Humanity - Epitome Of Irony

Chinese New Year is coming up. And I won't be skinned alive by my father as I initially expected because we did indeed get the week off. However, some other things also weren't exactly the way I initially expected, and for the worse at that.

For instance this has turned out to be a very wet and very cold CNY season. You see CNY locally has always been attributed with extreme heat and really dry winds. This year, however, it rains everyday still, and the breeze is still there but i wouldn't exactly call it a dry one. Seems like the 2012 stuff is for real, except that it's not as big a deal as Armageddon. Well, then again we won't really know until next year, will we?

Secondly, the celebration has become a little too generic. You see, we have all sorts of special occasions worth celebrating. CNY for example, Independence Day, Christmas and so on. Sure, the celebrations all have something in common, that is to go mad, yell like you don't need your vocal chords, turn everyone around you deaf with the air polluting noise you call singing, get piss drunk and get pissed on if you get too drunk. But these days, that's all celebrations are. It has become too generic. Not a single holiday is being spent uniquely anymore.

Back in the day CNY was all about lion dances, blindingly bright red lanterns, equally red clothes, staying up all night gambling then going around visiting family and friends and chat all day reminiscing about the good old days. And that's that. Nowadays all that tradition is done in private while in public we do the generic holiday stuff I mentioned earlier. Sooner or later the traditional bits done in private may go away as well. And that's very much the same as Christmas or New Year or whatever. Even the Hari Raya celebrations are getting generic. Each individual celebration seems to have lost its unique value and are all turning into a mere generic celebration. In time we won't even know what in bloody earth we are celebrating, just knowing that we have to celebrate something on certain days in the year because that's what has been done for the past uncountable years.

I suppose this is the idea of unity of some people. And it'll still be fine if each ethnic group were to keep their individual identities. But that seems impossible because things that one does as tradition seems offensive to another and instead of being tolerated they are being wiped out. While other really offensive activities are given the liberty to continue offending others and demand tolerance of others. Or face the consequences. More like oppression than anything else.

What's worse this time around is the irony of people. Victims of hypocrisy end up being hypocrites themselves. And you thought they'd know better. This is what happens when you teach your children 'If you can't beat them, join them'. This is also why the number of barbarians and criminals grow while civilization dwindles in numbers. The proper proverb should be 'If you can't beat them, die trying'.

Adieu to y'all. And that's 3 posts squeezed into 1.