Humanities is important

“The great strength of the totalitarian state is that
it forces those who fear it to imitate it.”

“The broad masses of a population are
more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric
than to any other force.”

“The great masses of the people
will more easily fall victims
to a big lie than to a small one.”

“Success is the sole earthly judge
of right and wrong.”

“The victor will never be asked
if he told the truth.”

“How fortunate for leaders,
that men do not think.”

Who said that?

Hitler!

Did you study Hitler and his words in school before?

Did you secondary school's history book:
- went beyond the history of this Matrix Island?
- went beyond memorising dates to include debates about different viewpoints?

How many years of history did your school allow you to study, and how was it taught?

WHY?

Human Battery: Humanities is important. It liberates the mind! And that's why you were not allowed to study it, and to study it in the right way. Haha!

开卷有益

In the previous post, I said: "READ".

Read what, you may ask?

Here's some recommendation - how about the life, work and words of the following people?

"There is a kind of dictatorship that can come about through a creeping paralysis of thought, readiness to accept paternalistic measures by government, and along with those measures comes a surrender of our own responsibilities and therefore a surrender of our own thought over our own lives and our own right to exercise the vote. The free system gives the right to every citizen to do something for himself. Because he has the right, the opportunity is always there" - General Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th US president, Supreme Allied Commander in WW II, Europe.


"We cannot possibly reconcile the principle of democracy, which means cooperation, with the principle of governmental omniscience under which everyone waits for an order before doing anything. That way lies loss of freedom, and dictatorship" - Lewis H. Brown


"A free market includes the free exchange of views, the ability to read what people write, regardless of what their views are, the whole area of freedom of speech, of religion, of discussion, of the press, is really an aspect of a free market. It is an area in which individuals should be free to cooperate with one another, to exchange views, to say what they believe."- Milton Friedman, 1912-2006.


"The history of mankind is a history of the subjugation and exploitation of a great majority of people by an elite few by what has been appropriately termed the 'ruling class'. The ruling class has many manifestations. It can take the form of a religious orthodoxy, a monarchy, a dictatorship of the proletariat, outright fascism, or, in the case of the United States, corporate statism. In each instance the ruling class relies on academics, scholars and 'experts' to legitimize and provide moral authority for its hegemony over the masses". - Ed Crane


"It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own" - Herbert Clark Hoover (1874 - 1964)


You can never get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you have all the facts, you cannot make proper judgements about what is going on." - Harry Truman

"The best test of a civilised society
is the way in which
it treats its most vulnerable and weakest members."
-Mahatma Gandhi

What the people really want to hear is the truth.
It is the exciting thing - to speak the truth."
- Winston Churchill

Don't say I bias hor. Here's a quote from LKY for comparision:

"I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think." - Lee Kuan Yew, 1987


How is he, compared to the rest?

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” - CS Lewis

When you have an efficient government,
you have a dictatorship".
- Harry S. Truman, 33rd US president:

"When dictatorship is a fact,
revolution becomes a right".
- Victor Hugo

And I reserve the best for the last:

"You can't get rich in politics,
unless you're a crook."
- Harry S Truman

Human Battery: 开卷有益!

Mega blue pill

(surely they meant:
"the future of our Matrix Master"?)

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves" - Edward Murrow (1905-1965)

"So long as men worship dictators, Caesars and Napoleons will arise to make them miserable." - Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963)


Have you come across such words of wisdom during your school days?

Perhaps during literature class? Or as part of the history project that you did on Napoleon or Caesar?


(But wait, you did get to study literature or ancient world history in school, right? No? Why not?

I mean, students all over the world from Europe to America, get to study literature and world history as part of their mandatory education, along with other compulsory subjects such as Math and Science. WHY NOT YOU?)


And if you did study history, surely your history lessons have consisted of more than memorising dates about Sir Stamford Raffles, right?

