THIS BLOG IS MOVING!

It’s so easy to find excuses for what is really laziness. I’ve stopped writing (in any meaningful sense) on my blog for a few months now, and the repercussions are slowly setting in: words are slipping past me without warning, thoughts worth penned down have been forgotten or become a faint half-comprehended memory, and an acquiescence for things around me is bothering me. It’s not so much a loss for words or intellectual regress, but a loss of momentum. Sometimes there’s so much happening in life that time to sit down and writing down daily muses has become a luxury that I can hardly afford. It’s sad to think – on hindsight – that A levels was what first killed the momentum, which once lost is difficult to regain.

I went back to living life. Which was in a way good and definitely refreshing (by any measure preferable to A levels), but I soon realized that a life unrecorded is a life unexamined, and therefore not worth living. In retrospect there were so much I wanted to write about that I hardly know where to begin, and so much regret that some of these memories are less vivid then they should have been.

And that’s the reason I’m reviving my blog again with a new interface, in a way ushering in a new chapter of my favourite hobby: writing about things I care about, things that really matter to me (and maybe you), things I love, things that are worth remembering.

So here’s the new URL for the new chapter: matterandart.wordpress.com

See you there :)

Allegrophobia

I was late. Positively late, and the typical Pavlovian response of mine was to panic. It’s called allegrophobia. My heart starts racing, blood rushing, eyebrows knitting, wrist-raising every few seconds to the eye level to catch a glimpse of the time. Only to realize I didn’t bring a watch – which is not atypical of me. Forgetfulness is my middle name. My eyes darted around in search for watch somewhere on the train, received only by freely hanging wrists adorned with wristbands and trinkets, no watches. I guess people increasingly choose to live in a timeless world where mad rushes and pandemonium is accompanied by a refusal to acknowledge the chariot of time. Or maybe phones have taken over the function of telling time. Poor old grandfather clocks – ever so stoic and consistent yet now shed their previous status as a necessity.

My mind wandered aimlessly while another part of it calculated every minute and second that whizzed by and imagined arresting time, putting it on a leash and freezing it with dry ice. Then kill it. Before it kills me, at least.

There’s this horrifying story by Roald Dahl whom I read a lot as a child and got all freaked out but insisted on reading (what a masochist). It was an awful, awful story, that story – The Way Up to Heaven was it, and that was the story that turned me into a goose at the end of it, oh all those goosebumps! Mrs Forster had a pathological fear of being late, missing a train, a plane, a boat, or even a theatre curtain. She would risk everything to be punctual – and I fathom she would jump off the cliff when the clock strikes twelve on 14 mar night if a death’s train to hell too.

So Mrs Forster was planning to fly to visit her daughter; terrified that she would miss her flight she departed early, only to find her flight delayed till the following day when she arrived. She returned home and spent the night there. And I’ll leave Wikipedia to tell you the rest of the story:

The following morning as Mrs. Foster prepares to take her car to the airport,
her husband announces that he should be dropped off at the club on the way,
which terrifies her, it being somewhat out-of-the-way. Before they leave, he
pretends to have forgotten a present he had intended for their daughter Ellen,
and to Mrs. Foster's dismay he ventures into the house in search of it. As she
grows increasingly impatient whilst waiting in the car, she notices the present
hiding in the crack of the seat where her husband had been sitting and "couldn't
help noticing that it was wedged down firm and deep, as though with the help of
a pushing hand ", and tells the chauffeur to call him down. He tries to enter
and notices the door is locked. She decides to go herself, but then, with the
key in the door she suddenly freezes, as if listening intently. After a few
seconds, she returns to the car, says there is no time, and is driven off to the
airport. She makes her flight with a few minutes to spare. Things go well in
Paris, and she writes her husband each Tuesday. When she returns to Idlewild
Airport she is mildly interested to find her husband has not sent a car to meet
her, but she gets into a taxi and arrives home. She sees the mail has built up,
and smells a peculiar odour. Noticing that the elevator is not in order, she
calmly dials for a repairman and waits at her husband's desk for his arrival.

So Mr Forster was condemned to death. The terrifying thought? Mrs Forster heard her screams for help before she left for the airport and had decided to ignore them. Call it allegrophobia, call it evil, call it devillish.

And there I was, so positively late. Mind wandering to a world with teleports – so we have no buses elevators down, no flight delays, no oh-it-was-raining-and-I-couldn’t-get-a-freakin’-cab, no excuses of being late. Damn, what a wonderful world that would be. The way up to heaven would have been less painful, for poor Mr Forster at least.

When words slip past me.

I don’t remember the word I wished to say by Osip Mandelstam

I don’t remember the word I wished to say.
The blind swallow returns to the hall of shadow,
on shorn wings, with the translucent ones to play.
The song of night is sung without memory, though.

No birds. No blossoms on the dried flowers.
The manes of night’s horses are translucent.
An empty boat drifts on the naked river.
Lost among grasshoppers the word’s quiescent.

It swells slowly like a shrine, or a canvas sheet,
hurling itself down, mad, like Antigone,
or falls, now, a dead swallow at our feet.
with a twig of greenness, and a Stygian sympathy.

O, to bring back the diffidence of the intuitive caress,
and the full delight of recognition.
I am so fearful of the sobs of The Muses,
the mist, the bell-sounds, perdition.

Mortal creatures can love and recognise: sound may
pour out, for them, through their fingers, and overflow:
I don’t remember the word I wished to say,
and a fleshless thought returns to the house of shadow.

The translucent one speaks in another guise,
always the swallow, dear one, Antigone....
on the lips the burning of black ice,
and Stygian sounds in the memory.

To the Tyrants

Tyrants! Bloody tyrants listen!

