The Superficial Complexity

I don't know how to play mahjong.

The reason I don't know how to play is because as a young person growing up, it was regarded as something the mundane middle classes in Singapore played (and by which was meant those who were supine for their personal professional and commercial interests, to a criminal, ever-on-the-make dictator who otherwise conveyed to all those that didn't know his secrets, that he was a hard-driving, honest and honorable 'leader' of Chinese people especially; he was a treacherous betrayer of them, in fact).

Believe you me, I could recount one or two little matters involving US overseas foreign affairs that would instantly have me sued and this Blog shut down - though at the same time it would blow Singapore to the ground forever...

Way back in the old days...
LOL

Harry Lee was blackmailing the USA for decades until eventually, Henry Kissinger basically just 'got on board with the plan' because to be fair, Kissinger was hardly that much better in terms of 'moral instinct.'

Birds of a feather and all that.

So yeah nah, I never looked twice at the game of mahjong.

However everyone knows that the good players are able to play the game really fast.

And it does have its nuances and complexities.

This is an apt metaphor for much of the modern world, and many of the people in it: they play fast, they have no patience, they are quite skillful at their 'games' (of life) - and in the end, on their death beds, it all amounts to nothing.

Today's world is superficial, demanding, meaningless, intensely stupid -, and with most of the people in it 'playing the game.'

What have you got on your death bed?

Anything?

What? Like what exactly?

In the olden days - Moira Shearer in
Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann.
...We will talk about this, soon.

What has made people act as if they are convinced none of them - especially the 'I' person being posed the question - is ever going to expire?!

The whole human race, Hollywood no less than everyone else, lays great stock in the idea of 'love' and loving someone - but how is that going to actually happen, if both participants are permanently engaged in a high-speed game of meaningless and superficial mahjong, but then for some small gaps in the game, each one or both 'devote' five minutes to 'love...' What is that 'love?' What do they mean?

Do you really go to doctors and they spend hours exploring your whole life's story to ascertain what the background is to any obtaining medical problem (and that's just the beginning)? Or are they all on a time-limit with you, to quickly prescribe a pill which quickly has an effect of some kind (or maybe not even; just plain doesn't even work - is basic fraud), or better, an injectable that by-passes your liver and the pre-process organic filters in and around your gut, so that it can even more quickly, give you a hit?

Life as a creme brulee.
You burn the surface with a torch
and it caramelizes
and hardens. 

So that then you can all go back to playing mahjong until you drop dead.

Is that what you are doing?

Is that what you are either letting people do to you, or are they forcing it all onto you via the commerce of exploitable needs, and basic living economics?

...The good players.

Are not 'good.' They are really really dumb.

Oh yes but I know, you think - 'but the money.'

LOL

The money, what money is that??

You have money?

The people you see driving around in those expensive cars have money, as far as they say and as far as you believe, right...

Nope. They don't have money.

Jack with the Beanstalk had money. He could go up every night, and no one believed him, until one day he brought the giant back down with him.

And that was the end of that story.

'Once upon a time there was a poor but honest boy whose name was Jack -.'

And that was just how things began.

; )