The End of Neo-liberalism?

by Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – The world has not been kind to neo-liberalism, that grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently, and serve the public interest well. It was this market fundamentalism that underlay Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and the so-called “Washington Consensus” in favor of privatization, liberalization, and independent central banks focusing single-mindedly on inflation.

For a quarter-century, there has been a contest among developing countries, and the losers are clear: countries that pursued neo-liberal policies not only lost the growth sweepstakes; when they did grow, the benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top.

Though neo-liberals do not want to admit it, their ideology also failed another test. No one can claim that financial markets did a stellar job in allocating resources in the late 1990’s, with 97% of investments in fiber optics taking years to see any light. But at least that mistake had an unintended benefit: as costs of communication were driven down, India and China became more integrated into the global economy.

But it is hard to see such benefits to the massive misallocation of resources to housing.  The newly constructed homes built for families that could not afford them get trashed and gutted as millions of families are forced out of their homes, in some communities, government has finally stepped in – to remove the remains. In others, the blight spreads. So even those who have been model citizens, borrowing prudently and maintaining their homes, now find that markets have driven down the value of their homes beyond their worst nightmares.

To be sure, there were some short-term benefits from the excess investment in real estate:  some Americans (perhaps only for a few months) enjoyed the pleasures of home ownership and living in a bigger home than they otherwise would have. But at what a cost to themselves and the world economy! Millions will lose their life savings as they lose their homes. And the housing foreclosures have precipitated a global slowdown. There is an increasing consensus on the prognosis: this downturn will be prolonged and widespread.

Nor did markets prepare us well for soaring oil and food prices. Of course, neither sector is an example of free-market economics, but that is partly the point: free-market rhetoric has been used selectively – embraced when it serves special interests and discarded when it does not.

Perhaps one of the few virtues of George W. Bush’s administration is that the gap between rhetoric and reality is narrower than it was under Ronald Reagan. For all Reagan’s free-trade rhetoric, he freely imposed trade restrictions, including the notorious “voluntary” export restraints on automobiles.

Bush’s policies have been worse, but the extent to which he has openly served America’s military-industrial complex has been more naked. The only time that the Bush administration turned green was when it came to ethanol subsidies, whose environmental benefits are dubious. Distortions in the energy market (especially through the tax system) continue, and if Bush could have gotten away with it, matters would have been worse.

This mixture of free-market rhetoric and government intervention has worked particularly badly for developing countries. They were told to stop intervening in agriculture, thereby exposing their farmers to devastating competition from the United States and Europe. Their farmers might have been able to compete with American and European farmers, but they could not compete with US and European Union subsidies. Not surprisingly, investments in agriculture in developing countries faded, and a food gap widened.

Those who promulgated this mistaken advice do not have to worry about carrying malpractice insurance. The costs will be borne by those in developing countries, especially the poor. This year will see a large rise in poverty, especially if we measure it correctly.

Simply put, in a world of plenty, millions in the developing world still cannot afford the minimum nutritional requirements. In many countries, increases in food and energy prices will have a particularly devastating effect on the poor, because these items constitute a larger share of their expenditures.

The anger around the world is palpable. Speculators, not surprisingly, have borne more than a little of the wrath. The speculators argue: we are not the cause of the problem; we are simply engaged in “price discovery” – in other words, discovering – a little late to do much about the problem this year – that there is scarcity.

But that answer is disingenuous. Expectations of rising and volatile prices encourage hundreds of millions of farmers to take precautions. They might make more money if they hoard a little of their grain today and sell it later; and if they do not, they won’t be able to afford it if next year’s crop is smaller than hoped. A little grain taken off the market by hundreds of millions of farmers around the world adds up.

Defenders of market fundamentalism want to shift the blame from market failure to government failure. One senior Chinese official was quoted as saying that the problem was that the US government should have done more to help low-income Americans with their housing. I agree. But that does not change the facts: US banks mismanaged risk on a colossal scale, with global consequences, while those running these institutions have walked away with billions of dollars in compensation.

Today, there is a mismatch between social and private returns. Unless they are closely aligned, the market system cannot work well.

Neo-liberal market fundamentalism was always a political doctrine serving certain interests. It was never supported by economic theory. Nor, it should now be clear, is it supported by historical experience. Learning  this lesson may be the silver lining in the cloud now hanging over the global economy.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Professor at Columbia University, received the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. He is the co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2008.

www.project- syndicate. org

So a political party leader mentioned that he agreed if houses of prayer should be kept neutral from campaign settings. Furthermore, the said politician also noted that sermons are not campaigns, and the two needs to be contextually separated. And someone commented that it’s a secular notion.

From my perspective, it’s not about secularism or anything. Politics and religions are mutually exclusive by themselves. Politics is about gaining power to rule over other people and lead them towards a goal. Religions –from a theistic approach, is about relating oneself to the divine. While leading people into their peaceful lives might bring you god’s favor or wrath if you lead them the other way around, it’s not the same as a religious action.

Really. One might assume that everything one does is an act of prayer, but it applies if and only if one do it on behalf of the god. In order to do that, one needs to always ensure the betterment of all beings. And I don’t think it’s as easy as it seems. What do you recall when you see a naked sexy chick stripping bare? Do you remember the beauty of god’s creation, or do you think of something erotic and sexually interesting?

Politics and seeing a stripper doing her job is essentially all the same. There are just too much worldly treats to remember of the one thing that made all those things possible. And unless the general people could see the god behind all that’s profanely interesting and attractive, religions and politics can’t run on the same path.

And about the stripper, I could say that I haven’t found anyone who saw god and not the stripper. Of course those same people moans and called his name over and over again, but I guess it’s because they can’t see his majestic presence behind that sexy curves of the dancer’s physique.

Traditionally, people have certain moral codes which differentiated what’s good and what’s evil. Most of the time, this distinction is black and white, and the society enforced a strong control over the boundaries. As time goes by, people developed several ways to metaphorize the concept of good and evil.

One interesting thing to see as a metaphor is the concept of good and evil. This has been a seemingly perpetual source of debate among philosophers. They tried to explain what’s good and what’s evil, but they forget to see the meaning of these concepts. They seem to take for granted that in this world exist two different –if not opposed, concepts of good and evil.

Moralists tried to argue about what’s morally good or bad. Ethic philosophers debated about what’s ethic or not in defining both the good and bad. Some believed that the opposition is god-given, while some believed that it’s men-made.

Cultures viewed this opposition between good and evil differently. Most cultures don’t really argue about what is good and what is bad. People traditionally believed that good and evil is defined on the basis of some divine set of rules, and they don’t question its values. Despite of the virtue in this, and the fact that it works over the ages, people still haven’t grasp the meaning of good and evil. They simply define the indicators for good and evil, and tried to live with it. And so it’s interesting to see how this metaphor of good and evil in cultures lead to a transcendental meaning of good and evil.

Chinese people, with their symbol of yin and yang, saw good and evil as two different and mutually independent concepts that complement each other to create a perfect unity. In their perspective, neither one of the parts are inherently and completely good or evil. It’s all about what’s suitable according to the need of the people, as nothing is completely good or evil. Good and evil is being in a dynamic dance to complete each other, and life is all about the seemingly nonexistent line of balance between the two that created completeness.

Another culture metaphorized the good and the evil as a line. There’s good on one end, and there’s evil on the other. An end exists to make the other side exists, and humanity is located within the line. It’s about degrees of evil and degrees of good in a social spectrum. Again, the ends of the line reflected what the society deem as good or evil.

Other culture viewed good and evil like the cycle of day and night. There’d be periods of good as there’d be evil periods, and men are to stand watch –and to survive, the periods. Just like hunters in the field, men are to find their way in the everlasting celestial dance.

Neither one of the three aforementioned metaphors of good and evil could be really accounted for being truer than another. I mean, it’s all about how a culture viewed an abstract concept. It’s already a good thing that they could create more-or-less down to earth metaphor out of this great debate of good and evil. It’s just about what’s familiar to the culture, instead of what’s universally seems to be true.

In the contemporary Jakarta, it seems that one of the common metaphors of good and evil is the two sides of a coin. There’s good on one side, and evil is on the other side. This metaphor connotes two different faces of a single entity, and it’s a very Javanese conception of existence. Javanese people also have the myth of a spiritual twin that coexists with each individual, and is taking care of the physical twin.

