got furious because they turned the temple into a market!

EDIT: After thinking about it, the line "The old king is dead, long live the king" could be a reference to Jesus being on the cross. All of the people mocking him, and King of Jews above his head.

The Angel without A Halo

It would be hard not to get smothered when reading newspapers. I believe this is a common phenomenon globally, an epidemic that plainly degrades human mentality. The virus in fact is not a lethal strain, but a lot of humans are prone to its effect, for they are devoid of the immunity - rationality. Contrary to many economists, philosophers, scientists and, needless to say, theologists, a lot of humans are still animals but are worse in that they have been deprived of the instinct on which animals rely to survive and thrive. The deprivation, regrettably, was, long time ago, given by rational humans who assimilated their irrational counterparts, albeit unconsciously and accidentally.

If one who has been educated asks, 'is today's news a truthful account of the day's events?', he must be an idiot (naive and uncynical, both attributes should be worth my appraise). When Heroic Capitalism is doomed, capitalism per se is hallow and open to invasion of undesirable elements, of which one is greed. This is sometimes still misunderstood, misrepresented or mistaken as what was depicted in the movie Wall Street. It is not. The reason is not obvious when today's news reporting singularly fails to bring out any truth other than the very incident itself - and sometimes it fails this one too, which is utterly saddening but inevitably accepted by us who are rational and clear in their mind. Perhaps 2 decades ago, I was told, very well, by popular TV series, that a journalist was an unhaloed angel. A journalist had the responsibility to bring out the truth, report the truth and reveal the injustice if such the truth behind the incident caused the injustice. A journalist endeavoured to dig out the truth and made justice be done. Very simple, direct though innocent way of thought. Indeed it was noble and ought to be respected but not looked down upon as a lot of us do today. So today, should there be certain standards, or golden rule, of journalism in news that a decent human, a decent professional journalist should follow and admire? Perhaps we should cite a plausible definition of news. Who can define news? Let me see if Jack Fuller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune journalist and former President of Tribune Publishing, is perhaps a qualified person. Mr. Fuller best defines news as a report of what a news organisation has recently learned about matters of some significance or interest to the specific community that news organisation serves. Journalism today is not the same as it was over half a century ago, very well. Jim Squires says that journalism 'even at its worst and most unfair... once had as its goal a quest for accuracy and perspective that would eventually provide truth. News, itself, is best defined by the Hutchinson Commission on freedom of the pres in 1947 as a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day's events in a context which gives them meaning. On top of that, a responsible newspaper must judge what defines the significance of the news but only what the readers want to read. Only and want are italicised, for the conditionals are important and should not be twisted in order to get oneself the pretext to go wrong.

It would hardly not be frustrated, in addition to being smothered, after learning of these brilliantly described rules in journalism and reading newspaper of today's. But what has gone wrong in fact? I should say it again, when Heroic Capitalism (I recalled that Lord Clark said of Heroic Materialism in his landmark TV documentary Civilisation) is dying and becomes defunct, our world goes back to the Dark Ages, only this time we do not have Thomas Acquinas, Duns Scotus, Francis Bacon .... to name but a few.

Quoting A Letter to the Idiot dated 17 July 2008

Life on the Verandah is about philosophical aesthetic and nourishing of philosophical temperant. Explosive literatures should be put somewhere else. The reason I wish to put A Letter to The Idiot, which I wrote on 17th July 2008 is it, in a sense, serves the purpose of Life on the Verandah, by pointing out that evolutionary pressure is necessary to put humanity in good cause. The artificial parameters or spirits cannot bring Good to human alone. They must be helped by Natural Elements (capitalised because they are defined specifically).

Dear Idiot,

Are you a spiteful person? Are you sick? Do you have a diseased liver or brain? I am not disposed to ask questions naturally. But I raise questions when facing an idiot, and obviously I have the answer to all my questions respecting idiots. Are you a spiteful person? You are, for you definitely do not know where this question comes from, and you definitely do not bother where it comes from, and you are only concerned that you can take off on time and join other idiots in the karaoke bar. Are you sick? Terminally. Sickness may be treatable yet I do not wish a cure be available. Do you have a diseased liver or brain? Your liver is diseased, but your brain deceased. Let me tell you, Idiot, I am not like you, an idiot. This is evidenced by my behaviour and my habits in daily life not only entirely different from yours but totally in contrast with yours.

I am puzzled when you queued up for hours for a pair of rubbish sandals with a monkey sign on them. Let me ask you, Idiot, did you read Critique of Pure Reason, in the hours you squandered queuing downstairs of the monkey shop, with the company of other monkeys, chimpanzees, bums, scums, imbeciles and primate-like entities in the form of a long queue. I think not. Kant's masterpiece is reserved for the brilliant minds, not you. You need not be worried as you have not heard of Critique anyway and you will not feel ashamed if asked why you did not read it. 'None of my business.' you think. But where did the time go? You wasted it? Well, I give you the peace of mind. No, you did not waste it. You never treasured your time so one cannot say you wasted the time, as if time was precious and you mistakenly used it in the wrong manner. Not at all, you queued up for your pair of rubbish sandals and time went on with you as well as other useful people. But even though your time was taken, it was not accounted for as though it had not been taken.

