A Civilisational Challenge: Rome, Han, and the Test Before Us.

History as Confrontation.

Image by ChatGPT

If we are serious about learning from history, then we must stop treating it as comfort and start treating it as confrontation.

The Roman Empire was the greatest empire the West ever produced.

The Han civilisation is the longest continuous civilisation in human history.

One collapsed into fragments.

The other endured through collapse itself.

This is not a curiosity.

It is a challenge.

⸻

Rome was unmatched in power. Law, engineering, administration, military force — it organised the ancient world at scale. It knew how to command. It knew how to build. It knew how to expand.

But when Rome broke, so did the idea of being Roman.

People did not fight to preserve it. They adapted. They narrowed their loyalties. They became Italian, Spanish, Gallic, Frankish. Rome did not fall in flames. It thinned out. Authority weakened, and meaning went with it.

Rome built systems strong enough to rule the world.

It did not build an identity strong enough to survive itself.

That is the lesson most people miss.

⸻

Han China faced a harsher test.

Dynasties collapsed. Emperors failed. Civil wars tore the land apart. Foreign powers ruled China for long stretches of time. By every political measure, the Han state should have disappeared.

It didn’t.

Language endured. Customs endured. Ways of thinking endured. Even under foreign rule, people still understood themselves as Han.

Why?

Because identity did not live only in the state.

It lived in shared judgment — taught, practiced, and expected.

Rome organised behaviour.

Han China trained people.

That difference is everything.

⸻

Now the challenge turns to us.

We are building systems more powerful than any civilisation before us. Artificial intelligence can calculate faster than we can think, predict outcomes we cannot see, and optimise decisions at a scale that feels almost godlike.

We celebrate this as progress.

But here is the uncomfortable question:

Are we building systems that make us wiser — or systems that allow us to stop judging?

Intelligence is no longer scarce.

Judgment is.

Judgment is slow. It hesitates. It carries responsibility. It knows when not to act. It asks what should be preserved, not just what can be improved.

No system can do this for us.

When societies replace judgment with process, authority becomes technical instead of moral. Decisions become efficient but hollow. People comply, but they no longer believe. Trust drains away quietly.

That is how Rome dissolved.

⸻

The lesson of Han China is not that moral systems prevent failure. They don’t. 

Power still corrupts. States still fall.

The lesson is harder:

a civilisation survives only when judgment is carried by people, not outsourced to systems.

That kind of civilisation does not panic when power fractures. It does not lose itself when authority weakens. It adapts without dissolving.

Rome mastered power.

Han China mastered continuity.

We are now being tested on both.

⸻

This is not a question about technology.

It is a question about who we are becoming.

Will we be a civilisation that builds intelligent systems but forgets how to judge?

Or one that uses intelligence without surrendering responsibility?

History will not ask how advanced our tools were.

It will ask whether we knew what had to do to remain human.

That is the challenge.

And it is already underway.

Mid-Year Stock Take - Letter to Jon at 35

Mushroom cloud over Nagasaki 9 Aug.1945

 

Dear Jon,

Here we are, just breaching the second half of the 25th year of the 21st century. Also breaching the 35th year of your birth to your departure on August 9th. 

Admittedly, I have discovered more things about today as time progresses. It's perhaps of our fixation on birthdays that we overlook departure days. It has taken me nineteen years to realise more facts about August 9;

Apart from being Singapore's national day, and that it's exactly two weeks or 15 days after your birthday, 

it was also the devastation of Nagasaki when the US dropped a second nuclear bomb to unofficially and brutally end the war.

 It’s been a year since I last shared endings and beginnings with you. It was the beginning of the 2024 Paris Olympics ending around your departure date leaving the world relatively safe and peaceful. 

Fast forward one year, this post is a sort of report card of where the human race is at. 

1. The human race has never been so comfortable, peaceful and empowered in their daily lives. 

2. Things could get worse. 

3. Things could get really bad. 

We live in a material world. We do all that matters in search of better lives chasing dreams in a society that has provided the best in healthcare, food, living conveniences, economic and technological advances are unprecedented yet we’re on the verge of self- destruction. 

There is a serious trust deficit growing amongst us since the end of the cold war. From relationships to families, communities and nations. Most people in the civilised world are living ultra comfortable lives yet not happier but more anxious desiring more of everything material that we think will make us happier. Be it entertainment, food, sex, possessions or anything that provides distractions from ourselves. 

The endless scrolling of screens be it the mobile devices as an extension of our hands or the large screens as extensions of our living rooms, searching for news and useless information so we can feel-better. That’s not what happiness looks like.

As if not serious enough, we are heralding the dawn of Ai, arguably mankind's greatest technological achievement, coming into the mix. Although the possibilities are positively game changing, the dangers of misuse by bad actors using Ai to plot world domination, loom ominous. 

Not withstanding Ai, the madness is already upon us. Israel is carrying out a systemic genocide on the Palestinians since October 2023. As if mad with bloodlust they have started wars with Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen with the aid of their lackey the US and no end in sight.. 

It is a slow and painful genocide in Palestine. The Israelis are deliberately starving women & children and mindless wars are being waged in the Middle East that could escalate into another nuclear third world war. 

One would think that after Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy & the Japanese defeat in the Second World War would have taught us the futility of war but apparently not. It has been exactly 80 years since the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked by the US ending the war but more wars are being waged around the world today instigated or led by the US. 