Another contemporary metaphor is about how good and evil is branches on a road. One branch led to heaven, and the other leads to hell. In this metaphor, they talk about choices, one choice is deemed better, and being proliferated among the people, while the other choice is highly discouraged. In this metaphor, people talks also about reward and punishment. A rather traditional mode of social control, I say.

In short, there are various ways to see both good and evil, and neither one is inherently right or wrong. It’s just a matter of blind men trying to understand an elephant. And just as sighted people could see how incomplete their perception of the elephant might be, so there are philosophers who constantly reminded us to guide our blind brothers to understand the elephant more completely.

So Hegel used the metaphor of bud, flower, and fruit to comment our vision of good and evil. When the bud is replaced by the blossoming flower, we could say that the bud is false and the flower is true. But when the flower withers to be replaced by the fruit, we would say that the flower is a false existence and the fruit is the truer existence.

And yet, we who are familiar with plants would see that the bud, flower, and the fruit are all false indicators of a plant’s existence. The truer meaning is that they’re just indicators of the plant’s development. We can’t say that a plant without a flower is not a plant, nor could we say plants without fruit are false plants. We already know how to define plants more universally.

Nietzsche might suggests people to go beyond what’s interpreted as good and evil, he urged us to transcend the limits of socially accepted norms and boundaries in order to understand life. It’s a virtuous suggestion. But still he doesn’t define the core meaning of good and evil. What he defined, is the fact that good and evil is just another societal concept.

The extent of this particular article is to discover the essential meaning of good and evil, as free as can be from social and societal aspects. From the metaphors, we could see the qualities that gave shape to the concepts, but they don’t say what forms it. And that’s exactly what lies beyond our daily meaning of good and evil.

To return things to our contemporary Jakarta, especially its metaphor of good and evil, I really think that the metaphors are highly affected by religious prepositions. Well, I think culture and religion is highly intertwined, and they are highly interchangeable, if you get my meaning.

When we talk of two sides of the same coin, we could somewhat say that it’s two faces of the same person or two natures of the same person. And I personally chose to think that good and evil are natures of man. Men are inherently good as they are inherently evil. Most people wished to forget that completeness implies having both sides of the coin. A coin can’t have only one side, can it?

Being both good and evil doesn’t mean neutrality. Come on people, if you speak of neutrality, it implies a spectrum, and that’s on another metaphor. What this particular coin metaphor meant is the fact that men have the potential to be good or evil.

In this perspective, it doesn’t really matter if you’re good or evil, as long as you remember that there’d be someone on par to balance you out. So if you’re a very evil genius, you’ll somehow meet a very good genius that would fuck up your every plan so it won’t cause more grief than laughter in the people’s heart. There’s always a good side to every evil things, and there’s always evil side to every good things. And it’s men’s responsibility to maintain this balance. The final cause of Javanese philosophy of life is to understand the nature of existence in its unity between the creation and the creator. Only by understanding the meaning of good and evil, could one begin to understand the meaning of life itself.

But somehow people just want to see the lighter side of things. This very wish to remember only that men are inherently good is then celebrated and glorified in texts that gained dominance in the world. And in Jakarta alone, I could talk of several metaphors that only speak about the goodness of men and somehow overlooked the evil twin. And to speak generally, there are more good guys’ metaphors than evil guys’ metaphors in the popular world. Good guys got talked about more often than their evil friends. And these evil guys are to be spoken of as a warning for others.

The contemporary road metaphor just talks about that very thing. Its primary assumption is that men should pick the better path that would lead to goodness, instead of taking the evil path. By taking the good path, you’ll end up in a better place. In short, you’ll be rewarded for every ‘right’ choice as you’ll be punished for every ‘left’ choice. Pun intended.

In this particular road metaphor, you could also see how life is seen as a journey to find an ultimate goal or a better place. This implies that life is not necessarily as good as one might wished of it, or in other words, life sucks. Only by doing good things could one make this world a better place. And there’s virtue in this, though I don’t really think it would do any good anyway.

This common wish for a better place is one of the things that made this metaphor is celebrated more than the coin metaphor. Other aspect is the fact that a dualistic choice is pretty much simpler than maintaining precarious balance. And don’t forget of its perspective of the neutrality assumption of men. Besides, this metaphor doesn’t really talk of understanding life, it only talks about finding a better place, this dream seems to motivate better than the guide to understanding life.

To complete the road metaphor, people also developed stories about how good deeds brought handsomely rewards, and evil deeds brought only grief –if not death. Currently, this metaphor gained a prominent position with the presence of soap operas. And in fact, it also gained prominence in religious shows and various mass media.

In the soap operas, especially in its religious version, they classically –and constantly, talks about this ‘right turn’ of life, and that’s just the reason why the road metaphor gained prominence. The way the director depicted evildoers’ death is more horrid than vulgar, from exploding graves to maggoty carcasses. Most of the time, they glorified the good way of life as they are exaggerating awful ways to die.

Unfortunately, these shows always depicted stereotypical kinds of good and evil. Most of the time, good people is depicted as some oppressed guy that live his simple life in the light of some religious belief, while the evil people is depicted as those who live an egoistical hedonistic life, a cynic, far from being religious, and so on and so forth, till they die a horrible death.

This deliberate dichotomization might intend to show the extents of being good or evil, but it doesn’t really fit in the world where good lived with evil such as our world. And although being good and evil could be operationalized in observable indicators, could going clubbing –in opposition to going to the house of worship, be said as evil, as it’s opposed to good?

Religious shows always talked about choices. One of the common themes is about what one should do when facing a complex problem. The best option, in their regard, is to consult the [most of the time religious] texts or other more knowledgeable people. If these two options are unavailable, then one is to pick a path that’s less controversial.

So let’s say that I’m stressed out as hell. Should I go clubbing or should I go to the church? If I’m to consult the bible, it suggests me to go to church. And it’s said that I’ll have my moments of peace there. Without the availability religious texts and more knowledgeable person, I’ll pick something less controversial. And let’s say that Jakartan people chose clubbing than churchgoing in times of stress. We just have ourselves a paradox here, people. Personally, however, I’m not going either place. I have my third option which is sitting in front of my PC and doing stuffs I like with cigarettes and some drinks to accompany me.

To return things to the case, we live in a complex life where good things live peacefully along with evil things. Some times, good people kill evil people and some times evil people kill good people, but they usually live alongside. We just can’t tell which person is good and which person is evil. We can’t really say what’s good and what’s evil as well. Everything is a simulacrum of good and evil.

And when everything is a blurry gray, instead of stereotypical black and white, people suggest avoiding it. Can we really avoid our life? We could hang out with only people who engaged the same ritual with us, but are they good or evil? Is the ritual good or evil? Are we good or evil? We can’t really say. Perhaps it’s not controversial, as it conforms to the commonly accepted things, but does it mean good or evil?

Just because everyone practiced it, that doesn’t mean it’s good. It might be evil, but the people just chose to overlook it –or they might have other justifications for it. This is one of the things why we currently condemn cannibalism as evil. And in the light of cultural relativism –and then value pluralism, we couldn’t really say that it’s either good or evil anyway. We could choose not to practice cannibalism, but we can’t say that it’s an evil thing to eat your enemy, further, we can’t say that it’s evil to o clubbing every night.

The road metaphor and its derivatives don’t really talk about this. Unfortunately, I can’t really say that this mythical metaphor is either good or evil. I mean, it’s just a matter of how a culture viewed something. And despite of its logical fallacies and other value-laden things, it’s essentially just a theory about something. And as far as scientific thinking goes, you can’t have a fully complete notion about something with only one theory.

That’s why people developed new ways to see good and evil. That’s why we know words like /wrong/, /false/, and /bad/ along with their opposition to ease our thinking. The problem then lies in the usage of these words and the new extension classes of these words.

Problem is what’s not good –although it’s not necessarily evil, could be said as wrong, false, or bad. The opposition is then imbalanced –if not confused. Words like wrong, false, and bad is used more or less freely to judge things that’s defined as not good.

In its development, we could see how we invented a new opposition for good. Instead of good/evil, we now use the opposition of good/not good. And the word evil has a new place in our mental dictionary, and it even has a new opposition, which is evil/not evil. Unfortunately, this new opposition is still impaired. If we could say that what’s not good is wrong, incorrect, false, or bad; could we say that what’s not evil is good, true, correct, and even right?

Most of the time, people would confuse the answer. It seems to be a common sense that what’s not evil doesn’t have to be right. It could be wrong, it could be false, it could be incorrect, it could be sinful, it could be almost anything, but it doesn’t have to be good.