When you had lunch, alone or with other bums, scums and imbeciles, did you think of the food you ate? Was it good or bad? What did you talk? Did you debate Morality and Amorality as a reality of collective good or simply a standard naturally derived from behaviour of human being? No, you did not. All you did was to talk about why your employer did not raise your wage (I can answer this for you, for you are just an idiot, which has not been worth the money you have been kindly bestowed as you begged for it disgracefully, sneezed even by the monkeys who are starving for bananas). Why did you occupy the whole table when your nauseating bum friends had not even left their shitty office? Did you want to demonstrate your idiocy to such great extent that the Useful World had to shovel you away? Well, I tell you, I teach you The Idiot. But you will not listen. I am sure. I tried to tell a monkey of The Idiot. It ate bananas and ignored me. So I must say, you will not listen to me. The protagonist in The Idiot does not resemble you. I cannot find anything in common with you in him, Prince Myskin. The world believes Prince Myskin an idiot and calls him an idiot, but he is not. Myskin is not like you. This is blasphemous to compare Myskin with you. You ate or devoured junk food and consciously refused to accept my telling of a brilliant story. You queue up for scandals but are ignorant of the Corpenican Revolution in philosophy. Your consciousness is as idiotic as your being, which should have not been created from the outset. The Christian intellectuals feared Feurebach for his philosophical brilliance and eloquence. You do not in the same manner you are afraid of no junk food. Will you every think about the Good and attempt to differentiate it from the Bad? I think not.

You spend so much time eating junk food, going to karaoke bar with monkey friends, drinking low-quality alcoholic drinks. Have you ever introspected and realised what you have done is worthless? Not only that, are you conscious of the plight that your own being hinders the Useful World's development? Do you understand that such nonsense as equal opportunities or anti-discrimination or anti-racists or political correctness or pan-democracy is as detrimental and evil as the Inquisition and the Assassins? Do you see that it is because of you idiots, anti-discrimination becomes discrimination - against talents, against the Useful, against the Good? Do you smoke cigar? Do you enjoy Havannas or non-Cubans? Would a Dominican Davidoff satisfy your palette? Can you smell the floral fragrance burning out of a Cohiba Esplendido? I do not even expect you to ask why, reason being that you are worse than the monkeys who can choose good bananas and throw away bad ones. Your bad mouth can only hold Marlboros but throw out Ardberg or Oban or Miltonduff. Your shitty hands can only hold cheap cigarettes. Your ghastly eyes see not Evil, as they are too blind to see such brightness, such stretching of the amplitude of life; they see only tabloids which publish pictures of 2nd class B-movie actressess going to discotheques. They can't read but only see. Your unlubricated brain think of having sexual intercourse with them (her) every night but all you can do is to jerk off in front of your cheap PC.

Oh yes, I almost forgot, a PC, a machine that you idiots love to embrace. You must be a big fan of those MSN, ICQ, Skype or Facebook. What a socialite! What good is it that you socialise with only idiots? How can your brain not become paralysed and deceased, if you are exposed in prolonged periods to MSN, ICQ, Skype or Facebook, those objects that promote idiocy under the disguise of cleverness. So, Idiot, I admonish you, you are becoming devolved into worse than a giant jellyfish whose ancestry dates back the very primordial age, but giant jellyfish conquest humankind. Idiots do not know of its existence, nor does jellyfish know of idiots. But the prolonged exposure to Facebook obviously turns you into some kind of jellyfish, only that you do not share the strong survival 'instinct' evolved through millions of years and perfected through sporadic changes on Earth. You are apparently a giant jellyfish bound to be eaten by Chinamen.

So, Idiot, I have to answer all questions in one go: The only place for an idiot like you is the gas chamber.

I remain, Idiot,

Heroic Capitalism

At the time capitalism came to pass, that is, I would say, after World War II, it started maturing and up to around 1960's, capitalism was a fully fledged young man, matured, sophisticated with more decency than cynicism. I call it Heroic Capitalism. It is Heroic Capitalism that constructed the framework of development in the 1970's where Japan was in its Showa golden years, the US was reborn after the Vietnam war, and Europe was having a rethink of socialism (whether it was a good cause). The power and confidence of this young man was bound to crush the ossified, moribund old man, who, having swallowed too much of the communist travesty, had his days counting. The Thatcher-Reagan offensive, a term I coined to refer to the way these hawkish conservatives chose on dealing with their supposed diabolic neighbour in the East, served, utmost, a catalyst but not a necessary condition. Totalitarian communism was too rotten to live on by the late 1980's.

