De Mockery of Democracy (Reprise)

[My young friend Kamil sent me the following assignment question, asking for some viewpoints from me. I figured my response to Kamil was worth sharing, so here it is...]

It has been said that democracy may not be the perfect form of goverment but it is better than the alternatives. To what extent do you agree?

Certain assumptions are being made here that may be inaccurate or incorrect, So before we can answer the question, let's examine what these assumptions are.

Assumption #1: Democracy exists and is practised in certain countries.
In truth democracy is purely theoretical. Even in old Athens where it was invented, there was only democracy up to a point - beyond which one could get arrested for subversion, imprisoned, and end up drinking hemlock. The state is forever jealous of its authority and power, and will not hesitate to use force if persuasion fails. In so-called democratic countries, we find that the public is led to believe it has freedom of choice - but in actuality that freedom does not extend beyond the most trivial matters (like the make of car you drive or the scent your date prefers). In all crucial areas decisions are made by "backroom boys" acting on behalf of a tiny handful of plutocrats (people who own banks, newspapers, TV stations, bomb factories, armies, spy agencies, and governments).

The machinery of political power is driven by popular votes. However, elections can be rigged, conducted on an uneven playing field, and stolen outright. Voters can be bought, hoodwinked, disenfranchised or overlooked completely. Because "majority opinion" is measured quantitatively, human destiny can be jeopardized or hijacked by a corrupt and dishonest clique willing to take extraordinary risks. The proverbial man-in-the-street doesn't stand a chance against a cartel of well-funded criminals, who obtain their money through illicit means and buy up all the airspace. He can't be heard against a well-coordinated media blitz.

In effect, scratch a modern democracy and you'll find mobster rule. Robber barons and pirate kings now come with a slick corporate image and very expensive tailoring. But gangsterism is gangsterism, and privilege actually means "private law." So when even the law is privatized, is it any wonder that justice is blind?

Democracy originally meant "popular rule" - in effect, government of the people, by the people, for the people. Which sounds pretty similar to Marxist/socialist ideals. However, you only have to have the means of influencing the collective psyche to make the people believe they are exercising their democratic rights when all they can do is predictably react to pre-programmed stimuli.

Assumption #2: Though imperfect democracy is "better than"...
"Better" is a very vague term and begs redefinition. This dish is good but that one is better... in reality the other dish is simply different. You cannot compare pheasant-under-glass with a hamburger. Each recipe works in a specific context. In other words, a fair comparison is hinted at where none is possible.

Assumption #3: The word "alternatives" implies Communism.
A popular misconception is that the opposite of democracy is communism. Actually, it's dictatorship we're talking about: what's antagonistic to popular rule is state despotism - whether the despot is a single individual or a faceless committee. The alternative to democracy might also be monarchy - or various spin-offs like aristocracy, meritocracy, or plutocracy. Nevertheless, there are no clear-cut categories of power. If we have an absolute monarch who is approachable, open-minded, empathetic, humble, friendly, and wise - let's take as an example the notion of a "King of Kings" like Jesus the Christ, or Aragorn of Arathorn in J.R.R. Tolkien's ringlore - the public may actually enjoy great freedom and security, prosperity and success under such benevolent and enlightened rule. As opposed to the situation where a supposedly democratic government functions under the secret orders of an invisible brotherhood of black magicians and decadent junior gods: people would endure increasing oppression and never know who exactly is taking away their freedoms and rights, life just seems to get rougher and tougher all the time.

Courtesy of Bodohland

The concept of government itself needs to be reassessed. An individual with sufficient inner discipline can be described as a Self-Governing Individual who does not subscribe to or support any form of external government. When enough such individuals emerge in a community, it's possible that anarchy will blossom in a wholesome and workable way where each member of the community cooperates with the others consciously, willingly, and wholeheartedly. Imagine the amount of creativity generated by humans no longer engrossed in destructivity or obsessed with conformity and homogeneity.

One can view government as an unwelcome intrusion - akin to a high fence built around the crest of hill to prevent people from rolling down through carelessness. In trying to ensure "public safety" what government effectively does is disempower and desensitize. After a few generations, people would become incapable of taking any initiative whatsoever, in a sure-footed way. They will NEED official guidelines, clearly-marked trails, and instructions at every turn. In effect, people would no longer be able to sit quietly atop the hill and gain divine inspiration from the beauty around them – because the man-made “security” fence mars the view and is ugly, that is, a violation of the natural environment and the unwritten laws of harmony. This may suit those in power very nicely, but it invariably incapacitates the masses from independent and original thought. They will become blind and allow themselves to be led around by ravenous wolves disguised as professional seeing-eye dogs.

