Pantai Kasih and Literary Study in Malaysian High Schools

"It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people."

Heinrich Heine

Contain some spoilers for the Harry Potter books.

I am reminded of the uproar I lived through over the Harry Potter books back at the height of their popularity. Predictably, due to witchcraft being an integral element of the series, many folks who are antsy around words like "witch", such as fundamentalist Christians (and Muslims), wanted nothing to do with The Boy Who Lived™ and even sought to ban it from school and library for fear that the books would lead children into ungodly practices of magic. I remember back when I was doing my A-level, I had a coursemate whose parents - strict Christians - forbade her to read any Harry Potter books even though they have not even read the books themselves to see if the writings are as detestable as they were led to believe by their pastor. But that's par for the course: people often complain about things they do have not the slightest clue about.

Now, I want to talk about another similarly controversial, though far less famous book that is facing a similar situation in Malaysia,

The cover art is very reminiscent of the illustrations of school textbooks I used to have.

What it is? Well, it's a novel called Pantai Kasih (Care Beach or Love Beach) by Azmah Nordin. It is the designated reading material for the literary study component of the subject of Malay language for Form 4 students in Malaysian secondary schools.

What's wrong with it? Basically, many people, from teachers to parents to mullahs clutched their pearls and clucked about how it is an inappropriate novel to expose our 16 year old students to because of its "lewd" content and purported "lack of literary merits". They are clamouring for the Ministry of Education to select a more suitable work to put in its stead.

Now, I have not read the novel in question (and I dare wager, neither did most of its detractors). Yet, most people felt that they have formed sufficiently informed opinions on it after reading a passage from Pantai Kasih which have been widely circulated on social media,

My eyes!

The offending bit seems to be that paragraph the finger in the picture is pointing to, and translated to English, it goes something like,

It cannot be held back - Doctor Sadiz was unable to control his lust any longer. Raiha became the victim of his rapacity. Without any design or willingness on Raiha's part, Doktor's Sadiz's genetically 'unique' cells made its way into Raiha's body. Those 'special' cells then swam to meet and united with her healthy, fertile ovum in her womb. A zygote was created and it develops in its process of growth, month to month - a process taking place within Raiha's belly.

I was never particularly proficient in Malay but you get the idea. The passage described a sexual act - a non-consensual one - followed by the act of ejaculation. It then became almost clinical in its very brief birds-and-bees description of how babies form.

Now, all caught up? I confess that that's all I know about the novel in question so far. Even knowing so little, I feel confident in challenging the view that Pantai Kasih is devoid literary saving graces.

Firstly, in my opinion, any book no matter how deplorable or detestable has literary value. I would say that even about Mein Kampf or the Holy Bible. The whole point of literary study is to learn how to engage with literature; how to consume it, interpret it, critique it, and understand its relevance to the greater culture around it.

Yes, there is passage in Pantai Kasih in which a character was raped by another but let's discuss that. Rape, I find, is a recurring motif in Malay romance fiction. Take for example the popular local drama film Ombak Rindu (itself adapted from a novel by Fauziah Ashari): it was billed as a hard-won romance between a man and a woman, but in actuality the male protagonist (Hariz) is a rapist who raped the heroine (Izzah), a pious woman sold into prostitution by her uncle, while she was unconscious. She was then bought and kept as a sex slave by him, and must fulfill his sexual needs whenever he wishes it. She fell in love with him and married him eventually.

Another popular Malay novel-turn-TV show in Malaysia is The Wedding Breaker by Evelyn Rose in which Ariana Rose (the female protagonist) - at the behest of Tengku Juwita - pretended to carry the child of Tengku Adam Kamil (the male love interest) in order to break up his engagement with Tengku Juwita, who did not want to marry Adam. In retaliation, Tengku Adam raped Ariana Rose. The story ended with Tengku Adam apparently reforming after his pilgrimage to Mecca and marrying his rape victim. This too is portrayed as a love story.

Most Malay consumers of such fiction, even women, readily accepts male protagonists who are rapists (evident from the popularity of such works). This ties into the motif of rape in Pantai Kasih too. There is much to discuss on the prevalence of rape culture in Malay communities and what inculcated it. Rape culture is a concept in feminist theory that describes a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality. In fact, many religious scholars in Malaysia does not even recognise the concept of marital rape, and the Perak Mufti even said last year that women must submit to the sexual desires of their husbands, even on camel-back. We also see regular news about how rape victims are frequently married off to their rapists as a resolution to such tragedies.

From a literary study perspective, the theme of rape in Pantai Kasih has a lot of sociocultural relevance and how a blurring of lines between rape and love do in fact exist in Malay culture.

Also, it seems that the consumption of such salacious and sexually explicit content is quite common amongst Malaysian readers, in spite of how conservative Malay Muslim culture actually is. Are these works simply a form of acceptable outlet for Malays who are compelled to live in such sexually-repressed lives - lives in which outright pornography and premarital sex are prohibited?

Another thing I noticed about the passage from Pantai Kasih is that the lusty rapist's name is Dr Sadiz, which sounded like a meaningful fictive name. Authors frequently give names to characters which describes said character, or names which hold some hidden significance. One of the most famous examples in contemporary literature is Lord Voldermort, whose name in French means "flight of death" - alluding to the character's commitment to be immortal. Voldemort may have also been inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's M. Valdemar (The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar), a character who also similarly returned from apparent death. Additionally, Lord Voldemort is an anagram of Tom Marvolo Riddle, his real name. Pretty much every character that J. K. Rowling created has a meaningful name.

