Questioning

I was having dinner with  family friends (a whole family)  this evening, and had this conversation with their 10yr-old

10yr-old (rolls eyes): My class is terribly misbehaved. Everyone screams and rounds around whenever the teacher is not around. Even the monitor is playing

Me: What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with screaming and running around and playing?

10yr-old (eyes widen): What’s wrong?! Everyone is running all over the place and it’s not the playground

Me: Yes, but why is that wrong?

10yr-old (gives me a *duh* look): You’re supposed to keep quiet and read a book!

Me: But if you don’t like reading? What’s wrong with playing? It’s well & good if you like reading, it’s not wrong to read. But why can’t I play if i want to?

10yr-old (*confused look* pauses to think of an answer): My teacher says we need to keep quiet and not run around

Me: Ah! your teacher says so! How do you know it’s not your teacher who is wrong? What if you’re right and she’s the one who’s wrong?

10yr-old :……
(is in a state of shock as it dawns on him that the teacher might actually be wrong)

Me: Why don’t you go spend the next few months thinking about why it’s wrong, and give me an answer the next time we meet?

.
.

The 10yr-old went off pondering. I don’t think he will ever accept authority unquestioningly ever again.

.

…………………………………………………………….

Later on our other family members got wind of our little discussion and decided to join in too, while waiting for our family cars to arrive (the 2 dads had gone to drive the cars over).

“So what’s the answer??? why is it wrong??” they asked

Me : I don’t know. Everyone has a different answer, what’s do YOU think?

“The noise will disturb other classes” someone suggested

10yr-old : But it’s 7 30 in the morning, classes haven’t started yet

“There are all the chairs and tables around. You might bum into them and hurt yourself” another person reasoned.

.

The cars had arrived. Everyone agreed that seemed like a good reason. Peace and security reigned once again — the teachers are right after all!!

.

………………………………………………….

I wanted to ask one more question but didn’t get a chance to.

I think I’ll ask him the next time we meet.

“So why can’t we just move the chairs and tables away? Why must we sit down & not play?”

Strategies for individuals: how to ensure secularism in Sg

I was at a recent discussion , on ways that we as individuals in our personal life & job capacities, can ensure that public policies and spaces remained secular. Kinda like how religious groups strategize outreach activities, but just the opposite.

At the beginning of the discussion, a significant number of people took the view that this was a futile effort. What could small fries do up against huge organisational machinery? However, after a few individuals who were idealistic or brave enough to defy common wisdom & suggest ideas, the group norm started to shift. At the end of the discussion, almost everyone (there will always been a couple of exceptions) was contributing ideas. And these ideas are so fantastic I thought I should share here:

Influencing friends/people we come into contact with/students

-          Encourage them to think

-          Making your stand known

-          Teaching children secular values

-          Spreading articles/views via Facebook

.

Spreading the word

-          Sending letters & questioning through the media

-          Writing blogs/on blogs/online forums

-          Write books, contribute to magazine articles, newsletters

-          Engaging schools by offering to speak in schools, eg. assembly talks, trainers/speakers for CCAs, supporting science/humanist CCAs/activities in schools

.

Influencing your workplace

-          ensure your work place/organizations have secular policies

-          speak up for secular values within work place practices

-          ensure procurement rules/criteria for public agencies & large organizations are secular

.

Finding Champions for Humanism/Secularism

-          Finding influential champions eg, politicians, wealthy/successful individuals or businessmen, entertainment industry personalities

-          Working towards being an influential person or key decision-maker

-          Educating influential people eg. influencing NIE course contents, influencing programme designers

-          Finding out who decision-makers in various organizations are and engage them

-          Engaging the international community & media

.

Speaking out on issues

-          Engaging your MP

-          Signing petitions

-          Writing letters

-          Organise lobby groups for specific issues

.

Providing Alternatives

-          Start alternative schools, classes, organizations, societies built on Humanist/Secular values eg. providing out-of-school independent Comprehensive Sexuality Education workshop for families who want children to receive this sort of education

-          Start ground-up changing-making organizations

-          Starting formal Humanist student clubs in tertiary edu. institutes

.

Strategic angles to take

-          Treating ‘religion vs non-religion’ & ‘protecting secularism’ as 2 separate issues

-          Getting Humanism to be included in schools’ ethics/civics/moral edu/religion classes. Getting the concept of Secularism to be taught in these classes

-          Changing mindsets of the majority

.

.

.

If anyone wants to engage in further conversation on Humanism & Secularism, a few of us are celebrating World Humanism Day this coming Monday, 21st June, 6 30- 9 30pm over dinner(order & pay yourself) at

http://www.kichn.com/

Small café, below $10 prices, owner-run

30pax total capacity (We’re already expecting 20 people to turn up, so come early to have a seat….. or else standing around is fine too)

Their tagline is sweet —– Embrace your right to choose

Food Review here : http://calvintimo.tumblr.com/post/666680893/kichn-albert-court

The Queer Sacred

I was at a talk last night given by the creator of the website ThinkStraight.sg

He talked about reclaiming the term ‘Queer’. ‘Queer’, not used as a derogatory term, but as an umbrella term to describe persons of all sexual orientations & genders, apart from your conventionally defined heterosexual males in male bodies & females in female bodies. In another words,  anyone not straight.

.

Why use the term ‘Queer’ as opposed to LGBT? Because LGBT has only 4 categories —- insufficiently inclusive to also include people who were asexual (not sexually attracted to anyone), pansexual (sexually attracted to male, female, transgenders & all other queers), intersexed, non-gendered, comfortably haemophrodite etc etc etc. ……

.

