Saturday, April 17, 2004
Great minds, no place in academics
Monday, April 12, 2004
More on Thai blogs
After unsuccessful googling for some kind of directory of Thai blogs, I had to opt for the tedious work of going through pages and pages of google results of webpages that had the words "Thai" and "blog" on it. It took me a whole night to just get the links below. They are what I would call "preferential' links, by the way, since they are the ones that I liked. I have not included a number of other blogs which blogged about Thailand, mostly those written by foreignors who seem to mostly enjoy ranting about the negative aspects of Thailand.
Anyway, that tedious search turned out to be productive because some of these links have links to other Thai blogs, which requires more reading on another day. I'm so frustrated that there isn't an easier way to do this.
What I also discovered was that there are a lot of young Thai-"Americans" (a growing new generation of Thais) blogging in a blogging ring called Xanga. Interesting that there are some claims that Xanga is growing faster than Friendster. I liked the ecclectic mix of people they have there and there seems to be some sense of order and respect among its members. I have to see what they have to offer as a community and as a blogging tool and may just decide to join them.
Additionally, Ross Mayfield mentions a blogging programme being tried out in Thailand by think.com which I haven't had the time to investigate just yet.
My preferential link collection of Thai blogs:
blogwise: List of blogs in Thailand This was a directory, that actually didn't have many "Thai" blogs. But who knows, it might grow.
"The voices in my head" A bit slow to download the whole page, but worth the wait to see the pictures she's posted. Blogged by a Thai.
"Just my thought" Blogged by a Thai.
"Stories from the life of Stuart G. Towns" who is not a Thai.
by Ron Morris, great source of news, and good pictures. Not Thai, but passionate about Thailand and its mass transit system.
Piyawat's a new Thai blogger and updates slowly.
"The House of Random Crap", Thai-American who moved to Thailand. Actually not crappy at all, quite intense.
"Wanderlustress" I think she's Thai, she certainly travels!
SOMMAIRE Not a Thai blog, but a blog (of sorts) by His Majesty Sihanouk, King of Cambodia. I've put it in my links here in hope that maybe King Bhumipol or Princess Sirindhorn will eventually blog. It would really be the establishment of the Thai blogosphere.
Discuss
Anyway, that tedious search turned out to be productive because some of these links have links to other Thai blogs, which requires more reading on another day. I'm so frustrated that there isn't an easier way to do this.
What I also discovered was that there are a lot of young Thai-"Americans" (a growing new generation of Thais) blogging in a blogging ring called Xanga. Interesting that there are some claims that Xanga is growing faster than Friendster. I liked the ecclectic mix of people they have there and there seems to be some sense of order and respect among its members. I have to see what they have to offer as a community and as a blogging tool and may just decide to join them.
Additionally, Ross Mayfield mentions a blogging programme being tried out in Thailand by think.com which I haven't had the time to investigate just yet.
My preferential link collection of Thai blogs:
blogwise: List of blogs in Thailand This was a directory, that actually didn't have many "Thai" blogs. But who knows, it might grow.
"The voices in my head" A bit slow to download the whole page, but worth the wait to see the pictures she's posted. Blogged by a Thai.
"Just my thought" Blogged by a Thai.
"Stories from the life of Stuart G. Towns" who is not a Thai.
by Ron Morris, great source of news, and good pictures. Not Thai, but passionate about Thailand and its mass transit system.
Piyawat's a new Thai blogger and updates slowly.
"The House of Random Crap", Thai-American who moved to Thailand. Actually not crappy at all, quite intense.
"Wanderlustress" I think she's Thai, she certainly travels!
SOMMAIRE Not a Thai blog, but a blog (of sorts) by His Majesty Sihanouk, King of Cambodia. I've put it in my links here in hope that maybe King Bhumipol or Princess Sirindhorn will eventually blog. It would really be the establishment of the Thai blogosphere.
Discuss
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Oh, my God!
Yes, oh my god!!! I found a webpage that says everything I wanted to say! (So why am I, do I continue to write this?) Talk about endlessly walking, "endlessly pulling into the future". Talk about muses, and serendipity! Well anyway, the webpage is called, "Fractal Chaos Crashes the Wall between Science and Religion"
(Added edit: Be cautious with the site, many things written a bit loosely. But I still insist that they have many provoking ideas, just take them with a generous pinch of salt. I wanted to thank and acknowledge the good sense of my cyberfriend Flammifer for reigning in some senses to my impulsive, over-enthusiastic nature which had on many occassions caused me considerable embarrassment. It's good to know that I can count on my friends to give me a nudge when I am putting my foot in my mouth.)
