In Continuum.

Anyway, speaking of school, the book that I had to read when I was in high school was Animal Farm by George Orwell. You know, the one about the leader pig called Napoleon ruling over all the other animals in a farm and then defying the humans, only to become one of the humans by seeing himself as being "more equal" than the others? We've all read Animal Farm, and it is a brilliant literature classic of the last century, despite the fact that it featured talking animals which stood on two legs. George Orwell seems to have a deep and profound understanding of the human condition, he seems to have grasp how the mechanisms of a human work, and that insight has somehow enabled him to break away from the possible falsehoods in our society. Now, he explored similar themes of authoritarian control in his other famous book, 1984. In this book, he predicted that the world would be under one single government by the year 1984, and this government would be ruled under this father figure whom they call the Big Brother. In this futuristic world of his, humans would speak a common language and would be monitored in every way possible in order to great a homogeneous society. It was George Orwell's attempt to take a jab at Communism, an ideal that was rapidly growing in its popularity in his time. This unquestioning obedience to the authority, however, isn't something that exists merely in the pages of this classic novel. 

For those who feel that they'd rather watch the paint dry than to read a blog entry about something you are already studying in school, this is about the time when you turn back. It's just something I feel very strongly about, and it's pretty interesting just how much of what we've studied in school has reflected our society and explained some of the other events that have already occurred in my own life. Authority, the word itself looks pretty authoritative by itself. You see that word pretty much everywhere you go, even those red and white signs you see in underground MRT stations or the ones on the doors that lead to offices or storerooms filled with secret military documents (which really just mean the record of money they spent on stupid items around the camp like new taps or utility bills). "Authorized Personnel Only" the signs would declare, as if unauthorized personnel would be electrocuted, pierced by a thousand arrows and then melted by highly concentrated hydrochloric acid, or worse. Being an "Authorized Personnel" just puts you on a higher pedestal, doesn't it? You know, you just feel like you have the power over others when you are authorized, when you are allowed to do something that others are not. That's power, people. That's power - even if it is just the last cabinet in a public bathroom reserved for the janitor and his toilet cleaning equipments.

If you are authorized, that also means that you have been given a certain permission by an authority. Well, who really is this authority anyway, the leader? The boss? The manager? In some culture, age matters a lot, and the authority is just somebody who is older than you in your family. It doesn't matter if your father is an alcoholic and beats up your mother when his alcoholism kicks in, he's still older and he's supposed to have your respect, he's the authority. To me, respect and authority shouldn't be attributed, but something that is earned through time, but that is besides the point. It doesn't take a lot for people to treat you as an authority these days, you don't need to pass an IQ test to be in the senate. In the grander picture, the authority in our country would probably be the government, the few delegates we have chosen to run the country for us because, well, we have better things to do. These authorities set the rules, they are the ones that tell you what to do and what not to do. The curious thing happens here when they do something like that: most people obey these rules and regulations without questioning, even if they may seem to be completely and utterly ridiculous to begin with. 

You know these authoritative figures in our society, we all know one or two of these people. Politicians, doctors, lawyers and religious leaders, they are at the top of the food chain aren't they. If a doctor in a white robe and a stethoscope tells you that you are about to die in three weeks from prostate cancer, you believe him without questioning. Why? Well, because he is the doctor, and the doctor must be right, right? If the politicians tell you that you that the country is enjoying a 10% economical growth in the last quarter, and the projected growth for the country may increase to a whooping 14%, you believe them, right? They are the politicians, they are the ones who know these stuff better than us. We are just the civilians, what do we know about numbers and figures anyway. If the newspaper tells you that the world is going to end tomorrow, then it's about time to find an underground safe house for you to live for the next half a century, it makes sense right? I mean, it's the newspaper! If it is written in the newspaper, it is authority, it has to be right! If the religious leaders tell you that there is an invisible man living in the skies, we believe them too, we don't question the rationality in these claims even if they sound exactly like any other fairy tales we have heard ever since we were kids. Religious leaders are right, they are never wrong! They are the messengers of God, after all. It's GOD, MAN! The authority of all authorities, what could go wrong?