Same as any other ideology or system of thought, Capitalism follows the same path as it grows old and gets lost on its origin, the heroism that dictates capitalism, not the other way round as many economists and apologetics of this cause had understood. I think, of course, with hindsight, this started when Thatcher and Reagan enticed the entire capitalistic world to follow the pattern of (simplistic speaking) Anglo-Saxon ideology (ASI). And ASI ruled the following decades successfully to the extent that as naive as many people of preceding eras, people began losing the alert that history changed. When they grew and expanded, one day they were bitten back by their own success. I Ching refers to this situation as the regretful dragon that goes overlimit, which happens after a prolonged period of booming and satisfying life.

I was (am still am) skeptical of the lasseiz faire advocates (those economic liberals, for example) who criticised Japan's interfering habits throughout the lost decades. Not long ago, I still heard them moaning on Japan's showering the economy with money, and not so long ago, these people turned mute because their very own governments had started pouring liquidity in the same way the Japanese did a decade ago. My view is, Japan's malice lay on the delayed diagnosis and treatment in the early 1990s and not the wrong treatment of quantitative easing. Japan raised interest rate too high but too late when the bubble became too large. It got a stroke and would never be recovered, from the perspective of Western economists. But some people such as the late Miyazawa and even myself beg to disagree, as no one should necessarily be required to see through the eyes of a Westerner and live according to the standard of the West. Somewhat Keynesian, Miyazawa died prematurely, in the late 1990's, to see if his postulation could work in a way, in the long run, better than Koizumi's ASI which, in the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, short-circuited the longest prospering period of Japan. Again, I shall not singularly point out that it is Koizumi's fault to follow a liberal view and act accordingly. Japan never buys into that. Still Japan had its own bubble in the expanding period in the first decade of the 21st century, but this time it was different.

The bubble burst is not easily seen in Japan. The bubble lay clandestinely in the swelling factories in different areas in nation. The GDP growth, though very mildly at 2-3% p.a., reflected the gradual expansion of production capacity built up to feed the world's devouring demand for goods (China and eventually the US). This is globalisation. We have reason to blame it. Liberals, a warhorse being The Economist, vigorously sell globalisation. The basic rationale of it I do not abhor. The Economist presumes it is Heroic Capitalism that pushes globalisation and the decent elements in the system would make globalisation a truly reliable and fair means to eradicate poverty and create value to the whole mankind. But the presumption becomes groundless empirically when we observe the capitalist societies around the globe. But with demand free-falling, does the Heroic Capitalism in Japan (I believe that Japan still has it) survive the torrent of darkness? In particular, the ASI in se has bad seeds and they now prevail at a rate unimaginable to those who naively believe in the capitalistic good. I believe in Japan's ethos that a corporation is not merely a profit-maximising entity but a social one that bears responsibilities not only for shareholders but for employees, which explains the life-long employment system that flourished in the Showa years. The greed and unceasing pursuit of interests and profits, those bad seeds, sour the whole fertile land of capitalism. As it grows old and frailty prevails, decency makes way for greed and excess. There should be two consequences - either a volatile, revolutionary scenario in which the diabolical capitalism is violently overturned or a more benign one in which the good elements among the bad seeds reinvigorated capitalism.

The Age of Unjustifiable Triviality Due to Excess

Could it be better that we are impoverished? This appears to be a daft question that need not be treated seriously. But it does now. Our age is that of unreason, all right. This is no harm anyhow, for there has always been a bunch of people, at any given point in time, who behaved in an unreason manner, and who were unreasoned men. This phenomenum, Darwinian or otherwise, can be explained a posteriori, by means of simple observation of the human history as well as a priori, through some deductive logical reasoning of the humanity structure. Since the Age of Enlightenment, those unreasoned bunch (I shall call them the reprobates) imitated in great stupidity the enlightening supposedly given to those enlightened people. Reprobates took advantage of this era, the loophole of enlightened people, and themselves began getting excessivly conceited, for they knew (they were stupid still they possessed such level of cognitive ability so as to still be called a human) this well that they were given the golden opportunity to act stupidly without ever worrying about being penalised for such stupid acts. This became excess. The excessivness emerged since the time when those Washington, Jefferson or Adams proclaimed so vigorously and cogently such unjustifiable standard that all humans are born equal andGeorge Orwell was yet to be born to remind them some of us are more equal than the others that we all were wrongly led into believing that the reprobates were actually born equal with the enligthened group. Reprobates were divided into a few categories. The worse ones were even worse than any parasites that lived on a wrong host that caused the host to die fast.
This age, I call it that of Unjustifiable Triviality Due to Excess, has a deeper element, which is the lack of reasoning and judgement but only essentially making oneself overly important but in fact no importance at all.

John Mortimer

Sir John Mortimer, barrister and freedom-fighter, died on 16th January 2009, aged 85

As usual, reading The Economist's obituary is a literal enjoyment, which is so unique that I can't think of an adjective that quite resembles one with which I could have come up for any food I tasted. Every week I read a life of brilliance, humbleness, controversy, you name only a few.

Every true-born Englishman knows that the law is an ass. Rules are better honoured in the breach than the observance. Judges are best represented in a chorus line at the D'Oyly Carte. The English constitution is a vague formulation in someone's head, and that foundation of English liberties, Magna Carta, is best known for banning eel-traps in the Thames. The firm clip of the law is for the other fellow. Behind the furled umbrellas and decorum, Englishmen are anarchists. Or, as John Mortimer liked to think of them, votaries of 'my darling' Prince Kropotkin.