I mean, surely, you must have done many history projects on:

• Napoleon, Caesar, Hitler: their thinking and their words,
• the rise and fall of Chinese dynasties: the causes and the reasons,
• the various types of political ideologies: communism, democracy, how they arose, the theories behind them
• reading up various contradictory accounts of the same historical event, thus understanding that "history is written by the victor"?
  

(I said "surely", because that's how students in other developed countries are taught, and we are a developed country.)

No, No, No to all 4 bullet points?

WHY NOT?


Or perhaps, the words of these wise men appeared in one of the hundreds of essays that you read, during your 10-12 years of English language "reading comprehension" lessons?

No? Literally hundreds of essays and not a single work by such famous people/writer?

WHY NOT?


I will tell you why!

Because we are human batteries!

Our responsibility, as far as education goes, is to learn how to build things, cure sickness or make money, so that we can become engineering/ medical/ business human batteries respectively.

Learning to think, to question, and to ultimately liberate the mind is NOT the educational goal assigned to human batteries!

And our Matrix Masters have specially designed an education curriculum and exam syllabus and streaming criteria to ensure that.


"But.. but.. but a country does need people who are well-versed in such history and literature and philosophy and whose mind are liberated in order to survive, does it not?", stammered some human batteries in shock.

Sure it does!

And our Matrix Master knew that too. Long ago, in fact.

More than 20 years ago, he had already come up with the perfect solution - a Humanities Scholar Scheme, designed specially for the top X% of each cohort. Here's how it works:

• Identify such top students via national exams
• Allow these students (and only these students) to enroll in selected schools that are funded with extra money allocated specially for the scheme.
• Let their young minds be liberated through such studies in humanities.
• It's ok, because they won't betray the Matrix Masters. The undergraduate scholarships and bonds that they will get later, will ensure that!

(Wee Shu Min, by the way, was in this Humanities Scholar Scheme, if I remember correctly).


To put it another way, on this Matrix Island, only the top X% of each cohort are allowed to go through a real education - which seeks to liberate the mind by training it to analyse, to doubt, to question, and hence to be able to sieve truth from falsehood, relevance from irrelevance, fact from myth. And, having had their mind thus liberated, they, while useful to the country, will also become a serious threat to the Matrix Master, and hence all will be bought over with scholarship money and high salary and be inducted into the administrative service!

Oh, btw, X is a very small percentage.

Less than 1%.

The gifted student scheme is for the top 1% of the cohort. Each cohort is about 50,000 students and so only 500 join the scheme each year. The Humanities Scholar Scheme draws its students mostly (but not entirely) from a subset of the gifted student scheme and so is made up of less than 1% of each cohort!

"The remainder i.e. 99.xx% of each cohort, they have better had only a technical education which serves the economy directly and which will ensure that they remain ignorant human batteries!", so thought our Matrix Master.

In Chinese, there is a special term for such an education strategy:

愚民教育！
(an education system to "stupidify" its citizens)

Human Battery: The entire education system - curriculum, exam syllabus, streaming - is a mega blue pill!

Thanks, Mom

Mother's Day is here.

Just what kind of mother do you have?

What moral values did your mother teach you?

This is what George Yeo's mother taught him:

"我妈妈对我们的教诲，我们是个大家庭，必须善待陌生人和客人，因为你对来客感到害怕。你对来客一定要比对家人好，因为他是难以预测的，也可以对你造成伤害，所以你必须确保他能融入"。-- 杨荣文, 早报 2007-04-29

"My mother taught us thus: we are a big family. we must treat strangers and guest well, because we are afraid of them. You must treat a guest better than you treat your own family members, because the former is unpredictable, and can also cause you harm, therefore you must ensure he can assimilate" - Foreign Affair Minister George Yeo, in an interview with Lianhe Zaobao on 29/4/07, translated by the Human Battery.


The Chinese said: "养不教，父之过" - to raise a kid and not teach him any moral values, is the fault of the father (and in the modern days, mother too). How true! Some parents really need to be spanked for raisinig kids with no moral values. This means parents like yours or mine, who have no sense of morality, unlike George Yeo's mom.