It’s still a gray area out there. And this article is still trying to grasp the essence of good and evil. Now, despite of the perspectives of good and bad, people idolized one thing instead of the other, that one thing is being good. There should be a reason behind this idolization. In my opinion, people favored good and demonized evil because of this idolization.

Let’s try to take on the aforementioned metaphors, in order to understand the nature of this idolization. With the Chinese, it’s about yin and yang. Yin is the passive female principle of the universe, characterized as female and sustaining and associated with earth, dark, and cold. The other side is Yang, the active male principle of the universe, which is characterized as male and creative and associated with heaven, heat, and light.

For the Chinese, the dynamic between the two is needed to sustain life. They are believers of balance, or so it seems. But let’s see the associated concepts, before we’re to leave this part. By being earth, dark, and cold, as opposed to heaven, light, and heat, especially in the fact that yin is female as opposed to yang is male, we could see that there’s this subtle favoritism over one thing.

A complete life needs both male and female, heaven and earth, light and dark, heat and cold, active and passive. If we’re to believe that there’s no favoritism here, then we should forget that females are lesser people in traditional China. Or at the very least, they’re needed to sustain what males created. It’s true that life can’t exist without females, but most traditional cultures would avoid being female if they could help it.

Then there’s old Latin culture that chose to see good and evil as a spectrum. This, IMHO, is the most neutral perspective of the three. And since our modern culture mostly consists as a result of the renaissance, it’s no wonder that this Latin metaphor dominated the western world. The only problem in this metaphor lies only in the usage of their labeling words: dexter versus sinister, right versus left. People don’t say extents of evil before good, they say good before evil, as they say right before left.

As men is mostly dextral in motoric abilities, we could see how they viewed the left hand as lesser to the right. This association is already an ordinal scale by itself. In our contemporary word, thanks to political scientists, this association is revived in ideological spectrum: right being democracy and left being total socialism. And this could also be confused with the word /right/ that means correctness, morally good, satisfactory, and other ‘good’ things. We could see the favoritism in this metaphor too.

And the third metaphor is of African origin. As hunters, African tribesmen hunt during the day and watch their camp at night. Thus we could see why they associate day with good, and night with evil. In truth, this night/day opposition is universal enough for every other culture on earth. People tend to see the nighttime as a period of evil, mainly because most predators hunt at night. The darkness aspect of night is also associated with evil because of it.

By the associations, we could see that people often viewed being good as being better than evil –no pun intended. This favoritism deliberately existed because of some reasons. There are so and so reasons why people loved light better than darkness, as they loved good better than evil. I think there’s a certain thing inside the concept of good that made people worshipped it more than they worship god.

By their mode of social control, people forced other people to be somewhat good. Traditionally, the reason was to ensure social order which in turn led to the survivability as a clan or group. This doesn’t really mean a universal good whatsoever. What’s implied is order to ensure social functioning, as social functioning assures survivability. Goodness, in this aspect, is seen as the ability to conform to the whims of the elders and the values that worked for their ancestors ceteris paribus.

As cultures grow, so does the coverage of the concept. Being good grows to be a certain set of values which include a better side of life. Somewhere along the line, being good grow to relate with the heaven –an ideal place to live happily and peacefully, perhaps it’s because people wished to live in a better place. Stupid perhaps, but that’s just what happened.

To make this review more complete, let’s take a look at other metaphors that talked about good and evil. One of the common themes could be found in stories about heroes and their adventures. Themes of heroes could be found in almost every civilization that ever existed, and so we could suppose that they represent a more or less universal concept of good and evil.

In the epoch of heroes and villains, heroes would represent good and villains represent evil. Heroes are definite victors while villains are definite losers. Heroes will be celebrated long after his death while villains will face damnation. Heroes will live prosperously, and villains will be toppled down and crumbled before his treachery.

For me, this represents an innate human wish to be good instead of evil. They don’t really say of a heavenly good or evil. People wished for a better place to live, and they think of several set of actions that perhaps would ensure enough survivability to maintain their existence before they could find that better place. One who practiced these sets would be deemed better than those who against it.

We could see condemnations of evil things in many various cultures in different myths. Good seems to always designated to be winners. Even a hero with evil or dark attributes could be called as an anti-hero. But villains with good or light attributes couldn’t be said as anti-villain. Heroes will be heroes because they are the idealized version of a man.

Villains, no matter how good they are, will always be villains because they simply are the darker side –if not scapegoats, of the society. In the end of the stories, villains would die a horrible death or they’ll turn and help the good guys, only to somehow live anew as another hero of another story, or die another pointless death. Either way, they’ll get forgotten sooner than our hero.

Let’s sidetrack a bit. The tales of heroes and villains are the color of today’s life. To every story, there’s a celebrated hero –or at least someone we could sympathize about, and a damned villain who we would hate. The heroes would face trials and tribulations, to emerge victorious. And if a hero should die, it died a glorious death, the kind of death that made people mourn for its absence.

Stereotypical heroes and stereotypical villains, the way I see it, is not a symbol of good against evil. It’s simply a symbol of men’s wish to be good instead of evil. No, it’s beyond our daily notion of good and evil, it’s more like man’s wish to be an ideal version of itself instead of a condemned version.

As you could see, any evil character is always depicted as a somewhat impaired person. He might be ridiculously strong, he might possess whatever strength the hero has, but a villain will always have some highly exploited weaknesses that would be revealed somewhere near the end of the story where the hero is depicted to fight his final battle against our oppressed villain.

While heroes also have weaknesses, they could overcome it and turned victorious. Villains, however, lived with their inner demons at best, or even succumb to it at most. And if we’re to take our mind deeper to its meaning, it’s the capacity of overcoming his inner demons that made the heroes as what they are. The inability to do this, on the other hand, is what made ordinary people turned into villains.

People wished to be good, because being good would bring higher respect and then favorability from the people. And being favored would bring fame and higher enviability. Goodness, in this perspective, is more like a Marxian capital. It’s more like power or money, and it explains why people so wished to be good. It doesn’t necessarily resemble something of transcendental good, but as long as it’s seen as an idealized state of existence, it will be seen as good.

Being evil, on the other hand, is similar to having less capital. And having less capital would lead to the brink of marginalization. Being evil, in this perspective, means whatever things people don’t want. As people hate poverty, so they hate marginalization. As they hate being left, so they hate evil. As they hate evil, so they associate dreadful things to it.

So heroism means about ideal states of men who tried to ensure survivability of mankind. Heroes live to promote humanity, as villains live to degrade society. Heroes are figures men wanted to be, as villains are figures men wished to discard. They signified the expectation people have for themselves. Within their conceptual existence, people promote something over something else in order to prolong humanity.

There’s also this theme of catastrophe, from Noachim flood to some alien rampaging through the universe and destroyed earth. This particular theme promoted the perseverance of humanity in the face of destruction. Men would always win –or at least die a glorious death, because men are the scions of humanity. It’s fairly logical, as cats would be scions of felinity if they’re sentient enough.

What’s interesting in the theme is the idea that men would endure. Of course it derived from the dream of immortality, and as a collective, the dream of eternal peace and prosperity. Heroes, when facing catastrophic condition, will be depicted as trying to find a way to save mankind –thus humanity, from extinction. This means that an ideal human would uphold humanity even in the face of trouble.

Despite of dramatic exaggerations in such epochs, each and every one is subtly asked to put humanity over anything else. Traditionally, people were asked to put the clan over one’s self, then after we grow this far, we’re still asked to put some greater imagination over our selves.

And so, if trying to be an idealized version of humanity is good, and if doing less than that is evil, then I guess men are inherently evil, because we’re nowhere near our idealized version of ourselves, and most of us are lazy enough not to strive for our idealized state. Then being rich is good, and being poor is evil. Not in the physical state, perhaps, but at least it exists in the realm of ideas or in religious spiritualism.

I’ve heard the notion of being spiritually rich somewhere in some –or perhaps several, religious texts. I believe it’s an interanimation of some sort. I don’t know which one comes first, but from what I observed, being spiritually rich –as opposed to materially rich, also provided means of escapism from the real life. Promise of salvation, perhaps, that if one’s poor and yet not tempted, he might earn his place somewhere far off, eternally. But I’m not talking of religions here, though it’s quite interesting how religion seems to echo the cultural voices of men.