You who are deaf shall hear us a final time and then no more.

We the people have risen

Broken the silence, the chains, the manacles!

Now we walk down the streets, high held our heads.

We fear no more.

We bow no more.

This is no awakening – for we were wide awake

When you butchered our brothers, burnt our fathers,

Left our mothers to the gutters,

We ate fear, bitter as gall.

Now we spit, and we roar.

We die but once, and we shall fall

Though not until you’re under the pall!

A Libretto for J.S on the Libyan uprising, 9 March 2011

For the peeping peeps out there...

Given your amazing stalking ability I'm sure some of you are reading this.

Thank you for the lovely birthday card - it's the biggest one I've ever had! Had a wonderful time reading your messages (they really made my day), though I must comment that a particular 'golden rooster' whose name I need not mention does need some penmanship class XD

You guys are sweet as peeps... stay that way peeps! See you in class :)

Growing beyond growth

Nothing preoccupies the modern political process more than economic growth does. The very term ‘growth’ and its corollary connotations of progress, improvement and prosperity convinces us – before any argument or debate takes place – that it’s something worth pursuing. It’s only natural that economies ought to grow, just as human beings do (or think we do). Beyond that it is certainly more appealing to think that the world is evolving towards a better and more prosperous future than to imagine a picture of stagnancy; the enlightenment idea of progress has the ideological pillars of capitalism firmly planted in the soil: the engine of progress is undoubtedly economic growth, the expansion of volume of goods and services at human’s disposal.

It’s certainly not without cause: economic growth has lifted millions out of poverty, improved standards of livings, opened up an unprecedented array of opportunities for people to realize their potential as human beings. Until the past 200 years, standard of living has been very much like a horizontal line, almost stagnant. And where it did change, changes were virtually imperceptible and most people expected to die in the same economic conditions that prevailed when they were born. Since the industrial revolution during the 19th century, total output has increased 40-fold, per capita real output increased eightfold. People are experiencing changes at an unprecedented speed and of a nature never before seen. Increase in income gradually became the very object of life in modern society to which all men and women are dedicated – both for the real improvements that it promises and the excitation & effervescence it generates. Who doesn’t want a better tomorrow?

So economists became the priests of an increasingly influential cult. They became relentless advocates of growth as the solution all problems. If there’s inflation, grow the economy so that aggregate supply shifts rightwards to offset price increases brought about by demand increase; if there’s unemployment, grow the economy and jobs will come naturally as wind. if there’s a BOP deficit, grow the economy by making factors of production more productive and therefore more competitive in the international economy; if income inequality’s rising, grow the economy, still, so that everyone is better off instead of making some worse off through redistribution. In my A levels economics exam growth was the final solution for all economic problems, or so said the notes. (well to be exact it didn’t say it was a perfect silver bullet but it was the best out of everything else, just like how democracy is the worst form of government except all those others that have been tried from time to time) And benefits of growth are not taken to be so self-evident that hardly any textbooks bother explaining why growth should be pursued.

But there are costs to growth, and these are magnified when countries pursue growth at breakneck speed or remain indifferent to the nature of the growth that’s taking place – eyes kept peeled only at the GDP figure, blind to environmental degradation, depletion of natural resources, costs of structural changes which can lead to social instability and welfare losses.
In Singapore’s case (as in many where else) we seem to have been trapped in a false dilemma: to grow or not to grow? Either we grow and make everyone better off with higher disposable income and therefore greater prosperity, or we don’t and tumble down a road of inevitable decline and stagnancy. But recent works I’ve come across (not least cos of work at cpe) have shed new light on the nature of this problem, convincing me further that our understanding of growth has been artificially represented in the above-mentioned false dilemma.

That growth is desirable has been predicated on two major assumptions: growth makes people wealthier, and people are happier when they are wealthier. In short, more is good and richer is better. Presumably that’s why it’s restrain is so much to ask of us mankind when growth is bumping against physical limits so profound, like climate change and peak oil. There is now a large body of evidence casting serious doubt on the dual assumptions, but which is until very recently systematically ignored by policy makers and most economists yet consistent with folk knowledge that money cannot buy neither a happy life nor a happy nation.

For one, economic growth does not necessarily make people wealthier; beyond a certain point it can generates inequality and insecurity that is unsettling and counterproductive. Growth means perpetual structural changes and this means there will always be winners and losers at any one time period. In the short run some people lose their jobs, those at the bottom may experience stagnant wages for decades due to ‘competition from globalization’. In the long run everyone might be better off, but in the long run the people who lived through the short run are dead. Every short run can mean a whole lifetime in the economic time scale.

For two, more is not always better; rising incomes do not always mean greater happiness. While there is a strong and powerful argument for more economic growth in countries where large populace lives in abject poverty, the case for more rapid economic growth in developed countries seems to be losing traction. For instance, studies have shown no correlation between average appreciation of life ranking and GDP per capita or (surprisingly) even HDI. This imply that it is unlikely that in itself additional income makes much difference to wellbeing in developed countries. Other studies – John Hicks’ ‘law of diminishing marginal significance of economics’, for example – suggest that as incomes rises, income and economic factors become less important in welfare.

Further, even if higher income means greater happiness for the individual, it is not entirely clear if it holds true for society in general. Recent findings suggest that more equal societies are more happy societies: Robert Frank, in his recent book “Falling Behind” illustrates how psychological wellbeing depends not just on one’s level of income, but also on the perceived gap between one’s actual and desired income, one’s actual and expected income and ones actual income and the incomes of others. Academics like Michael Argyle would go even further to say that income inequality is a stronger predictor of national happiness than income levels precisely because people have reference dependant yardsticks of wellbeing. In other words, if economic growth causes the rich to be richer than no one is better off; for society as a whole to be better off the rich will have to be less rich. To be frank I am surprised this is even news that economists marvel about because the gut feelings of fairness and justice is something so instinctive, intrinsic so deep-seated within the human psyche! And economists have to take this long to realize something so basically human.

