Anterograde Amnesia RePast

This was a draft I did a long time ago, Nov 07 to be exact... never came around to publishing it until now.

I just watched Ef - a tale of memories. One protagonist, Shindo Chihiro, has anterograde amnesia. This is just a rambling post trying to encapsulate and understand how horrifying anterograde amnesia is. The thought of memory loss alone is bad enough, but this is far worse.

The past, present and future are to me, defined by memory.

Past is... any event stored in long term memory. Things now hazy, that require time, storytelling, or cues to dreg up. Often in conjunction with when i was little, remember the time when we..., hey i studied in this school before!

Present - any event that is stored in short term memory. It doesn't mean literally this very instant. It could mean the last 2 days. Or the last 2 hours. Things that we consider fresh in our minds and on the tip of our tongue. Like remembering that I got my MAI exam results back this morning. Often talked about in conjunction with Just now..., I just did that..., etc.

Future is any event yet to be experienced and is yet to be stored in short term or long term memory.

Notice how things that were in short term or long term, but are no longer there, are in no categories. If i don't remember them, then to me they didn't exist. Yes it is a very self-aligning subjective mode of thinking, but remember, its those events that happened to me, that i don't remember.

Records of them are a different case. They i would consider a form of long-term memory.

So.

Anterograde Amnesia is like having a certain definite past, from when you are born to the time of the accident. Then, from then on to right before the events stored in your short term memory, you have absolutely no recollection. Nada. Zip. None.

See, this form of amnesia is an inability to transfer the short-term to long-term memories. That means i cannot remember what i did yesterday or the day before, up to the day of the accident. I don't even remember that i HAD a yesterday or the day before. It is as though you keep waking up each morning as though the accident just happened yesterday.

But yet the places you remember, the people you meet, keep changing. After enough years, you would feel as though you had woken up into an alien world. And you don't even keep track of the changes, so every day your bewilderment and horror is afresh. The horror is repeated every day.

Chihiro "saves" her sanity by writing a diary. Her short term memory lasts only 13 hours, so each day, she'll write down what she experienced that day. The next morning, having no recollection of anything prior to the accident, she'll chance upon the diary and read it. And "recalls" all the things that has happened since. She has been in this state for four years now, so i guess the diary's pretty big by now.

Its really hard to experience normal life of any sort. Schooling, skill learning, jobs, are to impossible. Sadder still are the complete disruption of relationships. All her relationships are at a standstill, exactly as they were four years ago. Everything she experienced then with even her family is not remembered at all. Worse still are the new relationships she might make. Because she would not recollect any new persons in her life. Sure, she would record it, but every time she meets them, it is as though she has to make that friendship again. And at a far deeper intensity than a new friendship, as that friendship could have been 3 years old already.

She has a nightmare that comes intermittently. She fancies herself shackled at the ankles to a pole on a ground. She can wander around in a circle, limited by the length of the chain. The chains are exactly 13years long (she was 13 when the accident happened). And her hands, when stretched out desperately out of that circular prison, is just 13hours long.

You can see why living that life is scary.

Silhouette Glimpses

Bronze waxes

limber, movements

Poise, to sway

the heart melting 

despair,

with glimpses, that stay

life 

that would, others

wise turn

away

Clannad ~After Story Another World: Kyou Chapter

Just a montage of Kyou in the extra OVA for Clannad ~After Story: Kyou Chapter.

Beautiful, strong, vulnerable.

painting tau

Silent Scribbles

Blood,
stains the evening,
black, with remorse
we leave, traces
coursing to where
it begun ink-filled
expending, expounding
lettered paper, hopes
of light, thoughts
unceasing
dark, words
unbreaking, yet premise
unfounded.

learning: Piano

Pieces i've reasonably mastered:
To Zanarkand (FFX)
Mariage d'Amor (Richard Clayderman)
The Wedding Song (Kenny G)

Learning at the moment:
Fly Me to the Moon (Josh Groban) 1 week
You Raise Me Up (Josh Groban) 2 weeks
Tifa's Theme (FFVII) 3 weeks

Keepin' in View:
Love is a Stapler (K-On!)
Reflectia (True Tears)
Let Me be with You (Chobits)

One Day:
Aerith's Theme (FFVII)
Cagayake Girls (K-On!)
Don't Say Lazy (K-On!)
Fuwa Fuwa Time (K-On!)
Motto Hade ni Ne (Kannagi)
God Knows (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu)
Lost my Music (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu)
Euphoric Field (ef - a tale of memories)
ebullient future (ef - a tale of melodies)

Updates on Paint Scheme

Stirrings

Crimson
wakes, the heartless
sun les
the hopeful
dwell in dreams
clad streams
of tender
dates with tender
hearts with tender
times with out
the dreamer, risen to life.

377A

Transcript of Thio's speech.