But to conclude things up, I think you could get my interpretation of the concepts good and evil. Good is a representation of the ideal state men wished to live, it’s an idealization of men’s existence. Evil, on the other hand, represents a contradictory state where men are going further from its idealized state. Good gained dominance over evil because of its favoritism and the glorification by the society. People promoted good because they believe it would make their life better.

Not just that. People, collectively hold this firm believe in the existence of humanity. Humanity as the ideal set of attributes that made us human, is the ideological set of belief that made us what we are, and it exists beyond societies. And come to think of it, our sentience as a collective created humanity while in return, humanity shaped our sapience.

Society is made out of some unspoken social contract in order to promote survivability. Humanity, on the other hand, is made out of some invisible imagination of our sentience. Just as society is an imagination of living as a great group, humanity is an imagination of living as an ideal human state of existence. The difference between the ideal kind and the ideal self is that the former is the societal aspect while the latter is the individual. An ideal human kind, no matter how absurd it might seem, consists of ideal selves.

But what’s important is the fact that people promote good over evil because it’s the mean to survival. Good, as nothing more than means of survival, is a worldly concept. It’s neither divine nor transcendental. In fact, it’s a very primitive concept which rooted from the early human years in earth. Somewhere along the line, people hallowed this concept to a mythical realm where it stood until now. Good and evil, survivability and extinction, a longed one and a feared one.

This exaltation, the transfer from a human realm to some divine realm, came mostly of the fact that primitive philosophers are often seen as mediators between men and god. People need to consult with the gods in order to make their existence worth while. A man with greater wisdom is often considered god-sent because of his virtues. And it’s this aspect of seemingly transcendental virtue that possibled the association between that man and their god.

We would today call as scientists, theorists, and other elite attribution for people of competence, but primitive people would regard them as shamans, people who could talk with the spirits of knowledge and wisdom, people who read the signs of the wind and said the words of god through their mouth. It may or it may not be words of a god, but since it’s of mysterious origin –as they haven’t known of cognitive sciences, and it holds great virtue, people heuristically chose to see it as the words of god.

Further, men feared god more than anything. As god is mysterious and all powerful, they would fear it more than anything visible. People tried to please their god because they fear its wrath and long for its benevolence, thus they would consult these god-sent people when they are to do something of greater magnitude. Primitive as they are, they already understand that an action with greater magnitude would create greater impact to the society.

And the idea of betterment pushed people to take the best course of actions in order to achieve a result of positive impact. People struggled to do their very best in order to become something they wished for. This need is based on the motives of self preservation. By becoming something greater than itself, men wished to elude mortality.

Heroes go to heaven, that’s the original preposition. Essentially it means that an ideal person would live in an ideal state of existence along with other ideal people. Just like Viking heroes are sent to Valhalla to live forever [and party forever more] as they wait for the Ragnarok, so does this idea found fruition in contemporary religions.

The Chinese and traditional Latin people have a certain mode of glorification for people whose deeds are exemplary. These people are not only going to heaven, they become gods in the myths. Apotheosis is the Latin word for it. By being gods, people expected them to watch for the rest of mankind and guide their path.

This idea is a hyperbolism from the myth of heroes in the culture. Heroes, as powerful as one can be, are still human. By being gods, these people of stellar performance transcend the mortal realm. By being gods, these people attained an extremely high enviability from the common people. And so people struggled to excel them with the hope that they’d be gods as well.

As opposed to elitism in the used-to-be feudal world, religions try to reach as many people as possible. Religions tried to communicate that there’s a hero inside everyone if they’re to practice a set of heroic attributes. As we could see by now, heroes and good guy are the very same set of ideal self that promotes and ensures the survival of humanity. Religions claimed that good –faithful, people goes to heaven, a promise to elude death –and extinction, in its widest meaning.

Heroes are elitist concepts, while good people are socialist concept. Heroes connote a long-winding road of trials and tribulations, while being faithful connotes only a limited set of daily rituals though we do understand that it also implies an adoption of some principal philosophy of life that may or may not suit the needs of the people at different cultures. While they essentially spoke of the same thing, for some reasons people viewed them differently. While heroes are seen as worldly victors, the faithful is a future citizen of heaven.

But this doesn’t mean that religions don’t promote heroism. Glorifications of certain characters made them seen as heroes of the religion. And though I would say that they only promote their religion as opposed to humanity, we know that religions essentially upheld humanity as well.

And for some reasons, the religious heroes are depicted as having the better side of things –or the favor of god. The war could be seen as some purgatory or some purification –to remind people of their communal dream, but it somehow overlooked that religious wars are about fighting others over some confusion.

But in the light of this, good is not some certain end of meaning, it’s a symbol that stands for another mode of an enviable aspect: the ability to obtain and maintain an ideal self and an ideal state of existence. This ability is an enviable thing because of the glorification in it. If nobody said anything about having an ideal being and state of existence, things would go differently. The world will be overrun with evil, as a writer might put it.

The idea of good is favored because of the promises it brought. And so people traditionally think that if they could surpass their existence, they could elude death. Nobody said anything about an ideal being wouldn’t die, they just imagined that it would. It’s based on this dream of immortality that the concept of good became an enviable commodity.

At the very least, it creates envy in people to have their tales sung by bards in the local pubs long after they die. As a mode of promoting this idea –especially given the fact that heroes and good people do die, people developed an idea that an ideal being would live in another place, an ideal plane of existence where they’ll live eternally, happily ever after.

The very idea of immortality is also confused with god. Although they used to think that god is a formless powerful being that resides in the seemingly eternal nature, they started to see that perhaps it is an entirely different anthropomorphic all powerful being, somewhat an ideal human being that transcends and governs their heroes in an ideal plane of existence, a king of kings in heaven. In this light, god is still defined as an ideal being, but somewhere along the line, this concept grew to resemble human and humanity. Perhaps it’s humanity that mimic god, or perhaps it’s god that mimic humanity. Either way, god and humanity became a single entity in successive cultures. At least, they do hold same attributions. Without these embedded attributes, the concept of god became formless beyond all languages. And people just don’t want an indefinable god.

In essence, men are economic animals, trying to fortify one self with as much attributes as possible, in order to gain enough resource to stand for oneself. This fortification includes justification and other cognitive operations that built a necessary condition for sufficient attribution to stand for oneself. Another implication is that everyone is doing the same thing. The burden of upholding humanity is then distributed among the people who wished to live eternally in an ideal plane of existence as an ideal being.

This phenomenon created a marathon to chase after personal dreams and the communal dream, and series of other phenomena that result in today’s conception of good and evil. While the primary objective was survivability, men found new ways to make survivability more assured. And comically, one way to solve a problem is to find harder problems to solve.

Either way, men came to this idea of an ideal state of existence because of certain reasons. First, this world seems not as happy as one might wished of it. Two, providing a working structure of the society with more passive social control over the populace, along with rationales to explain the unknown nature and reason of their existence. And in such condition, even a promise of a better place is better than anything. A dream, as imaginary as it might be, is better than a handful of sand. And so, people dreamt of a better place and a better self, to fit in the representations of the mysterious world out there.

And thus, good and evil exists as a symbol for the hidden goal to retain humanity. Philosophies of ethics and morality, in the traditional sense, attempted to explain why an action is more proper while another is more improper. They provide the rational suggestions of what course of actions should be taken in the face of problems. Traditionally, all these necessary dimensions of living is covered in cultures, and then in religion.

Due to the unquantifiable dynamic of today’s life, since the society proliferates faster than cognition, we need more thinkers to think for a certain aspect of life. They especially think of a particular aspect, not a dimension, for a complete way of living in this highly demanding world.

And to close this article, I think it’s quite interesting to see that more complex societies demand more explanations, while they essentially constantly erasing the essential parts of their life. And by the essential part of life, I’m referring to the immanent need of an ideal self and an ideal state of existence. They’re growing to be less complete everyday, thus they demand for more completion from others. And in this noisy hubbub, they seek more and more enviable things to fortify themselves with.

In the light of this condition, it’s interesting that despite of some material wealth, people still yearn for some metaphysical assurance. With the object of the metaphor shifted from immaterial enviability factors to materially enviable concepts, the core concept of humanity should’ve changed as well. But somehow it’s still exists as is.

Perhaps men are incomplete because they are alienated from their essential existence. This incompleteness –if I could say, results in more thirst and craving for completeness. The many shifts of meaning and essence made this condition worse, since people couldn’t really find the dreams they used to dream together. People grow detached from one another, and so they wished for togetherness more than anything. Unable to find comfort in their individual dream, people looked the other way to material possessions, especially since they are today’s popular object of enviability.

