8 months into Singapore now. Few more months and it’ll be a year.

My verdict on this place is that it’s not my dream city, though I’ll make do for the next 2 years, especially since the money here does allow me to travel and pursue certain personal development goals like learning Spanish, tennis etc. On top of that, work is fairly interesting and I’m learning a lot which is great! Plus I have someone with me here now, so… it’s really not too bad.

The reason I wanted to blog today though, is because I just finished Brave New World, and realized in the final few chapters the uncanny similarities between Singapore and the Age of Ford. TBH there are a lot of things going on in the book that I probably need to reread, but here are some of my favorite/most striking and pertinent quotes:

…you can’t make tragedies without social instability. The world’s stable now. People are happy … They’re well off; they’re safe… they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave.

On censorship and safety in Singapore (at all costs). These costs that I see are mostly subconscious social constraints, through brainwashing in school and the media. Of course every country has some brainwashing on its own citizens, but there’s just some semi-dangerous undercurrent running through this country’s veins that one has to see/observe to believe

But that’s the price you have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art … Actual happiness actually looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability … being contented has none of the glamour of the good fight against misfortune … Happiness is never grand. 

I guess what is being said, is that trials and tribulations in life are always a lot more “exciting” than the stable and purely happy, peaceful days. And in order to preserve that boring stability/happiness, all that is exciting needs to be purged from the people’s subconscious vocabulary such that instability just will not exist.

He can’t help himself; he’s fore-doomed. Even after decanting, he’s still inside a bottle — an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations.

That’s nature and nurture at play — us being squeezed by predetermination from both sides.

[Main character’s disapproval on humans going for Violent Passion Surrogate (VPS) once a month to flood the system with adrenaline without humans undergoing any of the emotional baggage]

John: But I like the inconveniences … But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.

Mond: In fact, you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.

Amazing — because it’s so true. I guess I’ve lived with so much of reality and excitement for so long, that the duplicitous happiness in Brave New World/Singapore just isn’t enough for me. Basically, I want life — not just stability and/or “happiness”.