Dr Sadiz calls to mind the Malay word "sadis" - a loan-concept drawn directly from the English word "sadist" (someone who enjoys inflicting pain on others, sometimes in a sexual sense). The word sadist itself has its etymological root in the name Marquis de Sade, a French aristocrat famous for mistreating women in cruel, unusual and sexual ways.

See? Even Pantai Kasih can provide very relevant and compelling literary lessons in the hands of someone who knows how to approach literature. And that's how you deal with books - you analyse them, not ban them. Sanctimonious puritanical teachers, parents and religious authorities take note.



P.S. Luckily, it seemed like the Ministry of Education is sticking to their guns and is keeping the book in schools.



A rapacious devourer of books,
k0k s3n w4i

Proof of Najib's Guilt?

"There's letters seal'd, and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd—

They bear the mandate, they must sweep my way

And marshal me to knavery.

Let it work; For 'tis the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petard, an't shall go hard

But I will delve one yard below their mines

And blow them at the moon."

Hamlet (1603) Act 3, scene 4, 202–209

by William Shakespeare

I think this is as clear as day. Najib is guilty. My certainty of it is as strong as the Muslim's faith in the words of Muhammad and the Christian's faith in Jesus' divinity. Why?

Let's pretend for a moment you are Mr Najib Razak, premier of Malaysia. You are political royalty. Your wife has big hair. You once held on to RM2.6 billion of donation money in your own private bank account. What would you do?

You'd foresee that your political enemies may one day question this insanely huge amount of money to throw aspersion on your character, so you'd make damn sure you have proof to produce one day to show that you in fact received that amount of money in good faith.

You'd make sure that every last one your associates know about this money that was pumped into your political coalition. The deputy president of your party should definitely be informed about it so he would not appear in the media now saying that he had no inkling whatsoever previously regarding that RM2.6 billion. In a leaked video no less.

In fact, to be absolutely in the clear, you'd place the money in the hands of trustees, and not in your own private account in the first place - but forget it, that ship had sailed and sunk.

Now fast forward to 2015, The Wall Street Journal, The Edge, Sarawak Report, every newspaper you don't control and their dog are questioning you about this RM2.6b honest donation that sat in your private account. What would you do?

The first thing you'd do is just come clean, say it's a donation from day one. If you are innocent, the truth can only help you, right?

"Donations."

Now, what wouldn't you do?

For starters, you wouldn't interfere with the investigation AT ALL. You wouldn't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. You want it to appear as legitimate as possible to prove your innocence.

You would not reshuffle your cabinet.

You wouldn't promote 4 members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) who were investigating your case to ministerial positions, one week before they start meeting a few of the former Chief Executive Officers of 1MDB to delay or obstruct their process in proving your innocence. In fact, never in the history of the PAC was so many of its members elevated to governmental positions at the same time. It's really bad timing to do something so unprecedented that calls attention to the act itself.

You wouldn't fire your Attorney-General (A-G) a couple of months before his retirement for "health reasons" so suddenly that even he was taken by surprise and expressed that surprise to the press.

If you are innocent, this series of moves at this juncture in time would make you look very, very guilty. If you are innocent, why are you sabotaging yourself so completely?

This is why I feel Najib effectively confessed that he is guilty. I really wrinkled my brain but I can't think of any sane, rational reason why Najib would do the things he did if he is really innocent. Ask yourself, what would you have done in his shoes if you are really innocent?

He is either corrupt or the stupidest man in Malaysia. Either way, he has no business running this country.



A creature of logic,
k0k s3n w4i

Won't Someone Think of the Children?

"If you still say 'It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve' as an argument against gay marriage you need to Adam and leave."

Unattributed

There is a particularly deplorable kind of anti-gay argument that keeps popping up whenever same sex marriage is discussed. I call it the "Won't someone think of the children?" appeal to emotions. Basically, the argument is this: the natural arrangement of parenthood is that there should be a male role model and a female role model to aid in a child's growth. Some might even argue that children should have an inviolate RIGHT to one male and one female parent, and that we are somehow selfish or cruel to deprive them of this by advocating for marriage equality.

And if you ask children what they need, some might even say "triceratops".

Firstly, there is a very contentious claim that the above arguments are predicated upon i.e. gay parents are inherently inferior to heterosexual parents. In what way are they inferior? We are not sure. Claiming that the best parental arrangement is one with a man and a woman in it (and therefore gay marriage is bad) is essentially circular logic. It's a bit like saying that apples are bad because they aren't oranges; because oranges are better than apples; because oranges are totally the best damn fruits in the universe. Aside from that fatal logical flaw, it is also a complete bald-faced lie. A review published last month which looked at 19,000 studies related to same-sex parenting from 1977 to 2013 finds an "overwhelming" consensus that there are no difference in children raised by same-sex or different-sex parents.