Although the craving for material objects is today’s trend and today’s center of gravity, the original concept of humanity perseveres, perhaps because it’s definitely a transcendental concept of existence. Dreams don’t demand anything; it’s there to be an envisioned end. People might still know their end, but they just don’t know their path. In this myriad of confusion, the more you drink, the more you thirst. The more you try to be the ideal person you wished to be, the further you stand from it. The more you try to uphold humanity, the more you endanger humanity.

Then the solution to this confusion lies not in the texts, because they are prone to hermeneutical and contextual confusion, but more in essential ideas that exists beyond the extents of the confusion. In understanding the nature of things, we could begin to find our way back to a continuum where we used to dream together. And understanding the nature of things, in this contemporary world, demands the willingness to objectively judge things that doesn’t fit our misinterpretations.

You just can’t have too much irony in life, I assure you.

Back in the 2004, the long-awaited Phantom of the Opera movie production was finally released. And I intended to watch it with someone who was my loved girlfriend back then. Many things happened, and the plan was definitely fucked up. I haven’t watched the movie production until now, and I don’t plan to. There’s only one person in this world I’d want to watch it with.

Many things happened in these three years, the drastic rise and fall of Lurino in all his imaginary glory. I don’t think it’s book-worthy, and I definitely wouldn’t think it’s noteworthy if it’s not my own life I’m talking about. Three years, and no fucking award! Three years of slipping off from a great fuck up to another. Three fucking years, for fucking out loud, and no great achievement whatsoever!

This is still a sick nation, with all its load of fuck ups. This is still a nation where stupidity rules over anything else. I don’t know any other place in earth where stupidity reigned over even money, and they used to say fortuna imperatrix mundi, they should say stolidus imperatrix omniam for Indonesia. Omni Indonesianum vivo ex stolidiam!

Either way, this April, the musical production of Phantom of the Opera will be performed in Singapore. It’s been a long time since I’ve awaited the chance to see this show. Phantom of the opera was –and definitely still, the most fascinating musical production in my limited perception. I don’t really know how to put it into words, but I’m so gonna watch it.

The first of April happens to be a significant day for me. It represents the start of a new –less stressful, life for my mind. For damn three years I’ve tried to make my way up the stairs, and though I somehow made it, I found that it burdens my mind more than I know.

It’s been a common sense to see me as an autist, which happens to be diagnostically true. Several people diagnosed me as having Asperger’s Syndrome, along with several stress induced schizophrenic symptoms. Further inquiry into it shows that my brain structure is somewhat impaired –compared to ‘normal’ conditions, in a way that everything goes through my area 13 before going to where they should be. Easier put, I rationally think about every single little detail that enters my area of perception.

Luckily, I have great cognitive capacity, and so I don’t really lag when compared to normal people. Luckily, the only problem I have –else than sensory hypersensitivity, is the tendency to ignore emotional impulses and non-verbal communication. This also explains why I’m less abled than normal people in the social arena, and the fact that I tend to be somewhat stupid when faced with emotional matters.

The high stress level I’ve lived all these years finally surfaced as this stupid schizophrenic sensory fuck up, along with depression and homicidal tendencies. And the most stupid thing is that the stress came from my inability to relate and interact with common people. I could interact well with people with the same intellectual capacity, and I could communicate my ideas quite well, but not if I’m talking to normal people, which is inherently stupid at their best.

And most of my problems came from this inability. It’s almost like an obsession for me to get a good healthy relationship with someone who’d perform with me. It’s almost like an unhealthy obsession for me to get a good sexual intercourse. And it’s almost impossible, given the fact that my basis of interaction is hostility and distrust. I’m less hostile, perhaps, but I still can’t trust people, not even those nearest to me.

So I decided to take a sabbatical leave from this world. Trying to live rather slower, trying to take some time to breathe between each step. Trying to reconfigure my internal mechanism before more bad things happen, expecting for some improvement while charting out the necessary backups when things went all the way downhill.

Perhaps I used to be an art director, and I just don’t like fighting head over heels for my concepts which would lose in front of budgets. I might perform well in management fields, but I just can’t handle the stupid daily overseeing things. Even if I perform well as a strategist, my mind is not well-suited for negotiations and sorts. The best course for me to take as a career is to either be an artist, a digital illustrator, a writer, or a philosopher. Each course provided enough space for my autism, and they could even take advantage of my autism. And most of all, they don’t really force me to interact with people. I’m left alone to my devising, my little secluded world, and I’m definitely free from the noisy world out there.

As for girls, well, I don’t think there’s any dream girl with enough capacity to deal with someone like me. Even if I could manage my thing, there’d be episodes when things went out of control, and I don’t think anyone could deal with that. Even mom can’t, so why should anyone can?

As much as I want girls to sleep with, it’s more pleasurable to do it myself, since I trust my hands more than any other living human being in this world. I might want to try it every once in a while, but it’s more practical to go for celibacy. It’s not like I could really love anyone anyway.

Oh well, at least I’ll get to watch Phantom of the Opera this April, thanks to some imaginary girl. At least someone’s trying to care for me, though it’s easier for her to be with her current manager boyfriend. At the very least, there won’t be any romantic talks with her, since our talks will revolve around my analysis towards everything perceptible. At the fucking least, no one’s asking for security assurance from me. You just don’t ask an insane to keep you safe, you just logically don’t.

Three years of some helluva work, isn’t it Lurino? I guess you could rest for a bit now, before things start to happen sometimes later. I’ll just try to live as a happy aspie, despite of anything the world might throw at me.

Despite of my current life, I’m a fan of Broadway musical shows. And though I don’t really grasp of its history and origin, I’m a fan of its music. There are songs on my list that originated from Broadway musicals. And if you think musicals suck, then I should remind you that most Disney musical animations are somewhat related to it.

Throughout Disney animation movies, there are stage show adaptations from animations like Mulan, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Tarzan and Lion King as well. And there’s also Disney channel’s High School Musical that’s a drop dead musical performance.

And I believe you also still remember the 2004 movie, Phantom of the Opera which is based on a stage show of one of my favorite composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber. And if you still think musical sucks, there’s the classical Grease, starring John Travolta. There’s The Sound of Music, there’s South Pacific, there’s My Fair Lady, Oklahoma, Oliver, Aida, The King and I, Same Time Next Year, Les Miserable, A Chorus Line, The Boy from Oz [starring Hugh Jackman, the very guy who also played in the movies as Wolverine and Von Helsing], there’s Rent, Annie, Mary Poppins, Jesus Christ Superstar, Jeeves, Chess, Evita, West Side Story, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Cats, Starlight Express, Sunset Boulevard, and many other shows I just couldn’t get my mind off.

Originated from classical opera, modern musicals retained its identity in its songs and dances. And really, being a part of the show –even as an audience, the strength of the songs and dances could really set your feet tapping to the rhythm and set your heart ablaze with the spirit of the music. And really, the passion of the music could really set a stone to dance.

And I really miss those good old days, when the whole song, lyric and music, is deliberately designed to move the heart. Until now, this quality could only be found in musicals especially due to the fact that it’s what sells, in the context of musical stage shows. Unlike popular music that’s designed to please the song of many, the songs in any given musical show –even if it holds R&B theme, are designed to please the taste of the few. In short, it’s premium music, and its quality is definitely worth the price.

It’s about the emotions unleashed with the songs, people. While R&B invites primal instincts and pop music tells the story of many people, but musical songs revealed the whole rhetorical perspective. Musical songs are always sung passionately, it could make you cry as it could make you laugh, it could tell tales of beauty so dear you would rip your heart out, and it could tell tales of anything so divine it would turn you into a believer.

And I NEVER found this inspirational quality in popular music. Many of the evergreen songs came from musical shows, and that’s just what musical songs are: evergreen. Pop music is merely a passing bird in this sea of over-changing trend, but musical is the wind that blows over the tides.

The passion, people, it’s all about the passion. Whatever their genre and field, artists are always passionate about their thing, almost obsessive in some aspects. And that’s just what it takes to create new dreams out of thin air. Not just any dream, but dreams that would move the hearts. And knowing the nature of men, anyone would move a mountain when inspired.