Discuss
(Added edit: Be cautious with the site, many things written a bit loosely. But I still insist that they have many provoking ideas, just take them with a generous pinch of salt. I wanted to thank and acknowledge the good sense of my cyberfriend Flammifer for reigning in some senses to my impulsive, over-enthusiastic nature which had on many occassions caused me considerable embarrassment. It's good to know that I can count on my friends to give me a nudge when I am putting my foot in my mouth.)
Discuss
On question, questioning and quest of identity in cyberculture
The question of identity and its quest with myself and other members of cyberculture has been mentioned many times in my blog as well as many other blogs. It was enlightening for me to listen a classmate's presentation about her research and the model of media systems which she applies. She classified "identity" under "Communication as Social Knowing", as opposed to the opposite group of "Cognition as Individual Knowing". Of course, we don't know who we are until we can relate ourselves to somebody, and we start from the moment we are born with our mothers.
The revelation for me was to see the classification. It rang a bell with a recent paper I found through google. Anthropologist Richard O'Connor questions the assumption of anthropology and its method and retheorizes culture and said let's look at the sense of locality of the Tais and its relations in the definition of their identity. It's obvious that they have multiple identities and paradoxically a single, consistent identity.
Serendipity, Sibylle, and googling "Sybil", (a probe of her name), I found this webpage - about identity, saying exactly the same thing, that "personal identity is not singular".
The insight I gained in this mini-journey, quest of identity, was being able to see the unseen, how we lock ourselves in with fixed notions of identity thinking we are "..." by nation, by geographically location, by our job position, our position in family. We construct a sense of identity with a border. So we invented terms like "schizophrenia" and applied these distortions to those that didn't fit society's definition of how that person should be or behave. It really isn't like that.
Something about McLuhan's method also recalls to my mind Carlos Castaneda's work on shamanism, and recently I've pulled out my old book "Woman Who Run with Wolves" as well.
Discuss
The revelation for me was to see the classification. It rang a bell with a recent paper I found through google. Anthropologist Richard O'Connor questions the assumption of anthropology and its method and retheorizes culture and said let's look at the sense of locality of the Tais and its relations in the definition of their identity. It's obvious that they have multiple identities and paradoxically a single, consistent identity.
Serendipity, Sibylle, and googling "Sybil", (a probe of her name), I found this webpage - about identity, saying exactly the same thing, that "personal identity is not singular".
The insight I gained in this mini-journey, quest of identity, was being able to see the unseen, how we lock ourselves in with fixed notions of identity thinking we are "..." by nation, by geographically location, by our job position, our position in family. We construct a sense of identity with a border. So we invented terms like "schizophrenia" and applied these distortions to those that didn't fit society's definition of how that person should be or behave. It really isn't like that.
Something about McLuhan's method also recalls to my mind Carlos Castaneda's work on shamanism, and recently I've pulled out my old book "Woman Who Run with Wolves" as well.
Discuss
A Probe/ A Poem for Sibylle
Discuss
Chronology of an awakening
Sep 10- Dec 3, 2003: Mind, Media and Society 1, creating my weblog, Derrick.
Jan 14 - Apr 7, 2004: Learning "Laws of Media" tetrads with Mark, Mind, Media and Society 2, an anti-environment of mms1.
Fri, Mar 12, 2004: Foreground (another anti-environment) - Seminar on 17th century Spanish Baroque, UWO, saw applied complexity to literary criticism in action, a multi-diciplinary event, the start of the pieces falling into place. Background - the similiarity of viewpoints to McLuhan's media studies, "seeing" (hearing, and experiencing) the parrallel to complexity analysis in action.
Fri, Mar 19 & 26, 2004: "Merry-go-round disorient" and Superway Mekhong" - Changes in my blogging style.
Sat, Mar 20, 2004: Discovery of ThailandLife.com, insights into a culture that constantly redefines itself - the Tais (the sounds of legend, a memory of "Dear Moon", a lullaby sung by my mother, discovering that it is Laotian. Deeper memories evoked of a woman-making, Ban Chiang, the potting princess, the pots that speak. Understanding the effects of weblogs and my perception of its evolution into groupblog forms that are not blogs.
The week: Furiously Googling, learning how to ask the impossible, questions that I thought that couldn't be. Always amazingly suprised with Google's results.
Sun, Mar 28, 2004: A co-incidence, the storyteller, Marcela Romero's visit, a lead I followed and opened up to another world of discovery and re-discovery.
Tue, Mar 30, 2004: Sibylle Moser's presentation: In the shadow of Laurie Anderson. El duente the soul of a storyteller is blown softly into my face. Numbed by shock, I walk shivering home to dream.