And you know what? There are studies which show that gay parents might even be superior to heterosexual parents, statistically speaking. It makes sense if you think about it (and if you actually own a brain in working condition with which to do so): gay parents consciously and purposefully choose to be parents because all avenues available to them, whether they achieve it through adoption, surrogate mothers or donor sperm, necessitates deliberation. I would also imagine that gays who want kids tend to be higher on the social ladder and are already in committed relationships. Meanwhile, it is entirely possible for teenage, non-committal heterosexuals to accidentally produce new life (and they do so very frequently, I must say), thus opening the can to sadly unwanted children being bestowed upon woefully unprepared parents. In case it is still not made abundantly clear, being straight doesn't automatically confer one with adequate parenting skills and if this is news to you, you might possibly be an idiot.

Secondly, this "Won't someone think of the children?!" argument assumes that the only conceivable reason anyone has for marrying is to create teeny, tiny, stickier, less potty-trained versions of themselves. In fact, a anti-gay-parenting gay man went as far as to argue that marriage's purpose is not because of love but rather, it's for the regulation of reproduction. Ipso facto, gays shouldn't marry. But even if we treat marriages as purely loveless social contracts with the state, there are still literally more than a thousand reasons for anyone to get legally hitched including tax benefits, family leave from work, visitation and health care proxy rights in hospitals, immigration purposes, joint insurance, and inheritance in absence of a will. So, if you are against gay marriage, you are spitefully denying a gay person from having all these rights your selfishly enjoy.

Besides, if the inability to reproduce disqualifies one from marrying, then why do we allow infertile or sterile, or even menopausal individuals to marry then?

Thirdly, same-sex couples are about 3 times as likely as opposite-sex couples to adopt. To say that gays cannot be good parents is to say that they shouldn't raise children, even adopted ones who were abandoned by their biological parents. I mean, more gay parents means that more unloved, unwanted children will find a home, right? What is wrong with that? By this fact alone, I am convinced that the anti-gay-marriage people who exhorts us most strongly to think about the children are the ones who give the least thought to children of all. It seems to me that people who opposes same-sex parenting would rather children be raised in orphanages rather than in a family with two loving, doting parents. They only care about children as far as they can exploit them in rhetorics to fight gay marriage and gay parenting, and I find that to be a particularly vile brand of hypocrisy. What they are actively doing undermines the hope of children for better lives, all while they pretend to be concerned for them.

So, really, who are the real abominations here?



P.S. No, I'm not going to put a rainbow filter on my display picture. I daresay I did a wee bit more than that.



Thought about the children,
k0k s3n w4i

High Horses Are Meat Too, Vegans, So Stop Riding Them to Death

"In the strict scientific sense we all feed on death - even vegetarians."

Mr. Spock

For the longest time, more out of pure laziness than any other excuse, I have taken the word of a vegan acquaintance of mine and assumed that veganism is very much better for the environment than eating meat. At first blush, the maths do check out - farm animals belong to a higher trophic level & them smelly cows do fart a lot - so logically, meat production necessitates a higher burden on our resources than, for example, the humble workaday cabbage. The full vegan pitch is far longer and far more irritating, but that's really not my job to present it - or at least, it isn't anymore. While I lack the resolve to commit myself (and my family) to a vegan diet, I do try however to be mindful of the amount of delicious flesh I consume everyday and visit a local vegetarian joint semi-regularly. Whenever the topic of veganism and sustainability comes up, I just repeat what I learned from that vegan acquaintance of mine and shared much of the same references he shared with me. I recognise that I am holding out because bacon is fucking delicious of selfish reasons but I am all for more people embracing veganism if they are willing to take the plunge - though admittedly, I cannot reliably quantify the carbon footprint that will result from the combined annoyance experienced by us omnivores with the population surge of even more vegan prats, so there's that caveat.

Anyway, I have no cause to question what my herbivorous friend had told me (for years) until that same friend confronted me again regarding my choice to stick with a omnivore's diet this week on Twitter. Now, I am aware of the backfire effect - people confronted about their beliefs tended to dig in and double down rather than change their minds - and I am sure that that is precisely what occurred to me as that vegan friend prattled on and on about what a irresponsible jerk I am for not giving up meat.

However, in the process of backfiring and digging my trenches, I was forced to unearth and re-examine a lot of "facts" I had taken for granted and parroted in the veganism slash sustainability debates and in the process, I learned, for one thing, more about how alarmist vegans are great at cherry-picking stats and numbers to inflate their own contribution and sense of importance to the environment. I told that vegan friend that what he was doing to me was probably futile, given that I already agree with him on his talking points but because he couldn't shut up about how shitty a person I am for enjoying a chicken dinner, I went the extra mile to vindicate my own position. The sum result of all his high-horsing is that I now hold a less favourable position on veganism. Nice job breaking it, vegan.

The reason supplied to me for my tongue lashing from the vegan was because I tweeted a photo of my dinner. In the photo was a cut of chicken katsu I fried up myself. The vegan said,

And it triggered an urge in me to punch him in the teeth. True story.

"Trigger" is a word that is appropriated by the internet from psychiatric language and in my line of work, we usually use it to refer to "trauma triggers" and it is a serious thing. Judging from the vegan's words, I sincerely doubt that he was "triggered" in the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder sense of the word (just as I sincerely doubt he was actually diagnosed with PTSD). Furthermore, I pointed out to him that he is completely surrounded by "triggers" everywhere he goes considering that more than 95% of people eat meat and images of meat permeates the world. He should be a nervous wreck by now if he was genuinely triggered. Way to go in cheapening the experience of shell-shocked veterans and victims of sexual assault.

