On Streets

Here is the piece I wrote for the Pub:


Think of the connecting bridges that ferry our consumerist souls across Central. Rather than enduring the intense sunlight, these bridges suggest that we can take an alternative route in order to steer ourselves away from the crowd and traffic lights. We may embark on our journey from Landmark where it allows us to see a more enchanted world through the shop windows of Paul Smith, Marni, Dries Van Noten, and the likes, wandering towards Alexander House where we betray none of the rituals and sacrifice our credit cards to Dolce & Gabbana, then taking a stroll to the Prince Building, hovering a variety of products, among them expensive mattresses, incense sticks, and Nigella Lawson's kitchenwares, through the hallway surrounded by Giorgio Armani's, passing by The Exchange Square, and finally settling for a film at IFC Palace. How one might easily be seduced to be the victim of consumerism through the human invention of what we call the air-conditioning.

Between the intervals of these bridges, there lies a modern invention called mall, an architecture endowed with a form of utilitarian beauty that conspires to offer all the possible solutions to the human conditions. Though malls may be able to satisfy all our material needs, why are we carpeting the landscape of Hong Kong with works of architecture that only allow us to perform the necessary shopping rituals?

If we are prone to shopping in malls, it is perhaps because we have been inspired by an American sentiment that suggests we could fix our somewhat deeply flawed lifestyles in a compressed environment through consumerism. Our obsession with malls hence reveals our distaste for streets and favours a succession of identical shops rather than fashionable boutiques. It ceases to give birth to what is special and unique and limits our physiological behaviour within a narrow range of already known items, thus once we examine the shops in Tsim Sha Tsui, it might be deemed unnecessary to venture into Causeway Bay.

Streets, on the contrary, tend to surprise us, rather than asking us to circle each floor and encounter the same sets of escalators in the same manner, the main street will deviate itself away and send off many other possible streets that take their own ways. They never cease to surprise us of what is around the next corner or what may be unfolding after our next left turn, as opposed to the predictable nature of malls. Moreover, though with the same type of rubbish bins that devour our used bottles and cans and the same design of traffic lights residing rigidly in the corners, streets could colour the area which makes no allowance for shops, which are identical to those in the malls, but rather, boutiques, which indicate style, that are designated to suit this particular area only, as part of the landscape, instead of being independent of it.

It is, perhaps, easier to draw wisdom from the metaphorical war between nature and technology. Though the modern era seems to have proved that technology has triumphed and that technology and nature are inherently incompatible, but through all works of design, we seem to discover ways to reconcile both, a balance between free will and tyranny, love and civilisation. To extend the analogy, the difference between malls and streets could easily be seen as the difference between what is inside and what is outside. While malls disconnect us from the outer world, namely, the reality, streets seek to reconcile utopianism with realism. Streets may act as a medium, rather than strictly confining us to the utopia where perfect figures are modelling the summer collection, they draw us back to the reality in the midst of delusion that may fool us into thinking that we could carry the clothes as perfect as the models. They create the discrepancy of entering and walking out, allowing us to invest our hope in what is perfect, yet stopping us from losing sight of what is real.


The American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson once in his essay "The Poet" introduces us to a succession of alternative forms of beauty, that is, the beauty of warehouses, railways, and factories. The American artist Edward Hopper also portrays a succession of paintings about cafe, gas stations, trains, and cars. Rather than laying down their judgements of beauty and ugliness according to a traditionally superficial aesthetic logic, they have redefined what is beautiful, ascribing a more "just" and "accurate" aesthetic value to what is common.

I wish to imagine one day which we could appreciate paintings and poems that could portray the same spirit as those made by Emerson and Hopper. We need art that could function for our times, that it could remind us of the gravity of streets, that how the rampant creations of malls may soullessly destroy our love of novelty and steer us away from the real world. We need art that could remind us that our ancestors had once caressed the nature and how malls will shut us out from the reality and damage the value that should be preserved within the human hive.