Tue, Mar 30, 2004: (sometime around midnight) A dream of all the connections making a connected whole, I wake up frustrated because dreams are lost at the moment of awakening. I am transformed into la loba, the wild woman
Wed, Mar 31, 2004: later today - I try to capture it in words.
Wed, Mar 31, 2004: today, (4:04 am) - This chronology - "Thanks to McLuhan", showed me how we are all artists, craftsmakers with our electric world, we are shaping the world at every moment.
Discuss
Jan 14 - Apr 7, 2004: Learning "Laws of Media" tetrads with Mark, Mind, Media and Society 2, an anti-environment of mms1.
Fri, Mar 12, 2004: Foreground (another anti-environment) - Seminar on 17th century Spanish Baroque, UWO, saw applied complexity to literary criticism in action, a multi-diciplinary event, the start of the pieces falling into place. Background - the similiarity of viewpoints to McLuhan's media studies, "seeing" (hearing, and experiencing) the parrallel to complexity analysis in action.
Fri, Mar 19 & 26, 2004: "Merry-go-round disorient" and Superway Mekhong" - Changes in my blogging style.
Sat, Mar 20, 2004: Discovery of ThailandLife.com, insights into a culture that constantly redefines itself - the Tais (the sounds of legend, a memory of "Dear Moon", a lullaby sung by my mother, discovering that it is Laotian. Deeper memories evoked of a woman-making, Ban Chiang, the potting princess, the pots that speak. Understanding the effects of weblogs and my perception of its evolution into groupblog forms that are not blogs.
The week: Furiously Googling, learning how to ask the impossible, questions that I thought that couldn't be. Always amazingly suprised with Google's results.
Sun, Mar 28, 2004: A co-incidence, the storyteller, Marcela Romero's visit, a lead I followed and opened up to another world of discovery and re-discovery.
Tue, Mar 30, 2004: Sibylle Moser's presentation: In the shadow of Laurie Anderson. El duente the soul of a storyteller is blown softly into my face. Numbed by shock, I walk shivering home to dream.
Tue, Mar 30, 2004: (sometime around midnight) A dream of all the connections making a connected whole, I wake up frustrated because dreams are lost at the moment of awakening. I am transformed into la loba, the wild woman
Wed, Mar 31, 2004: later today - I try to capture it in words.
Wed, Mar 31, 2004: today, (4:04 am) - This chronology - "Thanks to McLuhan", showed me how we are all artists, craftsmakers with our electric world, we are shaping the world at every moment.
Discuss
Friday, March 26, 2004
Memories of Superway Mekhong
Another reminiscence from modern tribal woman:
It was February 2000. A cousin from Mexico sent us an email about his dream of traveling down the three greatest rivers of the world, the Amazon, the Nile, and the Mekhong. It dawned to us that we were sitting on the banks of his dream, the Mekhong. As it didn't seem likely that he would cross half the world to visit us any time soon, we decided to take the trip for him.
The Mekhong is a strange river. A river like any other, but full of marvels. It runs from the roof of the world, the Himalayans, cutting through gorges, cities, towns, paddy fields and forests. Sometimes it is wide, other where it can be dry and shallow, some places deep, churning, rocky. It is periodically lined by sandy beaches. The Nong Khai beach is rich with gold flecks. The river is peaceful, but many times carried the currents of war and illicit trafficking. Associated with it are myths of water dragons and mysterious floating fireballs. Rare white fresh water dolphins, giant catfishes share the waters with armed patrol boats and many other different kinds of exotic vessels. I would say that thanks to the river's fickle nature no major cities has yet clogged its shores.
As I remember my journey down that great mythical trip. In my mind's eye, I see myself standing on the balcony of a temple on top of a hill in the middle of an ancient 11th century capital of a lost kingdom.
As my fingers skim this slight keyboard of my white ibook with its blue screen, seeing these incredible words magically constructing themselves, I experience a surreal mosaic of time, space, and senses. The past, present, and future merged me into a certain space of my mind downloading itself into some obscure server in that infinite space of bits and bytes. My skin, bones, nose, ears, and eyes have been sent through a wondrous time machine, re-gathering itself to stand at that moment four years ago, on that other side of the world, disorienting from a spot on the concrete grid that is Toronto.
I stood in a palpitating moment of peace allowing a calm breeze to carry away the hazy heatwaves of humidity, cooling off my sweat, regaining my breath and regular heartbeat from the climb up the steps of that temple in the middle of that capital of the lost KIngdom of Laos, Luang Prabang. That same breeze had carried up a faraway melody of children's laughter from the foot of that hill. Its ringing melody was ocassionally drowned out by the staccato of street cars sounds and motor-cycle-powered boats gunning off the nearby banks of the Mekhong.