Speaking of "triggers" (in the annoying internet jackasses sense of the word), I went out of my way and ate a huge slab of sirloin steak last night after having abstained from beef for months - as a reward to myself for having suffered a bout of vegan evangelism. In fact, the last time I ate an honest-to-goodness beef steak was literally years ago. I am not even joking here: all that talk about the unsustainability of beef actually "triggered" me to crave for a medium-rare side of cow which I have been missing.

Here is what I had last night,

"Vegetarian: A person who eats only side dishes." ~Gerald Lieberman

But let's get to the meat of this post, which are mostly things which environmento-vegan rangers tend to gloss over or omit in their guilt-tripping sales pitch, in no particular order:




Fertilisers.

One of the basic things we can all agree on is that when applied intelligently, mixed farming (crops plus livestock) is the more sustainable model in food production. One very obvious advantage is that manure from the animals can be used to fertilise the plants but according to this report by the USDA,  only a measly 5% fraction of total planted acreage even received manure and it's not because manure is in short supply. In fact, the US is drowning in so much shit that it threatens to be an environmental disaster if handled improperly. Manure is cheaper than commercial synthetic fertiliser, so what gives?

The reason why all that poo doesn't get spread around more is because 52% of harvested crop acres in the US are on farms with no livestock production at all and the cost of transporting that much crap is proving to be a deterrent for most farmers. So, they settled on using synthetic fertilisers. And if vegans have their way, we would end up fertilising 100% of our crops with synthetic fertiliser since they want to to put an end to animal farming.

And what is synthetic fertiliser made out of? Non-renewable resources like natural gas. That's sustainable alright.



The Emission Impact of Farm Animals Versus Plants.

Cows and sheep are flatulent and they fart more than soy and corn. Agreed. But what are the numbers really like, and how do we come to a more nuanced understanding of the issue without resorting to ultimata of utter meat rejection?

Here is a chart on production emissions (including emissions from processing, transportation, et cetera after the food leave the farms) from the EWG,

Okay, what are people doing to potatoes after they leave the farm?

Lamb meat is the greatest offender here, with the production of 39.2 kilos of CO₂ per kilo of consumed food with beef winning silver in the agricultural fart Olympics at 27 kilos. The reason why lamb generate so much emissions per kilo is because they produce less edible meat relative to the sheep's live weight - so, aside from putting a stop to lamb chops we should really boycott wool clothing as well. Also, lamb makes up less than 1% of the meat consumed by Americans anyway so giving up sheep-meat isn't going to matter much at all.

You'll notice immediately that after ruminants (hoofed animals with 4-chambered fart-generating stomachs), the emission levels dropped precipitously when we look at other sources of meat protein like pork and chicken. And just eyeballing the chart, you can tell that pork produces about 6 times and chicken about 3 times as much emissions as most plant-based food. Which is still significant, if you ignore the fact that meat is faaar more calorie-dense compared to vegetables and grains. I mean, if you stop eating beef, you can’t replace a kilogram of it (which has 2,280 calories) with a kilogram of broccoli (340 calories). You have to replace it with 6.7 kilograms of broccoli to make up the caloric difference.

So, a fairer and more science-literate comparison would be to look at emissions per 1,000 calories,

Perspective, bitches.

You'll notice right away that tomatoes and broccoli farming actually produce MORE emissions than farmed salmon, pork, chicken, canned tuna, milk, yogurt, cheese and eggs. But do you hear vegans bothering people who eat brocolli and tomatoes? No. Why? Studies showed that it's because they are oversized, wet, flopping hypocrites.

Of course, vegans will moan "What about methane?!" Yes, methane is way worse than CO₂ when it comes to comparative impact on climate change.

I prefer chicken anyway.

You can see in the above graph that chicken produces nil enteric methane emissions. That's because physiologically, birds don't need to fart. While I can sort of see the point for abstaining or decreasing beef intake, I don't see any compelling environmental reason to give up poultry at all.

There is a reason why scaremongering documentaries like Cowspiracy place a lot of focus on beef production (aside from embarrassingly bad puns) because ruminant farming is an order of magnitude worse than poultry farming. While it is not outright lying, it is propaganda that downplays the fact that ruminant farming is exceptional in their negative impact on the environment and presenting numbers which look dire on face value, while playing pretendsies that a vegan diet is always better - ignoring the fact that pork and chicken can actually be better choices than some vegetarian alternatives. But of course, he chose to badger me because of my chicken katsu instead of giving his equally insufferable vegan friends friends pain for their marinara gluten-free pasta dinners.

Will my vegan friend give up tomatoes and broccoli and start eating chicken and pork again when faced with this evidence? I don't think so.



Vegan Culture's Obsession with Organic Farming, Fad Superfoods and Fighting GMO's.

There is no hard way to determine just how many vegetarians and vegans buy into organic farming - and how many of them unfairly malign the use of genetically modified organisms (GMO), but one can't help but notice a huge overlap in ideology there if one frequents blogs or pages which advocate plant-centric diets. It makes sense since they generally approach orthorexic levels of finickiness and scrutiny when it comes to what they stuff their faces with.