How nicely a paragraph could be phrased and how much excitment such a paragraph could be read with!

The Age of Unreason

A lot of us talk about the absurdity of our era, about people of these days being unreasonable, and probably about our society being anti-rational (in which the term rational is used in a general sense). Regardless of what our world looks like, it is apparent that people seem to be unable to reason. In a radical sense, this means human stops being homo sapiens. Betrand Russell said, in his essay The Ancestry of Fascism, that the revolt against reason begins with the revolt of reasoning. Russell has his own reasoning. I am not here to repeat how Hume destroyed causation which in turn destroyed the foundation of science. All I want to do is to describe these people being unreasonable, our society being anti-rational and our era being absurd. It is only a description and leaves rationale behind later. This description, without rationale, seems to some the equivalent of those unreasonable, anti-rational and absurd people I am attacking. No, not true. When something we sense is by reason accepted to be so, which is to say, we have no reason to refute what we see, then it is likely that it is true - or at least it is not absolutely wrong or illogical that it cannot exist. It exists. More importantly, I am a rational person, and I am reasonable. I live in a world that is far from absurd, albeit that I know of such a world which I attempt to avoid with all my efforts but regrettably - admittedly - with which I must interact.

Russell was right in pointing out that when the political ecology becomes more heterogeneous, it would be hard to attribute issues to reason, for the diversity in values makes it impossible to argue from a common assumption. If the value of judgement is not the same among each others, then it will not be possible that reasonableness takes place in the argument. Each party comes to his own conclusion from his own starting point. The gap is unbridgeable as a result. The only way is to subject the opposition to force; otherwise, both sides continue to argue and keep on arguing to the point when both lose their temper and at the end defer to force for resolution. We shall be glad to know that at this point in time, politics only just reach the point when both side are arguing. In many parts of the world, the so-called matured democracies come to the point of keeping on arguing. When economically the society can sustain such wasteful behaviour, the arguing continues. One day will come to a point where people cannot find their subsistence and by then they no longer believe argument per se is the effecutal means to acheive what they think to be an end of their own good. Then we jump to force and violence for a final and quick solution. This sounds less probably but possible.

Those immature democracies, pseudo-democracies, democratic totalitarian states and failed states (of different degrees) can come to the final point much easier. However, in the city where I regrettably reside, there is less of a concern to come to the violent resolution, for one particular reason I assure you of the safety - the intellectually castrated citizens are enormous in number. No other how these castrated dogs cannot act violently, as they lack the organ that secrets the hormone to make them violent. They are violent to the extent that they shout at each other in the subway train or yell to some anonymous parties on an internet forum. But when they are given a gun, they have their shit scared out of them and shake and break. Such useless, castrated animals, jumping and joking, hysterically grinning and shouting, fully occupy this place. They know, perhaps, by heart, that in a decade of two, they would turn inferior to the group of humans, whom they once abhored and derided but who have become their masters, and turn totally of no use to them. As a consequence their castration becomes a blessing, for they do not need to reproduce and no more castrated animals to come to this world. The reproduction rate of this city is the lowest in the world. The Age of Unreason tells us that when reason goes away, the barbarism comes to fill its vacuum, which seals the people's fate. The unfortunate thing is when we live in a world which is rational, reasonable and beautiful, we have to tolerate an anti-world that is spreading and no too soon devouring ours.

To the Land of the Covenant

'Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they cannot understand one another's language.' Genesis 11:7

I have asked myself in another web log why the 1980's matters. There should be sociological theories to explain it but all I should like to say is in Japan, the 1980's truly was the golden age not only of scientific and humanity progress but also in music and movies. The animation, or anime, as this form of expression is called, is one of the best developed form of art, if you will. The efforts the Japanese anime artists put into an animated movie is unthinkable unless you have seen one. In 1989-1990, when Japan's asset bubble was almost blown up, a movie called Patlabor the movie, which was an extension of the eponymous TV anime series, was carefully produced. Patlabor is the team of police, equipped with robots, Patlabors, established by the police department to tackle crimes and situations created by robots which are widely used in Tokyo. This first movie version of Patlabor is shocking in images and reality. The delineation of a post-buble Tokyo realistically reflects what Japan is going to face - in a bleak future some people endeavour to protect the things that decent people hold dear. The whole movie defies anything you want from an anime, from the pace to the speech. It is a movie, a dramatic scientific fiction which subtlety covers the dramaticity that could be mistaken as boring and pointless.