By this definition of Queer, Jesus was queer, so was the Buddha(s), etc divine & sacred beings (the Prophet Mohd. Seems to be your conventional het male tho’) . Why do I say this? Well many Catholic/Protestant congregations would probably get upset at the idea of Jesus having erections in the close proximity of the women (or men!) he hung out with. Unimaginable! Jesus was too divine & above it all to be sexually tempted! He transcends sexual arousal. The Buddha(s) too, preached gender & sexual transcendence

.

A feminist Buddhist Venerable gave a talk on Buddhism and Gender at the Poh Ming Tse recently, and she pointed out how in various cultures and religions, the sacred tends to transcend gender. Think about how nuns, monks, priests, priestesses are intentionally asexualized. At least in their ideals (we have heard enough of the actual practices, yes).  In Indian American culture, some tribes had  4 genders, where ‘Shaman’ is a gender of its own.

.

Most cultures recognize the 3^rd gender & they tend to have special roles. It’s a Judeo-Christian view that adopts gender and sexual binaries. Even tho’ the Christian founder, by ThinkStraight’s  definition, would be considered Queer.

.

Why the fascination & portrayal of the sacred as having transcended sexuality and gender? Perhaps because sex is viewed as human & soiled? Because sex is a form of power play ? At a health talk I once attended, the patient is depicted with the male hand. The caregiver is depicted with a very androgynous looking hand. Why? Because anything sexualized disturbs us?

Why do we accept the Queer amongst the sacred, but not amongst ourselves?

Freak Flash Flood

When does a Freak become a Fault?

When an unsually catastrophic event happens, we have a tendency to call it a Freak event. Isolated incident.

What we really mean, when we label something a Freak is that
- It’s not our fault; this was totally unpredictable, uncontrollable
- It won’t happen again, or the frequency which it will happen is not worth the cost of fixing the system : the system is still fine
- So we don’t have to do anything

Which is dangerous. Because sometimes, the Freak is mislabelled.  The unsually catastrophic event happened because something just got broken. Something became a Fault. A Fault in the system. It may or may not be a Fault of the man-made system — it could be a Fault in nature…. a fundamental change in the environmental conditions for example. The first catastrophic event is the first symptom of the Fault.  When it’s a Fault, we can be assured, it WILL happen again.

.

Some Freaks that turned out to be Faults

- The once-in-50-yrs flooding :
100mm in 1hour rains WILL happen again. More than once in 50yrs.
Hasn’t the message hit home that the climate has fundamentally changed? Climate changes can’t be managed by just recycling plastic bags and using energy-saving bulbs alone. Drainage systems need overhaul yes?

- Epidemics:
SARS was a Freak? Nope, H1N1 proved it’s a Fault.
Migration patterns & travel modes have fundamentally shifted in the world, and that will not change in the foreseable future. The nature of epidemics change accordingly.
Epidemics WILL be regular features in the years to come. And to think they’ll just be airborne respiratory epidemics is naive. HIV is a sexually transmitted epidemic. Watch out for more varieties of global epidemics to come — water, food supply (how many food MNCs are supplying our global food chains??) etc. Are we prepared?

-Earthquakes
In recent years the earthquakes in Sg seem to have gotten more frequent & more noticeable. Freak? Or Fault? Not our building fault maybe. The Earth’s fault maybe. Are we prepared?

- Financial crisis, terrorism, cultural clashes, etc
Lots of Freaky news. You KNOW they will happen. Again. and again.

.

Investigations & Reviews needed: PUB & Civil Defense?

So what’s the point?

We need to review our risk management. How prepared are we?

Not just at the national level, but at the personal level too.

I was very very surprised at how NONE of the press or blogs picked up at the very dangerous way people along Orchard Rd responded to flashfloods (or maybe I’ve missed such articles. Apologies if I have, please enlighten in the comments, thanks!). Many shop owners and staff in Lucky Plaza’s basement decided to shut their doors and set up barricades, hoping to keep the water out. Many shopowners and staff stayed in their shops.

They were very very lucky indeed, the floods remained so shallow, at knee-level. What if the flash flood had rose to above head level? WHat if the flash flood completely buried the basement? Flash floods happen within minutes, like fires. If you’re in a basement & you see water rushing down the stairs, RUN OUT! You could actually be buried & drowned in minutes.

In addition to PUB’s investigation, I would like to see more people calling on the Civil Defense to review the emergency response procedures the public needs to be aware of, in cases of flash floods. I would like to see the Civil Defense raising awareness on this issue. Because it WILL happen again.

.

Insurance

I was pleasantly surprised to see NTUC Income’s very quick response at reassuring its customers.

“You can be sure of one thing with us — Someone will pay for this”

I had expected our main news channels to do detailed reports on the various compensation options and insurance policies different companies had. Ah well, maybe tomorrow =)

.

.

PS. Been real busy lately, hence the infrequent updates. In fact, I didn’t even know about the floods until i finally checked my FB news feeds at midnight last night!

My sympathies to all the business owners. Think I’ll contribute by having my favourite Green Tea Cream at StarBucks later.

Who can enter the Kingdom of God

Jesus said (Luke 18 : 24, 25)

“How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”

Going by the number of millionaire pastors/evangelists & ex-communicated LGBT folk these days, it seems more accurate to say

“How hard it is for the queer to enter the Kingdom of God!”