Helen of Troy

When I think about olden Greek legends, sometimes I am reminded of the Story of Agamemnon and how he lead Sparta and all the nations of Greece against Troy.


When Menelaus heard that Helen had eloped with her lover Paris (who was supposed to be a guest in Sparta), his heart was acrimoniously torn apart and so sought after the assistance of his older brother Agamemnon. Agamemnon was a war-mongering man who loved power and control. In fact he had been hoping to gain control of Troy but was unable to lobby support from his allies. Troy was one of the most wealthy nations around because it had access to important sea routes. When Agamemnon heard of Menelaus’s plight, he made a deal with his brother and said he would help Menelaus get Helen back and offer him Paris’s life but in promise for the riches of Troy.


Menelaus gathered all the great Kings around him and mustered an army of 10000 fleets of warships to sail to Troy. The most important characters in this story were of course Achilles and Odysseus. Achilles was the son of Peleus (a mortal), the king of Myrmidons in Troy. His mother, Thetis, was a Goddess and tried to make Achilles immortal by dipping him in the river Styx. However she forgot to wet the heel she held him by and that left him vulnerable at that spot.


Odysseus was a man of great intelligence and had a great mind of strategies of war. He was one of the supposed suitors for the hand of Helen. Because Tyndareus (Helen’s father) feared that whomever he did not choose as Helen's husband would become jealous and rage war against Sparta, Odysseus came up with a solution and convinced Tyndareus to make it mandatory that all the suitors of Helen to swear an oath to defend whomever Helen chose as husband from among the oath-takers. The suitors, including Odysseus, swore, and Helen finally chose Menelaus as her husband.


Agamemnon, however was not able to gain support from Poseidon, the God of the Sea. The winds blew in the opposite direction of Troy, which made it impossible for them to sail toward their destination. A prophet came to Agamemnon and informed Agamemnon that Poseidon would only grant him access to good winds only if Agamemnon would sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia. Agamemnon thus tricked Iphigeneia by convincing her that she would be wedding Achilles. When Iphigeneia was dressed in her wedding gown, Agamemnon murdered her upon the altar to satisfy Poseidon. They were thus granted favorable winds to Troy.


This whole part of the story disgusts me entirely since Agamemnon in the legend loved his daughter Iphigeneia a lot. When it came to the cross road between wealth and power and family, he chose the former. What was left of his decision was a wake of destruction and tragedy. It is true that Odysseus eventually was the protagonist in the fall of Troy. He was the one who knew that there was no way to destroy the walls of Troy and leveraged on Troy’s weakness (their pride) to cause their downfall. The idea of the Trojon horse was his and he challenged to Trojans to take the Horse into their city. But what was left of the tale was the burning of the City of Troy, of death of tens of thousands of soldiers, disease and 15 years of absence from the home country. When Agamemnon finally returned to Mycenae, his home country, his wife had taken a lover and eventually murdered him for revenge of killing their beloved daughter.


I love and enjoy hearing or watching epic tales of war. One of the situations that really touches (and can make me tear) is when I see the remnants and witness the destruction caused by war. I find that a side of me that’s a little queer since I am not affected by those lovey-dovey stories where a lover dies and his counterpart mourns (That bores me a little as a matter of fact). Some examples can be seen from the shows, “The Curse of the Golden Flower”, when Jay Chou (the prince) led his soldiers into a war they couldn’t win and charged against the shield barricade of the enemy and in another show, “The Kingdom of Heaven” the scene when the Arabs tried to retake the city of Jerusalem, and suffered great casualties. (Gosh I love that show, I want that DVD!)


The most recent show was from the anime Kishin Taisen Gigantic Formula, and during a post-war scene of great battle between two machinas, when the pilot of one of the automatons came out of her cockpit and witnessed her city in ruins, she started weeping for the plight of her city. I have posted some screen shots below. That particular scene really, really touched me.



What makes these parts of the show so sad to me is when I think to myself, all this pain and suffering, for what cause? For what purpose? They say that the study of history is so that we can learn from our past mistakes. I think that even with all the academic sources and historical evidence readily available, men are unable to learn at all from the past, or rather we choose not to. As a matter of fact, men are attracted to the idea of war and the abandonment of what I call idyll. This can be seen from how we enjoy watching war firms, and engage in games like Metal Gear Solid, Call to Duty and all other games that involve the spill in massive amounts of blood. If we truly, abhor the idea of war, it would be rationale to avoid entertainment such as these. I think of SAF and how all men in our country have to enlist to serve our country. They tell us that we have a role to play in defending our country. To me, I think this is all a façade. When I was training in Tekong and doing our Basic Military Combat training, our instructors would instruct us to shout “Kill! Kill! Kill!” with every movement we made. This does not make sense to me. How does the idea of “Killing” go hand in hand with protecting our loved ones? I think this is where we lose our sense of purpose here.