The title song, To the Land of the Covenant, is to me the best anime song I have ever come across (the second best is Megazone 23 Part 2 - Please.give.me.the.secret). The title sounds biblical, which in a sense reflects the rationale behind the story of the Patlabor movie that people have become corrupted in the financial bubble and lost their own self - but retained a vacuous ego; so some cleansing work must be done and the remaining good ones are promised a place where God and the good make a covenant. The 'God' is never disclosed in the movie however in the middle, an investigator concludes him to be evil, for he was (he was dead) not truly God as we all know in the conventional sense, but he was the unfathomable one who had some idea that he believed to be right. The song creates a sense of sin which people, the reprobates, have committed and for which they must accept penalty - but the brightness in the rhythm conveys message that the Land of the Covenant is there in store for all of us, but we have to endeavour to fight for it, to fight because of it. The team of Patlabor is among the good; because of whom the world is worth fighting for. How can I forget when confronting a bleak future.

Postscript: The quotation of the Book of Genesis is not from the Catholic edition. I just followed that in the movie.

Celebrating Darwin

The Economist writes of Darwin in the latest edition, saying, correctly, that the evolutionary theory perhaps is the only scientific theory that is not widely accepted. No normal person, regardless of how much science knowledge he bears, would be proud to say that he does not believe in Einstein's theory of relativity; probably all he would say is he has no idea of what Einstein's theory is all about. However, Darwin's theory, which has obviously satisfied all parameters as a valid scientific theory, sounds somewhat controversial 150 years after the Origin of Species was published. In fact the evolving nature of living organism, as the newspaper points out, was not first raised by Darwin. Thinkers far older than Darwin such as the Greek philosopher Empedocles, who was born in 490 bca, are known to have suggested that nature selection might explain why living organisms were adapted to their surroundings. The idea of struggle for existence could be traced back to a Muslim theologian al-Jahiz born in 776 ca. But why, after man has lived through ages of ignorance and begun to enjoy an enlightened life, is he in doubt of Darwin's theory? There are plenty of reasons. I can think of one here: man is too proud to come to the cruel reality that he is no better than other living organisms that share the Earth with him, after thousands of years of theocratic hypnosis. Theocratic hypnosis. Yes, and ironically, the substance this term is supposed to refer to is, in fact, a result of evolutionary force that makes man adaptable to the environment he once lived in. Is there a reason to awaken a man who is still in a Dark Ages slumber, a consequence of theocratic hypnosis. I am not entirely sure of this, despite the fact that I abhor ignorance and barbarism; but I am not sure if the slumber we are in should be utmost interrupted. However, some waking moments are worth pursuing.
To me, the evolution theory is easy to grasp and nice to follow, for, as I said, it has all the attributes of a scientific theory, and so it is falsifiable. Unlike some other arguments such as Intelligent Design which I am not particularly convinced to accept, evolutionary theory has a firm ground to base on and the ground is increasingly strengthened as we find more fossil record and have progress on genetics and molecular biology. Some people who obviously possess a brain which is inferior, in a Darwinian term, do not like to accept they themselves and chimpanzees (probably) share the same ancestor. While I do not like this (because chimpanzees obviously live a much fuller life than those people and it would not be fair if they share the same ancestor as these human beings), I do not deny this likelihood if such likelihood is high enough.

A Bookish Life on the Verandah

I have no right to complain of my life so far as the substance I have been given is concerned. The title of this weblog is all about my life on the verandah of my humble but resourceful apartment. I must qualify that humble is a gentlemanly modesty expected of any educated person. Despite having no right to complain, I preserve my right to be concerned. I am concerned about the doom of civilisation and unlike the trampling of Rome by the barbarians when civilisation survived by the skin of its teeth. We are now at risk of oblivion without much to rely on if civilisation is to be saved. One characteristics of this life on the verandah is its bookishness, if you will. There I may have a cigar, a cup of coffee or a dram of single malt, but it is not complete without a book. There is a profound difference between a life of gastronomy and a life of letters. The former is likely to be infesting among the affluent whereas the latter is more likely now than ever to be at the risk of extinction among them. This is a shame when in the Middle Ages and even the Renaissance, those rich people performed their oblige noblesse. They were rich but entirely passionate about art. The rich nouveau become parvenu simply because they lack the organ to appreciate art which, in my opinion, formulates the skeleton of a civilisation, and without which I am doubtful if a society can be classified among the civilised societies. The reason why I am concerned, as I just explained, is because these days the worst is deemed the best, the golden rule to follow, the silver bullet. Quite the contrary, I am afraid the worst, as these attributes were classified in civilised intelligence but muddled through in today's idiots who control the media, would dominate our world such that the once best and good are swamped and die out. Humanity is submerging into barbarism; one which is different from 2,000 years ago in that the latter was barbaric, but with less ingrained detrimental effects than the former. Modern barbarism was created by those good intentions for high quality people. But they are now abused by the worse kind who is given to live a diligent life but who cannot because of their bad genes.