The Westerners said: "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world". How true, too! The fate of human batteries on this Matrix Island was sealed, not in recent years, but many years ago - the day some mother taught her son that he must treat outsiders better than the way he treats his own family members!

On this Mother's day, this human battery would like to express his gratitude to his mother for not having taught him the "values" that George Yeo's mum had taught George!

Heng ah!

Human Battery: Thanks, Mom!

心寒

马照跑，舞照跳，
百姓照样“死翘翘”，
薪水照升，“死伯爽”！

"Mr Lee noted that one major long-term challenge is the rapid ageing of Singapore's population. The key goal, said the Prime Minister, is to enable workers to work longer and retire later." - PM's May Day message， Channel NewsAsia, 30 Apr 07.


这种“滥交“话，他竟可以说得出口？

且还是大大方方，“面皮厚厚”地在五一劳动节，向着劳动阶级的工友们说！

心寒了。


"Free education and subsidised housing lead to a situation where the less economically productive people in the community are reproducing themselves at rates higher than the rest. This will increase the total population of less productive people.

We must... take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic." - MM, years ago, revealing the true reason why he would never permit any social welfare on his(?) Matrix Island.


这种“击败“话，他都可以大言不惭地公开讲。。。

。。。而大选竟还可大获全胜？？

当年支持他的选民也真他妈的够贱！犯贱！

真觉得心寒。


"We want to teach people the government is not a rich uncle. You get what you pay for. We are moving in the direction of making people pay for everything." - SM Rajaratnam, during a time when the "old guards" spoke their mind more freely than the younger Matrix Masters of today. (btw, I got the above two quotes from here).


那还缴税来干屁？

何必有什么 GST, COE, HDB???

这种令人发指的话，他都可以毫无顾虑地说出来。

实在令人心寒。


"A Singapore opposition politician yesterday overcame blisters and fatigue to complete his 55-hour protest walk across the city-state to highlight the plight of workers. Chee Soon Juan, secretary general of the Singapore Democratic Party, and his sister Chee Siok Chin finished the 150km journey on May Day at a park designated Singapore's Speakers' Corner to applause from about 20 supporters." - AFP


但，这才是真正令本电池人不寒而栗的！

有道是：“哀莫大于心死，而人死亦次之。”（庄子·田子方）

这就是了。This is it!

心。。。

。。。寒了，

。。。彻彻底底地死了！


后记：
所以说嘛，本电池人是蛮佩服 那个 Neo 的。为何他能如此坚持下去而心始终不寒，不死呢？

百思不得其解。因为电池人就办不到！有必要吗？What's the point? They don't deserve you!

In fact, to be more precise, the Matrix Masters (MM) and their human batteries deserve each other!

The rest of us should just "远走高飞" ("walk far far, fly high high [away]")，while we still can!

Human Battery: 令人心寒！

Nobody has ever...

(more pics here)

"当一个叛逆者（特别是政治与思想的叛逆者），是要付出代价的，那代价也许是失业、失学、贫困，更严重的是坐牢，甚至丢掉性命。。。

有些人想叛逆，但又不愿承担叛逆的后果，那怎么办？鼓励别人叛逆，自己当观众。你说他没有勇气？不，鼓励别人要有勇气，这点勇气他还是有的。" - 韩山元,早报副刊,2007-04-27.

"To be a rebel (especially a rebel in politics and thinking) requires paying a price. That price can be deprivation of job, education, and money, or more seriously, imprisonment or even death...

Some people want to rebel, but dare not shoulder the consequence of rebelling. What to do? Such a person encourages others to rebel, while remaining an audience himself! You say he has no courage? No, (you are wrong). To encourage others requires courage too. This tiny amount of courage, he still has!" - translated by The Human Battery, from a 27/4/07 article in Lianhe Zaobao.