And at the end of the day perhaps the founding fathers of economics still knows best. “Towards what ultimate point is society tending by its industrial progress. When the progress ceases, in what condition are we to expect that it will leave mankind?”, asked JS Mill, who confesses that the idea of the stationary state is not that unthinkable afterall:

“I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and trading on each other’s heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phrases of industrial progress... the best state of human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.”

The first lesson of economics has always been on scarcity: the central problem of economics is figuring how limited resources might be used to satisfy unlimited wants. From day one I had found this statement to be inherently illogical: by definition finite resources can never satisfy infinite wants – the two variables are like parallel lines that will never converge no matter how much we delude ourselves. Economics makes itself a dismal and futile enterprise by even trying to bring them in line. But there’s one thing we can change, and that is ourselves: we can be contented by controlling our wants, by knowing what we’ve got, knowing what we need, and what we can do without. We human beings need to grow – in wisdom and in understanding – before growth outgrows us to eventually lead us by the nose.

Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

	Thy soul shall find itself alone —
	Alone of all on earth — unknown
	The cause — but none are near to pry
	Into thine hour of secrecy.
	Be silent in that solitude,
	Which is not loneliness — for then
	The spirits of the dead, who stood
	In life before thee, are again
	In death around thee, and their will
	Shall then o'ershadow thee — be still
	For the night, tho' clear, shall frown:
	And the stars shall look not down
	From their thrones, in the dark heav'n;
	With light like Hope to mortals giv'n,
	But their red orbs, without beam,
	To thy withering heart shall seem
	As a burning, and a ferver
	Which would cling to thee forever.
	But 'twill leave thee, as each star
	In the morning light afar
	Will fly thee — and vanish:
	— But its thought thou can'st not banish.
	The breath of God will be still;
	And the wish upon the hill
	By that summer breeze unbrok'n
	Shall charm thee — as a token,
	And a symbol which shall be
	Secrecy in thee. Edgar Allan Poe

The End of The World

(passerby reminded me of the doomsayers' and soothsayers' obsession with 2012, so here's something about it:)

Many people believe that the world will come to an end in December of 2012. This date marks the end of the Mayan calendar. This date is also tied to an astrological event that is predicted to occur on this date. The predictions show that the path of the sun will cross with the center of the Milky Way. It is believed that this will cause a pole shift. (But more correctly the 2012 end-of-the-world prediction is a misreading of the Mayan calender which doesn’t count keep count of time beyond 2012)

Many religions also have their own theories as to the coming of the end. Christians believe that the Apocalypse is nearing when certain signs begin appearing in our world. These signs are war, greed, religious deception, natural disasters and false prophets. Most other religions have written of similar signs and a prophet, god or other spiritual leader appearing at the end of times. (Shouldn’t our world have come to its end long ago then?; the world’s coming to an end everyday)

And for the record, here’re the failed End of the World Predictions:

• Many believed the world would end during the millennium in the year 1000. Pilgrims made a journey to Jerusalem in hopes to be saved during the Apocalypse.
• Charles Wesley and the Shakers predicted the world would end in 1974.
• The Jehovah’s Witness religion has predicted the world would end in 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975, 1981 and 1994.
• In 1982 it was predicted that the earth would explode into many simultaneous natural disasters as a result of all the planets lined up on the same side of the sun.
• June 6, 2006 can be written as 6/6/06. 666 is seen as the sign of the devil. It was believed that this would be the day that the Antichrist would return to earth.

When I think the world will end? The world will end when there's no war, no greed, no religious deception, no natural disasters and no false prophets (these things keep the world going) - which is probably never -.-

REVENGE

Not long ago I wrote a paper on retributive justice, exploring the rational and non-rational justifications for punishment. Throughout history, oceans of blood have been spilled and an endless number of lives ruined in an effort to settle scores – even when nothing good could possibly come out of it. I was interested in why makes people seek justice, where the primal urge of seeing the foe who wronged you suffer came from, and whether it is after all, rational. My conclusion was a rather dismal one, alluding somewhat to Foucault’s belief that no punishment is ever justified – it is inextricably tied up with assumptions and beliefs that have no independent rational foundation and the very idea that penal institutions can be justified is suspect and self-delusive. Despite the more balanced conclusion I provided (that justice is a construct of both reason and emotion – the all-time cliché ‘middle path’), a part of me still thinks that retribution, revenge has its roots in punitive emotions – a primal instinct and expression of irrational vengeance.

Admit it: we relish punishment for people who did us injustice. Even a saint would fume and determinedly declare the heretic would burn in hell when he blasphemies God. It’s only human. And human beings are not rational (whatever that word means).

Ernst Fehr’s Ultimatum Game is probably the simplest illustration. It goes something like this: You’re paired with another participant and kept in separate rooms. The experimenter gives each of you $10; you get to make the first move and decide whether to send your money over to the other participant or keep it for yourself. If you keep it, both gets to keep the $10 and the game is over; if you send over your money, the experimenter quadruples the amount so that the other player has their original $10 plus $40. He can either keep all them money, in which case you’re left with nothing, or send half the money back to you so that both of you ends up with $25. So the obvious question is: Do you trust the person on the other side? But here’s the rub: if your partner chooses to keep the $50 for himself, you can use your own money to punish the bastard (for each dollar of you own money you give the experimenter, $2 will be confiscated from your greedy partner). Would you sacrifice your own money to make the other person suffer?

