Even as i type, the score ticks on and on. 213/3. 214/3. 215/3. Jayawardene inches (and i mean INCHES) closer and closer to his century.
This is gonna be awesome.
Anyway, totally unrelated, i've been looking for a place to stay in Johor, where i'm gonna start my clinical years next year. Quite troublesome, actually, with high prices and lousy rooms, but i'm getting there.
Anyway, over the last year or so i developed a little fantasy, with regards to living away from home again. I had hoped to move in it with my group of close friends, people i know i get along with well and can live with (various trips to all sorts of places pretty much proved this). This group happened to be a pleasant mixture of girls and guys, similar to my first group of housemates, which turned out quite fantastic, so i was actually a bit excited about it.
Silly, naive fool.
As the house hunting started, i made my proposal that was all live together to find it crushingly rejected. It wasnt their fault, but unfortunately the parents of the females involved had decided, in their infinite wisdom, not to let their little baby girls stay with big rude guys.
I was peeved.
I couldnt really understand the logic behind such a decision. They hadnt actually met me yet, so they really had no such reason to come to such an anti-male opinion. So i decided to approach this in my usual way; i interrogated the girls.
The first question, of course, was Why? Why wouldnt you be allowed to live with guys? Guys you KNOW? Probably your closest friends in the class? Guys you'll be seeing for atleast the next 3 years of your lives? Really, what do your parents think is gonna happen? As soon as you move in you quit med school and become a full time hooker, sexually satisfying your male housemates and whatever friends they bring home?
I wish.
We live in a modern world. Women are empowered, have rights, and make their own decisions. Moving in with a guy doesnt mean she'd have to fuck him! Privacy? You have your own bloody room, right? Security? Wouldnt living with a couple of guys make the place alot safer, than say a house full of innocent little girls? There's absolutely no reason why two adult friends of the opposite gender cannot live with each other. Please, if you have a reason, comment. Tell me. Because i certainly cant see one.
One of the anwers i got was: "Its not traditional. Gender segregation is our culture."
I was more peeved.
Culture and tradition. Pathetic.
Culture, the way i see it, is a collection of values and traditions they've been carrying out for as long as they can remember, for no particular reason. Unless tempered with a pinch of common sense, and some cynicism, it can cripple people, keep them from doing things and making decisions that would make life so much easier for them.
Think of some of your 'traditions'. How many arent fun? How many are pure stupidity? A vast majority of what people call 'culture' is made up of actions and beliefs silly, not only lacking in scientific foundations, but just going against plain old common sense. Who invented your culture? It would have been your society, potentially hundreds of years ago. What might have once been practical social ettiquete is now nothing but an archaic social burden, completely unsuitable for any modern population.
Look at how different we are from our parents; look at how society has changed in 20 years, let alone a hundred. The advent of lightspeed global communication, worldwide travel, and a surge of scientific and technological advances have rendered so many traditions obsolete, and created a new culture; what people call 'western culture' is probably the best equipped to handle this new world we have created for ourselves. Just log onto the internet, and there you'll see it; millions of people from a kaleidoscope of societies and backgrounds have gotten together, exchanged ideas and opinions, forming an amalgam society of open debate, acceptance, and free will. The future, hopefully.
And before you internet weary travellers protest, yes, i know. There are alot of noobs online. People do propagate hate and discrimination and narrow mindedness on the net, and it is just as potent, if not more, as it is in the real world. But from what i've seen, for every asshole there is, there are even more genuinely nice people, interested in making new friends and learning from them, people who accept things with an open mind, and actually consider all the possibilities before expressing a strong opinion.
Another friend told me about how she was born; her due date was what her grandfather saw as an 'unfavourable' date, and he made her mother, ripe and ready to deliver, wait at home an extra day instead of going to the hospital. Foolishness to the power infinity in my opinion, putting both the mother and child at risk. And why? Because he thought that being born on a certain day would've damned the child to an unlucky life.
Now i dont know the man, and as tempting as it is, i shant call him an idiot; for all i know, he might've been a brilliant person, with a charming personality and a fantastic face to boot; but his traditional beliefs, what he saw as his culture, clouded his judgement, prevented him from objectively weighing pros and cons and coming to a decision that would have been the safest for both my friend and my friend's mother. Anything that clouds your judgement like that, permanently, isnt something to be celebrated; rather it should be shunned and refused, all round.
