ideas
what does it mean to possess cultural capital? re: singapore context.

ok, so i'm like some sort of an academic. i read a lot, write a lot (used to), think a lot, and i observe a lot. the work i do deals with learning, teaching, communicating and remembering.

my da and ma both graduated from nantah; they treat education with quite a high amount of respect. there are beautiful things in my house, from paintings to dinosaurs. i am reasonably proficient in chinese, more so in english, and a lil bit ok in indonesian/ malay.

i used to act, and used to play games, tell stories a lot more. those leisurely pursuits, together with my family's respect for the scholar-knight errant, had more to do with my current life in this configuration, than anything else. i grew up with a bunch of great friends who were from different walks of life, but were all expressive and confident in their own spheres of life, and we did many great things together.

what is it that prevents this greatness and exuberance from reflaring up?

the machine of this place.

hmm.

why am i able to continue doing what i do? family background comes in. not by birth, but by my family's cultural dispositions towards education, literacy, and higher learning, i was equipped with enough resources as a kid that nurtured certain nascent qualities within me. I have entered the ranks of a scholarly elite class that exists in this country. i do not *choose* to channel my social and cultural resources towards attaining what this country's popular discourse holds up as being "success", but that also possible due to my good relationship with my family. i don't encounter the same pressures as perhaps others of my social class do, to become an iron bowl bureaucrat, and they have encouraged at many times these interests and affinities of mine.

Cultural capital, in Bordieu's sense?

hmmm. university. it's not bout whether you can get the book or not, to read. it's bout the training, the apprenticeship to a discipline, the mentor-journeyman relationship, where you learn not just bout books, but about life and lives. books are cultural objects - artifacts that contain "embeddings" of culture, perhaps, but to associate books entirely with intellectual high culture is an aspect of the totemic fetishism..

yes, i read many things on my own, and i gained a lot from these readings, but it was not until the discussions, the arguments, the late-night conversations, the research papers, the putting of theory into practice, that my readings crystallized into learning.

(cultural capital also linked thus to social capital? to meet people of similar interests and affinities, whom you can apprentice together with, to learn a craft and master some skills? they then eventually go into certain sectors of society, and i can utilize those contacts and friends to do certain things?)

hmmm. and in this regard, RPGs - both as hobbies/ leisure activities and groups of people who come together, the hobbyists - represent a possible way by which people can gain access to cultural and social capital in a highly stratified society. It's not something that appeals to everyone - or can work for everyone; firstly, there are some affinities that are more useful than others. Power gamers and rules lawyers emphasize that bend-it-till-it-breaks ideology that underscores Weber's ideas of the bureaucratic elite and their knowledge-power base; linguistic affinities, ability to express oneself and understand others are also good skills to have, because all games are social activities and cultural products.

hence, ppl with interests in magic, but not necessary of that intensity/ sort to go into the full-gonzo occult lifestyle, can consume "fantasy"; the fundamental schema of reality within their reckoning is not threatened because it is not "really real", but also because it is not "really real" it is actually less dangerous and more comfy; so you can put it into your life in a more or less modular fashion that isn't so painfully stark.

Magic isn't limited to being an intellectual thing, but some degree of intellectualization and cerebral activity is involved. there is the whole breaking apart of cultural conditioning + the ability to have faith and belief in things. most of the time, without the latter, the former degenerates into some kind of flaccid agnosticism?

but anyway, not the point.

RPG => hobby groups and activities => different kinds of people play them, come together into different groups, recreate their social universes and express their fantasies and ideas, gain access to voice for self-represnetation, even if that voice is borrowed from other forms of culture through media => and speak for one-self.

context? => local arena, stratification of classes, tightening control of social and cultural capital for the technocratic culture elite, survival tied to global flows, loss of soul and spirit as language and memory is molded and spliced, increasing amount of empty markers of class boundaries, searching for "identity", for "who am i truly", while agnosticism increases, and the erudite love techne more and more for its "reality", and then the drive towards fundamentalist interpretations of scripture also increases, that are actually supporting pillars *and* distinguishing features of an increasingly atomized, self-worshipping, individualistic society, that seeks to define the limits of "humanity" and creates a cultural product of the "human being".

ack.

nightmare blade!

chill. relax. something gestated there. return to the void. namaste.