I am pulled back from the dream of that faraway ancient riverbank by the similarity of the thoughts that I am reminded of at that moment with those that this 21st century blogging tribeswoman has been thinking about on the edge of an information superhighway. The thoughts I wondered were: "Will this superway one day connect the diverse people who flash in and out along its banks? As it once connected the ice-age caveman to the rainforest hunter and food gatherers to delta rice growers to outrigger travelling seamen, will the modernizing dwellers along its banks overcome the artificial borders they have drawn in the spaces of their minds over the river's generous flow and allow its people to freely travel and thrive in multi-culturality again once more? So too, I wonder about the information superhighway that is the internet, will it unite its cutting edge techies of the E-age or will the segregration of peoples we have put in our minds simply transpose itself to this growing cyberspace cyberculture?"
Discuss
It was February 2000. A cousin from Mexico sent us an email about his dream of traveling down the three greatest rivers of the world, the Amazon, the Nile, and the Mekhong. It dawned to us that we were sitting on the banks of his dream, the Mekhong. As it didn't seem likely that he would cross half the world to visit us any time soon, we decided to take the trip for him.
The Mekhong is a strange river. A river like any other, but full of marvels. It runs from the roof of the world, the Himalayans, cutting through gorges, cities, towns, paddy fields and forests. Sometimes it is wide, other where it can be dry and shallow, some places deep, churning, rocky. It is periodically lined by sandy beaches. The Nong Khai beach is rich with gold flecks. The river is peaceful, but many times carried the currents of war and illicit trafficking. Associated with it are myths of water dragons and mysterious floating fireballs. Rare white fresh water dolphins, giant catfishes share the waters with armed patrol boats and many other different kinds of exotic vessels. I would say that thanks to the river's fickle nature no major cities has yet clogged its shores.
As I remember my journey down that great mythical trip. In my mind's eye, I see myself standing on the balcony of a temple on top of a hill in the middle of an ancient 11th century capital of a lost kingdom.
As my fingers skim this slight keyboard of my white ibook with its blue screen, seeing these incredible words magically constructing themselves, I experience a surreal mosaic of time, space, and senses. The past, present, and future merged me into a certain space of my mind downloading itself into some obscure server in that infinite space of bits and bytes. My skin, bones, nose, ears, and eyes have been sent through a wondrous time machine, re-gathering itself to stand at that moment four years ago, on that other side of the world, disorienting from a spot on the concrete grid that is Toronto.
I stood in a palpitating moment of peace allowing a calm breeze to carry away the hazy heatwaves of humidity, cooling off my sweat, regaining my breath and regular heartbeat from the climb up the steps of that temple in the middle of that capital of the lost KIngdom of Laos, Luang Prabang. That same breeze had carried up a faraway melody of children's laughter from the foot of that hill. Its ringing melody was ocassionally drowned out by the staccato of street cars sounds and motor-cycle-powered boats gunning off the nearby banks of the Mekhong.
I am pulled back from the dream of that faraway ancient riverbank by the similarity of the thoughts that I am reminded of at that moment with those that this 21st century blogging tribeswoman has been thinking about on the edge of an information superhighway. The thoughts I wondered were: "Will this superway one day connect the diverse people who flash in and out along its banks? As it once connected the ice-age caveman to the rainforest hunter and food gatherers to delta rice growers to outrigger travelling seamen, will the modernizing dwellers along its banks overcome the artificial borders they have drawn in the spaces of their minds over the river's generous flow and allow its people to freely travel and thrive in multi-culturality again once more? So too, I wonder about the information superhighway that is the internet, will it unite its cutting edge techies of the E-age or will the segregration of peoples we have put in our minds simply transpose itself to this growing cyberspace cyberculture?"
Discuss
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Great Thai Blog!
I enjoyed visiting this webpage: Thailandlife which is another Thai webpage that I find has the characteristics of a blog, but with the format of a webpage, an interactive one at that. Thai culture is quite different from the western conventional, therefore Thais may not find blogging in the conventional format attractive. But as with the two websites I've found, that certainly hasn't stopped them from being creative and inventing their own style of "blogging".
What is interesting about the above website is its network of webpages, created by amateur webmasters of Sriwittayapaknam School. The school itself is novel in its experiment of teaching Thai kids to learn English by teaching them how to use the internet.
Discuss
What is interesting about the above website is its network of webpages, created by amateur webmasters of Sriwittayapaknam School. The school itself is novel in its experiment of teaching Thai kids to learn English by teaching them how to use the internet.
