Vancouver Drift

Rawls is very interesting. He is truly a neo-Kantian, most evidently demonstrated in his work "The Law of Peoples". Many correlations can be drawn from Kant's Perpetual Peace. Rawls's originality, however, lies in his ability to rationalize the principles laid out by Kant using his original position and filtering non-universal maxims through his categorical imperative. This idea of a peaceful federation (foedus pacificum) is somewhat cosmopolitan, and very utopian. According to Rawls's model, war would be virtually eliminated amongst liberal democratic societies as well as decent societies. He is therefore a very strong proponent of liberal democracy, and understandably so.

However, this happy picture leads one to question where the "realism" enters into the picture. Some may suggest that his 8 principles are realistic, but I argue that what makes his "realistic utopia" truly realistic is the importance he places on "peoples" rather than "nations" or "states", themselves being rather, and overly, parsimonious institutions. States cannot act morally. In saying this, I mean that the nature of the state does not prioritize moral actions over self-interested ones. Among states, utilitarianism is king. Realism defines much of state action, where liberalism and interdependence forms much of what people within states wish to aspire the state to be. The focus on people is important because it realises that states are controlled through the actions of people. When public reason and consensus is adequately developed in a liberal society, war is very much avoidable. When the people within a liberal democratic state develop morals that work internationally, the state has little choice but to follow suit. Institutional change that develops the people within states seems to me, although a long drawn out process, the only way to achieve a long term change in the international system where utilitarian states seem, to reign supreme.

i am looking for something to excite me this year. so far, it's been cyclical and short term. i need something that excites me in the long term, a change, a spike a spark. can i should i go out and pull the trigger? make it big, do it for myself, create opportunity? or should i wait, passively, but at the ready.

if i were to pounce, i wouldn't know where or what to pounce on. if i were to wait, i wouldn't know for how long, and whether i would recognize my prey, before it was too late.

someone SHOCK me before i stay frozen like a popsicle without a mouth. hrm... ok, that didn't sound too kosher, but it was the first thing that came into my mind, so i'll stick wit it.

goodnight world.

this is funny, i want to make a video sometime. any takers for this summer?

why asian girls dig white guys

As many of you have probably read, there has been a mudslide in the farming town of Guinsaugon in the Philippines burying an entire town of 1870+ people alive. 1000 US marines were diverted from a training exercise near by, but surivors were less than 50. Today a mass grave is being constructed for at least 50 unidentified bodies that they have dug up.

Now, I admire the machinary of human organizational structures in dealing with relief and disasters. It is very hard for anyone to ignore the impulse to help out in situations like that. However, I do wonder why we prioritize relief efforts to preventative measures. According to the villagers, the mudslides were caused by the effects of heavy torrential rains on the mountainside where illegal logging had left no protection for the town beneath. Now, it's just a guess, but if those marines were diverted a few days before to help secure the area or evacuate the town, would we still be digging graves? Or perhaps going back a few weeks, could the Arroyo government have realized the illegal logging would lead to problems and bring in specialists to help? Or maybe a few months back, they could have acted to twart the illegal logging activities in the first place.

Perhaps I may be reading too much into it, some residents were indeed evacuated but were let back into the village when the weather became sunny again; however, it's just a wonder how the impoverished sectors of a country are put in the most compromising positions. Has a landslide fallen on a rich area of the Philippines burying a few millionares alive? Natural disasters always seem to make you wonder if the hand of God has a class bias.

Read Hurricane Mitch: click here
This addresses the Politics of Hurricane Mitch. This was also refered to by Chomsky in an Amnesty Lecture Series.

Read the Philippines news report: click here

If only life was like in those old Captain Planet cartoons that received lots of play time in Singapore. I'm not sure about Canada, I wasn't young enough when I came here.

so, after a week long blogger hiatus, the long weekend has sunk its midterm teeth coated with industrious intentions. what do i have left-over after my 2 weeks of blind pursuit of the emptiness of an image? well, i have salvaged some dignity, and more importantly collected the atomized pieces of worry and fear and am slowly assembling it like lego into a consolidated godzilla of sorts (read: 2 weeks of slacking off is fucking me over).

i think a lot of my life is dealing with the complicated balance between the social and the academic. i need to keep 'em separated. but oh, they bleed into each other. i end up lecturing over pho, and going out to the library with the girl of the week (read: impossible crushes that help me not study) with the guise of studying.

