Ayn Rand and Iron Man

3 weeks has passed since my last exam, a week since my status as a Masters graduate has been conferred upon me. Yet, my life is still a heady mixture of financial crises, behavioural economics and Brett Easton Ellis. The only thing unacademic about my life now are my almost daily runs. Even then, these runs have provided me with time and space to think.

It is exceedingly difficult to separate myself from the consumerism and capitalism that must go on in my daily life (shopping, television, Starbucks coffee, etc etc) and appraise the system objectively. Enslavement is rarely an option that can be declined. As Nietzsche predicted, I'm only human, too human. The task required of me is equivalent to trying to become the Above Human or the Over Human. Of course, that isn't going to stop me.

So much is expected out of anyone hoping to pursue a future as an intellect, or even an academic in the social sciences. You gradually become eccentric and more worringly so, highly cynical of the things that people around you spend their time on. Watching a football match is also understanding that I am subscribing to a Western phenomena which requires everyone to go with the rules laid down by those who wield power (economic and cultural). Giving money to these people is equivalent to a tribute to western superiority.

I owe it to the many budding Asian intellects and academics, whom I've had the priviledge of knowing, not to propagate a culture that denigrates everything we've worked so hard to achieve.

In my journey so far, I have managed to piss many people off. Friends, family, loved ones. I will continue pissing people off, I'm sure. I find it increasingly difficult to do things to gain the approval or acceptance of others. Perhaps this is the fate of the New Intellectuals mentioned by Ayn Rand, people with a responsibility to question and critique. Then again, maybe I just don't ever want to see myself grovel for the sake of gaining acceptance. I don't want to lose respect for myself.

One must always know who and what he/she is, and hold fast to that knowledge. There are too many in this world who will try to impose their will upon you, for fear that the project they have invested themselves in lack the sort of critical mass which is required to sustain it. "I" has become so precious a commodity in a world flush with "We"'s and "Them"'s.

Ang Heng