Why should one tell the truth if it's is to one's advantage to tell a lie

This is the question lingering in Wittgenstein's mind, when the 20th century's greatest philosopher was only eight. He probably believed it has no harm to lie, quite a shock to many who rightly believed that Wittgenstein was a truthful person. Wittgenstein always had his own reason. For a layman such as myself, I think of this question, capably, only from the perspective of the advantageousness of telling a lie. The reason why I seldomly tell a lie is entirely due to the fact that I know I cannot gain any advantage by telling a lie with a long view. Wittgenstein is right that it is nothing wrong to tell a lie in such circumstances, that is to say, when it is to your advantage. The only part that is missing, deliberately or otherwise, is for how long. I may tell a lie and get away with a felony I did at a certain point in time; for which it is to my advantage to lie. However, if I have to lie continually thereafter and those lies become inconsistent among each others, which I say consciously or unconsciously and as a result of the utterance of such words and such inconsistency arising therefrom, I put myself in a situation far more difficult than when I did my felony. And more importantly, if I am frank about the felony from the outset, I am forgiven; then obviously telling a lie in this context is truly not to my advantage.

The question remains, how could I know whether, at a certain point in time, it is to my advantage to lie or to be honest? The answer is not straightforward and easy. But I think it is answerable, with certain disentangling of the world's fundamental values. What are the fundamental values? First of all, it is the complexity of the lie. If the lie you have to make up is complicated, the chance of its being spotted as a lie is higher. Secondly, the time frame you have to maintain the lie. The longer the time frame, the more likely you will slip some truth out of the lying process. Thirdly, the seriousness of the consequence if the lie is revealed. Normally this follows the fourth point. If level of seriousness is high, you may probably avoid lying from the outset. However, having said that, one may avoid the seriousness of the consequence if the truth is told and therefore lie, which is the fourth point I wish to make. We need to weigh on the two - whether the seriousness of the consequence if the lie is revealed is higher than that if the truth is told from the beginning.

Life

Perhaps I am not stating my point clearly. When I said organisms that live on instinct fare better, I mean compared with those who cannot live up to what instinct requires them to live, those organisms that live on instinct are better. I want to talk about life here.

On Liberty

People talk of pros and cons, judging them and deciding which way to go, if they are in a liberal nation in which they are free to do and act as long as the law permits. Compared with autocratic nations, free nations are better choices as a living place and learning ground. However, people tend to rot and they abuse freedom.

Love

I am highly skeptical of the claim that human is unique and superior to other living organisms on Earth, and more so of the claim that human is superior because he has developed love. I even more abhor people who conceitedly claim that human is superior because he has developed love on the premise that God created man with such capability of developing love, and that God created man in His own image which is love. There are so many different claims, Christian or otherwise, that sell human love. Perhaps we are a bit different, but not superior, because we have developed rationality and had a pair of dexterous hands; but I don't think it defensible to claim that our rationality and love ensue from a higher being and automatically we become superior to other living organisms, which, you may wish to say generally, in certain sense, live on instinct that in fact appears to fare far better than human beings. I need to emphasise the word automatically. For man is not automatically superior because he is created to bear these attributes, it is ironic to believe that the ability to love that a man bears positions himself on the top of the planet, let alone managing the planet.

I qualify my statement by saying in a certain sense, organisms live on instinct fare better. In what sense? You would probably ask. In the sense as a living organism to such extent that it lives its life in full. I think only man behaves obnoxiously or only man can behave in such a manner that makes decent fellow men sick. Because of rationality and love, man is rotten. Alas, I am not going to be accepted if decency is no longer warranted in the presence of rationality and love. Who will forgive me debasing the foundation of humanity. Why can the availability of rationality and love, such superior attributes, make man rot? The only explanation is that not all men are created with these attributes. A certain percentage of men are defected items, which have no such organs that accommodate love or trigger rationality. The rotten organs they have are those who imitate love and rationality by applying sub-human attributes which are the worst in any conscious beings and living organisms.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Why, all of a sudden, has a people lost entirely its dignity and continued to live in hypocrisy and degradation, while, I have to admit, materially its members have gained what many other peoples envy to the death? I need to speculate profoundly in order that I am hopeful of getting an answer; perhaps, I have not speculated profoundly enough so far; which, as a consequence of my lack of progress, makes all endeavours to treat this people in dignity futile. In fact, I am not saddened by the fact that this people has no dignity at all or that I have not recalled once it had. As I always like to mention, the founding fathers of the Constitution of the United States of America, believe that the pursuit of happiness is a proper goal of human, I naturally think that a people who pursue happiness are bound to gain dignity, as a dignified people have a proper goal. The deduction is right, only the premiss is wrong for this people - this hopeless people which is lucky enough to carry on what it does not deserve. How dare it criticise and complain!

All-Goodness

When coming to Judeo-Christian God, a concept that fails from the outset is all-goodness.  It has been a complicated concept to construct a god that is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent but still conceptually these attributes are imaginable, albeit a twist of the concepts and some qualifications are inevitable.  However, to argue that a god is all good is a thornier task in our world.  Although the all-goodness is imaginable, it is not defensible in our world where evil is.  The very concept, put to test of logic and observation, is obviously defeated before actual argument is built up. However, a lot of people are still strenuously attempting to defend it.  Richard Swinburne, an Oxford theologist, is one and I have to admit, he is almost there in his Existence of God.  The problem of evil per se does not defeat the all-goodness argument but it is the availability of the higher order of the evil that does.  It is arguable and clearly defensible that God is all good with minor evils, e.g., small pain that alerts you imminent danger, or ordeal that strengthens your will and reminds you of greater virtues.  But higher orders, for example, large scale and serious natural disasters that kill thousands of people and result in loss of family members, cannot be explained easily if at all possible.  

