Saturday, April 16, 2005
The Manifesto of a Modern Day Bourgeois
Have you ever found yourself in a situation whereby you feel as if you've been pushed into an inconsequential little corner of humanity, stripped of the right to call your voice your very own; your intellectuality muffled by a forced deafening obmutescence; your very existence reduced to a mere speck of dust by the presence of a figure of perceived higher authority who commands tacit subservience? If your answer to any of these is yes, then perhaps you might be able to relate to what I'm about to write on.
I have been raised as a bourgeois in an orthodox patriarchal-authoritarian Asian family. When you are in a family who holds firmly onto this rather antiquated form of governance, you have to know your place. It's imperative that you understand the hierarachy of power that exists - the head of the family, being the father, has absolute control over everything and any reminiscent authority or its spectre for that matter, is depreciated down the line, from the eldest child right down to the youngest. I am the youngest child in a family of ten children. Hence on the family level, "authority" and "freedom of speech" to me are just lexical ambiguities.
Before you dip your foot into the murky waters of Assumption, rest assured that I am anything but a puppet in a family of proletarians. Silence does not spell consent. Like all political systems, it's a bit of a contradiction, really. I am the undisputed commander of my own free will and as unbelievable as it might seem, throughout my life, I have never really found a reason to rebel. Without being divorced from love and concern, my family adopts a pretty much laissez-faire disposition in my personal life. As far as I am concerned, curfews have been as bona fide as Greek mythology. Hell, I am like a CIA operative - my movements in and out of the house are made clandestine by the shroud of conscious nonchalance. In fact, I used to live in a maisonette and the stairway to (no, not heaven) the main door was virtually concealed from the rest of the house. As I have never been able to adopt the gaudy civility of telling my family where I would be heading to at any point of time, more often than not, they wouldn't know. Call it barbarous disrespect if it helps you sleep at night, I don't care. It's my family, I know better. I know for a fact that though it points towards dysfunctionality, it is actually a mutually unspoken family understanding. Ok, ok...if it is of any comfort, I've always had a pager or a mobile phone they can reach me on in case of emergencies - for instance, if I've run out of a month's supply of shampoo. So...I would have friends calling for me at home, only to be put on hold by whoever it is who answers the call at a particular point of time. It would be three or four successive hollers of, "Az! Your call!", from the lower level of the house, before the family member finally gives up hope of my presence in the vicinity and goes on to relay the unfortunate news to my friend, who, by that time, would have already been well-informed, courtesy of the series of space-penetrating hollers. Nevertheless, this fabricated insouciance of my private life should not be mistaken for disinterest or the lack of love. It is a conscious effort engineered towards the establishment of a sense of reciprocal trust.
But that's all in the individual context.
I do, on the contrary, find solace in the sang-froid of silence as far as decision-makings at the family level are concerned. For I understand with utmost clarity that personal autonomy in my family does not make you God. When decisions have to be made at the family level, like a local police precinct contending for authority with federal agents on national-level issues, that is where my jurisdiction comes to an abrupt halt. Macro-level issues the likes of the family financials and cold wars between siblings at the higher end of the hierarchy are big politics to me. It's my Forbidden City, my anathema. It's like the Money section on The Straits Times - unintelligible gibberish. Sometimes I do not understand the inner workings of those issues; most of the time, I just choose not to. Maybe it's a form of self-preservation. The vociferous dominant voices at the top of the hierarchy would simply drown the whispers of those at the lower end of the authority spectrum. Sure, you can be all evangelical and set out on a crusade to fight for your basic human right to voice out your opinions. But at the end of the day, all that mean shit. I mean, no disrespect to my family, they are the best. But this is the naked truth of the matter which I believe many of you can relate to, be it from the family perspective or that of any other social relationships. Hence, rather than settling for condescending approvals, I have come to the realization that sometimes there is more amplitude in a rhetorical silence than in a silenced jabber. Less is indeed more.
As with many of you guys, I'm sure, I am not a blind follower. I am worldly-wise enough to know that people at the top don't always know what they are doing all the time. Anyone needs a reminder of the situation in Iraq? Enough said. On a side note, whether they would admit to that is another story for another blog entry. That said, I am not a fool who rushes in where angels fear to tread. If I think my family has made a good decision on an issue, I keep my mouth shut. Otherwise, I still keep my mouth shut. Notwithstanding, I have never done anything I wasn't willing to, and I don't intend to start, ever. Neither do I see the need to tell the whole world about it. I believe my family is fully aware of this muted standpoint of mine and there is a sense of implicit approval from them. You don't have to like it, just try not to make it too ostensible.
And so far, this understood agreement has served me well.