Results of the experiment were as expected: most of the people who had to opportunity to exact revenge did so, and they punished severely. A PET scan reveals that while making their decisions, the part pf the brain associated with pleasure is stimulated – and this was consistent with other findings I had in the paper: recent neuroscience discovered that the emotional centre of the brain (the limbicsystem) has far more connections sending messages to the rational centre of the brain (the pre-frontal cortex) than vice versa, showing why emotional impulses so often overwhelm rational cognition. The fact that rationality is a recent arrival in human evolution, while emotional forces have long dominated behaviour also suggests that retributive judgements normally stem from the more general intuitive based judgement. In other words, retribution, revenge, punishment all has biological and emotional underpinnings. Our sense of justice is far from rational. Funny how ‘justice’ might actually be an euphemism for the deeper primal urges we all share.

Does that make it right, then, to exact revenge? That’s an "ought" question which ironically demands REASON & RATIONALITY to answer. But then again, with whose rationality?

objet du désir

She is jealous of that mannequin - yes, that one; see what she’s wearing?
She wants that little black dress.
But then her brown wallet is thinner than she is
Or the glass that separates her and her objet du désir

Into the boutique she walks,
With an air of awkward confidence –

Size S, please.

And the dress is in her hand,
Its smooth satin swimming about in provocative caress
Had her skin been less calloused it would have slipped off her hands

The dressing door creaks, slams shut; her heart skips
a beat. She slips into it
rips off the brastrap tightens her butt zip it all up
feel it embrace her waist kiss her skin hug her breasts
stops –
looks into the mirror that now speaks:

It wants you.

She grabs her handbag and stops breathing
swings the door open takes a quick peek
All clear it is and out quick she walks
A leopard with prey in mouth sauntering proud
Like the kill is meant to be and rightful owner she

No looking back

She walks out of the shop and hears a gasp, some gasps
But none from her it was the music it was the people it was everything but her
Her heels clicks loud and clear against the granite floor
Turns left swings right and up the stars

No looking back no looking back no looking back

And then she’s lost amid the crowd but so is everyone else.

False victories

The cancun climate talks were doomed to fail. So said EU president Herman van Rompuy – not openly, of course (it was wikileaks’ doing – again). And so it did. I have come to learn that real UN summits and assemblies are not very unlike the model UN summits we students organize and attend: delegates fall asleep, the president makes or breaks the whole session (and often does the latter), at any point of time more delegates are steeped in half-comprehension than there are enlightened ones, and resolutions/accords are passed for the mere sake of passing to project the image that something is being done (to justify all that hullabaloo?) Delegates enter an assembly with the goal of passing a resolution, which in itself is taken to be a great achievement because consensus or agreement of the majority is more the exception than norm in the UN. Whether they are actually good resolutions is not so much a question of objective goodness or reasonableness, but more a game of alliance and compromise, diplomacy and politics.

So it comes as no surprise that some (very) bad UN resolutions actually passed:

• 1993 Bosnia resolution, the safe haven resolution which was supposed to
  protect the civilians of Srebrenica. Not only did it fail to do that, a short
  time afterwards there was one of the largest scale killings in Europe since
  WWII
• Resolution 914 in which the Security Council decided to actually reduce the
  size of presence in the country despite concrete evidence of an impending
  genocide. We all know what happened after that.
• Resolution 661 imposed after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait which essentially was
  a comprehensive economic embargo that led to hundreds of thousands dying from
  malnutrition and famine.
  

And these are just the 3 famous ones out of god knows how many. To make things worse, most UN resolutions remain in effect forever; few are actually retired. There were, for instance, a lot of resolutions imposing restrictions on weapons of mass destruction, purchases of chemicals/pesticides for the Iraqis passed during the Saddam Hussein’s time. Now that Iraq is under a new government, these conditions should by right be lifted for the benefit of Iraqi development. But political inertia would make this a far more complicated and difficult process than we could imagine. Someone has to initiate the change, and change means turning stones and lifting boats, potentially opening up a Pandora’s Box where people start rewriting legislation over Middle East resolutions all over again. Just as how it is never easy to pass a resolution, it is never easy to retire a resolution.

The climate deal was reached in Cancun on December 11, having marshaled the votes of all nations present escept Bolivia – who was naturally accused of being obstructionist, obstinate and unrealistic. In an open letter, Bolivian ambassador Pablo Solon stated his country’s stand:

Many commentators have called the Cancún accord a "step in the right direction." We disagree: it is a giant step backward. The text replaces binding mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions with voluntary pledges that are wholly insufficient. These pledges contradict the stated goal of capping the rise in temperature at 2C, instead guiding us to 4C or more. The text is full of loopholes for polluters, opportunities for expanding carbon markets and similar mechanisms – like the forestry scheme Redd – that reduce the obligation of developed countries to act.

(the rest of the letter is worth reading - read it here)

One wonders whether the Cancun accord is yet another false victory and empty vessel. I think it is. It certainly doesn’t help if the accord brings standards down instead of raising them, and despite the surface ‘political consensus’ and unity we have reason to listen to what Bolivia and the many underrepresented countries have to say. Often their courage to speak against the international community (sometimes for good reason, though not always) and offer their side of the story comes at great expense: after Bolivia rejected the Copenhagen accord, US cut their climate funding.

Copenhagen didn’t do any good, neither did Cancun. It all reminds me of the hours of lobbying and debating we spend during MUN conferences, only to arrive at a resolution absolutely falling short of what is satisfactory. Because some delegates were sleeping, some implicitly coerced into voting the way they did, others were eager to end the summit off in victories (albeit false ones) rather than disappointment. It didn’t really matter in our cases since the resolutions don’t actually take effect. It’s scary to think that the movers and shakers in the real game aren’t necessarily a lot more enlightened.