Back to the story of Troy- The soldiers of Agamemnon were told that they had an obligation to defend the pride of their country and their King. They must not condone their country being made a cuckold by allowing Helen to be stolen by Troy! So this is where it all boiled down to- Thousands of soldiers fighting for one man’s honor (Menelaus) and one man’s greed (Agamemnon). This is what I mean by façade. This is what I mean having no sense of purpose. This is why scenes like those I mentioned make me sad.


Why did Helen leave her husband and 6 year old daughter behind and elope with Paris? She chose with her own free will to marry Menelaus. Was she wrong to elope with her lover? Even if she did not love Menelaus, was she wrong to abandon her daughter? These questions have been debated on since time immemorial and an answer to this have not been decided upon.


In the myth from Plato’s Symposium (an extract from The Unbearable Lightness of Being):


“People were hermaphrodites until God split them in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.


Let us suppose that such is the case, that somewhere in our world each of us has a partner who once formed part of our body. Toma’s other part is the young woman he dreamed about. The trouble is, man does not find the other part of himself. Instead he is sent a Tereza in a bulrush basket. But what happens if he nevertheless later meets the one who was meant for him, the other part of himself? Whom is he to prefer? The woman from the bulrush basket or the woman from Plato’s myth?”


Likewise, Menelaus was from the bulrush basket which was sent to Helen and Paris was the other half of Helen from Plato’s myth, which was meant for her. She chose Paris and in so doing, acted in accordance with Aphrodite’s insuperable desire, the longing for the half of herself that was lost. Even if Helen’s decision brought about a great loss and death, to me, she had a purpose that was greater than all the men who went to war for her, and that purpose was for love. Even the King of Troy, Priam concurred: “I have fought many wars in my time, some were fought for land, some for power some for glory. I suppose fighting for love makes more sense than all the rest…”


And this to me makes all the difference because the purpose makes the outcome, no matter what it's grief, it's weight, it's tragedy, bearable for the people who lived in the past and for the future generations who have lived after them. We shoulder it when we are obliged to study the history of previous World Wars in our school curriculum. We shoulder it when we cry together watching historic firms in masterpieces created like "the Pianist". This is what it all boils down to which Milan Kundera very aptly describes regarding men's fundamental debacle:

The struggle of man against power, is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Some thoughts on philandering

Milan Kundera describes it with the life of Tomas:

"What is unique about the 'I' hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual 'I' is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.

Tomas who had spent the last ten years of his medical practice working exclusively with the human brain, knew that there was nothing more difficult to capture than the human 'I.' There are many more resemblances between Hitler and Einstein or Brezhnev and Solzhenitsyn than there are differences. using Numbers, we might say that there is one-millionth part dissimilarity to nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine millionths parts similarity.

Tomas was obsessed by the desire to discover and appropriate that one-millionth part; he saw it as the core of his obsession. he was not obsessed with women; he was obsessed with what in each of them is unimaginable, obsessed, in other words, with the one-millionth part that makes a woman dissimilar to others of her sex. . .

. . . We may ask, of course, why he sought that millionth part dissimilarity in sex and nowhere else. Why couldn't he find it, say, in a woman's gait or culinary caprices or artistic taste?

To be sure, the millionth part dissimilarity is present in all areas of human existence, but in all areas other than sex it is exposed and needs no one to discover it, needs no scalpel. One woman prefers cheese at the end of the meal, another loathes cauliflower, and although each may demonstrate her originality that demonstrates its own irrelevance and warns us to pay no heed, to expect nothing of value to come of it.

Only sexuality does the millionth part dissimilarity become precious, because, not accessible in public, it must be conquered. As recently as fifty years ago, this form of conquest took considerable time (weeks, even months!), and the worth of the conquered object was proportional to the time the conquest took. Even today, when conquest time has been drastically cut, sexuality seems still to be a strongbox hiding the mystery of a woman's 'I.'

So it was a desire not for pleasure (the pleasure came as an extra, a bonus) but for possession of the world (slitting open the outstretched body of the world with his scalpel) that sent him in pursuit of women."

Haruki Murakami describes in a conversation between Nagasawa and Toru:

"After you've done this 70 times, doesn't it begin to seem kind of pointless?"

"That proves you're a decent human being," he said. "Congratulations. There is absolutely nothing to be gained from sleeping with one strange woman after another. It just tires you out and makes you disgusted with yourself. It's the same for me."

"So why do you keep it up?"