W

Wine and Friendship

"One reason why I don't drink is because I wish to know when I'm having a good time." - Nancy Astor

Few activities promise us as much happiness as love. If love is the anchor of our happiness, it is because it renders our trivial individual existence unique and allows our life to take on a certain value. Though there are many kinds of love, many seem only to cling obsessively to one specific species of love, namely, romantic love. Undoubtedly, romantic love is of supreme importance in our everyday life. It helps to connect the private spheres of our heart to the ones who could articulate the same feelings in the same degree of sophistication. It encourages a sort of intimacy that may render other forms of love incomparable. However important ideals of a good life romantic love may seek to inspire, does that mean we could reduce other forms of love to a status of inferiority?

Aside from romantic love, friendship may be easily seen as an equivalent of romantic love. Friendship, like romantic love, is based on a contract of mutual equality, rather than evaluating the importance of our friends according to the pyramid of social hierarchy, it conspires to strike a balance between what is good and what is bad within us- that neither any of us is better or worse than the other. Moreover, what puts friendship on the common ground with romantic love is that it conspires to impute similarities rather than differences though it is essentially a mixture of both. Whatever the differences we discover through the process of getting to know each other, a loving relationship is more founded on things which we find agreement on that would seem too churlish to deny that we are not made to understand each other.

Unfortunately, however important friendship may be, few of us conduct deep thoughts on it in the same manner, let alone the questions why we need it and how we should enjoy it and the likes. Speaking of friendship, what Nancy Astor says perhaps deserves our attention and invites us to reflect on the relationship between wine and friendship.

The precise nature of friendship might be hard to pin down, but perhaps the most difficult part of a deep friendship is not about whether one can open up his intimate self to other, but rather, how one might enforce the necessary atmosphere for others to submit the secrets about themselves to our scrutiny. If there is such intrinsic fear of transparency, that is, the fear of our secrets being known, it is because we are not courageous enough to venture alone into the assumption that we might no longer be loved after the secrets have been revealed. But behind this fear of transparency, there lies a more deep-seated fear- that is the judgement on our secrets that will follow, that we are no longer the masters of our own disclosure, that we are ignorant of our own selves. Little wonder why most of us are reluctant to pay a visit to psychologists.

However, to allow our friends to rationally examine our characters is not to take pride on our own inability to fathom ourselves. The idea that we may know ourselves better than others may fool us into generating egoistic and self-centred assumptions about ourselves. But what could inspire us to open up the private spheres in our hearts?

If there is something that may prompt us to risk exposing our unlovable elements to others, then perhaps we should not undermine what the role of wine has to play in a deep friendship. Though at one level, as Nancy Astor remarked, drinking wine may prevent us from having a good time, but at another level it also suggests that we could relax ourselves with the liberty to express what holds true in our hearts. To get drunk is to disregard social etiquette. Social etiquette is founded on the assumption that we must only reveal what is best within us, requiring us to live up to the expectations of others. If getting drunk runs counter to social convention, it is perhaps because its unaesthetic quality stems not from offering what is best within us, but rather, our whole selves, among them our good and bad qualities altogether. It is also precisely because of this unaesthetic quality that may require the charity of others to be generous towards what is usually cordoned off as private. It is premised on the assumption that others always suffer from the rigid inability to integrate the good with the bad.

But perhaps Nancy Astor has forgotten how to get drunk moderately. Oscar Wilde once said, "A true friend stabs you in the front." If friendship is about opening up our intimate selves, then wine might be the essential catalyst to deepen such friendship. It urges us to break free from the bondage of social convention, so we can be stripped of defences and follow what our hearts say. It takes off the jacket of our consciousness and liberates what lies deep in our unconsciousness.

But one might wonder, "Why specifically wine?" Because to use the word "wine" is to exclude other alcoholic beverages including cocktails, shooters, and beer. If wine is the catalyst rather than other alcoholic beverages, it is because these drinks have no patience for deep talks. They fail to enforce the required atmosphere for deep friendship to develop and deprive us of the ability to command our minds with fluidity to articulate what is intimate. Cocktail and the likes only assure us that we have a good time, but are unable to provoke the question why and how we should have a good time. It sides with relativism- that how we should enjoy friendship is of no significance because all methods to enjoy it are equally valid. Wine, on the contrary, endeavours to make friendship better and offers us the time for slow thought. It allows us to express who we are in precision, delicacy and sophistication under the rigours of rational examination. It gives weight to our feelings rather than emptying our soul to ensure us a sense of lightness.