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty's glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this is if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. William Henry Davies

Homo economicus

Work at the Centre for Public Economics has been fun to say the least, especially with wonderful colleagues and projects I take a personal interest in. (though my friends would probably ask: what has labour economics got to do with YOUR life?) Well it has. Now I know why my mum hasn’t got a significant salary rise in 10 years, why pay always lags behind productivity rise and inflation, while some there’s this “10% of the population” quietly getting so filthy rich they need 10 lifetimes to finish using those cash, why inequality is here to stay.

Some things I also came to learn: Economics is quite helpless when it comes to giving valuation for intangibles: how much is a life worth? How much is national pride worth? How much is education worth? Or your love for the girl next door? It’s always hard to place a value that correctly represents the intrinsic worth of many things. And indeed it is counter-intuitive – If everything can be neatly weighed and measured quantitatively (including how much you are worth as a person) then ‘priceless’ would disappear from the dictionary altogether. If there’s a barometer for everything then there’s no need for literature either. Or love poems with those corny (but secretly appealing) hyperboles which always try to compare love’s worth to other things but always ending with the same hint that it is ultimately beyond valuation. And for good – if it can’t be measured, it can’t be. There’s no telling how much something is worth, except when you weigh it all out by feeling with your heart. And numbers don’t come in handy here, words do (and often fails).

Though of course – economists aren’t meant to do these things. They use their own sets of instruments they call ‘cost-benefit analysis’ among other things, which unlike the human heart is cold, calculative, exact because it is also lifeless and unchanging ceteris peribus. But it’s necessary. When they observe human beings in aggregation, taking the macro lenses, they render every being out there identical with the assumption that they’re all equally rational so they can be reduced to a number, for convenience’s sake sometimes. Surely they can’t get into every individual’s mind in search for answers; that’s left to psychologists. Though interestingly behavioural economics in recent years has sought to integrate insights from psychologists with neo-classical economic theory, there’s something I find quite paradoxical: the generalizations of human behaviour in behavioural economics might be useful in factoring in behavioural accounts, but they remain generalizations – and I’m not sure how strong these generalizations really are. Over the past 2 weeks of reading papers after papers on behavioural experiments I realize that every conclusion that came out of each study is upheld with an uncertainty that seems to make the conclusion self-refuting. For every experiment there is a counter-experiment, for each claim there is a counter-claim. At the end of the day I was left stranded, with no answers as to how human beings actually behave – not that there’s no evidence, but too much contradictory evidence.

In retrospect this shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It’s human beings we’re observing here – and what are we? The human species is made up of seven billion subspecies, each consisting of one specimen.

After a long siesta...

Well. That did it – after some 8 crazy years in high school and JC all I got was an email:

Dear Chi Ling,
On behalf of the Undergraduate Admission Committee, it is my pleasure to offer you admission to Stanford’s Class of 2015!

Over the past few years I had had to make many decisions. Some more important, some less, but all secretly leading me to a somewhere out there about which I have no idea. When I got my PSLE results I decided I would enrol myself into Nanyang for the most superficial reason: I saw the beautiful school campus on newspaper one day and that sealed the deal. (before that I had no idea it existed; my dream school then was Juying Secondary School because it was right beside my primary school and it looked bigger and had more water coolers in it) When the time came for all Sec3 students to decide their subject combinations I went with the flow and took triple science (which seemed the cool thing to do then cos all my best friends were taking triple science) but two weeks into the school term I realized I felt nauseous every time I flipped open the physics textbook so for health reasons I got myself transferred into whatever alternative there was, which at that time was Literature. And that I came to love IMMENSELY, both because of the teachers and because words, prose, poetry are the most incandescent things that could move me besides music. But I never saw myself as an Arts student because Biology and Chemistry were so intriguing (more the former), interestingly conceptual and precise it suited my left-brain inclination. Then there was the rashly made decision (unfortunately many too fell for it) to accept a scholarship that would make studying China Studies in JC compulsory – to be perfectly honest I never had any regrets or qualms about it, it’s just that I have friends who absolutely have no interest in the subject but were forced to take it up and slog through it for 2 whole years. Then the decision to drop Mathematics and take up KI which was probably the most awesome decision I have ever made in my academic life because I knew life would be a total hell cauldron otherwise.

Then A levels came and I decided to work hard for the final national exam I’d be taking in my life, so that meant 3 months of having no-life and not-much-fun, except the brighter moments I had studying with friends. On hindsight those past 3 months appear almost a blank, as if I had locked myself in a vacuum (which explains the inactivity in this blog) where my true interests had to be put out of view. I remember penning down a long list of things-to-do (many of which I haven’t gotten down to doing), which later became my only source of refuge because the more I look forward to those the more reasons I had to pull through As as well as I could.

When it was all over, there wasn’t the euphoria moment I had been looking forward to, but my head kept running through a book title (which, incidentally, was brought up at a recent graduation ceremony by a guest speaker):

What got you here will not get you there.

So here I am, on a new starting point again, treading the waters and preparing to ride the next big wave. This time, it’s bringing me to California.

Hey readers, thanks for the comments both on the chatbox and on the page and to my email! I'm currently in Hong Kong and will be updating once I'm back in Singapore! :)

We all need these reminders once in a while.

-----
Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
-----

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

this is a sign of boredom

"God has not been so sparring to man to make them barely two-legged creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational."

Sometimes I wonder what life would be if I had utterly no sense of logic at all; if every thought comes reeling across with complete randomness. Like this:

I love cats - No I don't.

I feel like shooting them down.

Cornflakes are the greatest things on earth.

Nothing ever is, everything is becoming, nothing steadfastly is.

I exist.