Morality of the Strong

Unfortunate substances spread like wildfire.  Moralists or pseudo-moralists love to think of dilemmas and are delighted to show to the world that moral dilemmas are unsolvable and inevitable.  Regardless of what they intend to show, they pronounce that they belong to the weak, and their morality is that of the weak and for the weak.  When some moralist asks which one, your mother or your wife, you would save on a sinking ship (provided that there is only one vacant seat on the lifeboat), they believe they think brilliantly and design a scenario that is perfectly unsolvable, a question unanswerable.  He advises strongly that we shall think and argue if we intend to save one but not the other.  Let me tell you, Gentlemen, there is nothing worth squandering a second on.  This is the morality of the weak.  Compassion, kindness and love are received in the weak; they are given by the strong.  Such sinking ship, such situation - the strong will know it is nothing but an inevitability in which the strong will make a choice and confer it with his own reason.  That is the end of the story.  The strong bestow compassion, kindness and love.  They have their own values that need not be reminded.  But unfortunately when malignant discivilisation takes the dominant place in the stead of good civilisation, unfortunate substances grow and spread.  Humankind is contaminated and suffers from incurable disease of the weak.  Humans let themselves be weak and remain weak.  They create a lot of ingredients to protect them from harm, to seal them from touching the most precious thing they once had, instinct.  When instinct is lost, weakness comes in.

Critique of Pure Reason

It sounds extremely naive to write of a title like this one. But I am not here to intepret what Kant had said. What I would like to say is punctuality. Kant's life is uneventful. He was reportedly obsessed (well this might not be a correct word) in punctuality. It was said that the whole city of Konigsberg adjusted the clock with his passing by every day. On one occasion, Kant stayed home for a few days to read Rousseau's Emile. The whole city was late.

In the city in which I temporarily reside, I find it increasingly difficult to meet sometime on time, or, to put it more mildy, in time. To meet someone on time is a difficult task as there is only one point in time with the two parties meeting that makes a meeting on time. But to meet one in time is easier, I suppose, if both parties do not arrive later than the appointed time.

Perhaps the lateness, so to speak, is attributable to the emergence of mobile phone; whereby people can postpone meetings in the last minute. But I think it is more to do with one's declining mentality when technology advances. Those people I come across are all stupid beings. Quite to the contrary of conventional wisdom (well, who possesses wisdom these days?), technological advancement, progress in medicine, reduced need in hard labour and much diminished likelihood of bodily injuries at work are supposedly positive (virtuous) factors in the loop that strengthens humanity not weakens it; but in fact these factors add to the decadence of humankind (or a majority of the members in the humankind).

Kant was groundbreaking which is incomparable with what I see - those late people I am hateful to see. Hume, the great Scottish skeptic, proved that the law causality is not analytic, which inferred tht we could not know for certain of its truth. Kant accepted it is synthetic but it is known a priori.

There has only been one Christian. He died on the Cross.

Why is Nietzsche so attractive to someone like me? First of all, who is 'someone like me'? I am a complex person and am not prepared to permit myself to admit I am a certain type of person. I am far from a philosopher, for I have not developed a philosophical system or destroyed one (like Nietzsche), and I am not keen to become a philosophy scholar, who spends all day in the university, delving into what has been delved into for innumerable times. Well, this term does not equal the scholastic philosophers in the Middle Ages who made groundbreaking suggestions - think of St. Anselm's Ontological Argument and St. Thomas Aquinas' Cosmological Argument. St. Augustine of Hippo's predestination affected followers and non-followers profoundly; if you look at Calvin's predestination doctrines, you will know what I mean. A philosophy scholar is likely to make one associate him with a mediocre mind these days, despite the fact that the chances are, we would find a dozen of brilliant minds at Cambridge and Notre Dame, not to mention the large numbers of liberal arts colleges in the US. The 'someone like me' becomes hard to grasp, if I am just a layman with great interest in philosophy but have no credentials to support either I am a philosopher or a philosophy scholar. A layman merely with great interest means everything but a poet without composing a single poem (paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre's words), and unlike Tony Blair, it seems I do not have a third way to proceed. Then, the only way out would seem to be either to develop a system or destroy one. I am complex because I believe in systematisation, for a system makes arguments easy to follow and hard to breakthrough (if properly deduced). However, obviously systems tend to be contrived and are prone to errors so I believe in pulling down systems as much as I like building them. Destruction of a system is not as easy as one might think, as the works of Nietzsche had well demonstrated. Pulling down an institution of belief is not easy but I guess it could be done with reasonably high probability. But the most difficulty part is - how to replace the institution refuted without adding back just another institution. It was the question Nietzsche was forced to confront after he proposed that God was dead. I do not have the intellectual capability and valour to confront this grand question. The 'someone like me' could be exemplified by a generalised term, of course, a consequence of systematisation, which reads, 'one who is prepared to amplify, to the farthest extent, one's life, and leap out of the morality framework, and define one's own good and evil. This sounds neat and simple, fully appreciable and totally passable. However, for the 'someone like me', it is entirely complex, since it involves something intertwined together with the deepest concerns at its ultimate level - life, morality, good and evil. These are very complicated elements which defy simple explanations.

