foolish children

Friday, 7 October 2005 T: 20 08

And so it has come to be that my promotional examination for junior college will end on Monday. Obviously, this is not Monday, but you can’t blame a person for taking a break. Somehow, I feel as if I’m carried through their period of time, alternating between sickliness and craziness, dragged down by that endless and horribly menacing notes, lifted up time and time again by songs and of course Advent Children – the movie of the year I would boldly declare.

I do not think I see a more real animation, with people almost comparable to the actual humans, only that they are too perfect to be true. Everyone looks so pretty, so flawless, even the villains, and of course the heroes. For me, it seems like a world built for me to be absorbed in, drowned in, and I found myself eccentrically crazy over an artificial female character. Perhaps for a precisionist, perfection in Man can only be found in fantasies, never in reality.

It amazes me to see how Man has progressed over time. I was watching Kingdom of Heaven earlier and once more enriched myself in the battles of the past, the rapid, violent, and ugly spillages of bloody, the labour-intensive battling ram and bridges. Yet today, such are replaced by guns and tanks, where lives can go as quickly as they arrive, perhaps faster. Nuclear weapons will steadily replace the arsenals of power-hungry countries, and the ones whose lives are more vulnerable than ever are just the average people walking on the street, trying to make sense of the world he or she is in, attempting just to feed himself and his family. Look at the physicists and the formulae they come up in order to better interpret their surroundings. New things and formulae are discovered each day, perhaps only to the turmoil of students trying to secure a job years later. We have made our lives more comfortable, or have we? Look at the computers which you are now using? Do you realise that the whole complex system is run just by two numbers – 0 and 1? How about the bridges, and the flyovers, meticulously calculated during the building of it to ensure that they will not collapse? Advent children speaks of graphics that would never be dreamt of a decade ago. Yet somehow, has humanity progressed?

Worldwide, poverty still threatens thousands. Another hundred is murdered each day and the murderer goes free. Another 30 children starve to death and probably a lot more suffer from malnourishment. Corruption is evident, perhaps exist in smaller amount than the past. Terrorism flourish, just for the sake of showing its presence, bombing tens each year, and perhaps will never cease to exist. Children and young girls abducted to satisfy the requirements of the global prostitution trade. They are frequently visited by heartless people with the mindset for self-pleasure and self-fulfilment. Governments end up sanctioning gay-marriage and gambling, under the excuse of human freedom and economic competition. Has Man become more humane over time?

I suppose the perfect world that I seek would never come, at least not mundanely speaking, unless there is divine intervention. I suppose my own life is never perfect to start with and will never be, even if history can be ignored. It, like a dirty rag, speaks of disgusting deeds, thoughts and words totally hypocritical to the identity I claim to be.

As I enter the world of competition, I can’t help but look at my notes, my grades, my lamentations about my careless mistakes in the papers, my ceaseless criticism and pointless pursuit of education for a career, and know that all will come to pass someday and fail to exist. All is but a chasing after the wind. Yet the foolish and humanly wise us would still pursue air, for perhaps in the hearts of the foolish, temporal pleasure and happiness would suffice. I took a deep breath and look at the huge stack of bio notes besides me. Though meaningless, I would still be back to the books soon enough, at least after a few glances at Tifa that is, haha.

I’m never sane, am I?