Discuss
Friday, March 19, 2004
Tales of a modern tribal woman
A "non-literate/aural" in an obsolescing, electrically accelerated visual/linear world.
The merry-go-round disorient. I was born off the edge of Chaos. When I look back at that edge I feel that it was closer to near-death-static than to the alive, paradoxically orderly, complex edge of which I presently float in. Sakolnakorn is a town far away from the center of Thai politics, history, and economy. Time stands still in this town. Change happened so slowly and so little during the past 20 years that I hardly perceive it when I visit my mother, a true native tribal member of this changeless town. It was a place of birth, not the place that I grew up in. I have no town-mates I knew from kindergarden, no intimate pals I knew from the local high school alumni. Even as in a simple town life, a large part of the town are my distant cousins, aunts and uncles, I hardly know them.
My life is a constant reorientation. My family and I pack and re-pack our belongings nearly every two years. Even if we stayed in one city, there was always a reason to move to a new house. As I started to become aware of my identity during adolescence, I had these nagging feelings that I was somehow strangely out of place. As a youngster, because you grow up with the environment, there is an illusion that the neighborhood you play in is yours. My father's work took us to Lebanon when I was five. Being an Asian in Beirut during the late 60s and mid 70s was definitely not the norm. When we mentioned that we were from Thailand, very few people knew where it was. Yet when I was going through Grades 2 to 8 in a school where most kids came from different places and soon left for different places, I realized that, well, since I was one of the few class members who had been there since Grade two, I had somehow earned a status that opened me to groups of "non-others" that otherwise wouldn't have allowed me access. When I returned to Thailand as a quite disoriented teenager, I suffered the culture shock of going back to a culture that was mine but which I didn't have a clue about. I couldn't even speak Thai. So came the years of trying to belong. Maybe it would be more appropriate to call the period - the years of creating a belongingness in non-locality.
My Psyche gave me preliminary warnings of the ordeals she demanded as her due for passing through the dark nights of her world with an inflammed, congested gall bladder that was maybe unnecessarily removed. I obliviously throdded through her gates. Her breathe of wakening only hit me full in my face when I started falling apart internally at cocktails parties under my well-learnt mask of Thai politeness, graciousness, and the facade of a politically correct career woman, in the middle of a soon to be cut short career as a Thai diplomat. (I still carry the symtoms of vertigo whenever I engage with groups larger than about 12.) I was then in my early 30s, divorced and a single mother of a 3 years old boy who was starting to show symtoms of language confusion in an English-speaking Asian city-state that emulated a Western model of development.
So started my journeys of self-uncovering. Through this merry-go-round of disorientation I found the name of my tribe, by reading Marshall McLuhan. He named this new village, the Global Village, and so I recognized that I was in essence a non-literate, aural woman in an obsolescing, electrically accelerated visual/linear world.
Hopefully there will be more tales to come from this whimsical modern tribal woman.
Discuss
The merry-go-round disorient. I was born off the edge of Chaos. When I look back at that edge I feel that it was closer to near-death-static than to the alive, paradoxically orderly, complex edge of which I presently float in. Sakolnakorn is a town far away from the center of Thai politics, history, and economy. Time stands still in this town. Change happened so slowly and so little during the past 20 years that I hardly perceive it when I visit my mother, a true native tribal member of this changeless town. It was a place of birth, not the place that I grew up in. I have no town-mates I knew from kindergarden, no intimate pals I knew from the local high school alumni. Even as in a simple town life, a large part of the town are my distant cousins, aunts and uncles, I hardly know them.
My life is a constant reorientation. My family and I pack and re-pack our belongings nearly every two years. Even if we stayed in one city, there was always a reason to move to a new house. As I started to become aware of my identity during adolescence, I had these nagging feelings that I was somehow strangely out of place. As a youngster, because you grow up with the environment, there is an illusion that the neighborhood you play in is yours. My father's work took us to Lebanon when I was five. Being an Asian in Beirut during the late 60s and mid 70s was definitely not the norm. When we mentioned that we were from Thailand, very few people knew where it was. Yet when I was going through Grades 2 to 8 in a school where most kids came from different places and soon left for different places, I realized that, well, since I was one of the few class members who had been there since Grade two, I had somehow earned a status that opened me to groups of "non-others" that otherwise wouldn't have allowed me access. When I returned to Thailand as a quite disoriented teenager, I suffered the culture shock of going back to a culture that was mine but which I didn't have a clue about. I couldn't even speak Thai. So came the years of trying to belong. Maybe it would be more appropriate to call the period - the years of creating a belongingness in non-locality.