What would be much "better than" democracy would be an evolutionary quantum jump that would effectively upgrade Consciousness and Intelligence and realign them with Compassion. No amount of theorizing can make this happen. Those of us who realize this simply have to embody our ideals and break free of semantic traps such as the question above. No statistics are required. It only takes ONE individual to crack the code - and before long, not only the entire species, but all lifeforms will regain their primordial freedom.

"Drug control is a thin pretext, and getting thinner, to increase police powers and to brand dissent as criminal." - William S. Burroughs, @ 1971

[Originally published 19 March 2007, reposted 27 March 2009, 25 September 2016

& 19 September 2023]

Another case of much ado about nothing (reprise)

Many years ago I met a Sufi master whose profound understanding of Islam truly impressed me.

But before I continue with this story, let me state that almost all the Muslims with whom I have had close friendships have either been Sufis - or were gravitating towards a mystical interpretation of Islam. The mystical approach is experiential and private; whereas ritualistic religion is regulated by public behavior and therefore tends to be tribalistic in nature.

I find it impossible to have an intelligent conversation with fundamentalists of any persuasion - whether Muslim, Christian or whatever. This is because fundamentalism is antagonistic to intelligence. Wherever violence erupts over religious differences, fundamentalism is invariably the root cause. Brawn and brute force override brain and heart when independent thinking is suppressed.


Looking up the word "fundamentalism" in my trusty digital dictionary, I found this concise summary:

"Islamic fundamentalism appeared in the 18th and 19th centuries as a reaction to the disintegration of Islamic political and economic power, asserting that Islam is central to both state and society and advocating strict adherence to the Koran (Qur'an) and to Islamic law (sharia), supported if need be by jihad or holy war."

There you have it. Fundamentalism is basically an outward manifestation of ego insecurity. An entire tribe or nation can suffer from ego insecurity and seek refuge in hardline dogmatism and fanaticism. You could say it's a pathological condition and, as such, can be quite easily cured - once the hidden hand behind the reactionary forces is revealed and surgically amputated.

In every case you will find that the chief puppetmaster isn't even a believer. He cynically exploits the gullibility of the mindless mob and manipulates its collective pain-body through control of the mass media and law enforcement.


Coming back to my Sufi friend who enlightened me about the essence of Islam. He pointed out the significance of a triconsonantal syllable in Arabic and Hebrew which expresses peace, harmony and wholeness: the Arabic SaLaM and Hebraic ShaLoM are the commonest embodiments of this key to being truly muSLiM.

Sin-Lam-Mim (Arabic: س ل م‎ S-L-M; Hebrew: שלם‎ Š-L-M) is the triconsonantal root of many Semitic words, and many of those words are used as names. The root itself translates as "whole, safe, intact."
[Wikipedia]

Note that this triconsonantal syllable forms the root of the words "Islam" and "Muslim." This places the frequency of peace, harmony and wholeness at the very core of Islam and any sentient being that consciously aspires towards attunement and harmonization with the Whole of Existence is intrinsically Muslim.


When one has embraced the essence of Islam, no other rules apply. All observances, injunctions and rituals (specific to a historical and sociocultural context) immediately become irrelevant and meaningless and fall away of their own accord. As such, Islam in its pure, essential form can be said to be the ultimate guide to attaining cosmic equilibrium and liberation from illusion. This is precisely the teaching of wu-wei found in the Tao Te Ching and it corresponds perfectly with the highest aspirations of Zen Buddhism. It also resonates effortlessly with the concept of yoga or sacred union with the Godhead or Source.

What about the name "Allah"? Does it have a special meaning? My learned friend explained that the word, written as Al-Lah means The Great Void - or The Nothingness from which Everything was born. In other words, Source.

Every Tibetan Buddhist aspires to return to and consciously merge with The Great Void. The Nothingness is a key element in Chaos Theory which postulates that Order (structured existence or an actualized state of being) emerges either randomly - or as a focused expression of desire and will from the Primordial Chaos (Infinite Potentiality). It all makes perfect sense to me.

The mystical understanding of Allah and Islam frees us from a narrow and limited distortion that can only lead to divisiveness and discord. Indeed, the way my Sufi friend explained Islam made me instantly receptive and I realized that this was truly a sophisticated philosophy with universal appeal and cosmic wisdom. No compulsion, no harsh and punitive rules, no exclusivity.


Alas, the crafty hoodlums who rule over unthinking mobs must of necessity opt for the most demented, inane and constricted interpretation of any belief system in order to have any control over the untutored passions of their flock. They will set up formal councils and academies to determine the parameters of belief and behavior and vigorously persecute (and even execute) anyone who preaches any form of "deviancy" from the orthodox doctrine.