Well, everything could. The doctor could have mixed your record up with somebody else's in the next room, the politicians might have missed the negative signs in front of the numbers, the newspaper might have accidentally printed the title of the movie "War of the Worlds" and its poster on the front page, and as for the religious leaders - God might not exist. Everything could have gone wrong, but we don't want to consider the possibility, it is too inconvenient. We'd rather take what is given to us, be passive receivers of information, like corpses in front of a television. We don't really want the time and the ability to process certain information, to validate the truth in those numbers. We just kind of go with the flow, because that is what everybody is doing anyway. The truth, I feel, is that the authority has harnessed this weakness in the human condition, and as a result has exploited all humans to comply without question, absolute and complete obedience to the boss, the Big Brother. 

Speaking of fairy tales earlier, I remember those times as a child in school and at home. If religion wasn't sticking its foot into your life yet, there were probably two groups of authoritative figures in your life - your parents, and your form teacher from school. No questions about your parents, because they have the power to ground you or send you to your bedroom - the horrors! Your form teacher has the ability to detain you, to fail you, to cane you, or worse - tell your parents about you. Children back in my time were petrified of parents and teachers, they had the absolute control over our lives. They also had absolute power over what we learn and what we do not learn, and they also have the superpower of 'unlearning' what we have already learned. You see, they are the giver of knowledge, they are the ones who are passing on the knowledge that have been passed to them from their childhood authorities. The cycle goes on, and we are supposed to teach our children the very same things as the authorities next time. 

Imagine, if your parents actually told you that Jack and the Bean Stalk was real, and that there really was a chicken that laid golden eggs trapped in a castle up in the sky. Would you have believed it back then? Of course you would! They were your parents, of course you had to believe them! No questions asked, just do as they said. If they told you that Santa Claus actually exists, if they told you that there's actually a man who flew around in a sledge pulled by reindeers to drop presents into chimneys, you would have believed, right? Hell, they could have told you that Santa is God, and you would have believed. The truth is, we are genetically engineered to obey the authority, or at least the authority figure that we've been taught to follow, to obey, to comply. We've learned in class that the word "Because" is the most powerful word in the English language, and most of the time a proper reason isn't even needed. "Santa is God, because". That's really all the parents could have said in order to have us persuaded. 

What is so hard to believe about Santa Claus, if you think about it. Here is a man who has a list of names of all the children in the world, and he'd tick off all the bad kids just to make presents for the good ones. Then on Christmas, he'd fly around in a sledge pulled by reindeers to drop these presents through chimneys around the world for the good kids, never the bad kids. Oh, and he loves cookies and milk, do leave some by the Christmas tree and ignore the soft moaning sounds coming from your parents' bedroom at night because Santa might be screwing your mother. It does sound very ridiculous, who in the right mind would believe Santa Claus these days. "We are rational people," you would say. "We don't think that makes any sense". What is so different between the story of Santa, and the story of Jesus Christ? The latter story just seems a little more believable because, well, our parents told us the story, our teachers told us the story, the priests told us the story, it has to be right. Of course, you can believe in your God and I can believe in my no-God. Keep thy religion to thyself, I live by that very much. I am not trying to force this down the throat of anybody here. However, have you ever considered the possibility that what you believe is merely what the Big Brother wants you to believe? That religion is merely the result of social proof, of reciprocation, of consistency, of authority, or all of the above? Pick one, choose an option. Either way, you are right. Congratulations. 

That is just my humble opinion of course, that is what I believe. I believe the majority of the people in this world do some of the craziest and dumbest things because some "authority" said so, because they used the magic word - "Because". Think about how many people died in World War II alone because an "authority" said that the Jews were bad, that the Jews should be exterminated and wiped out from the face of this planet. We were taught that murder is bad, killing people is wrong. But when someone in an uniform addresses a crowd of one hundred thousand on a podium broadcast through the radio all around your country, his words trump everything you have learned. At the end of the day, we are just chess pieces manipulated by the people at be. The politicians have been using those tricks, the lawyers have been using those tricks, the religious leaders have been using those tricks. We've been fooled for so long, and we don't even know it. 

And that, is the undisputed truth. Why? Because.