Organic farming produces about 20 to 30% less yield compared to conventional farming practices. That means that for every 100 kilos of zucchinis we produce through conventional farming practices, we can only produce 70 to 80 organic zucchinis.

Also, GMO use had also lead to higher yields and more sustainable farming practices like decreased reliance on pesticides and yes, prevented 203 million tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere from less soil disturbance as well. If anything, I think genetically modifying our food organisms will be how we eventually solve the sustainability problem.

And every new "superfood" that these eat-right clowns buy into (quinoa, chia seeds,
açaí berries, goji berries, et cetera) will in turn create demand for these products and thus, cause the opening of more farms to accommodate these specialised crops. Yes, non-vegans do get sucked into these fads as well but these are all technically plant-based food.

Now, my vegan friend may not necessarily buy into organic farming practices (and all its associated woo) and fad diets nor is he against GMO, as far as I know. I bring this up because this is one of those unquantified elements that put into perspective how the vegan movement isn't necessarily as great as they say it is when it comes to sustainability. Individual vegans may even be worse than an average omnivore like me who is pro-GMO, anti-organic farming and gets most of my meat protein from chicken - particularly if that vegan eats a lot of tomatoes and broccoli.



Vegan Evangelism Isn't Going to Work.

I have no doubt that one day in the distant radiant future, humanity will no longer butcher any animal for their food (I am wagering on flawless, sustainable lab grown meat) but until that day arrives, we will be eating our hoofed and beaked friends for many decades or even centuries to come. So, on a pragmatic and practical level, I asked him how successful he is as spreading the Good News about veganism.

His reply was this:

In his mind, rousing inspirational music must be playing while a cape billows dramatically behind him.

That tells me that I am dealing with someone who puts ideology above actually focusing on doing what is actually effective.

After much dodging, he later said he had only convinced just 3 or 4 people to adopt veganism in all the years of his "activism". I have no way of knowing if the converts did so due to his highly annoying proselytising or if those 3 or 4 individuals were going to go vegan anyway, but I will generously give him the benefit of the doubt. Still, at a rate of about one conversion a year, he would still have done almost no good at the end of his life, however prolonged he imagine it would be thanks to his vegan diet. He would have annoyed a great many people though.

We also know that throwing evidence in the face of people largely doesn't work, as this study on the effectiveness of vaccination information campaigns suggests (that article even mentions the "backfire effect"). I mean, I already buy the party line that veganism is more sustainable and environmentally-friendly and I still refuse to adopt vegetarianism because it meant that I would have to sacrifice my quality of life. This is a losing battle. I ought to know - I counsel alcoholics and nicotine addicts everyday in my day job. I am technically at the "precontemplation" stage in regards to giving up meat and if I already agree that meat-eating is less sustainable than eating greens, then the right thing to do is to step back and be available if I actually want more information - but instead, this vegan friend's persistence had actually caused me to be less convinced than before.

Likewise, burning fossil fuels is bad but hardly anyone is willing to give up the convenience of modern transportations or electric lights. The solution to that is creating more fuel-efficient cars (or developing equally good electric cars), inventing more energy-saving light bulbs, investing in nuclear power or resorting to renewable energy sources like solar or wind. Doing the equivalent of screaming on street corners with a sandwich board pronouncing the doom of the world if we do not "repent" by stopping the use of cars or the consumption of meat is actually counter-productive (especially if it comes with insults implying I am irresponsible or evil or smelly) and it belies a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature: most of us will do what is easy rather than what is necessary. So real, practical solutions would have to come at no cost to our comfort in order for them be popular enough to make a significant difference. Adoption rate is key and king.



Veganism is not the Solution.

There are a million aspects of our lives which we can tweak to reduce our impact on the environment and on climate change but vegans like this Twitter friend of mine who harrassed me are disproportionately focused on their personal demons in their advocacy (meat, in this case).

You know what is far, far worse than eating meat? Having children. You can drive all the Priuses and eat all the kale in the world but that is but a drop in the ocean when you compare that to the carbon footprint of reproduction. I think all these vegans making sustainability arguments should sterilise themselves if they think that us omnivores aren't doing enough for the environment because they too are doing a half-assed job as well. It brings to mind this parable that Mencius told about a soldier who ran 50-paces away from the battlefield calling his fellow who ran 100-paces a coward (五十步笑百步).

In fact, I did say as much. I told that vegan friend to go kill himself if he really cares about the environment so much. To that, he said,

I nearly asked him if it "triggered" him because he attempted or contemplated suicide before,
but I realised that I have stopped caring by this point.

We had been enjoying an omnivorous diet since time immemorial and we never had a problem with animal husbandry until recent times because - get this - meat is not the problem. It is a herring and it is red. The reason why meat farming is unsustainable (and eventually, crops farming as well) is because this is actually the toll that the continuously rising human population is having on this planet.

That's the fucking problem. Fix that.



Conclusion.

I try to minimise my own effect on the environment whenever I can if it does not come at a sacrifice in my quality of life. For example, I reject plastic bags whenever I shop but I'd still accept one if I really need it. I am mindful of the amount of meat I consume, both for environmental and health reasons. After the sialic acid Neu5Gc in red meat was found last year to be implicated in the increased risk of cancer, I have further reduced my already infrequent indulgence in red meat. When I bought home appliances recently for my new house, I tried to get the most energy efficient ones. And I decided to only have one child, and that alone already qualifies me for a higher horse than pretty much every vegan who birthed two kids or more. I make many of these little decisions everyday that counts towards my total impact on our world but to demonise one aspect of my life - my homecooked chicken katsu (which was delicious, by the way) - is incredibly misguided, unhelpful and tone deaf.