Chicken rice.

I am.

Blood donation.

I think.

Calculators.

Brouhaha.

Skittish fop.

Gaggle of otakus.

Homophobia.

Nom de guerre.

Neuroses.

Levity.

[Blank]

[more blankness]

[Chi Ling doesn't exist hereon]

Aesthetics has no real value to societies. Discuss.

Every time I come across such a statement the first thought that comes to mind is, BULLSHIT. Here's my rebuttal - ironically through a KI essay (which is sometimes quite full of bullshit too).

Unlike in Science where inquiry reaps tangible results that is instrumental to technological progress and the empowerment of human beings in controlling nature, it is not clear at first glance what real value the aesthetics offer society. A world without art or aesthetics is perhaps imaginable for some who claim that human beings will survive all the same without it. The same people would agree with Oscar Wilde when he says that "Art is really quite useless" – but is it really? The concept of value is exceptionally vague when it comes to the aesthetics not least because of the subjectivity that is involved in aesthetic judgement and thus its value. This essay will suggest a pluralistic view on value as applied to aesthetic knowledge while making a distinction between artistic and instrumental value and maintaining that only the latter is crucial in ascertaining 'value' with respect to society. In examining its instrumental value, this essay uncovers art's value in providing important perspectives to society through illustrative and interpretative demonstration and come to appreciate the fact that art, while not strictly indispensible, is certainly valuable.

The first question that demands discussion is this: what do we mean by 'value' when it comes to the aesthetics, and can it be determined? Taking the non-essentialist point of view, a work of art can have many different kinds of value - a cognitive value, a social value, an educational value, a historical value, a sentimental value, a religious value, an economical value, a therapeutic value; it can possess as many kinds of value as there are points of view form which it can be evaluated. There might not be one unitary value that renders art intrinsically valuable, and no single value that is definitive of the artistic evaluative perspective. For instance, Bach's Prelude & Fugues can be artistically valuable in its intricacy and elegance of formal construction, but at the same time embodying a sentimental or therapeutic value that is personal to the listener, and even a religious value since it is well-known that Bach's music was (presumably) 'inspired by God'. It is hence reasonable to take a pluralistic view on the concept of value in aesthetic knowledge.

From the litany of possible sources of 'value' outlined above one can distinguish artistic value (which includes cognitive and sentimental value) from instrumental value (including educational, historical, economical, social value) In the latter case art is somewhat a medium, a means to an end rather than 'art for art's sake'. That an artwork has excellent formal qualities and balanced colour tones may make it artistically valuable, but it is hard to see its relevance to improving society per se, so it may not necessarily be of value to society. However, art may possess instrumental value if it carries a message that may inspire improvements in society - for instance, John Lennon's Imagine is famous for its message of peace and love - then its value to society is certainly clearer. The determination of its value is however not a quantitative one simply because it is impossible to 'price' art objectively (disregarding auctions of artwork, which in no way project the objective value of art). But it is nonetheless possible to demonstrate that art and aesthetics have instrumental value to societies.

Foremost, art holds significant epistemic value because it provides insight into complex, diverse subjects - most notably the human condition - where general laws of science are elusive and non-existent. Society pursues not mere propositional or scientific knowledge; as human beings we all seek to learn more about ourselves, our emotions, our relations to each other and our place in the world. But these cannot be fully understood by subsumption under general laws; we rely on perspectives, rather than theories in understanding these phenomena. For instance, reading Pride & Prejudice tells me that first impressions are a poor guide to a person's character - something that science cannot teach me through theories. Neither can the mere statement that 'first impressions are a poor guide' sufficiently convince me of its truth. In the vein of the exemplification theory, the novel in this case exemplifies a perspective and thus becomes a source of non-propositional knowledge, shedding light on a particular corner of reality and hence allowing us to achieve a better understanding of our behaviour, attitudes, and society in general.

Historically, art has also held a special place in society as a catalyst for social and political changes, a reflection of culture and the spirit of the time ('zeitgeist'). We can observe how people live in the past through observing paintings or art produced from the past, just as how anthropological studies find evidence from art and craft of the past. But art goes beyond being a passive reflection of the past - it participates in the shaping of society, and might even possess immense power as a catalytic element in political revolutions. The wave of 20th century art movements like Dadaism, Surrealism and abstract expressionism - among others - ushered in post-modernism (at least in the cultural sense or in representing its spirit). Many of those artwork are symbolic of the rebellion against order, stifling regimentation and hypocritical 'high-culture and finesse', preferring instead chaos and fragmentation totemic of post-modernism. Particular artworks also hold special value - Theodore Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, for example, was a powerful social commentary unprecedented at the time, drawing attention to unpleasant truths of how the human instinct to survive superseded all moral considerations, plunging civilized man into barbarism. Similar subversive and deconstructivist art seek to question aspects of society and provoke reflection on present-day politics and values. While art does not necessarily reveal an explicit truth, it highlights a perspective that have implicit power in generating reflection and catalyzing social & political changes. Even if art represents the opposite of truth (or half-truth) - as in the case of propaganda - it is itself a use (and thus in some sense of value), and on hindsight telling of the political climate of particular points in history.

One might well argue that all that art represents can be equally well-expressed in other non-aesthetic forms. The portrayal of violence in Picasso's Guernica might be expressed in passionate prose - why not? To some extent art is not an indispensable medium, but such undermining of art's value fails to see that art - although like speech a medium - is not entirely the same. While Guernica translated into an essay might tell us about the violence of aerial bombing and of war in general quite convincingly, it cannot demonstrate in the same way that the painting does. Neither might it be able to capture the imagination and minds of people as viscerally as a picture, or a song. What is suggested here is not that art is a superior medium of expression; the point is that art provides a different perspective, a different means (interpretative demonstration) for us to access knowledge of reality - and should thus be valued in its own right. To reject art's potential value to society is to reject countless perspectives and mirrors by which we can perceive reality and come to understand ourselves.

