The Grey Man In A Black & White World.

Have you noticed how people these days are increasingly perceiving the world only in terms of black & white? The trend is every where these days, in newspapers, magazines, TV, blogs and even in ordinary day to day conversations. It’s a litany that typically gets played out too often. Even our minds are resigned to it, filtering it out automatically, hardly even registering its existence. Like the imperceptible hum of our computers, finger nails growing or even the fire extinguisher, one doesn’t really notice it. Till now of course, because I am going to ask you to tune in to what I am talking about, the black & white world.

If you are wondering what the babble is. It’s called post realist speak. Which tells us all, we are either plugged in or out, connected or offline, hip or square, globalizing or dinosauring, progressing or regressing, competitive or vegetating, enriching or disabling, enlightened or dimmed, successful or failed, right or wrong, moral or immoral, with us or against us.

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The Official Singaporean Earthquake Survival Manual

There is nothing like a good old earthquake to frazzle the nerves, huh? There I was sitting last Tuesday in the conference room somewhere in the CBD, with a few executives as we scrutinized like Talmudic scholars the details of the next quarter’s budget. Yes, the hard science of intercepting the future to create opportunities. If it sounds reminiscent of alchemy or rain dancing that’s because it is. Only it dressed up as something more serious, strategic planning. But don’t tell anyone just yet, it pays the bills. I even have a comfy cubicle with a sea view and job title that keeps me reasonably happy by pretending to be a very important know it all savant.

The earthquake wasn’t so much a jolt as it was a friendly head popping into the conference room with a quizzical look followed by, “Errh do you all feel the building swaying ah?” We looked at each other, then at the rattling windows and just before you could say, “Earthquake!” Everyone headed for the stairways, except me of course only because a two metric ton auntie was clutching on to me for dear life.

The Right to Privacy in a Brave New World.

“Privacy is under siege,” the new obsession: espoused as the most fundamental of right, marketed as the most needful of commodities, guaranteed to cure all ills including drowning away all your sorrows (if only you could get your good to boot other half to go swimming that is). Going once, going twice and gone on the third strike of the gavel, your privacy and freedom!

What is privacy? And how true is it that freedom is under siege? The claim has been made or implied so often in the Singapore blogosphere, that netizens, no matter how passive they are in their behavior, now remain quite dutiful to echo the same sentiments about lack privacy. If I would have to hazard a guess, our perception of privacy or lack of it, has a lot to do with how we perceive the valence between state control and personal freedom. Freedom of course is relative, a missionary stewing in a pot may suddenly experience the freedom of divine rapture more readily than those who are waiting to eat rubber English clergyman. Ultimately, the question hinges on how we make sense of situations, events and outcomes. You would have imagined in the digital age, the proliferation of information networks has actually increased our capacity to seek out the truth, to make sense of either the dystopian or utopian condition of our “freedom.” But I really wonder whether like me, you too suffer from that sinking feeling whenever you log on to the net, whether perhaps the world has suddenly gone dark amid the doom and gloom that is so often depicted by bloggers in general. “Privacy is in a dreadful state,” “we are under siege, “ “our rights have been eroded,” – trust me, surfing the net these days in Singapore is like taking a stroll in down town Baghdad. It’s a depressing scenery which lends a sardonic gloss to the saying, “being at the bottom of the human pyramid is no fun” (I am of course referring to those naked human pyramids American GI like to build in Abu Ghraib prison.).