I am an atheist and I believe that this is the only life I will ever get to experience. I certainly don't intend to live it without all the reasonable comfort and pleasures I can get out of it. I don't want the trouble of limiting my culinary and epicurean experience, making sure I am getting enough Vitamin B12 through supplementation, or being a perpetual pain of the ass of a guest with "special considerations" at every group meal, party or wedding - all in service of a poorly thought out, mostly masturbatory non-solution to a serious issue.



Thinks vegans are pricks now,
k0k s3n w4i

Going Bump at Night

"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"She's been having hallucinations and thought she's possessed," the medical officer on the other end told me. "We are admitting her for observation - in case it is really endometritis - but we would appreciate it if you can come and review her. She seems distressed though. Afraid. Especially after we told her that she would be admitted."

18 year old Malay woman. Just given birth to her first child a few days ago. Judging from the brief blurb my O&G colleague gave me, it might mean postpartum psychosis. It was 10 PM and I was not thrilled considering that I had to chase my last postpartum psychosis patient down a long hallway to stop her from "rescuing" her baby from the nursery.

I quickly found the ward and the patient's bed and I saw that both the patient's husband and mother was helping her to settle down. I know I should never make snap judgements from simple once-overs but the girl I was suppose to see appeared a lot saner than I thought she would be. Her name, for the purpose of this article, is Ruya.

After introducing myself, I interviewed everyone and this was the story I was given: When Ruya was twelve, her grandmother witnessed her rising from her bed after she had fallen asleep. She then tried to leave her room when her frightened grandmother gave her an urgent shake, jolting  her out of her blank, trance-like state. Ruya herself was surprised to find herself out of her bed and remembered none of her actions preceding her awakening. "It was like waking up from sleep," she told me.

Throughout the years, this odd nocturnal behaviour recurred alongside frequent nightmares. Ruya's baffled and terrified family then sought out the help of bomohs, shamans and medicine men who confirmed their worst suspicions - Ruya was being plagued by djinns and demons which possesses her to steal her away. However, nothing these witch doctors do could free Ruya from their clutches. "The spirits are too strong," they said in their failure.

Finally, they came into the care of a Muslim imam - a man they refer to simply as the Ustaz. The Ustaz gave them the same supernatural diagnosis and have told them that over the years, the spirits plaguing Ruya had multiplied in numbers due to the machinations of vengeful bomohs they have stopped patronising. And, with the help of this imam, the incidence of grand-theft-Ruya decreased as she grew older. Then it stopped altogether. Impressed by the spiritual mojo that this imam displayed, the family converted to Islam because clearly, it is the One True Religion™, is it not? Why else would Ruya's night visitors loosen their grips on her?

Keeping my face as straight as I could, I asked one very critical question: Did any of these "paranormal activities" occurred when Ruya is awake?

"No."

"My O&G colleague told me that you appeared very distressed and upset that you have to be admitted in this hospital. Why is that?" I asked further.

Ruya said that that's because she was afraid that she might have to stay in the hospital overnight alone. The Ustaz have apparently told her that she must never ever be alone or the spooks and djinns will take the opportunity to assault her again.

"Please tell O&G to discharge me tomorrow! Or my mother will have to sleep here with me for another night!"

At that moment, I felt very angry but since I'm a professional, I smiled instead. I started off by telling them that there are a lot of schools of knowledge and I happen to be from a school of medicine. I told them that what I know might bring Ruya some relief and proceeded to explain that Ruya is (or was) a somnambulist i.e. she walks in her sleep. Sleepwalking is very common in children and as a child grows older, the episodes will naturally decrease in frequency, as observed in Ruya's case.

After my brief lecture, Ruya's mother thanked me and mistakenly addressed me with the honorific of "Ustaz" (which I declined politely). Ruya's husband however incorporated the information I have given him into his worldview and agreed that the devious ghosts and ghoulies have been using sleepwalking to lure Ruya out of her bedroom. Holy crap, you can never win with these people!

Realising that this is a battle I don't want to fight so late in the evening, I politely excused myself, went down to the labour room and told the O&G team that they have just referred a case of sleepwalking to me. I gave Ruya an appointment, but not for her somnambulism.

Anyway, how did the imam "know" that it was evil spirits that's plaguing Ruya? Was he lying or did he fool himself into thinking he is able to detect supernatural entities just because he went to Qur'an school or something? And boy he must have considered it a great success to convert an entire family to his brand of magical thinking. Had Ruya's family consulted a Christian pastor or a Taoist priest just as her symptoms were abating, they would be following a very different god today.

I am frequently told that I should leave people's beliefs alone because, why take them away if it comforts them? Ruya is one of the reasons why. Thanks to pure superstitions peddled by the shamans and the imam, a young woman had become so afraid of the world around her that she must be accompanied by family members at all times. And this is not the first time I have one of my patients harmed by one of these charlatans.

This is the 21st fucking century, people. Stop being afraid of the dark.