"Hard to say. Hey, you know that thing Dostoevsky wrote on gambling?" It's like that. When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up. See what I mean?"

"Sort of"

"Look. The sun goes down. The girls come out and drink. They wander around, looking for something. I can give them that something. It's the easiest thing in the world, like drinking water from a tap. Before you know it, I've got 'en down. It's what they expect. That's what I mean by possibility. It's all around you. How can you ignore it? You have a certain ability and the opportunity to use it: can you keep your moth shut and let it pass?"


What's the difference between the two stories you ask? Well protagonist for womanizing for the first story is because of curiosity and the reason for the second story is because of endless possibilities. The thing about endless possibilities is that it robs men of their happiness. I once spoke to Kathleen on this- that the existence of mutually exclusive choices (resources) makes it impossible for men to be truly happy since there is always an element of regret when we pick one choice over an alternative (The benefit forgone or opportunity cost).

This was before I read Milan Kundera's book in the Unbearable Lightness of Being. A short verbatim in that book says:

"We can never know what we want because, living only one life, we can neither compare it to our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."

The similarity between both story is obvious. Both themes have to do with men conquering the girl (the challenge) with their ability. I think it's like hunting. There is no satisfaction in hunting for a prey that does not run away from the hunter. Likewise this is why most men cannot treasure a girl who they do not chase after. I keep an open mind to many things but one thing I cannot condone is accepting the new age culture of cultivating couch potato men and pro active girls. It's like the rabbit walking over to the hunter and saying "Hello I'm yours for the taking. No Price to Pay!" A friend once debated against me that, men going after a girl as proof as their ability and using their pretty girlfriend as a trophy prize to show off to the people around them is not love but a open display of ego. Yeah, that I don't disagree but the thing that I find hard to separate is the issue of ego and of pride. How do you know when you have crossed the fine line separating them?

And than some guys go to the other extreme, they keep their girlfriends away from sight of familiar faces. Their justification is that they do not see the need to haolian their girlfriend to the people around them, that their girlfriend is a private matter. So now which would be a better choice? For a guy to hang his girlfriend on the wall like some prized possession or kept protected from sight like a jewel in a treasure box? I am not talking about a balance of both. I am referring explicitly to a choice between two alternatives. If most girls choose the one relating to ego as preferred choice, than you risk more in getting a womanizer boyfriend because the day that he or his friends gets bored with seeing you as trophy worth mentioning, than like most hunters, they'll have a insuperable longing to go out for another hunting expedition. Don't get me wrong, it's not that they do not love you (if that makes you feel better). It is a age long problem since medieval times. Think. Why did Samson love Delilah? Why did Helen of Sparta have so many suitors? Sure, because she was the most beautiful woman in the world, but any relationship founded on external beauty cannot last because beauty based on looks is not eternal. Thus any form of happiness you have knowing that that is exactly the type of boyfriend you have is only a fleeting dream.

The next question I pose is this: As a girl which would you prefer given that he is the love of your life and you cannot tolerate infidelity?

situation 1: Your boyfriend cheats on you, and you find out
situation 2: Your boyfriend cheats on you. You will never find out the truth.

Both situation deals with a breach of trust. I hear this line a lot from my friends, "Don't tell me the truth if it hurts. I rather live in a lie unknowingly."

A familiar quote from William Shakespear in Macbath:


"Oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence."


I opine that from personal observation, if you do not want to be hurt at all, get yourself a really messy boyfriend- one that won't be able to clean up after himself (and he'll know it). That would keep him from temptation to cheat on you (If he cares about you at all). Really neat and tidy guys who clean up after themselves know they can get away with it. They think to themselves : as long as nobody knows, nobody gets hurt.

Ok time to get back to projects. Haha. OLAY TO ALL THE UNTIDY GUYS. If you cannot remember anything thing I have said, just remember that I am really REALLY untidy. :D

OK back from project(s). Here is another verbatim I want to talk about from that same Milan Kundera book I quoted from before.

"Men who pursue a multitude of women fit neatly into two categories. Some seek their own subjective and unchanging dream of a woman in all women. Others are prompted by a desire to possess the endless variety of the objective female world.

The obsession of the former is lyrical: what they seek in women is themselves, their ideal, and since an ideal is by definition something that can never be found, they are disappointed again and again. The disappointment that propels them from woman to woman gives their inconstancy a kind of romantic excuse, so that many sentimental women are touched by their unbridled philandering.

The obsession of the latter is epic, and women see nothing the least bit touching in it: the man projects no subjective ideal on women, and since everything interests him, nothing can disappoint him. This inability to be disappointed has something scandalous about it. The obsession of the epic womanizer strikes people as lacking in redemption (redemption by disappointment)."