We have seen what the Spanish Inquisition (which lasted from 1478 till 1834) was really about - the brutal and violent suppression of religious dissent and heresy for the benefit of a corrupt and greedy ruling elite. In this day and age we need a Malay Inquisition like we need a hole in the pocket.

Allahu Akbar! The Nothingness is All! So why so much ado about NOTHING?

[First published 1 February 2010. Reposted 19 April 2011 & 21 March 2024]

Meet Sanuk, my techno-wizard friend (repost)

"Music is a purposeless play, an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living." ~ John Cage (in a 1957 lecture, Experimental Music)

Deejay Sanuk (Daniel Schwörer) has been playing with sound since 1993

Born and raised in Zurich, Switzerland; now residing on Koh Samui, Thailand, where he DJs at parties and produces music on the side, using state-of-the-art hardware and software.

That's a one-line description of Daniel Schwörer, my techno-wizard friend who kindly agreed to digitally enhance and remaster my 1986 solo album, 2nd Coming. On Facebook he is known as Deejay Sanuk. In Thai, sanuk is a multi-purpose expression meaning pleasure, joy, delight, euphoria, contentment, bliss...

How I found Sanuk is a story unto itself. And why he would offer to me his expert services as an audio sculptor and sound cosmetician is another mystery I would prefer to remain unsolved.

Especially when the sort of music Sanuk manufactures in his tropical paradise lab is mainly for beach parties under the full moon - while the music I generated back in the 1980s can be described as mostly anarchic, expressionist, idiosyncratic journeys through inner space - not exactly danceable unless you happen to be a post-modern choreographer who has evolved beyond the Cagey silences and random industrial sound effects favored by Merce Cunningham.

Anyway, it all started with a visit to the SPCA a few years ago. Two of my cats urgently required spaying and I was pleased to meet a vivacious animal-loving young lady named Farida who was a volunteer or part-time staff.

I discovered that Farida was also a blogger. Apart from that she enjoyed beach parties in Thailand and that's how it came to pass that the first time Farida visited Magick River, she had this Swiss DJ on a visa run in tow.

When Daniel (who hadn't morphed into Sanuk at that time) heard I was also a musician he was curious to check out some of my early output. Played him a few tracks of recently digitized material and he found it intriguing. He asked if he could have a copy of the CD so he could fool around with the sound.

Months passed. One day I found a package waiting for me at the post office. It was a CD from Daniel Schwörer, posted from KL by Farida, who had been carrying it for weeks in her backpack.

I put on the CD and sat for a whole hour mesmerized.

What Deejay Sanuk had done was literally massage the music back to life. The material had originally been recorded on 2-inch, 16-track acetate, mixed down to 2-track stereo masters on ¼-inch magnetic tape, and dubbed directly to compact cassette (so that it could be played at home).

Another Daniel - a Tang - had laboriously digitized hours of material and saved it all on DVDs as wav files. However, without equalization and processing, the sound was dull and flat. Converting analog to digital isn't a straightforward task. The vitality of analog waveforms tends to get lost when translated into raw binary code.

Without altering the music in any way, Deejay Sanuk had succeeded in restoring the brilliance and clarity of individual instruments while consolidating the dynamic balance between the highs and the lows. In other words, whatever he did and however he managed it, my audio wizard friend from Switzerland had injected new life into music recorded in 1986, making it sound as fresh as when I first created it.


Sanuk's cultural imprinting as a Swiss native stands him in good stead as a techno-wizard. He is meticulous to a fault and ended up working obsessively on my Lazarus Project, tweaking hours of digitized music files.

Finally, many weeks of sweat later, he delivered two versions of the 2nd Coming master - one upfront, the other laidback - plus a completely unretouched version, tape hiss and all, as a reference to how the original mix sounded. I listened to both versions carefully, decided on the one to release, and wrote Sanuk a thank-you note via Facebook, incorporating some feedback. This is part of his response:

i have done the best i could not to deliver you something that sounds nice but shows its shortcomings when played at high volume, even though most people will not listen to it too loud i guess. i have used very drastic equalization which you will not hear in the final mix, i added bass frequencies in the low end which i then would cut back again. then after having cut low frequencies back i compressed the piano line as the leading element of dynamic in the mix. some other instruments had very extreme peaks in the problematic frequency range (e.g 1 khz, 3-4 khz ) so after any frequency manipulation and compression i had increased noise occurrence which i had to get rid of again without taking out the brilliance. so imagine that as an iterative process trying to achieve an acceptable result. i did the final step with a special emulation of the famous SSL (Solid State Mixing Consoles) equalizer and buss compressor.....

