Dauntless

On All Hallows' Eve, we remember the departed saints. It is a good alternative to Samhain.

The late and nearly-sainted Dauntless has long been a hero of mine; my great-grandfather was his student. But writing about him is difficult for that very reason. What can one write about one's heroes?

One duty of the historian is to tell the truth as much as it can be discovered. Another duty is to keep discerning how much truth there is in the truth, and how much cover remains to be discovered.

The first is a narrative duty; the second is an investigative one. The historian is a journalist of the past, with the frequent disadvantage that sometimes the sources are all dead and gone, whether human or otherwise.

And so a month after Adobe's commission, I am still mulling about whether the narrative I am telling about the Dauntless really is the truth — whether it is sufficient, whether it is adequate, whether it is correct, whether it is biased. Blah. And blah, blah, blah.

I want it to be true. Does that make me guilty of bias?

Off to See the Wizard

Tomorrow afternoon I am off to see the Wizard in the Palace. I hear that we are launching a book which is already in the bookstores. This is the 'lite', coffee-table-ish, version of the story of the Gnome. And it will, I suppose, have a 'lite', coffee-table-ish, launch at tea in the Palace.

It amazes me, thinking about the story behind this story's publication, that we have survived as long as we have while evolving as a state through such peculiar and unnatural processes. And the people involved! Oh dear, the people involved...

Gnomic Utterances

It is an intimidating task to write about my illustrious relative, the Gnome. As others have pointed out before, it is this man who played the globalisation game so well that his island nation moved up the leader board from third world to first in record time.

Of course, the true story, as you trawl through the oceans of his speeches and works, is that this country was a first-world oasis (although somewhat decrepit and imperilled) in a third-world setting. All he did was to burnish and cement its reputation in ways that would look good on the global stage. The systems engineering he carried out worked well too.

We can't say that what he did was all to the good. But there isn't enough evidence for the reverse. History will probably judge him as the real brain of the outfit, the one who cut to the chase and did the planning. His boss was the enforcer, who handled the politics, and that was all.

Nothing new here. Except that I am beginning to wonder, oddly enough, whether he ever really existed the way we thought he did.

Historicity

This boil has been festering for about ten years now. It came to a head in the past year or so.

Over the last twelve months, I've been looking with professional curiosity at how people put together histories of local events. Some of it is engrossing, immensely readable stuff, with verifiable facts jostling with human perspectives and journalistic reporting on the significance of various key events. That kind of stuff is pretty good; I read a glossy book which took as its subject matter the rather morbid history of the SARS epidemic in Singapore (2003) and made it into a tale of intrepid doctors and the triumph of the human spirit, and it was really inspiring.

Some of it is terrible. Trying to analyse the history of Singapore's education system, one runs up against account after account of data wrenched into some kind of shape indicating progress. Yes, the numbers increase, and the progression is good. But what does it mean? And why are there so many lacunae? How come former Education Minister Goh had so many bad things to say about the Ministry he led? How come they acted so slowly and ineffectively on some of his ideas and so quickly and ruthlessly on others? We do not know, and at this stage, with Goh descending into the fate of all mortals, we might never be able to tell that kind of story.

We know that many things achieved in this small nation-state are good. They are highly competitive, world-class achievements. But in some ways, the stories that are concealed, that are left untold, that are selectively told, these make a history that is incomplete, that is sometimes like mythology or hagiography or some other kind of narrative that is not history.

Recently, I read an account purporting to be a historical narrative concerning a famed educational institution. It was the second edition of an earlier account. The discrepancies between the two were alarming; although one should not judge a book by its cover, the second edition in garish gold was a far cry from the sedate dark blue of the original. The claims within were correspondingly magnified in a few areas as well. The said institution was originally honest in reporting that it had won a particular award only 'five times in six years' – in the second edition, this had become 'every year since its inception'. Blatant untruth, and deliberately crafted as such – and if not, surely a sign of shattering arrogance or ignorance or both.

What is worse is that future hagiographers, having adopted the gilded lily as canon, will certainly gild the lily further, thus creating a lump of gold which no longer possesses the aesthetic beauty of the original truth. Is this what we expect from 'history' these days? Are we yet so cynical, so arbitraged and leveraged and impoverished, that we must accept this?

No, I say. And perhaps the enterprising young men who flung the book into the trash were right, and there is yet hope for the past in the future.

Quickstep

The other day, a client asked me, "So why did you step down in 2004?"

As usual, I made no conclusive reply. The evidence is very clear. Read all my posts from August to October 2004, see what might have caused it, decide for yourself. I keep every bit of evidence from that time in a hard-copy file. Every bit. I was trained as a qualitative researcher, and I recorded many things. In twelve sets of files, too.

People might say things, but it is what they wrote that survives, and I will not publish it. Here, or anywhere else. Yet. And I have published nothing, have written no anonymous letters, and am occasionally furious (a sinful state, for which I am sorry) at the idea (conceived of, I am sure, by the ignorant and unreasonable) that I have done such things.

I never doubted my allegiances, my qualities, or my directions. I never lost respect for the respectable, or courage for the challenge. I have always been answerable in full for my own actions. I have always taken full responsibility. And I have never harmed my institution in any demonstrable way. I carry no burden of shame or guilt, because what God has forgiven and justified need not burden you once it is gone, and because sometimes there is no reason for it. This is what I call a holistic re-education.

But these clients keep asking questions like, "So why did you step down in 2006?"

The answers are the same.

Belief

It has always struck me that the Easter week fills the role of 'pagan fertility rite' very well. It is uncannily resonant (if not downright consonant in parts) with Robert Burns's version of the old British folksong, John Barleycorn, for example.

I have seen many movies of the crucifixion before, some compassionate, some agonized (or agonizing), some artistic, and some all of the above. To me, the best representations are those that don't highlight the gore and bloodshed. They cut to the essence of it; the sacrifice of the holy for the unhallowed.

I have good historical reasons for feeling this way. If we were to be historically accurate (for example) about pre-industrial England, we'd have to put more horseshit on the ground than can be found in any film. You wouldn't be able to see Sherlock and Watson in the London fog. And Arthur's brave defence of Celtic Britain would be bogged down by poor equine breeding stock. The story of the Christ doesn't need historical accuracy because no matter how much gore we put in (yes, we know about Roman crucifixions) the blood on-screen cannot sanctify the story any more than it is already sanctified.

John's gospel puts in succinctly. At the end of John's account of the latter part of Easter week, he says that what has been written is 'that you might believe.' That is all there is; the crucifixion and burial occupy a scant, terse 26 verses or so. Read the account yourself to see the difference between Bible and Hollywood.

Hence I am going to go out on the limb of a tree and say this: the accounts given are terse for a reason. They do not sensationalise because of two reasons: 1) it is not necessary to do so - the story speaks for itself; 2) it is not possible to deliver the true impact of Jesus' death and its aftermath, no matter how hard you try. Emotional impact, yes. Spiritual impact, no. The problem is that the former can act as a counterfeit for the latter, and it often does.

So away with all these gloomy meditations on the death of Jesus of Nazareth. "He is not here; He is risen!" says the Good Book. It is a time of joy. With the brethren of the Eastern Churches, we should greet each other thus:

"Χριστος ἀνεστη !"
Christ is risen!

And the response is "Ἀληθως ἀνεστη !"
In truth, (He is) risen.