If only people would have that great passion towards the thing they do. And yet, /if only/ is the loneliest word of all. Dreams are deemed to be lonely, as dreamers and visionaries are sentenced to live their life in isolation. But if you happen to be an inspired someone, then the next thing to do is to get yourself passionate about a certain goal, a certain ideal, or even a certain absurd dream.

The keyword for the next step is /hard work/. It’s all about keeping the passion aflame and setting it to the right goal. Dreams are meant to be actualized through episodes of hardship, of trials and tribulations, of keeping your pace. And that’s just what it takes to make a dream comes true.

And so, I’ll leave you with a song by Barry Manilow, a used-to-be accompanist in auditions. And as you could see, even a short song could tell so many stories. Especially when Manilow spoke of his anecdote: if you could give in, you could give out, but you don’t give up.

God Bless the Other 99

I learned more from failure than I learn from success,
I learned from no, thank you, so much more than from yes.
I learned to be willing to lead with my chin,
And if I were willing to lose, I could win.

I learn from the losers, who got right back in line,
The dimmer their future, then the brighter they shine.
Three cheers for the one, the one in a hundred,
But God bless the other ninety-nine.

If you make a thousand paper cranes, your dream will come true and you’ll find happiness. I think this is an allusion to being punctilious, that your happiness and dream will come true after an episode of hardship. And I think Cassius Handoyo tried to communicate this very message in his film “Burung-Burung Kertas.”

And by showing the extent of things people will do in the name of love, I personally commend this movie as an interesting thing to watch, despite of the superb and meticulously-detailed-yet-dramatically-astonishing cinematography offered. And to think this is a low-budget movie… I wish Indonesia is filled with this kind of creative people.

If we think about the things you’d do for love, I guess it’s almost a miracle to have this certain thing called love inside our life. In the said movie, you’ll see that love is about making someone you care about feels happy, more than anything else. This is a very simple thing to think, but not an easy thing to live.

So let’s take it that there’s always this someone whose happiness you romantically care about more than anyone else in the world. It should always be taken into account that you don’t really hold any obligations or any moral responsibility over anyone’s feelings. Emotion is a complex set of feelings, and happiness –as a certain emotion, could be defined as a pleasurable fulfillment of certain conditions that produced a certain set of feeling.

The question would lead to what’s pleasurable and what amount is sufficient to produce the expected fulfillment. And a fool could tell that it varies over people depending on their personal culture. A quantitative approach on it would be cost-benefit ratio, when there’s a surplus of benefit compared to the cost for the involved parties, then theoretically speaking, it would be pleasurable enough.

But really, I personally would question the motivation to care for someone’s happiness. Surely, it could produce a certain amount of happiness for you when you see your loved one is happy, but why doing it in the first place? If you really wished for your happiness, don’t you think it’s better to do things that would make you happy? Would there be any greater happiness when your loved one is happy? I don’t think it’s quite true.

I remembered a discussion with Ruli. He argued that happiness could be seen as a form of investment, which in the long run would be more profitable. When you make someone happy, you invest in them that, ethically, when you’re in need of happiness then they’ll return the investment with interest and other bonuses that could be seen as their investment on you. And I don’t quite follow the logic in it.

Perhaps it’s quite true that relationship is more like a lifetime investment which interest would be a lifetime companionship and sorts. And I also have said that, when you put everything into a relationship, you’ll do everything possible to make it work because the stake is just too high when the bridge is finally burnt. In this perspective, it’s just illogical to do all the things you’d do for love, since the risk would be greater. But this is just an intermediary hypothesis.

I seriously believe that all the time and energy you could spend for the hardships you’d do for love could be spent better by doing things you like, things that you know would please you all the most. In other words, between dating a potential candidate and playing games, I would certainly prefer playing games because of the low risk and the low cost, compared to the potential –which implies uncertainty, benefits whatsoever.

Then Ruli argued that it’s about having the optimum cost for maximum benefit, and he stressed that it’s about having the best bargain for the best possible outcome. Unlike him, I don’t haggle and I don’t like it so much I’d better paying higher price than doing it. But logically, let’s stress at the word potential. It’s all potential and it’s all uncertain. I don’t really care much for uncertainty, since I believe human mind is naturally constructed to adapt with changes and cope through uncertainty.

But, the word /potential/ itself connotes of /probability/. There’s always a certain probability whether things would go as planned or not. There’s always a probability whether random fuck ups would compromise the plan or would it support the plan. Probabilities everywhere, people. Even after I studied extrapolation, triangulation and other mathematical operations to predict a certain outcome based on an observable indicators, it just doesn’t work with individuals. It might work for a society, under a strictly measured condition, but it somehow just doesn’t work with individual human being.

Most of the time, /potential/ also implies a certain extent of capacity –or capabilities. And I don’t really believe this. It’s either you go all out with whatever limited resource you have, or you don’t go at all. It’s everything or nothing. As I’ve said earlier, the higher the stake, the more effort you’ll do to keeps it going. When there’s no predictable and possibly achievable outcome of a certain action, else than experimentation, there’s just no logical reason to do it.

Then I remembered that I’m making a digital illustration for someone, and I intend to give it as a present for her birthday. All right, it might seem like I’m doing an irrational thing, but I do it because of several reasons. First, I’m learning digital illustration; second, her divine face is motivating enough to keep me going; and third, I’m practicing this to ensure the growth of my future career as a digital illustrator.

You see, I’m doing this seemingly altruistic thing, without any hope to finally end my life with her, because of myself and my own deliberation. I don’t really care whether she likes it or not, I’m doing this simply for myself. Thus, I can’t understand why someone would do things for the benefit of others.

So I’m a genuine cynic and egoist. And though I love Cicero’s summum bonum philosophy, I love the actualization of myself even more. I mean, you can’t really please others unless you please yourself first. Whatever I do, I do it mostly for myself. If someone is somewhat happy because of it, that’s an unexpected yet welcomed implication. And if it made someone somewhat sad, then it’s an unexpected and ignorable implication.

Then you might say that it’s my moral obligation to concern if someone’s sad because of me. As a reply, I would remind you that one’s happiness is one’s sole responsibility. It’s already an absurd thing to associate your happiness with someone else, but it’s highly irrational to associate it with someone’s actions. People are just irrational. Could you, seriously, trust another to take care of your life? If the answer is yes, then I guess you’re one of the reasons this world is so fucked up.

Inspired by Cassius Handoyo’s “Burung-Burung Kertas.”

So ferdi;) seems to have this hit on communication programs, something I regret since he’s one of the supporting agent behind my being where I currently am [though I’m to go very soon]. But I’m not about to tell him of advices like what other communication associates might provide.

Despite of him being quite lazy and sorts, I still believe that this guy has a great potential to be a great artist. There’s always this certain feeling when you meet an artist, and I’m sure you’re quite aware of it. As a fellow artist wannabe, I seriously think about this matter for quite some times now in the spare moments of my waking days [which counts almost 24 hours except for the weekends].

It’s really not an easy thing to change the culture of an individual, and it’s greater still to change a nation’s culture. Especially since Indonesia, as we may be well aware of it, has no grand narrative to put its whole stakeholders into a cohesive society. It’s a highly difficult thing to do, but not impossible.

This may sound quite stupid, but Indonesia has been living under strong tyrannical rule that forced its dissidents to live cohesively. The regime was toppled, as well as the iron fists that held it with care. And in the light of so-called democracy, it would take another generation to have us finally understand the nature of freedom.

But, let’s not go that far yet. Culture is not all about things, and it’s not about ideologies. Culture is a way of living. People doesn’t really give a further thought to how they live what life they live. For them, it’s taken for granted and all about surviving today. The high level of uncertainty produced anxiety and stress, and too much of this will render people ignorant.

Since Indonesia is a high-context society where everything is ritualized, where doing the activity held higher reward than the content of the activity, and where thinking to change the contents held higher punishment than not doing the activity; then we should take this into account when we’re to produce some effective communication.

In a high context society, with highly inter-dependent self concept in it, Indonesia is pretty much blind to the contents of a certain ritual. Everyday life is already hard enough, and they just have a so-and-so mind capacity that they can’t really spare a moment to think further about their life.

I think the solution to this is about promoting a single key theme in a certain ritual with a contemporary fashion that is currently, commonly accepted. Something like, for instance, traditional wedding ceremony was designed to inherit cultural messages, traditional virtues to the newlyweds. Across cultures, there are similar codes saying about the same thing, and I guess this could be the start of a grand narrative.