8.16 am now. the sun has just come up past the snow-capped mountain that looms over the skytrain tracks. sarah vaughan, the artist i sleep with, is singing her heart out, complimented by the strings we hear so rarely in contemporary music.

i'm staring at the 5 books that are going to cost me a lot of wasted money when i forget to return them come monday. i'm a little hungry, dreading (only a little though, i actually like the stuff) heading back to my bed where aristotle, rawls and kant are waiting for me. hmm. i know that was obvious, but i better qualify it: they are in my book on ethics. i am NOT sleeping with men who think they are philosophers come from the grave (or the cave haha. man, when i make a joke, i really make a joke. hrm.. this could possibly be academics bleeding into the social... meh, what can u do). just wanted to clarify that for you crystal, lest you make some sub-par joke that is an affront to homosexuality, because i am as straight as a, like, erm.. like a straight line. yeah, booyah to your grandma as they say.

sigh, this midterm is gonna be real interesting. you see, this class that i'm taking is being taught by a diplomat that worked for the canadian foreign services for 30+ years. the guy is about 60 now, and still got some pop! left in him. but man, old ppl can be long winded. anyway, what he does is contextualize philosophers such as kant and aristotle in a contemporary way. it's sorta like being hip, but not too hip. he brings in the contemporary scholars of the time such as david singer and michael ignatieff and shows how a lot of what they say has already been said by aristotle (i don't know why red reminds me of aristotle, or maybe its the other way around). it really brought life back into philosophy for me. i don't have a huge background in it, but i had never really found it very interesting in the first place. now i'm actually looking forward to brewing some tea and set the mood for a lusty night of philosophy 101. well, it's actually political science 449 ethics in IR, but it's very much philosophy.

ooh and he makes philosophy jokes that make sense only after a long pause in thinking. they are, i believe, techniques learnt thru diplomatic engagements, like when you want to insult someone without insulting someone. i think they are great, even though it takes me a little longer than most to get them (of those that actually do).

okay, i've listened to this sarah vaughn album two times over already, i'm audi.
P.S if anyone living near me is reading, and likes to play tennis, give me a shout, i have 2 hitting partners, but they don't really wake up until the afternoon. and i have such a jones for this tennis thing these days.

so tired.

I have a problem with beautiful people. And i mean somewhat strictly in the physical sense of the word. I like them, but at the same time every psychosomatically-induced distaste i have developed during my youth finds faults and expands them to j-lo proportions. i have problems with beautiful, rich people.

i guess looking at it from a wider angle, i wonder how much social class and physical characteristics define your personality. on the surface, i seem to be correct. the haves are evil oppressors of the have-nots. it's quite a predicament for people like myself, who are flipflopping more than any electoral candidate between the two spheres. i am a have-some. my place is filled with ambiguity, not knowing if i am within my social playpen or out trying to ride wilderbeasts, so to speak.

more importantly, my actions. how do i come off to others? do i act with sincerity and exude charm and personality that i deem is a quality of the have-nots? or do i engage in the bougie sobbery of the haves. sure, the world is not black and white like this. but where do you lean?

why can't we just all you know, get a long man... sing kumbaya by the fire and shit. why can't the haves and have-nots break that social barrier? this is speaking more in terms of the beauty differences. but even looking at it from a social class perspective, i have started to realize that i am part of the upper middle class (egawd!!). yes it's true my friend. I have been volunteering downtown to give out food in the bad part of vancouver, and I have started to realize that I can't relate! I am trying to engage with my fellow humans. The have-nots. But I just can't relate, have nothing to say, and will I ever stand the chance of making friends with them? What in common do I have?

I think we all have to address our humanity, and realize what we have in common we do have with the have-nots both in beauty and with class.

I just finished reading part 1 of 2 of Weber's "Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism". This guy is Brilliant! The concept seems simple enough: the protestant ethic of frugality and hard work creates capitalism. My more than crass description of the work does the detail of Weber justice in terms of acting as a foil. This guy is simply brilliant when you get down to the bones of it.

Different rationalizations! That's the part that did it for me, and the way he used it as a tool to understanding the rationality of the Protestant ethic. As a writer, and a thinker, this guy really covers his bases. He doesn't go for an all-encompassing blanket theory, but rather finds niches within history from which he can fit his theories into the mosaic of capitalism.

Just amazing. On to part deux.