Rebuttal by Janadas Devan here. source here.

http://www.straitstimes.com/Insight/Story/STIStory_170911.html [Subscription required]

Oct 27, 2007
THINKING ALOUD
377A debate and the rewriting of pluralism
By Janadas Devan
I CONFESS: I found the parliamentary debate on Section 377A of the Penal Code exceedingly depressing. It is no fun at all finding oneself holding a view – I believe the provision is odious and should be scrapped – with so little support.

Of the 82 PAP MPs, only 3-1/2 expressed views that resembled mine – Mr Charles Chong, Mr Hri Kumar and Mr Baey Yam Keng. The half was Ms Indranee Rajah, who suggested 377A might be scrapped at some point, only not in this century. Her citation of how long it took to end slavery suggested we might have to wait roughly 2,500 years.

Of the nine NMPs, only one, Mr Siew Kum Hong, who presented the citizens’ petition calling for the repeal of 377A, stood up for homosexuals. And among the three opposition MPs, none did.

My depression was infinitely deepened when I read NMP Thio Li-Ann’s parliamentary phillipic – entitled Two Tribes Go To (Culture) War – as well as her Insight article yesterday. She was brilliant, incisive, learned, witty and civil. The ‘moral conservative majority’ has found a formidable warrior – notice that ‘War’; and my side – the immoral liberal minority? – was left looking stupid, speechless, confused, sour-faced and uncivil.

Consider how she tore to shreds so many of our cherished beliefs. The idiots that we are, we had believed ‘pluralism’ meant, among other things, ‘autonomy and retention of identity for individual bodies’, a ’society in which the members of minority groups maintain their independent cultural traditions’, ‘a system that recognises more than one ultimate principle or kind of being’, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it.

But we were wrong. ‘Democratic pluralism,’ Prof Thio wrote incisively yesterday, ‘welcomes every view in public discussion, but does not commit the intellectual fallacy of saying every view is right. The goal is to ascertain the right view for the circumstances.’ That means that under certain circumstances – to be determined by whatever passes for the majority at any moment, I suppose – pluralism can insist on a singular ‘ultimate principle or kind of being’.

We silly fellows had also misunderstood the nature of secularism. We had thought it meant separation of religion from the state, politics and public policy. We were wrong. As Prof Thio explained trenchantly in her ‘culture war’ speech: ‘Religious views are part of our common morality. We separate ‘religion’ from ‘politics’ but not ‘religion’ from ‘public policy’ (emphasis mine).

I never knew that! I had always assumed that it was necessary to separate religion from politics as well as public policy, for it was impossible to separate public policy from politics, and both from the state. But it turns out my assumption was baseless.

Jawaharlal Nehru, a Brahmin who insisted on untouchability being banned in the Indian Constitution despite the opposition of many caste Hindus, simply did not understand a thing about secularism. Bishop Desmond Tutu, a Methodist who insisted that discrimination against homosexuals be prohibited in the South African Constitution, was similarly clueless. And all those Enlightenment chaps in powdered wigs who insisted on the separation of church and state in the United States – in part, because there was no ‘common morality’ among religions – well, silly fellows, they knew nothing.

Yes, I must admit, Prof Thio demolished my side with astonishing ease. First, her big guns – pluralism is not plural; secularism can be religiously informed – left us limbless. Then, equally impressively, the cultural warrior sliced and diced us with her rapier wit and uncommon civility. We were finally left with our torsos tossed into ideological ditches and our heads stuck on cultural pikes.

‘To say a law is archaic is merely chronological snobbery,’ she thundered, referring to 377A. That sent me reeling. So original! So conclusive! So brilliant!

‘Chronological snobbery’ was first coined by Owen Barfield and C.S. Lewis, two eminent British popular theologians. It first appeared in print, I think, in Lewis’ moving spiritual autobiography, Surprised By Joy. Lewis and Barfield coined it to stigmatise modern ‘intellectual fashions’ that they thought consigned unfairly religious faith to a seemingly unregenerate past.

Prof Thio, a most learned person, must have known of the origin of this phrase in theological controversy, and she brilliantly extended it to the law. And if one linked this extension to the profound truths she uncovered about public policy in a secular state, one would see how her stigmatisation of ‘chronological snobbery’ can be extended further still. All those in favour of teaching ‘intelligent design’ alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools, raise your hands.
Done! Education Ministry, please take note.

Then there was her wit, deployed so civilly. Anal sex is like ’shoving a straw up your nose to drink’, she said. A colleague of mine googled that and discovered it was an often cited image in American anti-gay pamphlets. To top that, she said 377A must be kept on the books so we can say ‘Majullah Singapura’, not ‘Mundur Singapura’. If you did not get the joke, here is a clue: Mundur means ‘backward’ in Malay, and ‘backward’ here alludes to that ’straw’ and another orifice. See? Now, isn’t that funny?

