Specials

I'm feeling very contemplative today, so I hope that this contemplative thinking is something carried forward onto this blog post, as it is always something philosophical that I want to talk about and remember when I look back on this blog.

A few posts ago I said that Singaporeans bore me. They are essentially very similar and some of my foreign friends share the same perception, although few. With this in mind even fewer get depressed thinking that they see a uniform person everywhere they look as I do. As such there are few people that interest me in this country, and I can count them on my fingers. I visit them as much as I can, and I'm sure that I would have gone crazy, or suicidal, ages ago if I did not share their company. 

Out of these individuals, the individuals that interest me the most are those with the behaviour of scientists. Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that you are particularly intelligent, but rather the way of which these people see the world. Those who observe and not just see, and those who listen and don't just hear. Although I haven't come up with a name for them let's just call them "specials" because that is what they are to me. Although fictional, Sherlock Holmes was one of them, and in turn I guess Doyle was a special. 

In Doyle's Scandal in Bohemia, Holmes shows us the difference between seeing and observing through the eyes of Watson:

"(Watson,) you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room"

"Frequently"

"How often?"

"Well, some hundreds of times"

"Then how many are there?"

"How many? I don't know."

"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed"...

Now Holmes was not very intellectual. He had no idea nor any bother for Copernican theory and refused to know things that didn't affect him, such as where the Earth and Sun is in the solar system. There are many things I wish to learn from Sherlock Holmes, and in many cases I wish he existed, although his acutely strange behaviour would be intolerable by many. Although one may argue that one needs education to get a diploma and get a job, I would much rather forgo all of these in favour of thinking in that special way. The good news: one can learn to think like a special, and although I don't count the steps in my house, I see, and I observe. What comes out of my thinking, often unfavourable in society, is another matter. 

In Singapore it is hard to find specials, especially because of the hectic life that Singaporeans live where "it doesn't matter how many steps there are in the house". But after searching, there are two specials in Singapore that I know of, and I meet up with both at least once a week just to keep my mind alive. 

But specials are not exempt from bias, and this bias often carries forward into our ways of thinking. One of whom I meet weekly keeps talking about the superiority of China, which although is backed up with reasonable evidence I find to be highly repetitive and the point already taken. Every once in a while this special says something that changes my world, and I ponder on it for weeks on end. It is these moments that I look for. The other one has slightly different but understandable biases, and living under the same circumstances I can understand the appeal of her words. Within both I see myself.

It's incredible how shocking it is to see yourself in someone else. The way the eyes dart around trying to absorb as much information about their surroundings, the way that they look to one corner and you know that what they are thinking is more complex, if not uninteresting, relative to the thoughts of the average Singaporean. The stimulus triggers very different thoughts. A single outfit can make a special question society, and a single thought about society make you question the structure of our universe. A mirror is different. A mirror lets you see yourself. A special makes you see within. 

If you have read this far in the blog, you have the potential to be one. Others would have easily dismissed it as uninteresting and boring, yet there are so few in the world. I guess the point of this blog post would be to remind myself to never stop being one, as it is so easy to kill off in this country and to remind myself that for me, money is never more powerful than the mind.

Cheers,

Matthew Tan