He who bumps back,
k0k s3n w4i

The Lies They Tell at Church

"The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient Mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud."

Age of Reason (1794) by Thomas Paine

Due to the confidentiality surrounding the parties involved in this story, I will be assigning aliases to them in the telling of this tale. It surrounds a woman whom I shall call Mary.

Mary is unwell. She goes for regular appointments at the psychiatric clinic I serve at and requires medications in order to ensure that she functions well enough to stay in her job in a government agency (and as we all know, government agencies often go to heroic lengths to avoid sacking any of their employees). If you are unable to perform in the position you fill, you will be invited to fill a less demanding position. If you can't do anything at all, there is a good chance they will keep you around anyway just so they can keep paying you. As it happened, due to the nature of her illness, Mary received the former option - she osmosed from department to department till she finally sank into a position way below her qualifications and pay grade (a glorified office girl), but was still privileged with her former salary.

Mary is schizophrenic. She believes that she is communing directly with her Christian God, and as House M.D. once said, "You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic." Believe it or not, this is actually the rule of thumb we follow in Psychiatry when we are dealing with patients who heavily involve religion in their psychopathology (though my experience with religious people informs me that there are acres and acres of grey area between piety and insanity).

One day, during a church event, Mary experienced something which she would later refer to as a "miracle". While she was praying, she felt the Holy Spirit entered her body and healed her mind. Believing that she was "fixed", she stopped taking her medication - and declared that she felt no differently. Without much more ado, she approached her pastor, a very influential man amongst the Christ-loving Iban people of Kuching, to relate to him about her allegedly miraculous recovery.

A reasonable man would tell Mary to go see her psychiatrist for a professional assessment, but the pastor is not a man of reason but rather, a man of faith. And having faith means that one is accepting of absurd propositions without feeling the need to ask for evidence. So, the pastor put Mary at a podium on a stage in front of hundreds of Mary's fellow churchgoers so she can testify and witness to them regarding her "miracle", thus enforcing the pastor's flock's belief that they live in a world where magic is possible and cementing Mary's own conviction that she was truly cured and that Jesus was totally speaking to her for realsies. Overnight, she became a mini-celebrity in her church and stopped coming to our clinic altogether.

What the pastor and all these churchgoing men, women and children may never know is that some weeks later, Mary had full-blown psychotic episode at work so her superiors brought her to casualty where I attended to her. The moment she saw me, she commanded me to bow to her for she (she insisted) was the Daughter of God. I told her, tongue in cheek, that I cannot do what she asked of me because I am an atheist and that I don't believe in her. She then tried to convince me of her omniscience by (wrongly) guessing at private details of my life. When she was in the wards, she claimed to have healing powers and were trying (unsuccessfully) to heal the other psychotic patients staying there. One memorable night, she used the ward's telephone to call me. She spoke gruffly, trying comically to impersonate my male Head of Department to order me to stop her medications. When she refused to pass the phone back to the nurse on duty, I hung up on her, called the other phone in the ward, and told my staff to give her a shot of midazolam to punch her lights out.

Will the pastor put Mary in front of his congregation now to set the record straight? That he had borne false witness to an ersatz miracle and had inadvertently fed lies to his godly flock? That Mary is still very much sick and requires psychiatric treatment?

Of course not. And worse than misleading his congregants, he did something that we should never do to delusional patients - he confirmed Mary's delusions, telling her that the divine revelations she had been receiving are real, and that her doctors have shit-for-brains for insisting that the voices she hears are symptoms of schizophrenia. Now, she no longer trust us and refuses all medication we want to give her. She may even lose what's left of her job and her steady income. Thank you very much, pastor!

Doesn't this make you think? Just how many miracles declared from the pulpits, like Mary's, have the same sob centre covered in a shiny coat of bullshit?

Mary's story is not unique. It is not even uncommon. I share this story because I want everyone to know that faith is not a virtue and why I feel the need to criticise it whenever I encounter any expression thereof. Seriously, it doesn't take a genius to realise that believing in something without evidence is a Bad Idea yet, for most people in the world, this gullibility is celebrated. Faith is a gateway drug to lazy, uncritical thinking - for why should anyone question the existence of unicorns when they have already unquestioningly accepted the existence of fairies?

There are no such things as miracles. There are just people stupid enough to believe that there are.



Faithless,
k0k s3n w4i

The Sins of Our Fathers

"We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society."

Alan Wilson Watts

This is a Father's Day post.

One of the questions that people asked me the most after they found out that I had my first-born son take his mother's surname was, "How did your parents take it?"

That is an important question because I am Chinese and the very core of Chinese culture is the Confucian concept of filial piety. Disobedience to one's parents and ancestry is considered to be one of the most unforgivable sins a Chinese person can commit. Ensuring the continuity of one's family name - the 姓 or surname - is a sacred duty that is entrusted upon all Chinese men. Friends and colleagues asked me about my parents opinion on my son's surname because more than anything, they wanted to know how my family could accept my act of sacrilege.

I have always given vague answers to that question and occasionally, outright evaded it. What I usually say is, "I have discussed it with my parents before Darwin was born. He is my son and that decision was mine to make." That's usually enough to placate most busybodies. It also has the advantage of being absolutely true without actually revealing how my parents reacted to my, how should I phrase it... blood betrayal?