Pancasila, in the yester ages, tried to do this. I’m sure you remembered how P4 said that Indonesian culture is based on the apex of traditional cultures, which implies that these similar codes across cultures are the foundation of it. This very idea is not necessarily a grand fallacy; it’s just that in the light of pluralism, it’s quite stupid to enact it once more.

So there are similar –and some universal, moral codes in traditional cultures that shared a certain ethnical reference to their respective cultures. These codes are supposedly interchangeable just like Lego blocks of a nation. Across cultures, there are just so and so commonness you could do, except if you transcend and see things from an outsider’s perspective.

IMHO, we could always put a new meaning around these moral codes. My example was traditional wedding ceremony. One interesting about it is that it promotes traditional means of domestic welfare and sorts. Perhaps a bit traditional or primitive in the light of post-modernism, but at least it used to work.

To put the motion back into the wheel, I think it’s best to re-animate the values in our daily life. It would be highly primitive to popularize traditional wedding ceremonies in its royal state, but we could always try to do it the other way, if you get my meaning.

Oh, and yeah, don’t forget that our current traditional rituals were used to be rituals of the royalties. It became popular after Islam came into the picture. Islam and its traditional virtue of equality helped people in giving them more dreams to make. Back then, people don’t really envy it when royalties wed, but it’s another thing when their neighbor wed. This should be taken into account as well.

Well, I’m sure by now you have a stream of ideas into mind, so spill it out bud.

Lurino signing out.

Rhetoric, from the ancient grecian days, is an artsy science of explaining things to the audience. Originally, the acts of rhetoric consisted of inventio, dispositio, elocutio, and actio. In simpler english, rhetoric is the art of ‘finding out what’s to be said and how to contextually speak of it;’ ‘putting a structured train of thought on how it’s to be said;’ ‘stylishly elaborating the arguments;’ and ‘moving the general audience.’

In the visual version, the actio and elocutio of rhetoric coincides. So, simply put, visual rhetoric spoke about how to design a picture that’s communicative enough to move the audience. And, given the salient usage of pictures, specifically in advertising, we could well say that in the advertising, visual rhetoric is about designing an illustration that could win audiences’ attention and persuade them enough to think about the message.

As Barthes said, in the publicity picture, contrary to the case of art, every detail (in the said picture –Lurino) has been calculated to convey a message. So let’s take it that pictures in advertising are rhetorical figures. As McQuarrie and Mick said, echoing someone, a rhetorical figure is about an artful deviation. So there must be some deviations needed to produce a certain meaning. This would be a basis for later thoughts.

But before we go to such an extent, we should remember that as a mean of mass communication [no matter how artsy and how consumer-oriented, advertising is a mode of one-way communication to the general audience], advertising models derive from a particular model of communication –the exact mention would be Information Transmission model, developed by Shannon and Weaver.

This model exemplifies on the transmission of a certain information from the source to the receiver through some spatial objects where noise(s) may interfere and reduce the quality of the received information. But something’s wrong with this spatial metaphor, mainly because we now understood that meaning is co-created instead of transmitted. Thus Sonesson came up with another model which he calls The Prague schools’ Model of General Communication.

What the Prague model said is that the two subjects involved in a process of communication may initiate their acts in time using different sets of norms. This echoes the fact that meaning is co-created between the two parties, and that none of the two parties means the exact same thing. In terms of the conduit metaphor, what goes in is not what comes out.

Since the two starts from a different point, then there would be adaptations. The sender adapts to the receiver –as what actio is all about, while the receiver also adapt to the sender. The sender then produced an artefact –like speaking the concept in some language or writing this article, to be perceived by the receiver.

Further, this artefact metaphor could well explain the nature of advertising pictures. An advertiser came up with an advertisement and threw it to the general audience via some media. Any given part of the target audience could pick up the ad from the media and interpret it, more or less, as one likes it. And how to persuade this someone is exactly what rhetoric is all about. It’s all about explaining the relationship of, as well as the paths taken by, the sender to create adhesion from the receiver.

From Barthes’ era, due to the binary opposition in structuralim, there are two divisions of rhetorical figures: metaphor and metonymy. The former was when a concept-thing was used to signify another concept-thing, where the latter was the substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant. And before we go further, let’s review metaphor specifically.

Theory on metaphors spoke something like a tenor-vehicle relation where the attributes of the tenor was imposed to the vehicle. In the metaphor love is a battlefield, for instance, the attributes around battlefield was imposed to love. So we could infer something like “love is about fighting, love hurts, love kills,” to something like “love takes a lot of guts.” And to make a personal metaphor out of it, let’s just imagine a tenor singer driving a car where the tenor would drive the car anywhere to reach his goal.

McQuarrie and Mick enlisted something like 20 rhetorical figures found in advertising language, and divided them to schemes and tropes. Schemes are about the excessive regularity of words –something like Eco’s version of Overcoded message, while tropes are about irregularity of words –Undercoded message. Metaphor fills in as one of the tropes, and it’s basically due to it’s figurative nature. 

So, rhetorical analysis is not just about analyzing the metaphors, since there are other rhetorical figures involved. But in the realm of visual communication, some rhetorical figures are just impossible. You can’t really invert some pictorial syntax like in an Antimetabole. The most possible and the most commonly found is metaphor and metonymy, though I could argue that character depiction could be a form of synechdoche. So, the rhetorical analysis of advertising pictures would consist mostly in talking of pictorial metaphors and metonymies.

So, if we’re talking of visual –and hence pictorial, metaphors, there are two standards of comparison we could take to interpret the visual message: the natural meaning of the depicted object and the natural properties of such object. This comparison would lead to Gibson’s ecological physics and Husserl’s perceptual lifeworld, along with some gestalt theories.

We perceive the natural world –this lifeworld, as a whole. This lifeworld is a myriad of independent objects existing in relation with other independent objects. There are certain ways which things tend to behave, said Husserl. It’s from this ‘customary’ things that we could analyze a picture to assess the degree of deviations it contains, and co-create the meaning implied.

But before we see how things behave, we should first see how things exists. Each and every lifeworld object is relatively independent, but still they maintained somekind of relationship with another objects. There are two forms of relationship between independent lifeworld objects: factorality and contiguity. Each object also has some integration with another objects, and yet maintained enough difference to be told apart. The last categorization would be how these objects are categorised within the society.

To put things simply, a chair would seem normal enough to coexist with another chairs, a desk, and a whiteboard in a class. We could differentiate between each chair, we could differentiate the chairs with other non-chairs, and it formed a whole of ‘classroom.’ This classroom holds its’ meaning and the society has meanings about classrooms.

But when the said chair was depicted being in some snow-covered mountain peak, or in the middle of pacific, then there are deviations involved. And the meaning that came from this deviation would be different from the usual meaning. The case would also be different if some polar bear sat on the chair and fishing on top of an ice hole.

Given this case, then we should dissect the picture in some rhetorical analysis.

First, let’s agree that we perceive these objects as a gestalt of its own. Like the polar bear, for instance, we see it as a superstructure consisted of polar bear-ish properties like color, texture, shape, and all it’s other properties as well as its extension classes and so on and so forth. To some certain extent, we also perceive other non polar bear-ish things to appear along with it, like an igloo or a penguin. It could be said that the penguin and the igloo has a contiguity relationship with the said polar bear. Further, though we could only see a side of the bear, we already have a prorotypical image of it in our head. So, even if the said polar bear is just a carricatural one, we instantly compare it to our prototypical image of a polar bear –along with all its extension classes and its properties, to grasp the gestalt of the said polar bear.

In the sense of metaphoric pictures, there’s always a certain deviation from what’s supposedly existed taken-for-grantedly from the lifeworld. So, what’s factoral or contiguous in the lifeworld might be depicted differently in the ad. Further, what’s seen in the lifeworld might be depicted differently in the ad, thus came degrees of similarity, degrees of difference, degrees of reality, and degrees of divergence. This far, we already have enough boxes to analyze in the iconical layer.

As Scott puts it, depiction is all about style. I think she proposed something more gestalt in nature than what semioticians like Saint-Martin and Sonesson does. The style of depiction is a gestalt prägnanz in itself. Why does the Panzani pasta be depicted this way instead of the other? Why was it photographic instead of carricatural in depiction? The 5W+1H for the style of depiction, that is.

And this style also covers a lot of ground, vast enough that we could start budding trees to replace the great forests we forested throughout humanity. It covers angle, lighting, details, and most everything that’s visually perceived by the audience.