Aristotle once told us to eat salt together, meaning we should cultivate our friendship in a face to face conversation. But what is better is perhaps we should drink wine together. The deeper implication of drinking wine is that while one may not have to devote all his passion to study the history of wine, one should acquire a basic knowledge of wine in order for a deep friendship to flower. If an education of friendship is deemed necessary as the ancient Greeks suggested, wine studies should be included in the curriculum.

W

SuperPennie's Response To "On Wearing Less"

SuperPennie has written a piece in response to me entry "On Wearing Less" concerning the taboo of nudity. Check it out here. Also feel free to check out her blog "A Broken Nihilist".

Thanks to Pennie.

W

On Travel

Here is the piece I wrote for the Pub:

This particular time of the season, though accompanied by a severely hot weather, often draws many of us away from what is familiar and invites us to harbour a wish to get a decent massage in Bangkok, give a boost to the Japanese economy during Tokyo's sale season, or ease ourselves in a Hokkaido's hot spring. Though we frequently venture to explore on a different continent once in a while, few of us bear in our minds the notion of travel once we get off the plane, let alone the questions why and how we travel.

If we are kept ignorant of the art of travel, it is perhaps because we are often in muddle of the distinction between travel and tourism. Tourism invites us to set foot on a place where our actions are often governed by guidebooks and leaflets offered by the hotel which suggests that there are churches, museums, shopping malls, statues, and the likes that are in need of our company, conspiring to give weight to our vacuous schedule. While museums and churches might fulfil our spiritual needs, the very essence of tourism also seduces us to lend a fair portion of the schedule to the sacred shopping rituals. It seeks to remind us that our homes are the anchors of identity and products that are remote from our homes can fix us to a version of ourselves we want to side with. It urges us to take pride on our current identities. It refuses to evaluate the fundamental values that are in ourselves, so that we can acclaim with confidence that our very selves rest firmly on what is lovable, that they can be perfected merely through material possession.

Travel, on the contrary, disobeys the guidance of what we should be curious about in guidebooks. Rather than submitting our geographical interests to what tourists should like, travel suggests we should rank the city's offerings according to a subjective hierarchy of interest. Though the Tokugawa Castle in Kyoto should be the highlight of our trip, a neighbourhood restaurant or even an ordinary backstreet might trigger our curiosity far greater than a well-known aesthetically constructed architecture. Though we are expected to appreciate the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the absence of our necessary receptivity to such architecture prompts us to admire a violinist who plays Beethoven's on the street instead.

If a neighbourhood restaurant proves to be more fascinating than a work of architecture, it is because one can venture alone into the very root of the city's culture at its fullest rather than a place where it is easily spoiled under the threats of massive tourists. It takes away what is habitual from us and encourages us through the changes around us, forcing us to form a new vision to look within ourselves. Because only through something that is completely foreign to us, we start to generate new assumptions that allow us to appreciate things in a different and a possibly more honest perspective.

Though travel is distinctly different from tourism, there lies a common ground for both activities- that we long to change ourselves. We get fed up with the monotonous routine of our everyday life and frustrated at the heaviness of inhibiting the same bodies again and again. Behind the same mortal bodies that bear our different torment souls, we tend to harbour a confused faith that there is yet another part of us that remains undiscovered, that our going away from home might summon the long-forgotten selves within us.

However similar the motive behind travel and tourism, while tourism rests on an optimistic attitude towards our practising lifestyle, travel favours pessimism, inviting us to change our ourselves in a more fundamental way. It strives to challenge the very essence of identity, the notion of "i". It confronts us with a complete opposite scenario which the values we inherently uphold might be fallacious, that these values that precisely identify the "i" have surrendered to a fundamentalist logic which ought to be corrected. It suggests that we should forget ourselves once we get on the plane. We need to unburden ourselves before we can fully enjoy the food offered by a neighbourhood restaurant and appreciate a beautiful work of nature because we are no longer critically dependent on the previously known assumptions about ourselves.