On another note, the undermining of art's value might stem from an unfair comparison of art and science as sources of knowledge. As mentioned in the beginning, science achievements in technological progress seem to dwarf that of art, which might have led some people to thinking that art has no real value in society. Such comparisons are ultimately meaningless because there is no common ground for the comparison of 'real value'. Science measures that in terms of technological advancement, art in terms of rather indeterminate slew of yardsticks. The turbidity of what constitutes ‘value’ in the latter is a problem, but does not justify a denial of art having any value for society at all. On the contrary, one ought to appreciate the plurality of what constitutes value in art.

The enormity and plurality of art's instrumental value cannot be more emphasized. While particular art works - such as Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" (a photograph of a small plastic crucifix submerged in the artist's urine produced with a grant of $15000) - are controversial in terms of what value it offers society (especially when taxpayer's money are in question), one should not categorically conclude that all art is really quite useless. This essay has proven that art serves specific functions, whether intended or not – and its instrumental value in inexhaustible aspects of society cannot be callously disregarded. The truth is that art has become so entrenched in society's culture that it is arguably an intrinsic part of what makes up society and culture. What constitutes 'value' in knowledge is sometimes quite arbitrary because of its pluralism, but this should not translate to an understatement of art's value. Rather, the fact that it is valuable in so many respects should be adequate evidence of its wide-ranging uses and brevity of concerns. Ultimately, while art may not be indispensible, it is certainly irreplaceable. To say that art has no real value in society is to throw away an irreplaceable mirror and perspective. Society does that at its own peril.

In a library, with a forsaken book.

The white dust rose in whirls

smelling of the ages gone, of forsaken

words

from a distant somebody who speaks but does not talk.

A perduring classic, a touchstone –

a stone that one would touch

to renew long-abandoned faith in humanity

or taste the rawness of what they call

the human condition.

But there it remained –

untouched,

sedentary on a shelf,

by the day and by the night,

its spine discoloured with osteoporosis,

dust seeking refuge as worms eat their way through

the papery yellow pages writhing

in pain of thirst for eyes to land

upon it most beauteous parts.

A hundred years past and still it does not die.

Would it ever? If it turns to dust, would it?

Words that once lived lives on for a long, long time -

As long as the wind blows,

As long as man have ears,

And a heart to listen.

So you are pulling your hair out over no problems at all.

Wittgenstein once noted how his works shows ' how little has been done when these problems have been solved" The reason behind this is simple - they're philosophical problems, and philosophical problems are in effect no problems at all. What he has done is to show that philosophical problems are no problems at all but puzzles believed to be problems - muddles believed to be mysteries - because the philosophers who addressed the, did not see that they were due to a certain kind of illusion. So philosophy dispels illusions in this respect (but in that very process create more illusionary problems, IMHO) Construing philosophy as a set of symptoms of the wayward intellect, his aim is to relieve us of the agonies they cause by showing their illusoriness. So philosophers embark on what they call a philosophical journey, go one huge circle making lives difficult for themselves by means of jargons, then end up at the very point they started out with - feeling a little complacently enlightened: Eureka! I've found that there're no problems with this problem! Wonderful.

What is art? What is truth? What is knowledge? What is morality? These are all perennial questions that have gripped the minds of philosophers, but to me the only 'problem' worth dealing with is the last one - what is morality? The first three are no problems at all - nice ideas to play with as a cat plays with his ball of yarn, but ultimately of little consequence and difference to our lives.

What is truth? Does it matter if we reach a definitive view on what makes 'truth'? What is truth but word? A truth is made to be true - even if there are objective truth, what use might we be if we have no access to it? Down with Plato's Ideal world of perfection. Objective truths are very fine ideals to play with - we intuitively have the desire to know the truth, the indubitable truth that is 100% certain and absolute because deep inside us we desire a sort of order over relativistic mess and chaos. But where, on this moonlit and dream-visited planet, are they to be found?

What is art? Ask this question 200 years ago and you get a different answer from what is generally accepted (is there?) today. Ask the same question 200 years from now and you would most probably get a different answer too. Questions like these cannot be discussed in the narrow confines of philosophy - it has to take up anthropological and cultural dimensions because they are so steeped in the spirit of the time (zeigeist) that it is meaningless to come to any over-arching 'artistic truth' (to me this phrase is total rubbish - 'artistic preference' would be more reasonable)

What is knowledge? How do we know that we know? What makes my belief 'knowledge' and not just mere idiosyncratic 'belief'? On the epistemological level all these sound very important questions that should not be easily dismissed. It is important to derive your knowledge from a reliable process and source, rather than believing everything that comes your way with glazed and naïve acceptance. But while philosophers have discussed extensively on theories of justifications, truth and knowledge, they have little bearings on our practical accumulation of knowledge. One problem lies in how philosophers are sometimes (often, actually) not the very people who create knowledge in the knowledge domains - few philosophers who write about science are themselves scientists (except a few that I know of - Hilary Putnum, for instance) who understand the intricate workings of the knowledge domain. It is not up to them to decide what counts as knowledge and what doesn't, though they can on the sidelines comment on how people in the field accord information the status of 'knowledge'.

What is morality? A very important question concerning what is right and what is wrong. It is, in my opinion, the only field in philosophy that should be taken most seriously because it has serious implications on how human beings behave, what society should encourage and denounce. It is the very face of human society. If I believe that what is good or right is determined by whatever is good or right for most people, then I am a utilitarian who will want society to act with utilitarian principles - and if I'm not aware of the need for justice, then that spells the end for the 'minority' and their interests. Morality and ethics is in my mind the most meaningful and important of all. They're ideals that can be applied. It makes a visceral difference to my life, and to many others'.