all in all i used quite a lot of different tools and dunno how many steps of rendering different versions from which i worked further where needed. that's only possible since we have powerful computers and can stay in the digital domain where there is no loss of data. another trick is to first transform the original file into a floating 32 bit data file since the good plugs all work in the 32 bit or 64 bit domain, then in the end you dither the whole thing back down to 16 bit 44.1 cd quality.... However, thank you very much that my work finds appreciation, it's the most difficult thing i have ever done and was a real challenge since it really is a remarkable recording with all possible sound elements and dynamics in it.

All the best and thank you again for the opportunity to work on something like that. best regards from cloudy Samui

I am none the wiser as to how Sanuk does it, since I know zip about the technical aspects of sound mixing. He did explain to me that he has special software that allows him to analyze the sound spectrum layer by layer and sculpt soundwaves with far greater precision than was possible in the analog era.

Of course, I feel a deep sense of gratitude to have met this wonderful wizard who happens to be a perfect blend of artist, scientist, aesthete, philosopher - and cultural philantrophist too, for I can't imagine getting this sort of magical results even if I could afford to fork out thousands. If you're interested in sampling some of Deejay Sanuk's head-banging dance tracks, go here. He has also produced soundtrack music for various European filmmakers.

Sanuk's amazing achievement is that he succeeded in restoring vitality, depth and presence to my 1986 recordings. I'm particularly pleased with the way he tweaked the piano so it sounds as if you're listening to a live performance. In short, I feel totally assured that the 2010 edition of 2nd Coming can hold its own anywhere in the world as a recording, in purely technical terms.

However, whether or not listeners will be receptive to the utterly unclassifiable music is something I cannot and dare not predict. Be warned: this album was recorded in the mid-1980s before music videos contributed to shortening people's attention spans.

But if you're curious enough, or kind enough, to order a copy:

2nd Coming is now downloadable online! 

[First posted 2 September 2010. Reposted 17 September 2018]

Advent of The Bunyip ~ musings about my son (repost)

Grandfather Dai had only three sons, but he had had countless daughters. Countless… because many of them had been drowned at birth in huge jars of urine kept as manure for the fields. In those days a Patriarch’s word was law. The Patriarch was the Progenitor – and the Progenitor held the lives of his progeny in his hands. Taking a daughter’s life was not regarded as murder. It was simply a means of ensuring fewer mouths to feed. ~ Dai Moong Yang (In Those Days, 1995)

Ahau's 13th day on earth

IN EARLY 1993 I spent a few weeks editing and retyping a collection of stories written by my maternal Aunt M.Y. (also known as Grace Lee) - but the significance of the lines quoted above didn’t fully register till 30 December 2012, during a long conversation I had with two healer-counselor friends, Heiko and Selina Niedermeyer, who have studied a wide range of emotional and psychospiritual healing modalities over a span of almost 20 years. They had recently completed a workshop with Bert Hellinger, founder of Systemic Family Constellation, which postulates that no soul enters into physical embodiment in isolation – it invariably enters through a complex soul cluster called the Family Constellation and therefore any healing process must always include an overview of the individual’s family dynamics.

Early blowpipe practice

In the course of our conversation, Selina mentioned that Bert Hellinger had discovered a nexus between murder in the suppressed family narrative (literally skeletons in the closet) and mental/emotional dysfunctionality. Apparently it is not uncommon for the souls of the murdered to be reborn within the murderer’s bloodline – but with characteristic disabilities like Down syndrome, autism or schizophrenia. The moment I heard this I had goosebumps. My sweet cousin in Singapore (the late Dr Dixie Tan) had two dysfunctional sons and two fairly normal daughters. My own brother Mike had been diagnosed with schizophrenia decades ago; and my only son Ahau, labeled autistic by some, was unlikely to ever interact “normally” with others because he was born with an unusual vocal cord that makes it difficult for him to simulate human speech.

Ahau at age 6 (pic by Emanar)

Our great-grandfather Dai, through sheer ignorance compounded with arrogance, had been instrumental to the murder of many newborn female babies. Perhaps the same number that had returned as dysfunctional males to haunt the bloodline like a family curse.

During a two-hour session I had with Heiko and Selina in the first week of January 2013, I conjured the spirit of my great-grandfather Dai. He had the haughty air of a typical Mandarin, scion of a rich land-owning clan, and it took him a while to even acknowledge that drowning newborn female infants was nothing less than murder.