Fact is, that's exactly how it was taken: a betrayal of one's family and blood (never mind the fact that Chinese women are expected to "betray" their "blood" every day). My mother disowned me, said that I did it to hurt her and cut me off from my inheritance. One of my favourite aunts said many harsh things to me over the phone and we have never talked since. My father alternately blamed me, my wife and my wife's family, lashing out indiscriminately like a wounded proud animal, spitting many hate-filled utterances that I would never have imagined could come out of his usually gentle, soft-spoken mouth. He had, in his moment of outrage, called his one and only grandson a bastard.

I don't blame them and I certainly don't blame my father. In many ways, his reaction was understandable. The weight of thousands of years of Chinese tradition compelled him to denounce my action as nothing less than a complete abomination, and it is just as hard for him to put down that cultural burden as it is for a person raised as a Christian to blaspheme in the name of Jesus or a Muslim to eat bacon. From what he said, I gathered that he saw me as a weak, placating man who was either going beyond all reason to please my wife or was somehow bought over by my wife's family via monetary means. In a way, his disappointment in me; his perception of me as an avaricious, unprincipled coward was what cut me the deepest in this entire sorry feud.

That's because everything he accused me of is the opposite of that person who did what I did. I risked being disowned and disinherited for what I believe in. I stood my ground against the monstrous momentum of that thousands of years of Chinese tradition my father and family are yoked to when it crashed headlong into the unyielding, unbreaking backbone of my most cherished principles.

Growing up, I was fed a steady diet of TVB Chinese period dramas that impressed upon me the importance of one's family name which, in many ways, is synonymous with a person's honour. Only males have the exclusive power to pass down the surname and the few rare times the reverse occurred had always been depicted in the context of an impoverished, degenerate man changing his name and marrying into a wealthier, more powerful family which has no sons to pass the family name down. As you can see from my own experience, not much has changed since the Qin dynasty.

This patriarchal practice forms the root of the disproportionate treatment of men and women throughout the annals of Chinese history. Female children, with their inability to continue their family's line and the combined cost of raising them and the cost of dowry when they are married away, are considered to be net losses to a family or "money-losing enterprises", to loosely translate a charming Cantonese idiom. This devaluation of the female gender directly led to one of the darkest elements of Chinese traditions and culture: two thousand years of gendercide committed against the female sex.

Till today, and perhaps aggravated by China's one-child policy and the lower earning power of women, the Chinese people are still killing and aborting female infants to the tune of millions. The sex ratio at birth (SRB) of China in 2005 was recorded at 121 males to 100 females, rising drastically from 106:100 in 1979. By 2020, men are expected to outnumber women by 30 million. This is what our Chinese "culture" and "tradition" of passing down family names exclusively through the male line represent to me. Our Y-chromosomal surnames are the symbolic bloody knives that have killed hundreds of millions of innocent girls over two dozen centuries of deadly sexism.

So tell me: how can I brand these sins of our fathers into the very identity of my innocent baby boy? How can I meekly comply and add to the silent assent for this "traditional" idea that men are better than women, that I am somehow superior to my wife? Am I not a man of principle?

And I assure you that more than anybody else, I have considered the consequences that might be visited on Darwin because of his unconventional name. Will he be teased or even bullied for it? Will people question his legitimacy behind his back or even to his face? Will he hate me for singling him out by giving him his mother's name instead of mine?

A 9-month-old Darwin, wondering how that piece of cardboard would taste like.

I don't have the answers to those question. What I do know is that I do not want him to grow up thinking that men are more important than women. And I certainly do not want him to carry the same two thousand years old cultural burden my father did which resulted in the murder of countless baby girls and made a grandfather call his innocent baby grandson a bastard.

Besides, what the fuck is Chinese culture anyway? Some sinologists have argued that the earliest Chinese people might have even practiced matrilineal naming conventions because when we look at the Chinese character for "surname" (姓) we can see that it is made up of the radicals of woman (女) and born (生). I neither read or write Chinese, nor worship any of my forebears' deities but that is somehow okay? And why are we wearing T-shirts, jeans and Western-style dresses instead of changsans and qípáos?

We have to admit to ourselves that the "Chinese culture" of any century is going to appear strange, offensive and even blasphemous when examined by a Chinese person from a preceding century. That is because culture is a constantly evolving construct and anyone who tries to defend any cultural tradition as the "correct" version is going to fail inevitably before the jackboots of progress.

My parents are not the enforcers of Chinese culture but rather, its victims. Their beliefs which formed the barrier that separated them from getting to know their only grandchild are not their own beliefs, but that of generations past - all of them insolently making little changes to their cultural traditions every step of the way anyway. Now, nine months after Darwin arrived into this world, my mother have since let it go and have chosen to fully embrace him. As for my old man, I texted my him this morning with an awkward, tentative Father's Day wish. I have not given up on him. I once met a beef noodle seller in Subang Jaya who recognised me and told me that my father is one of the nicest, most decent men he knew, and refused to let me pay for my lunch. I know that. Deep inside my father beats the heart of a good man.

"Thank you, son," he replied.

It's a start. Perhaps one day, he might even be proud of what I did.



RELATED POSTS:
Being a Woman in Malaysia
Naming Darwin



On both sides of Father's Day,
k0k s3n w4i