I'm not trying to refute the very point of philosophy or philosophers here (who I am to do that huh) - human society needs to have people sitting on armchairs reflecting on their behalf. But there're times where I feel that philosophers kick up a big fuss over some problems that are really, not problems at all - so that even if they arrive at the conclusion that they're really not problems, it's a big deal.

The teaching of the Vedantic school of Hinduism often proposed that problems that beset mankind are not real problems at all but illusions to be seen through. Analogously, it's the classical Indian (Chinese too, actually - whichever came up with it first) example of a rope mistaken for a snake or serpent. When it is seen for what it is, the potential dangers dissolve, but very little has been accomplished in showing that it was not real. All that is involved is a certain minimal displacement of perception and intelligence. And yet the change if momentous when things are seen for what they are (aka, the truth emerges, we're enlightened) The whole world, say the Hindu thinkers, is illusory in this sense, and the problem is not to deal with the problems to which it appears to give rise, but to see through them to a different order of reality. If we compare the achievement of these thinkers to the practical activities of snake hunters, their achievement is minimal. But in terms of the radical restructuring of vision, their achievement is immense. They have solved no problems as such, simply showed that there were no problems to solve. That's often what philosophy is about: There was no snake, and so no problem. "The deepest problems" wrote Wittgenstein, " are really no problems".

Some people find a perverse sense of pleasure in finding problems and then proving that they're no problems afterall. These people are called philosophers.

The Nature of Love - Unexplained.

“The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation, and the little we write about it has been written better by poets and novelists. But of greater concern is the fact that psychologists tend to give progressively less attention to a motive which pervades our entire lives. Psychologists… not only show no interest in the origin and development of love of affection, but they seem to be unaware of its very existence”

Eager to plug the vacuum of research work done in the field of discovering the nature of love, Harry Harlow sought to analyze this facet of human and animal behaviour into their component variables.

In Harlow's classic experiment, two groups of baby rhesus monkeys were removed from their mothers. In the first group, a terrycloth mother provided no food, while a wire mother did, in the form of an attached baby bottle containing milk. In the second group, a terrycloth mother provided food; the wire mother did not. It was found that the young monkeys clung to the terrycloth mother whether or not it provided them with food, and that the young monkeys chose the wire surrogate only when it provided food.

Whenever a frightening stimulus was brought into the cage, the monkeys ran to the cloth mother for protection and comfort, no matter which mother provided them with food. This response decreased as the monkeys grew older.

When the monkeys were placed in an unfamiliar room with their cloth surrogate, they clung to it until they felt secure enough to explore. Once they began to explore, they occasionally returned to the cloth mother for comfort. Monkeys placed in an unfamiliar room without their cloth mothers acted very differently. They froze in fear and cried, crouched down, or sucked their thumbs. Some even ran from object to object, apparently searching for the cloth mother, as they cried and screamed. Monkeys placed in this situation with their wire mothers exhibited the same behavior as the monkeys with no mother.

Once the monkeys reached an age where they could eat solid foods, they were separated from their cloth mothers for three days. When they were reunited with their mothers, they clung to them and did not venture off to explore as they had in previous situations. Harlow concluded from this that the need for contact comfort was stronger than the need to explore.

The study found that monkeys who were raised with either a wire mother or a cloth mother gained weight at the same rate. However, the monkeys that had only a wire mother had trouble digesting the milk and suffered from diarrhoea more frequently. Harlow's interpretation of this behavior, which is still widely accepted, was that a lack of contact comfort is psychologically stressful to the monkeys.

The importance of these findings is that they contradicted both the then common pedagogic advice of limiting or avoiding bodily contact in an attempt to avoid spoiling children and the insistence of the then dominant behaviourist school of psychology that emotions were negligible. Feeding was thought to be the most important factor in the formation of a mother-child bond. Harlow concluded, however, that nursing strengthened the mother-child bond because of the intimate body contact that it provided. He described his experiments as a study of love. He also believed that contact comfort could be provided by either mother or father. Though widely accepted now, this idea was revolutionary at the time. (Wikipedia)

Curious, I went on to look for videos of his experiments:

My first reaction to Harlow’s experiment was nothing short of total abhorrence. Not to even mention the cruelty of treating the young rhesus monkeys in laboratory conditions, depriving them of their mothers and normal growing-up environment, it is appalling to see how Harlow could make such premature generalizations, with the unforgiveable assumption that ‘love’ can be dissected into its variable components. Comfort, love, concern, nursing are all important ingredients to a healthy relationship between parent and child, but this is such an obvious fact that I don’t see how his experiments have shed any new light on the nature of love. The problem with science and psychology is that is always strives to prove something. Even when it is so obviously IN YOUR FACE.

Somehow Harlow’s mechanical and robotic voice in the video made the whole experiment surreally reminiscent of a mad scientist and his perverted experiments. Ironically, Harlow’s own love life was a complete mess marked by failed relationships and 3 unsuccessful marriages. To think he even sought to get to the heart of the nature of love in the first place. He was far, far from it. There is much in the world that is ineffable, indescribable, even incomprehensible. And love is one of such. It’s the part of human facet that can never be fully explained or comprehended and science brings us no closer to understanding it.

And if you’re interested in what happened to the baby monkeys, here goes: they grew up psychologically damaged and abnormal, swinging between clinging attachment and destructive aggression, often tearing at their body or shredding bits of cloth and paper. Few were able to mate as adults, and those who did have offsprings were unable to take care of them properly. Some died in acts of self-mutilation.