His only defence was that he wasn’t the only one who practiced infanticide; it was fairly common in old China (and even in fairly recent times, many couples aborted female fetuses because the government’s one-child policy didn’t allow them another shot at conceiving a male heir). Finally, that impassive, inscrutable mask shattered and a few teardrops began to flow down his cheeks. He looked, for a moment, humbled.

A 10-year-old Bunyip

“Please ask forgiveness from the souls of those you thwarted from taking earthly incarnation, and then forgive yourself,” I told my great-grandfather’s spirit. When he slowly faded from view, I knew the family curse was finally broken. My only begotten son Ahau Ben would be the last in the bloodline to bear the karmic consequences of his forbears’ abysmal ignorance and self-serving cultural myopia.

After some initial hesitation I decided to share this story to illustrate how “the sins of the fathers” do get passed along the chromosomal track. I use the word “sin” in its original sense: in Middle English the word sinne was a term commonly used in archery to mean “missing the mark.” As a metaphor, missing the mark indicates poor aim, barking up the wrong tree, misreading the map of life, or possessing an entirely erroneous and distorted view of reality.

Humans who have yet to attain enlightenment tend to commit stupid, destructive acts as a result of a benighted perspective, usually inherited through parents and imbibed from their tribal and cultural milieu. A society that places a greater value on male offspring is likely to adhere unquestioningly to patriarchal attitudes that glorify skills in combat and the ability to “bring home the bacon.”

Amphibious Ahau by Dorota Nierzwicka

What happens, of course, is that such males end up in decision-making positions, bringing along their blinkered perspectives and prejudices. As military chiefs they will be constantly itching for the glory or martyrdom of warfare; and as corporate heads their ruthless ambition will blind them and harden their hearts to the wholesale desecration of the sacred landscape for illusory short-term profits and bigger bonuses.

However, life does not occur on a single plane. Almost every event or situation can be interpreted on many levels. Likewise the Advent of The Bunyip (a nickname I bestowed on Ahau Ben when he was a toddler, partly because of his amphibious nature (he loved playing in the bathtub and later the river); but mostly because he did seem to me a somewhat chimerical entity, a creature right out of fairy tales and long-forgotten legends.

Ahau was named after the Mayan starglyph for the Sun or Solar Christ. His second name Ben is inspired by the Mayan starglyph for Skywalker or Celestial Messenger. It so happens that the last King of Mu was reportedly named Ahau too. Not one to settle for the mundane, I delighted in creating a mythic context in which to locate Ahau’s entry into my life. I have written about this at length before, so I will say no more about the mystery of Ahau’s being (click on this link if you wish to read about it).

THERE IS ANOTHER possible explanation for the way Ahau turned out. He arrived at 2 in the morning of the 21st March, 1996, by Caesarean section at the Hospital Kuala Lumpur. I didn’t know till a bit later that the nurses had given him a hepatitis jab without first asking my permission. When they asked me to consent to a second follow-up jab, I expressed deep consternation that they would administer a vaccine to my child without first consulting me. Of course, I refused to grant permission for another jab, having learnt of the unholy alliance between the pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession that has made vaccinations enforceable by law.

Twenty years after Ahau’s birth a heated debate rages between pro- and anti-vaxxers with the main contention being that evidence linking vaccinations with autism has been systematically suppressed by vested interests – because once a vaccine is approved and becomes a routine medical procedure, vaccine manufacturers stand to rake in billions every year. Intuitively, I tend to be anti-vaccination because I generally feel a great deal more trustful of nature and the body’s immune system than of medical or any other species of science – especially since the bulk of it is fueled by corporate funding and private grants.

The possibility that it was a hepatitis jab that triggered my son’s autism has certainly crossed my mind many times. But as I can think of no way I can obtain irrefutable proof of this, it seems pointless to hold on to this suspicion.

Ahau is the way he is and those of us who know him well adore him exactly the way he is – even though it still strikes me as absurd that he should take advantage of everyone around him, recruiting us into his service, instead of taking more responsibility for himself. No doubt this can be attributed to the fact that his ancestors on my mother’s side were landed gentry (my aunt boasted that it took men on horseback 11 days to collect the rent) - all the males being archetypal spoilt brats - or perhaps Ahau’s sense of entitlement is due to his residual memory of having been an absolute monarch in a lost civilization called Mu.

22 September 2017

[First posted 25 September 2017, 20 March 2019, 21 March 2021, 22 March 2024, 22 March 2024 

& 17 November 2025]

Photographic Serendipity ~ Perfect Timing! (reprise)

[courtesy of Olivia de Haulleville. First posted 3 september 2012]