Despite these, people persist. Outdated traditions do not die out. Why? Why must individuals cling onto these practices that serve no use? That it is culture is no longer a valid reason; culture must change to adapt to the world, and it will. Traditions must be questioned, examined thouroughly, and modified to suit modern living. New traditions can be made, traditions that we can use to plague our descendants for centuries to come, as our ancestors did us.
One reason some refuse to let go is because their culture is their identity, and their identity is everything to them. Everyone needs an identity; with out it, you dont know who you are. But culture makes lousy identity; do people really want to make themselves known for practicing bygone customs invented by people long dead? Modify your customs, make them trully your own, then you'll have a real identity, not the identity of the herd, but of who you really are.
So back to this housing problem. Culture isnt an excuse, i said indignantly. Question your culture! Question your parents! Demand a reason! The rationalisation behind it! We're young adults, not children anymore, and we're more than deserving of a logical explanation for any decisions our guardians might make. And then came the infamous catch-22: it's not in their culture to question.
My peeveyness exploded.
All this while, i've been talking about culture; under that umbrella i'm referring to not only practices, but attitudes propogated and encouraged by the society as a whole.
Case in point: i asked my friend, with utter frankness, whether she's ever been aroused sexually (the exact word i used was 'horny'). Being a good person, she did not deign to answer. So i asked her, "why wont you tell me?"
She said: "its private. Why should i tell you?"
I thought about it for a while; it was well within her rights to refuse to answer my question. So then i asked: "Whats your favourite colour?"
Sensing a trap, she asked me why.
"I just want to know. Would you tell me?"
She considered, then replied "Yes, i guess i would."
Ha. "Why would you answer that question, and not my sex question?"
Again, she thought about it (i like that about her). "Its not something we talk about normally, i wouldnt go around telling people about my sex habits".
"But," i countered, "I asked you. No one goes around saying they love green or anything, but when someone's asks their favourite colour, they answer. Why not with sex?"
"Because," she finished, "thats not the way we've been brought up."
Bingo.
Its not my friends' fault, of course. They're absolutely right. Sometimes you just can't fight your upbringing. I had the pleasure of growing up on the internet, a place where no one (atleast, mostly no one) cares about where you come from, what your background is, and you can freely express what ever opinion you have, no matter how wild it may be. That explains me. Alot of other people dont get that luxury, sadly... From young, they've been trained not to question, no to argue, to show eternal respect for their elders and their customs.
Respect must be earned, never taught.
But thats not how it is here. Here the old (read:senile) is sacred, and to question is sacrilege. And its hard, because even if you decide to break free of any customs you decide are impractical, you have to put up with the judgment that will be brought down on you by society. Labels and discrimination fly freely when people see their beloved traditions questioned and rebelled against. Marry out of our cast? Traitor! Watch porn? Pervert! Sleep with your boyfriend? Slut!
The obvious solution would be to stop caring what society thinks of you. There will always be open minded people, willing to accept you for what you believe. But we all know that its not that simple. Invariably someone who has the power to make your life miserable will stem from that society you shunned, and when that happens, you'll pay dearly for your opinions. Its easier for people distanced from their cultural families (like myself) to take this solution, but for people who have to face their would-be-persecutors on a day to day basis, expressing your own opinions sometimes just isnt worth the trouble.
The other option is slower, more long term, and perhaps unlikely to happen in my lifestyle: society has to change. Discrimination on the basis of superficial differences, violence because of differing beliefs, isolation and ridicule because of personal opinions plague our social system. The way i see it, these problems all arise from narrow mindness, and a reluctance to accept difference, and as a result of that, change. The way we can solve this is by being open minded, and this starts on a personal level; next time you argue with someone, think carefully about his side. Consider all sides of the equation, give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and never ever pass judgement on someone. And maybe, if everyone in the world reads my blog, our societies would change.
Not everything has to change, and not all at once, and I'm not calling for the abolishment of all cultures and traditions in the world. At one point, these customs and practices would have been useful, if not absolutely necessary. There will still be some that retain some vestige of usefulness, or perhaps even an element of fun. But the modernization of the world has meant many of these are no longer necessary. They have to be refined, modified and maybe even disregarded completely.
Culture can be a good thing, and it must be respected, right up to the point where it holds us back.
293/3. Its been a good day.
1 comment:
Why so serious?
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