My Psyche gave me preliminary warnings of the ordeals she demanded as her due for passing through the dark nights of her world with an inflammed, congested gall bladder that was maybe unnecessarily removed. I obliviously throdded through her gates. Her breathe of wakening only hit me full in my face when I started falling apart internally at cocktails parties under my well-learnt mask of Thai politeness, graciousness, and the facade of a politically correct career woman, in the middle of a soon to be cut short career as a Thai diplomat. (I still carry the symtoms of vertigo whenever I engage with groups larger than about 12.) I was then in my early 30s, divorced and a single mother of a 3 years old boy who was starting to show symtoms of language confusion in an English-speaking Asian city-state that emulated a Western model of development.
So started my journeys of self-uncovering. Through this merry-go-round of disorientation I found the name of my tribe, by reading Marshall McLuhan. He named this new village, the Global Village, and so I recognized that I was in essence a non-literate, aural woman in an obsolescing, electrically accelerated visual/linear world.
Hopefully there will be more tales to come from this whimsical modern tribal woman.
Discuss
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Somewhat a Thai "blog"
Since I've started blogging, I've been searching the internet to find what can be classified as "Thai blogs". Found many interesting things, but nothing close to what I was personally looking for until I had to do searches about Thai media ownership and discovered Busakorn's page. I find her style interesting because it is a webpage but has a weblog feel to it, and of course because she discusses media and being Thai. There was even a comment page added to it but she has control of what she wants to show.
Discuss
Discuss
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
A definition of globalism
Reading Mark Federman's document The Global Soul and the Global Village" (pdf), I attempt to extract a definition of the proposed concept of "globalism".
According to Mark who succeeds the work of Derrick de Kerckhove and Marshall McLuhan, globalism is different from the globalization of transnational enterprises. It is comforting to know that a global village is not anarchic but then one has to swallow its disturbing characteristic of non-uniformity, non-tranquility, discontinuity and division.
I find it interesting that the concept is an "-ism" and not "-ity". The "-ism" requires an action to be taken by the subject carrying that "-ism". Some common "-ism" I could recall of were "Buddhism, communism, nationalism". "-ity" seems to be a quality formed and perceived from an outside perspective, such as nationality which is given to you by the government or because you happen to be born in a certain geographical location.
This concept of globalism is described by Mark as a "a new modernity", a sort of post-postmodernism in which we are creating a new ground from the preceding ground of the postmodern that had shaken us from the even more conventional ground that was tied to geographic locale.
Mark refers to Pico Iyer's "Global Soul" and the challenge we face in forming this new identity. Here, I disagree with the perception that there is "no ground for cultural context or meaning". I think that the ground has simply shifted from nationalistic, border-confined ground to a larger more holistic ground of an Earth that is connected.
The most evoking symbol of this new ground would be the image of Earth seen as a precious, vulnerable, blue and white gem floating in space that was gifted to us through the camera lens of the Apollo astronauts. I think this new ground is one of teeming diversity, of a fully alive (and conscious?) bioshpere, where disunity, discontinuity and division can co-exist creatively as in an open complex living system where chaos is avoided through having entropy exported into the extra-dimensional scape of media, and entertainment or "play" of cyberspace.
This calls for an identification (or re-grounding) with a new cultural context that is acutally a larger geographical area. However, it is one that has more dimensional depth than just the physical, as well as one with emergent, ordered-chaotic diversity and non-unitary. I believe that once we have each personally experienced an understanding that no borders means proximity and realized that anything that affects you affects me immediately. This realization will flip Iyer's perception of "all rights and no responsibility" to one of self-chosen limited rights and voluntary undertaking of more responsibility than was ever expected at nationalistic level. This would have emerged from deep within a sense of self and identify that has experienced the world's connectivity and all its effects. This is the point where I agree with how Mark describes the nature of this new modernity as one in which we are experiencing as "experiential, as opposed to prescribed, pre-scripted and doctrinaire".
Discuss
According to Mark who succeeds the work of Derrick de Kerckhove and Marshall McLuhan, globalism is different from the globalization of transnational enterprises. It is comforting to know that a global village is not anarchic but then one has to swallow its disturbing characteristic of non-uniformity, non-tranquility, discontinuity and division.
I find it interesting that the concept is an "-ism" and not "-ity". The "-ism" requires an action to be taken by the subject carrying that "-ism". Some common "-ism" I could recall of were "Buddhism, communism, nationalism". "-ity" seems to be a quality formed and perceived from an outside perspective, such as nationality which is given to you by the government or because you happen to be born in a certain geographical location.