Having said that, I like Nietzsche not only because he is groundbreaking but also because he is up to the point when our world headed to decadence. He felt it necessary to reassess the values, travesty in fact, obscenely created by Christianity. He detested Christian morality as much as secular morality. The revaluation of all values was his last words. We shall never know what this is all about. But I shall be likely to appreciate how this may lead to. His distaste to institutional Christianity does not mean that he abhorred Christ, for he said, there had been only one Christian, but he died on the Cross. At the time this Christian died, the 'Evangel' became 'Disangel'; and good news turned bad. This is absolutely appreciable when the institution of Christianity began to take shape in the shadow of Roman persecution, the essence of Christ had transformed, or transubstantiated, in much the same way as the bread and wine to the flesh and blood, into something apparently different from what was expected of from the apostolic perspective and substantially incompatible with Christ's original teachings. Nietzsche noted it well.  I like Nietzsche because like Jesus, he stood firm on the new ground he built.  By overthrowing religion, he created the Superman, for he claimed, man is something to be overcome.  We are weak and frail, bound by evils such as morality, compassion and love of the weak man. Superman is here to overcome the weakness, to save the good from the bad morality. I like him because primarily and frankly I am a weak man but with the mind to become a strong man.  I daresay I am prepared to take the good out of the bad morality; and I am ready to reassess the values conveniently built upon the morality we take for granted.  I am complicated not in the sense I speculate profoundly on subjects that puzzle men of wisdom for thousands of years, not that I have on my mind a system as colossal as the Hegelian one. Instead I am as simple and open-minded in my thoughts as I am adamant in my will to disentangle life-long concerns of my own.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Perhaps I shall take this opportunity to explain why the life on the verandah is worth writing for. In the world where I am given to reside, regrettably there appears to be more moronic entities than intellectual ones; which as a result biases one's perception and leads us into believing that we live in a hopeless world or are part of the moronic ghetto that deserves eternal death but not hope for eternal life. How such bias and misleading belief could be rectified if the hopelessness and anti-intellectual aura surround you? The answers lies, quite to the contrary of some people who believe corporeal life is temporary and even unreal, in the physical life that we all have to live, enjoy or resent. I am glad that I have a big verandah (obviously a conspicuous claim) where I can spend the afternoon focusing on my intellectual or musical pursuits. And it proves to be a good antidote or corrective implement with which I am able to rectify the bias and the belief that our world is full of imbeciles and is going down the route of her own destruction. This short moment on the verandah is physical and nothing sacred or supernatural. It forms part of one's life, from an intellectual perspective, that all we have to go through, joyful or sorrowful it may be. Sitting on the chair overlooking the greenery and low-rise building in front of you, on the left, it is a main road where cars run and roar, it is entirely worldly but of a world I am desirous of, indeed quite earnestly, I sipped a cup of English tea, and watched my youtube.com. There I began enjoying my life on the verandah.

Medieval philosophy was the topic I chose on youtube.com to spend my first afternoon on the verandah. For those who learn philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition, the chances are, they are less familiar with medieval philosophy which houses the philosophers of the middle ages that few English-speaking universities are keenly interested in. And though the prominent names in this era are numerous, only 2 are particularly famed and well known to all of us, namely Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. The former, though the bishop of the city of Hippo, was a solitary figure, who came up with his philosophy from his own mind, in a certain sense, alone. Contrary to Augustine, Aquinas was a university teacher and a dominican friar, who had to live in the communities - surrounded by pupils and peer friars. In fact, philosophers could, in very general terms, be classified under these two types: Spinoza, Nietzsche, et al, fit the former; whereas Kant and Wittgenstein are the latter type. People do not take medieval philosophy seriously because unlike perhaps others, medieval philosophers endeavoured to prove what they had already believed in - Christianity. And such preoccupation seems to make their pursuit of philosophy and the result less convincing and less impartial. However, as Bryan Magee pointed out, in an interview with Anthony Kenny on Medieval Philosophy, the medieval philosophers bore the same intellectual curiosity as we do and were equally open on philosophical questions. And Mr. Magee said, of his experience with reading Dun Scotus, that instead of finding him strange and otherworldly, he was reading a young Betrand Russell; which, I should say, is pretty amazing for a writer who lived 1,000 years ago. Furthermore we should also know that medieval philosophers put logic seriously. After the Middle Ages, logic became, as Mr. Kenny said, a truncated torso and was taught in short courses in most European universities. However, logic has an Aristotlean tradition and, as we all now know, is the basis of all analytical philosophical pursuits of our times.