This human battery is glad that he still has this "tiny amount of courage". haha!

He hopes all of you have too!

Trinity: Neo... nobody has ever done this before.
Neo: That's why it's going to work.

He is the one

Videos of his speech entitled
"Singapore Success Story:
A Fairytale by the PAP"
can be found here

"We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fear -- unruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called 'the insolence of elected persons' -- in a word, free men" - Gerald W. Johnson

"In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." - Mark Twain (Samuel Langhornne Clemens)


A pro-Matrix Master (MM) reader once wondered aloud if I belong to any opposition party.

Relax and sleep easy lah: I don't belong...

I am not a patriot, but a timid human battery.

But one day, when "it costs nothing to be a patriot", I will become one. Haha!

For this reason, I admire The Patriot and his courageous followers. They dare to do what many of us dare not - stand up and be counted:

During the talk, the audience stood up
and held up a piece of yellow card, to
demonstrate their disapproval of the
recent outrageous display of greed .

What about you? Are you a patriot or a timid human battery? :)

Cypher: You like him, don't you? You like watching him.
Trinity: Don't be ridiculous.
Cypher: We're gonna kill him. You understand that?
Trinity: Morpheus believes he is the one.
Cypher: Do you?
Trinity: It doesn't matter what I believe.
Cypher: You don't, do you?

I'm not afraid anymore

"Our kids know that this is part of their father's work, it's nothing frightening at all. Earlier this year, when my eldest daughter told her teacher that "my father is in jail", her teacher was rather embarrassed. She told her quietly that "you don't have to tell me everything, I will read the newspapers myself".

After Soon Juan's passport was taken away and he was prevented from leaving Singapore, I told my parents that he probably won't be able to visit them in Taiwan for the rest of his life. Surprisingly, my mother said, "Don't worry. It won't be a permanent situation. No authoritarian government is going to last forever."

I certainly hope she is right."

Huang Chih Mei, 02 Dec 06

Trinity: Neo, I'm not afraid anymore. The Oracle told me that I would fall in love and that that man... the man that I loved would be The One. So you see, you can't be dead. You can't be... because I love you. You hear me? I love you.
[Neo's vital signs return]
Trinity: Now get up!

Why do my eyes hurt?

"If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought, and no excuse, whether of security, should allow a government to be deterred from doing what it knows to be right, and what it must know to be right... "

- Lee Kuan Yew,
Legislative Assembly Debates, April 27, 1955

If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies - even those who do not subscribe to our views - as much constitutional rights as you concede yourself."

- Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew,
Legislative Assembly Debates, Sept 21, 1955

"If we say that we believe in democracy, if we say that the fabric of a democratic society is one which allows for the free play of idea...then, in the name of all the gods, give that free play a chance to work within the constitutional framework."

- Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew,
Singapore Legislative Assembly, Oct 4, 1956

"Repression, Sir, is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love - it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack.

All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies. Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface. Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they're conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict."

- Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew
speaking to David Marshall,
Singapore Legislative Assembly, 4 October, 1956

"Power tends to corrupt;
absolute power corrupts absolutely"

- Lord Acton, British historian (1832-1902)

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but
if you want to test a man's character,
give him power.

- Abraham Lincoln

Neo: Why do my eyes hurt?
Morpheus: You've never used them before.

You are the One

"But I hear many of you say Singaporeans are not worth fighting for. They are selfish and apathetic and it's silly sacrificing for such an unappreciative lot.... Don't despair. Instead believe. Have faith in our fellow Singaporeans, that like peoples elsewhere, our own will one day stand up to the oppressors. For now the few of us must take that first courageous step. Don't wait for the next guy to come forward for if everyone waits for everyone else, then we will forever be standing still".

Chee Soon Juan's pre-protest podcast

"An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law"

- Martin Luther king, Jr

Morpheus: You are the One, Neo. You see, you may have spent the last few years looking for me, but I have spent my entire life looking for you.