This concept of globalism is described by Mark as a "a new modernity", a sort of post-postmodernism in which we are creating a new ground from the preceding ground of the postmodern that had shaken us from the even more conventional ground that was tied to geographic locale.
Mark refers to Pico Iyer's "Global Soul" and the challenge we face in forming this new identity. Here, I disagree with the perception that there is "no ground for cultural context or meaning". I think that the ground has simply shifted from nationalistic, border-confined ground to a larger more holistic ground of an Earth that is connected.
The most evoking symbol of this new ground would be the image of Earth seen as a precious, vulnerable, blue and white gem floating in space that was gifted to us through the camera lens of the Apollo astronauts. I think this new ground is one of teeming diversity, of a fully alive (and conscious?) bioshpere, where disunity, discontinuity and division can co-exist creatively as in an open complex living system where chaos is avoided through having entropy exported into the extra-dimensional scape of media, and entertainment or "play" of cyberspace.
This calls for an identification (or re-grounding) with a new cultural context that is acutally a larger geographical area. However, it is one that has more dimensional depth than just the physical, as well as one with emergent, ordered-chaotic diversity and non-unitary. I believe that once we have each personally experienced an understanding that no borders means proximity and realized that anything that affects you affects me immediately. This realization will flip Iyer's perception of "all rights and no responsibility" to one of self-chosen limited rights and voluntary undertaking of more responsibility than was ever expected at nationalistic level. This would have emerged from deep within a sense of self and identify that has experienced the world's connectivity and all its effects. This is the point where I agree with how Mark describes the nature of this new modernity as one in which we are experiencing as "experiential, as opposed to prescribed, pre-scripted and doctrinaire".
Discuss
Sunday, February 15, 2004
Dilemma of a Reality Creator
For some time now, I've been probing the effects of a newly adopted belief: "The world is a conscious, participative, and intelligent universe". Through various sources I've constructed a personal ephemeral picture of a reality that is plasticy and fluid, a reality that constantly creates, deconstructs and recreates itself, a picture of multiple realities existing and interacting in porous co-existing multiple dimensions. I teased myself with questions concerning the laws and forces of such a world. I asked myself, "If all living entities are conscious and possess creative powers where together they create a ground for the physical reality that we feel, sense and experience, what would be the moral laws for co-existence in this reality? (I saw "living entities" being animals, plants, even inanimate objects, such as, the paper we write on, the computer we use, houses we live in, and ideas that we create, such as movies, political thought, and concepts of nation-state...what if they were all "alive" and each created their own realities? How would each of these realities connect, impact upon and interact with each other, and by what laws?)
What has been useful for me has been the application of observation to my own experiences when I feel that I am in such a moment of having created an alternative reality for myself. I have, for example, noticed that with each new level of perspective adopted, I am able to perceive a new reality upon the same kind of situation that I wouldn't have perceived with the old belief.
A example of this play, of experimenting with how 'what I choose to believe in' coloring my perception of reality, can be recounted through my most recent recreation of reality during my visit to Montreal and Quebec City. Always a new environment gives new input. What was unique about this experience was how within the structure of a dominant English-speaking majority of a nation-state,Canada, there exist as well, this strong culture of French-speaking people.
I found myself oscillating between the different realities, the very obvious outside realities of the French versus the English, between my outside and inner realities of being a person who constantly moves from one location to another nearly every two years, being confused several times about where my sense of identity belonged to. During this trip, we visited some old friends who had immigrated to Montreal from Singapore, a place in my past where we had originally met each other. So there was this extra pull of my old self then (working and not yet securely established in a family situation) and my other self of now (not working but quite established within a cross-cultural family). Then there was also the teasing question within my mind about the differences between the environment of a "developed" economy such as Canada, with all its complications of high taxes, employment situations, etc. with the intriguing contradiction of my background coming from a developing country where the economic situation was relatively lower in dollar sense, but much higher in many ways in the quality of life in non-monetary value sense. All through these provoking exploration of realities, I was of course, reconstructing my direct present-moment reality by redefining many values and beliefs I had previously just inherited from what the status quo "told", or you could say, "taught" me through "formal education".
One of the high point of this tour was when we visited the star shaped citadel on the "cliff" hanging over St. Lawrence river in Quebec City. This military structure was started by the French to help them fight against the British in the 17th century then was reconstructed as a fort by the British in the early 19th century to protect Canada against the invasion of the Americans. To me it was more like a symbol of power of the English-speaking nation-state imposed over the more dominant French-speaking people of Quebec, which quite frankly felt like a different country.