Unfortunately, many have clung obsessively to tourism rather than travel. They refuse to see themselves as travellers to twist their curiosity contrary to guidebooks. If life is defined by a succession of lightness and weight, why can't we say the same for travel? Only we get on the plane with a sense of lightness, we can come back full of weight.

W

On 'Useless' Knowledge

I wrote a piece for Philosophy Now, here is a taster:


"The immediate benefit of curious learning is perhaps the pleasure of thought itself. There is too much readiness to act in this world, and too little reflections. The speeches of politicians are often charged with emotions, manipulating our minds with soundbites made by spin doctors. The media and masses determine our ideal of happiness, and our failures are deemed absolute if we don't live up to their expectations. Yet the pleasure in mere thought not only allows us to enlarge our sympathies and diminish our human folly, it helps us to ward off such bias and prejudice, thus making a way for us to see ourselves in a proper or honest perspective. It also comforts us with peace of mind among worries and misfortunes."

W

On Wearing Less

Originally published on the Pub which I am one of the contributors:

If teen models are denied entry to the book fair, it is perhaps because the notion of wearing less centres on a peculiar moral landscape that differs from the one the majority uphold, hence rendering the book fair a bit more "cultural". Behind such condemnation, there lies a tension between nudity and modesty, a boundary which teen models have endeavoured to obscure. However distinct the boundary between nudity and modesty, the majority have risked inspiring an unfair neglect of the inevitable connection between nudity and fashion and a misguided enthusiasm for coverings. Is wearing bikinis or lingerie more morally offensive than a virtuous McQueen's dress?

While many consider bikinis offending garments, women are also denied the liberty to admire their own physical candour. Rather than allowing them to take pleasure in their physical forms, a naked body should not be conceived as something to unnecessarily parade in public areas or in front of the media as if showing oneself naked is to reveal an area of potential shame. The body must therefore be viewed in a self-hating mood that suggests a state of vulnerability where one is stripped of defences and susceptible to exposing one's weakness, thus rendering the most unfavourable judgement on oneself.

If there is a long-standing tension between modesty and nudity, it is because the notions of covering and revealing are often examined in a paradoxical light. Contemplating the history of fashion, it is not uncommon to recognise a tendency to both reveal and shield our body. Particularly in women's fashion, it strives to maintain its aesthetic side on partly uncovering the body. The modern pioneer of wearing less was perhaps Rita Lygid who was the first one who wore a dress that was bare at the back to the waist in public. As the feminist movement was gaining its gravity in the 70s, the sizes of female clothes shrunk accordingly. We are living in a previously unknown skinnier era where women wish to bring out their feminine side by means of diet. Small wonder why stripteasing is always appealing.

If bikinis and lingeries and the likes are included in the realm of fashion, then perhaps they are often worn to bring out the virtues latent within women: the masculine side, the feminine side, women emancipation etc. They might as well suggest values that women uphold, the kinds of values that they wish to express privately in public. It is a material articulation of who they are or what they want to become. Instead of considering part nudity in an erotic light, it is a manifestation of the "i-confirmation", carrying with them an assurance of their own identities. They are not afraid to reveal their more intimate selves and reluctant to cover up all the weaknesses we ascribe to the species of what we call human, hence fearlessly collapse a private life into its public dimension. Aside from this process of self-actualisation, there also lies the courage for not being laughed and afraid of their bodies being used as physical evidence against them.

The evolution of fashion suggests there is no proper distinction between nudity and modesty today. What is modest in women's fashion constantly involves with the active participation of nudity. It once again invites us to consider the paradox of seduction and intimacy. Bikinis, like other forms of fashion, aim at uncovering the best of women yet retaining a distinctly confusing part of them to be uncovered only by their most intimate partners. They wander at the interval between seduction and intimacy that harbours what is most attractive within a person.

The teen models are not as morally offensive as the majority suggest. Rather than challenging the views of most women's rights organisations, they actually embrace them. Bikinis offer substantial female confidence. They are the epitome of the greatest female achievements. Teen models are feminists in the deepest sense of the term.