It was from these relation between gestalts that we could infer the deeper meaning of things. Visual metaphors should be analysed as a whole, instead as a part of another abstract superstructure. It’s methodical to do it like Groupe μ, Saint-Martin, Lévi-Strauss, or Sonesson does, but it’s more practical to do it my way. This methodology is also in many ways more similar to the casual viewing conditions. I’ll spare you from all the philosophical debate and debauchery, so I’ll just leave you at this.

After the iconical analysis we could start plastic analysis, or simplier put, meaning analysis. Let’s agree that in the sense of making sense of an ad, everything’s a metaphor that needs to be deciphered in a metaphorical sense. Each and every depicted object would, then, be a vehicle to some tenor driver [of course, this is just my personal metaphor of the tenor-vehicle relationship].

The meaning of a polar bear in a cartoon depiction would be different than if it’s photographed. And the meaning of something versus something else would also different as I care. So, meaning analysis is about making sense of what the tenor singers sung together as a gestalt prägnanz. In this stage, we no longer need to care about what vehicle the singers drive, but we only care about what the singers sung.

So, to put it in an Ainulindalëan [as in The Music Of The Ainur –J.R.R. Tolkien] kind of way, let’s imagine Placido Domingo brought up a certain theme, that other tenors would join and sing together, or others like Il Divo would came and ruin the theme Domingo had built.

A song where everything’s themed and every note supports the theme could be, IMHO, an equal to Eco’s proposition of an overcoded text. But a song where Il Divo stepped up and ruined the theme, or added up some dissonant notes would be a lousy example of an undercoded text. The better way of exemplifying an undercoded text would be something like a piece of an instrumental music where the general audience were asked to imagine a fullness of the music. 

But, saying that Simon Cowell’s Il Divo sucks wasn’t what this was all about. Rhetorical analysis, along with visual rhetorics, is a way to decipher the meaning of pictures. And further, it’s about how people understand the things they perceived visually. It’s about making sense of the picture on the basis of the perceptual lifeworld, so it shouldn’t be done nonsensically, instead it should be done commonsensically.

And the most commonsensical thing I could take, this far, is all about this. But what about the in-depth analytical procedures that required atomic divisions? Well, I don’t really give a damn about them.

It’s not wrong to divide things to its’ foundational basis, but let’s take a human body as an exemplary system to analyze. We could analyze the body per se, without any dissections whatsoever, to gain enough aesthetical understanding of the body itself. Or we could frame the body and analyze just a part of the body. Or we could dissect the body and analyze one of its organs. Or we could analyze the body as a system made out from various proteins, fats, and other things. Or we could analyze the body as a superstructure of so many cellular things. It goes further down the line, until we analyze the atoms forming the body.

The problem is, if we analyze just a cell and its relationship with another cells, we’ll stop at the level of cellular understanding. We couldn’t really say a thing about the human body, for our vision is limited to the cellular system of the body. And if we go deeper to the level of atomic analysis, we’ll see no grand difference between a human body and another organic object, or in other words, the human body lost its humanity.

We perceive the lifeworld as being a whole, or in other words, as a gestalt perception. We don’t see human beings as a superstructure made of atoms and atomic regularities, though our knowledge covers that. Only in the Matrix trilogy could we see fictituous lifeworld objects being seen as a myriad of codes, but that is a hyperrealism in itself. So, technically, we don’t really give a damn about the details behind a thing, we just see things as they are.

That, and the fact that, if we divide a given depiction to its coloremes, we’ll fail to see the picture. What’s pictorial about a blob of pigment? If we’re to divide pictorial depictions to blobs of pigments, then structuralist linguistics should divide sentences to its sound wavelength and conduct some magnitudinal analysis of the phonemes, instead of stopping at phonemes –for colors are merely representations of a reflected spectrum of light. But the said object of analysis would be a meaningless object then, wouldn’t it?

Thus, I resent the methodological procedure of dividing a pictorial object to its atomic meaning bricks. It’s probable and possible, if we need to understand the underlying foundation of things. But to understand the metaphors in a given picture, we don’t really need to cover that far. Instead, if we go that far beyond, we’ll fail to see the gestalt of the independent objects, and the gestalt of the general picture.

This far, my argument seems to echo Forceville, but I believe I’ve covered things that he failed to explain in his theory of pictorial metaphors. His reductionism would fail to see how minute details over a given metaphor could shift the metaphor interpretation vastly. A smiling face with different hue and saturation would mean different, even with the same metaphor construct. The same smiling face, with the same metaphor construct, with a different style of depiction, i.e.: carricatural instead of photographic, would mean different.

Further, the same polar bear, given different hue or saturation, could mean different. If this polar bear-object was set to be a factoral part to the whole metaphoric message, then the interpretive scheme of the message would be changed as well. The philosophy of color, together with philosophy of depiction –if there existed any, governs the mind mutually as salient as other visual things. And if the said polar bear-object was set as the sum of non polar bear-ish factoral parts, the message would change too. Hue, brightness, and saturation is just as important as any other means of deviation when it came to gestalt understanding.

A fault of a giant –even a gigantic layman, given his gigantic size in nature, would be a gigantic fault compared to the fault of an ordinary nobody like me. Forceville, for one, also failed to explain when reality became fused –and thus blurred, with depiction. Let’s take an ordinary fashion photographic ad, for instance.

Fashion ads utilized ‘ordinary’ people as its model when it comes to mass-produced clothing, and thus they grew to be an iconical symbol –and not necessarily metaphoric, of the specific class the advertiser targeted. People looked at this ad and interpreted it as if they’re the ones wearing the advertised clothing. These stylistic ads do not pose as some pictorially metaphoric mean of visual communication, though essentially it’s still a metaphor [if you’re the model, then … ].

A seemingly no-metaphor condition such as the aforementioned photograph should’ve been considered a metaphor too, given the rhetorical nature of advertisements. It might be not contain any apparent vehicle-tenor  relationship, but the model rendition of the general audience is a synechdoche in itself, and should be treated like other forms of rhetorical figures. Unlike in the verbal world, visual metaphors could exist beyond the apparent face value.

To some extent, even the figurative depiction of a full set could be metaphorical when there’s enough deviation from standard factorality/contiguity/similarity/difference of fashion norms, like when a black tux coexists with a bright yellow tie instead of a black or red bowtie. That, or a three-piece clothing being wore together with the absence of a proper pants or proper leather shoes. Or a carricatural tux accompanying a real life model.

So, I conclude, metaphor –and every extension classes it may has, also correlates with the style of depiction in order to create a full gestalt prägnanz. It’s only from this holistic view that we could analyze the degrees of deviation appeared in –or absent from, any given pictorial, and thus visual, modes of communication.

Visual metaphor works like any other verbal metaphors. There’s a tenor to every vehicle, only that in visual metaphors, each object exists independently, and the tenor-vehicle relations are much more complex than its verbal cousin. This complexity came mostly from how the objects depicted, or for short, it’s complex because any deviations from the lifeworld objects we know, is already a metaphor in itself.

Or the contrary, where the lifeworld object derived from the schematic idea in some given picture. It couldn’t really be said a metaphor, since the picture is not, in any way, a depiction of some lifeworld object. The picture is a symbolization of some abstract idea, and thus doesn’t have any relation to the object derived from the picture.

But we could still analyze how the picture communicate with its viewer. We make sense of pictures based on our perceptual lifeworld, and it’s not uncommon to find the objects in the lifeworld that have some resemblance to the depiction. It’s from these resemblances that we abduct hypotheses to understand the picture.

Allright, this is just speculative, but insofar I learned that we are gestaltic animals. By making sense of things, we inherently fill the gap we perceive from a source. And we make sense by deriving from our previous knowledges –also by asking from other sources, to gain some complete idea of something. Thus, my theoretical scheme could also be applied to the said picture.

The deviation coming from the realization of the said picture to the lifeworld object is not in itself metaphorical. There needs to be a certain sacrifices whenever an idea needs to be communicated, or as in Shannon-Weaver’s model, there will be certain noises. Such noises would require us to either accept it as some expectable loss, or to find some ideas, concepts, whatsoever, to complete the incompleteness of the realization.

That, and all its’ extension classes, is basically what visual rhetorical analysis is all about. That’s how we make meaning out of some visual message, and that’s how we basically perceive what we see. Sorry for writing this long, but some times, I am this obsessive –especially when it came to proving my worth and my merit over anything else.