So many more questions came out as a result of my playful probing of reality and belief system. Here are some of them: In face of oscillating realities, what is a healthy operational mode? When we switch from one language to another in the process of translations (because I was operating in a four language mode during this trip), what happens when some meaning is lost in the translating? I saw the citadel in a way as a physical translation of culture and environment as well. This experential experience of my trip to Quebec really cannot be communicated through any form of written or spoken language. It can only be experienced, so culture is, in effect, truly a transformer of experience, and possibly a better translator than language itself? How do I resist from being completely converted by the consensus ground, and be more consistent with my own unique interpretation of reality that I accumulate through the actual events that I experience?
When I extrapolate some possible answers to the above line of questioning I found some intriguing answers through more questions such as, what if I am able to give up some sense of individuality, give up accustomed sense of national identity in exchange for a more universal group belongingness not restricted by imaginary borders?
The problem with all this reality reconstruction is, of course, that one could easily go off tangent. So it seems that there is some value in some form of consensus reality, isn't there? When a person can create, and edit his reality, there are so many alternatives possible. This seems to raise temptations to use judgment as selection criteria but isn't there a trap somewhere in judging? Because you have to decide on what is good and what is bad, based upon values and beliefs one is not so sure of anymore? Does that mean that impartiality and the recognition in the impermanent nature of all processes will become the most valuable cognition to have in a world of virtual reality?
Discuss
What has been useful for me has been the application of observation to my own experiences when I feel that I am in such a moment of having created an alternative reality for myself. I have, for example, noticed that with each new level of perspective adopted, I am able to perceive a new reality upon the same kind of situation that I wouldn't have perceived with the old belief.
A example of this play, of experimenting with how 'what I choose to believe in' coloring my perception of reality, can be recounted through my most recent recreation of reality during my visit to Montreal and Quebec City. Always a new environment gives new input. What was unique about this experience was how within the structure of a dominant English-speaking majority of a nation-state,Canada, there exist as well, this strong culture of French-speaking people.
I found myself oscillating between the different realities, the very obvious outside realities of the French versus the English, between my outside and inner realities of being a person who constantly moves from one location to another nearly every two years, being confused several times about where my sense of identity belonged to. During this trip, we visited some old friends who had immigrated to Montreal from Singapore, a place in my past where we had originally met each other. So there was this extra pull of my old self then (working and not yet securely established in a family situation) and my other self of now (not working but quite established within a cross-cultural family). Then there was also the teasing question within my mind about the differences between the environment of a "developed" economy such as Canada, with all its complications of high taxes, employment situations, etc. with the intriguing contradiction of my background coming from a developing country where the economic situation was relatively lower in dollar sense, but much higher in many ways in the quality of life in non-monetary value sense. All through these provoking exploration of realities, I was of course, reconstructing my direct present-moment reality by redefining many values and beliefs I had previously just inherited from what the status quo "told", or you could say, "taught" me through "formal education".
One of the high point of this tour was when we visited the star shaped citadel on the "cliff" hanging over St. Lawrence river in Quebec City. This military structure was started by the French to help them fight against the British in the 17th century then was reconstructed as a fort by the British in the early 19th century to protect Canada against the invasion of the Americans. To me it was more like a symbol of power of the English-speaking nation-state imposed over the more dominant French-speaking people of Quebec, which quite frankly felt like a different country.
So many more questions came out as a result of my playful probing of reality and belief system. Here are some of them: In face of oscillating realities, what is a healthy operational mode? When we switch from one language to another in the process of translations (because I was operating in a four language mode during this trip), what happens when some meaning is lost in the translating? I saw the citadel in a way as a physical translation of culture and environment as well. This experential experience of my trip to Quebec really cannot be communicated through any form of written or spoken language. It can only be experienced, so culture is, in effect, truly a transformer of experience, and possibly a better translator than language itself? How do I resist from being completely converted by the consensus ground, and be more consistent with my own unique interpretation of reality that I accumulate through the actual events that I experience?
When I extrapolate some possible answers to the above line of questioning I found some intriguing answers through more questions such as, what if I am able to give up some sense of individuality, give up accustomed sense of national identity in exchange for a more universal group belongingness not restricted by imaginary borders?
The problem with all this reality reconstruction is, of course, that one could easily go off tangent. So it seems that there is some value in some form of consensus reality, isn't there? When a person can create, and edit his reality, there are so many alternatives possible. This seems to raise temptations to use judgment as selection criteria but isn't there a trap somewhere in judging? Because you have to decide on what is good and what is bad, based upon values and beliefs one is not so sure of anymore? Does that mean that impartiality and the recognition in the impermanent nature of all processes will become the most valuable cognition to have in a world of virtual reality?
Discuss