Oh, I cried when I read that. Imagine that: The moral conservative majority makes better vulgar jokes than the immoral liberal minority - and in Parliament too. If the immoral minority cannot beat the moral majority even in this department, we are really and truly kaput.

What sent me into shock was the discovery that Singapore is actually the US. I am referring to Prof Thio’s sources of inspiration. Google ‘culture war’ and you will discover them.

The term was made famous by Mr Patrick Buchanan, a right-wing conservative (many would say zealot) who challenged former president George H.W. Bush, a moderate, for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992. At the Republican convention that year, Mr Buchanan alarmed many Americans by declaring: ‘There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.’

Once one understands the milieu from which this statement issues, one would understand the origins of Prof Thio’s profound understanding of pluralism and secularism. It does not derive from the Enlightenment or from contemporary Europe or Asia. It derives from the American religious right. It is they who insist pluralism cannot ultimately be plural; it is they who demand public policy be informed by religious beliefs.

And all but a few thumped their seats when Prof Thio finished her speech? They must have missed the radical – yes, radical and extreme - nature of her claims. One person who did not, I think, was Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. My colleague Chua Mui Hoong reported he did not thump his seat.

That lifted my depression somewhat. I did not like one bit the upshot of the Prime Minister’s speech – that 377A will stay because the majority, especially Christians and Muslims, are opposed to its scrubbing. But I was proud of what he had to say, and how he said it.

There are ‘limits’, he said, for homosexuals in Singapore. But there would be limits too, in how religious beliefs are applied in the policing of homosexuals. Section 377A will not be applied ‘proactively’, he said – meaning, it will be inoperative.

Mr Stuart Koe, chief executive of gay Asian portal Fridae.com, was wrong to liken 377A to a gun being put to the heads of homosexuals and not pulling the trigger. There is a gun, it remains symbolically loaded, but it has been laid down.

For that – a small victory – we have to thank old-fashioned pluralism, not Prof Thio’s radical rewriting of it. Some of us – our children, our friends, our siblings – have different sexual orientations, so let’s give them space.

For the rest – well, we will have to wait, but hopefully, not for 2,500 years.

janadas@sph.com.sg


Praise by Cherian George, source here.

by Cherian George
October 27th, 2007
As someone who straddles the worlds of Singaporean journalism and academia but has never felt totally at ease in either, I have to say that, today, I am prouder to call myself a journalist than an academic. Singapore is not known for its investigative journalism; one international ranking places our press in the same league as Third World dictatorships. On the other hand, our universities do Singapore proud: while some of the international rankings are suspect, there are certainly pockets of excellence on Singapore’s campuses.

This week, both vocations were tested. Singapore society needed the best from them, to guide it through the extraordinarily difficult and contentious 377A debate. Although the bean counters in both journalism and academia tend increasingly to apply irrelevant key performance indicators, pressmen and professors in the end share the same social purpose: to contribute to the world of ideas and help society to deal with its problems wisely and rationally.

For this reason – and despite having signed the repeal petition that reached Parliament – I was mainly interested in this week’s debate as a test case for Singapore’s level of public debate. That 377A would stay in the books was a foregone conclusion. The real issue to me was whether such deeply held convictions could be deliberated openly in a civilized manner, and how journalists and academics would perform.

Therefore, more distressing than the final result of the debate was the retrogressive speech by the high-flying legal scholar Thio Li-Ann. Her convoluted, caricatured rendering of political philosophy and comparative politics needed to be corrected by good political science, but she got away with it in Parliament. Her theories about what constitutes a minority could have been debunked by any graduate student of sociology or anthropology, but this did not stop her.

Then there was Thio’s tasteless digs at homosexual sex, which some of her comrades considered witty, but really deserved no place in the highest forum in the land. Thio has been celebrated for supposedly speaking up for the silent majority. This is an insult to the majority, most of whom have the basic decency to know the difference between what should be uttered in public and what should be confined to close friends or private blogs.

Thio also did a disservice to the majority of God-fearing Singaporeans – we who would like to believe that our faiths are ultimately about compassion, not the hateful, hurtful cheap shots that Thio felt compelled to deliver on our behalf. How I wished a theology professor or other religious scholar would have stepped into the debate at that point, to show how it might be possible to express a faith-based objection to homosexuality – minus the hate speech.

But, no, for a whole week, Thio has remained – by default – the standard bearer of what Singapore intellectuals and our world-class universities have to offer to public discourse.*

Thank goodness for Straits Times journalist Janadas Devan. His column in Saturday’s Insight pages is worth the paper’s 80 cents cover price (which is good, since it’s not available free online). Its contribution to the 377A debate: priceless. Singapore doesn’t have a tradition of investigative journalism, but Janadas’ dogged, disciplined dissection of Thio’s speech has exposed it for the diatribe that it really was. There is hope yet for rationality and reason.

Cherian George

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