The way Kundera uses these two words, "Epic" and "lyrical" to categorize womanizers is simply beautiful. There are three kinds of people in this world. A maximizer, a perfectionist and a satisficer. A maximizer is one that see and accepts only the best. They are the lyrical men that Kundera describes. The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better. They are the epic men in Kundera's description. The last is the perfectionist (I fall inside this category). They are similar to maximizers, that they have very high standards, except that a perfectionist have high standards that they do not expect to meet. Put another way, the perfectionists are a living contradiction. They are both dreamers and realists at the same time- They hope high, but expect less to protect themselves from disappointment.

According to Barry Schwartz, research have proven that maximizers experience less satisfaction with life, are less happy, less optimistic, and more depressed than their satificer counterparts. In other words, the lyrical men are "cursed" to be unhappy from their womanizing nature.

That is why, I believe, that the attraction that woman have for the lyrical men, is an attraction to the "curse" they carry. It is like the burden that superheroes carry (think spiderman), that they are responsible to save the world because of the superpowers (the curse or burden) bestowed upon them and it makes women believe (albeit fool-heartedly) that they can lift or share that same burden with the lyrical men. Or maybe it is because, in the women's mind, they think they can become the ideal woman in the mind of the lyrical men (an ideal within an ideal).

The epic men on the other hand, is the opposite. They carry neither curse or burden that women are allured to attempt to share nor any chance for women to occupy a special place in the epic men's heart. This makes the epic men unattractive and vulgar, although both epic and lyrical men are both philanderers by category.

Put simply, the sin is not infidelity, but is instead the lack of redemption from it.

Words can't describe how much I love this book.

The spill overs from Finance studying.

This afternoon I was prodding Kath to share with me what Shing did to win her back. Here goes:

mok says (12:54):
what shing do

mok says (12:55):
btw

kathleen says (12:55):
he came over. and we talked

kathleen says (12:55):
and i guess i shd really just give it another shot

mok says (12:55):
why?

kathleen says (12:55):
urm

kathleen says (12:56):
cause it's been three years!

kathleen says (12:56):
and he's really trying

mok says (12:56):
but 3 years is a sunk cost

kathleen says (12:56):
AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

kathleen says (12:56):
MOK!

kathleen says (12:56):
ahahaha

mok says (12:56):
what

Gingy Gets Eaten

Meet Gingy's New Friend. Gingersarousrex.


mok says (03:00):
o god i hope i've got enough space in the car

kathleen says (03:00):
have

kathleen says (03:00):
or the most u sit in the boot

mok says (03:00):
DEN WHO DRIVE

kathleen says (03:00):
oooh

kathleen says (03:00):
gingy

.........

Vertigo

“Anyone whose goal is “something higher” must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it when the observation tower come equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts us and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, we defend ourselves.”

This is a beautiful quote by Milan Kundera in his book “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” The word vertigo is defined as a feeling of spinning round and being unable to balance, caused by looking down from a height. Kundera extrapolates this word and creates a new meaning to it. It is thus transformed from a sense of confusion (spinning around) caused by a fear of height in the literal sense, but to a sense of confusion in the realms of the metaphysical world.

In short, Vertigo is the INSUPERABLE desire to… to fall.

It is INSUPERABLE because it is a severe problem that has no solution to it.

It is a desire (and not a good one) because it is a temptation to fall from a higher place

It is the voice of the emptiness which reminds us of how lonely we are up there alone.

It is the nostalgic lost memories of the little child inside us, desperately reminding us of how happy we were before, crying while pleading us not to leave them behind.

Why must we be expect some day to suffer from vertigo and defend ourselves from the little child in us? I describe the emptiness as a child because I think of it as something innocent and primitive. I will give you an analogy using a short story I came up with.

Let’s say that you are a soul in heaven waiting in line to decent to Earth as a new born child. Every unborn child is just an empty vessel/shell without a soul waiting to be filled up by the souls in heaven. Before you descent, an Angel comes up to you and asks you this question:

“Dear child, you have a choice to choose between two families (the empty vessel) of which one of them you will be born into a great family, a world of immeasurable wealth but at the same time of neglect, loneliness and sadness. You will be a man of great success, an important figure and will be remembered centuries after your death.

The other family will be one of constant poverty. Your family will have problems meeting basic ends meet. You will be showered infinite love from your family. You will be born retarded and live a short and insignificant life, but because of your innocence you will not know of suffering and live all your life a happy child.”

The goal of “something higher” is the first family in the story, and the vertigo (desire to fall) that we face is that of the second family (the child that we defend against).

The INSUPERABLE question is, which family would you choose?