I AM NOT INDEBTED TO THE SINGAPORE GOVERNMENT

DO YOU STILL NOT

UNDERSTAND ME --

YET, GENTLEMEN?

Themes from the

Middle Kingdom:

Of Gratification; Gratefulness;

Gratuity; Gravy;

Gratuitousness;

and Sex -- And The Discerning

Non-Political Man,

The Serious and Thoughtful

Writer, The Compassionate

Human Being

and The Thinking Senior Citizen

I DECLARE:

I AM NOW -- AS I COULD NOT

BEFORE -- ABLE TO COME TO

TERMS WITH WHAT I

HAVE BECOME (AS A WELL-TUNED

AND DISCERNING LISTENER

TO BOTH CONTEMPORARY

POP MUSIC AND THE ROCK SONGS

FROM THE late 1960s

AND the 1970s)

THOUGHT-IN-PROGRESS :

WHEN A GENTLE, REFINED AND (NOW)

MANLY WRITER HAS BEEN

THROUGH SO MUCH SUFFERING AND

DEPRIVATION (AND HUMILIATION) --

FOR MORE THAN 36 YEARS NOW --

WITH MUCH EXPECTED UNHAPPINESS

AND WITH JUSTIFIED AND

JUSTIFIABLE UNWILLINGNESS

TO ACCEPT HIS OWN ALLEGED

"RESPONSIBILITY" FOR MAKING

HIMSELF INTO SUCH A VULNERABLE

VICTIM OF

SUCH AN UNACCEPTABLE

CONDITION,

PLIGHT AND PREDICAMENT --


THEN THIS IS OBVIOUSLY GOING TO SURPRISE YOU!

HERE IT GOES:

I am getting more and more :

(1) wonderful admirers;

(2) great supporters;

(3) intelligent readers;

(4) discerning guests;

(5) distinguished visitors;

(6) obliging girlfriends;

(7) open-minded female lovers;

(8) keen acquaintances;

(9) serious readers;

(10) thinking followers;

(11) loyal and true defenders;

(12) liberated women-friends;

(13) energetic lovers;

(14) inspiring helpers;

(15) much-need benefactors;

(16) bona fide bankers and financiers;

(17) geuine sympathizers;

(18) brave and kind (but foreign) magazine publishers;

(19) courageous and compassionate (but foreign) book publishers.

I am serious! On a more upbeat and positive note, when was the last time
you had spend a genuinely meaningful moment of companionship and of
conversation? Was it your time spent trying to exchange meaningful items
of information and ideas in general with someone you know? Did she
support you in your effortds to get through the day -- and night -- with
too much worries? Did she assist you in your work as a writer?

Was she grateful to you for having such an amorous, intelligent and honest
boyfriend, partner, and lover like yours truly?

Individual Identity and Society in the Postmodern Capitalist System

Subjects, Totalitarianism, Mass Culture,

Capitalism and Modern Societies

The postmodern position on individual identity and society (as an early statement): the world is fragmented and in a flux--in which individuals are liberated from any "repressive" notions about the rationality, unity, or stability of the self.

The modernity's capitalist system, in which repression and dominance are lived by the people, shows up the power relationship between modern society and individual desire!

Subjects and their pleasures are defined and controlled by the institutions of the modern state (unless or except if you're still individualists!). Capitalism has infiltrated all of existence. It has taken away from people -- except and excluding all those who are still individualists -- the possibility of experiencing genuine freedom, expression and satisfasction. All desires under capitalism are "fake", "mediated" desires. (For those who are still NOT yet SUBJECTS in the system, this is not necessarily true!)

Modernity has expanded communication technologies and consumerism into our lives--which are central to an insidious kind of totalitarianism. Thus totalitarianism produces "false needs" and seeks to penetrate consciousness itself--neutralizing all voices of dissent, and turning us all into interchangeable components of the capitalist machine -- except yours truly, whose voice of conscience and dissent remains clear, strong, vibrant, loud and still uncompromised -- after all these years -- by the Capitalist system!

Even in democratic societies, mass culture acts as an authoritarian force which reduces people to passive social conformity. It injects the capitalist status quo into people's unconscious--making its victims lose their individuality, and persuades them (its victims) to willingly accept mass culture's values!