W

On Sex Education

Originally published on the Pub which I am one of the contributors:


Enforced by the government, a great many teachers have to exchange roles with parents and impart sexual knowledge to the young. However, sex education not only reveals the government's underestimation of their physical maturity, but also renders the teachers' sexual knowledge insufficient, hence making them more liable to embarrassment. This situation invites us to the idea that perhaps the age-old ethical question "Should one have sex?" is no longer appealing to the young. In the modern era, the sexual openness of the young has enforced an atmosphere not of whether when one should have sex but rather, what brands of lubricants might enhance one's most pleasurable gratification or how long one has to endure in a romantic relationship in order to legitimately enter a sexual relationship.

But what could account for such openness? Other than the "culture" of haste and the excessive sexual suppression, what element has been at play? If sexual openness has become a necessity, it is perhaps because there lies a tendency for the young to think of sex as automatic assurance of intimacy. Skimming over the sex section of an online forum, some of the questions that have been frequently asked are whether how one can lure his girlfriend into bed and the more problematic one that why one is still denied the opportunity to rightfully explore the realm of complete privacy after being in a relationship for two weeks. The common ground of these difficult questions suggest that there is a problem without sex in a relationship and that the length of time to endure before one can make allowance for access to one's private sphere implies a significant romantic obstacle. Which ultimately suggests that intimacy can only be acknowledged by means of sex.

If the young anchor the notion of intimacy to sex, it is because they are often in muddle of the distinction between physical intimacy and psychological intimacy. What makes physical intimacy different from psychological intimacy is that the former is predominantly founded on the art of seduction. Rather than revealing one's character as a whole, the art of seduction lies only a need to reveal version of oneself one wishes to side with because it is founded on the display of one's finest qualities. Psychological intimacy, on the contrary, risks inspiring one's unfavourable judgement on his partner because love is about communication and understanding. Understanding involves not only with one's finest qualities, but also with one's vulnerabilities which one at times may be too ashamed of revealing. Therefore, while physical intimacy is based on revealing what is most attractive, psychological intimacy may involve with picking one's nose before one's beloved which must be considered in a complex, paradoxical light.

The young have hence mistakenly forged an inevitable connection between sex and love, thinking of sex as catalyst for longer conversations on more profound topics which consequently initiates an exactly opposite scenario. The relationship between sex and love has a need to be revised. The tendency of confusing sex with intimacy not only fools them into thinking that they have understood each other after a night in bed, but the danger lies in thinking sex as love. It destroys the clarity of love and sex and fails to attach a proper boundary between the two, prompting the young to make false additions to an already muddied picture. In the adult world where grand enquiries of love may often be easily avoided owing to the confusion of its nature, how one might suppose a twelve-year-old having the ability to accurately separate the the desired and the loved without guidance.

Though the question "Should one have sex?" is no longer appealing, perhaps we can revive its contemplative value by adding a "how" before the question. The question "How should one have sex?" not only preserves one's natural right to have sex, but also suggests that there is an art involving how one should do it. The young have often assumed their inborn ability to have sex, but if that is the case, why do bookstores carry countless versions of "Kama Sutra" to advise on positions to enhance our orgasmic appreciation? In the technological civilisation of ours, we are living in the era where one can legitimately skip the introduction of porn stars and scenes of foreplay in a pornographic video to the scene of what might be considered the most sexually arousing. How one can easily conclude that sex does not have to be taught?

But what is far more important is that sex education should not limit itself to its practical side, but rather, it should pay more attention to its psychological implications because we no longer have the need to submit our thinking to the traditionally dualistic separation of the mind and the body. What seems to be most intimate to the body might turn out to be intimate to the mind as well. Therefore, sex education is directly linked to the education of feelings. With the inability to distinguish sex from intimacy, there is a need to ensure one's desire should be well-directed so as to avoid confusing the yearnings of the body with the yearnings of the soul. Which leads to further investigation into sex, rather than just enquiring how one should have sex, perhaps it is equally appropriate to ask when, where, or even why one should have sex.

Sex education in Hong Kong is a failure not merely because of its limit on practical realm, but also the frame of mind when we approach the notion of sex. If sex education is to exert influence upon the young, it may include its deep psychological influence as well as a new attitude to see it in a proper perspective. In the days where the young change their partners as often as they change underwears, perhaps one should be taught to see the difference between one night stand and a stable relationship.

W