Lovefoolosopher
¶ 2:16 AM I have been raised as a bourgeois in an orthodox patriarchal-authoritarian Asian family. When you are in a family who holds firmly onto this rather antiquated form of governance, you have to know your place. It's imperative that you understand the hierarachy of power that exists - the head of the family, being the father, has absolute control over everything and any reminiscent authority or its spectre for that matter, is depreciated down the line, from the eldest child right down to the youngest. I am the youngest child in a family of ten children. Hence on the family level, "authority" and "freedom of speech" to me are just lexical ambiguities.
Before you dip your foot into the murky waters of Assumption, rest assured that I am anything but a puppet in a family of proletarians. Silence does not spell consent. Like all political systems, it's a bit of a contradiction, really. I am the undisputed commander of my own free will and as unbelievable as it might seem, throughout my life, I have never really found a reason to rebel. Without being divorced from love and concern, my family adopts a pretty much laissez-faire disposition in my personal life. As far as I am concerned, curfews have been as bona fide as Greek mythology. Hell, I am like a CIA operative - my movements in and out of the house are made clandestine by the shroud of conscious nonchalance. In fact, I used to live in a maisonette and the stairway to (no, not heaven) the main door was virtually concealed from the rest of the house. As I have never been able to adopt the gaudy civility of telling my family where I would be heading to at any point of time, more often than not, they wouldn't know. Call it barbarous disrespect if it helps you sleep at night, I don't care. It's my family, I know better. I know for a fact that though it points towards dysfunctionality, it is actually a mutually unspoken family understanding. Ok, ok...if it is of any comfort, I've always had a pager or a mobile phone they can reach me on in case of emergencies - for instance, if I've run out of a month's supply of shampoo. So...I would have friends calling for me at home, only to be put on hold by whoever it is who answers the call at a particular point of time. It would be three or four successive hollers of, "Az! Your call!", from the lower level of the house, before the family member finally gives up hope of my presence in the vicinity and goes on to relay the unfortunate news to my friend, who, by that time, would have already been well-informed, courtesy of the series of space-penetrating hollers. Nevertheless, this fabricated insouciance of my private life should not be mistaken for disinterest or the lack of love. It is a conscious effort engineered towards the establishment of a sense of reciprocal trust.
But that's all in the individual context.
I do, on the contrary, find solace in the sang-froid of silence as far as decision-makings at the family level are concerned. For I understand with utmost clarity that personal autonomy in my family does not make you God. When decisions have to be made at the family level, like a local police precinct contending for authority with federal agents on national-level issues, that is where my jurisdiction comes to an abrupt halt. Macro-level issues the likes of the family financials and cold wars between siblings at the higher end of the hierarchy are big politics to me. It's my Forbidden City, my anathema. It's like the Money section on The Straits Times - unintelligible gibberish. Sometimes I do not understand the inner workings of those issues; most of the time, I just choose not to. Maybe it's a form of self-preservation. The vociferous dominant voices at the top of the hierarchy would simply drown the whispers of those at the lower end of the authority spectrum. Sure, you can be all evangelical and set out on a crusade to fight for your basic human right to voice out your opinions. But at the end of the day, all that mean shit. I mean, no disrespect to my family, they are the best. But this is the naked truth of the matter which I believe many of you can relate to, be it from the family perspective or that of any other social relationships. Hence, rather than settling for condescending approvals, I have come to the realization that sometimes there is more amplitude in a rhetorical silence than in a silenced jabber. Less is indeed more.
As with many of you guys, I'm sure, I am not a blind follower. I am worldly-wise enough to know that people at the top don't always know what they are doing all the time. Anyone needs a reminder of the situation in Iraq? Enough said. On a side note, whether they would admit to that is another story for another blog entry. That said, I am not a fool who rushes in where angels fear to tread. If I think my family has made a good decision on an issue, I keep my mouth shut. Otherwise, I still keep my mouth shut. Notwithstanding, I have never done anything I wasn't willing to, and I don't intend to start, ever. Neither do I see the need to tell the whole world about it. I believe my family is fully aware of this muted standpoint of mine and there is a sense of implicit approval from them. You don't have to like it, just try not to make it too ostensible.
And so far, this understood agreement has served me well.
Lovefoolosopher
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As usual..as what Yanni said....excellent!!!
Totally agree with your views. Basically I've given up arguing with my parents long ago. No matter what you say, it's useless...they'll still win. Sometimes I even go through the trouble of getting my aunties or uncles to get the point to them...most of the time, it still didn't work. At one point in time, I even contemplated getting a counsellor to sit in with them, but after thinking through, I decided that I would just be wasting my time.
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Totally agree with your views. Basically I've given up arguing with my parents long ago. No matter what you say, it's useless...they'll still win. Sometimes I even go through the trouble of getting my aunties or uncles to get the point to them...most of the time, it still didn't work. At one point in time, I even contemplated getting a counsellor to sit in with them, but after thinking through, I decided that I would just be wasting my time.
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