on conservatism, part I (edited)

i don't believe what i just heard on the channel 5 news. there's actually a lawsuit going on, right here in singapore, involving an exorcism.

an exorcism! i won't even provide a link because it's so preposterous.

so after winding back the clocks from civil liberties to claim that gay sex is like shoving a straw up your nose to drink and inherently harmful to your body (NMP Thio Li-ann with her ill-deserved law degree from harvard), we now have an attempt to purge a human body of spirits in novena church, an act which was last officially sanctioned performed [whoops kels] by the catholic church in the 17th century.

we are that mediaeval. in spite of my friends, my opinion of christians in singapore just keeps going down, down, down. ian has observed more than once that christianity in singapore tends to be a middle-class-and-above religion, and usually corresponds with slightly higher education than the general population. no arguments there, but it seems every passing incident vindicates my theory of the mindset bottleneck more and more.

i can't even remember when i came up with that hypothesis; it was so long ago, and i doubt i ever gave it a name—at least not this name in particular. but i do remember invoking it, explicitly or implicitly, in any number of monographs i have written. the line of thought goes like this: despite having a thoroughly open mindset to begin with, as a person (or, in aggregate, a people) starts to get educated, his mindset will narrow sharply, and only gradually widen as he progresses up the educational ladder. the point at which it throws itself fully open again is the attainment of what has been termed, in religious contexts, as Enlightenment.

the reasoning is simple, and the assumptions more so. to simplify, the former is that, in the beginning, man is without any knowledge of the world, and is thus acutely aware of his limits, and bears no preconceptions; he looks upon the world with curiosity in order to find out more, and neither judges or prejudges because he is unable to without a yardstick. as he learns, however, he finds out what is usual and normal, and what is not; ideas then form, based on experience and a dash of logic, as to what ought to be normal. because his knowledge is still severely limited here, his mindset closes to a chokingly narrow state, and only opens in drips and drops as inquiry reveals not just more of the world, but also of the inadequacies of his methods and reasoning. gradually the cumulative effect will build and the enlightenment will arrive, like a hyperbola on a mathematical graph, after the flexion point is reached.

the theory practically traces the history of the western world from the prehistoric ages, through the greeks, romans and their many gods (the classical age is but a highly stylised culmination of the blind feeling that was early learning, and it ended with, among other things, plato sniffing at the ancient greek pederastic custom, and christian theodosius I desecrating the ancient roman pagan religion), the middle ages with its crusades and witch-burnings, the renaissance that brought with it the scientific method and galileo, followed by the enlightenment, which eventually, one might say, led up to the civil liberties revolution of the 1960s.

it doesn't fit the east that well, though. china, india (which other nation gave us the kama sutra?), japan and persia, not to mention the african empires of egypt, mali and assyria, among others, adopted highly liberal—even by today's standards—attitudes towards personal identity, choice and behaviour, all throughout their history (arabia, whose trajectory more closely resembles that of europe, is an exception). using homosexuality as an example, since 377A is so hot now:

1. until mediaeval britain's laws were copied en masse and hence gay sex outlawed in the 17th century by a qing dynasty wishing to ape the west's "modernity" (their idea of "education"), men commonly had intercourse with and married one another; the idiom 吟詩作樂 does not literally mean "compose poetry and make merry", but is a euphemism; the Han emperor Ai (漢哀帝, 劉欣) in 3 BC cut off his sleeve as not to disturb his sleeping (male) lover and contributed "brokensleeve" (斷袖; many others abound—chinese page);
2. up till the meiji restoration, again when western laws were unthinkingly adopted as part of "modernisation", samurai were known, and even encouraged to, engage in homosexual relationships with their daimyo (overlords);
3. even in the 18th century persian male brothels were seen as no different from the female ones: they simply paid tax like any other business; baccha were a common sight in samarkand in 1915 (see Prokudin-Gorskii's photo) and still are now.

a major reason why people suddenly become so short-sighted and narrow-minded is conceit. that smugness, self-righteousness and sense of entitlement suddenly renders a person unwilling and at times unable to accept the viability of another point of view. it is, as i call it, the Chosen-One fallacy: "look, i've discovered/realised/found out this, and my excitement and pride now overshadows all logic. you should see the light of my ways. what? how can you not see it? and what is that ignorant philosophy of yours; how could you believe such tosh?!"

isn't this what is happening in singapore right now? a growing middle class aspires to the ways of the west (rich, advanced, culturally dominant) and adopts christianity as part of the package. but in their eagerness and conceit—"ha, i'm more western than you, and so am more sophisticated; you should follow in my footsteps too, but why can't you see the light?"—commit an error that a little bit of history and understanding of how the law works would've prevented.

and so in reading the replies of some MPs to the petition to repeal 377A, you wonder whether they really understand the distinction between criminal law and morals, and the whole concept of a constitution. the one is intended to prevent or at least discourage harm to society by laying out punishments for transgressors, while the other is a personal checklist against which one measures his own actions and decides whether he is living as he wishes; the constitution guarantees the protection of the rights of minority groups, but by all the cowardly rhetoric about the majority's moral objection it seems as though NMP siew kum hoong was justified in exasperatedly pointing out that "majority" can also be coupled with "tyranny of the".

it is ridiculous to use this "majority" argument now when the government has blithely ignored the will of the majority in the past over so many issues. if it is so concerned about the silent majority's views (admittedly no longer silent after MPs etc. suddenly all burst onto scene to chime in against repealing 377A and to cue conservatives to join in), then why ignore it so often? why insist on racial harmony and equal representation then, since we have a majority of chinese? why build the casinos when so many opposed it too? it poses a greater threat to family values because people can become hooked on gambling; they can't on other people having sex, in this case especially if they are straight. gambling can tempt you and make you neglect your spouse, children, work and much else besides, but how can letting other people have sex?! ludicrous.

inconsistency and selective application of principles (clouded under the term "pragmatism", as we all learnt in social studies) is the key grievance here. it is pragmatic to build the casino because it will earn us money, and you all will get over it soon enough. it is pragmatic to welcome talented gay people to work here, even in the civil service, because we just need them to do a job, and we will make money from the pink dollar. but oh dear, what can we gain from legalising gay sex? we'll just lose a huge bunch of votes from the conservative christians and the surprisingly monolithic muslim community, and then what? nah, we'll just say we won't enforce the law but leave it there as a sop to the abrahamic folk. that should do it. there are so few gay people in comparison anyway and betcha most of them don't vote either. so shush, shush, let's move on. it isn't our core agenda anyway.

and i thought i'd given up political activity.

edit: take that, thio li-ann! alfian gives you a slap in the face.

and according to fridae, she also said the following: "Like an open mouth, an open mind must eventually close on something solid." is it just me, or did that come across as unusually freudian?

kudos, though, to MPs Charles Chong etc. and PM Lee for their progressive thinking. (and no, thio, we do have a customary definition of what is "progressive", so stop twisting words around; we aren't dumb.)