Isn’t it ironic, that the liberators of the free world from the horrors of the Second World War has been the sole peddler of wars ever since? It seems that the most powerful nation on earth is hell bent on destroying it. America has been entrusted to lead and police the world and they have done so with impunity. The age old adage still rings true; 'Who is going to police the police?'

These realities come to light when Donald Trump won a second term in the White House. A convicted felon managed to win a landslide victory beating the democrats whose last term was disastrous even irresponsible. Democrats or Republicans, America's politics have, from the onset, been divisive- "Either you're on my side or you're against me." This is nothing new as Americans have subscribed even invented this form of 'game theory' for decades against it's own people as well as the rest of the world. The world's largest human lab has in turn, turned the world into it's own human lab- bringing it's own ideology of governance or justice to all, inflicting chaos and destruction everywhere they choose. The only diplomacy they know is through force or coercion. Donald Trump is no different from his predecessors. 

"When all you have is a hammer, every challenge you face becomes a nail to be hammered out."

The only difference is that Trump is not a career politician but a 'businessman' and hopefully he can begin to see that business can only be done with mutual transfer of value benefitting both sides leading to a multi-lateral world, not one of domination by a facist regime. In fact, America is known to be a plutocracy (ruled by the rich 1%) or even kleptocracy (ruled by thieves) and the only reason they can be that is that they wield the biggest hammer. 

However, with the inevitable rise of China after a century of humiliation, there is a new world leader in the making. Compared to four thousand years of civilisation, it took only a century of humiliation to put order to the chaos largely brought upon themselves, tranquilised by the comforts of the spoils of internal warfare and imperial rule handed down through the dynasties. Starting with the end of the Qing Dynasty, China bade farewell to it's last emperor Puyi and the Chinese Communist Party won complete victory in the Chinese Civil War and the People's Republic of China was founded in August 1950. 

So in a sort of a roundabout way, I have briefly but more importantly recounted the journey and establishment of a world power worthy and capable of standing up to the US in the delicate balance of power as to who holds the bigger hammer, be it in military strength or Ai advancement to rule the world. 

I often wonder what we wouldn't talk about son.

Happy 35th Birthday Jon.

I love you. 65

Reality or Science Fiction? Or just a rant. 

Pohon Beringin*by PineForest

I am quite sure nobody remembers what actually happens on one's birthday. Or is it just me? Who is not so big on birthdays.

My mother always used to say; "If you're happy everyday, everyday is your birthday." Having said that; she'd still cook meesua soup with hard boiled eggs for me on my birthday. Thanks Abu. 

Be that as it may, I'm going to remember this one. 

On the night before, having gone to bed only at the wee hours, after the usual sojourn on my easy chair perched on my balcony, I finally drifted off to sleep as Alan Watts droned on my Spotify app. I find his talks very soothing if not tranquilizing, especially on the subjects of polarity and psychedelics.

I woke up just after eight to the sound of my phone ringing. A brother from another mother rang to shout greetings in my ear, seems like from a script that alluded to brotherly love, long life, happiness, joy and weed. Interestingly enough, I have spent more time with brother JB than any other person over the last few years. Hence it is no surprise why I had earlier texted him expressing my desire to spend today with him to 'jalan-jalan cari makan'. Unfortunately for me, he's away on a job in the north. Insyallah we meet next week when he returns. 

Well, it seems that I have made it to 65, 15 years after 50 and 5 years after 60. 

Both occasions were celebrated with a grand party. The first, a surprise party thrown by my family and my colleagues (master-minded by my ex-wife) when I hit 51. I wasn't in the mood to celebrate but I was blown-away with the gift of an exquisite memorial book that never fails to bring tears to my eyes each time I turn the pages.

When I hit 60, I splurged on a big Hollywood-themed party that felt as dramatic and as strange as a Hollywood script. On hindsight it turned out to be a farewell party for my closest and dearest. I left my home and my family that year. That brought tears to my eyes too.

Am I wallowing in self pity and remorse right now? 

I wouldn't be writing to commemorate this day if I were. I am writing because I have not felt this good in as many years. At least not that I can recall. Nor can I recall a more painful journey. 

Perhaps the best way to mark this milestone is to list the 10 things I learnt under it. 

And call it - What I know now at 65.

1. Life is to be enjoyed in-between the gaps of sorrow that will engulf us.

The secret is to live it fully, regardless. We are playing a game of hide and seek with ourselves here. In the end nothing really matters. We staged all this so that we can experience ourselves in this life. We came here as a Persona. Hence Person. The definition of which is Greek for a mask. A mask from which we put on a front/facade with an open mouthpiece that amplifies our voice to an open theatre. Latin verb per-sonare, literally sounding through. 

Because we so cleverly staged this life, we also cleverly caused ourselves to forget this staging. After all where's the fun in playing games where we already know the outcomes? And one thing is for sure, woman/mankind love to play games and be entertained. The more challenging, the more real, the more brutal, the more heartbreaking, the better. Or else what else is there to do? Even falling in love and making babies these days are falling out of favour but the constant consumption of stories continues. 

The stories begin with the self. Our body, our possessions, our feelings and our beliefs. As the world gets smaller our lives intertwine with others and engage with the world at large. The players, including ourselves, play our parts so well that soon we buy into the stories whole-heartedly. We get entangled in the drama and we get deeply attached to the passions, possessions and people in our lives. With deep attachments we get disappointed, dissatisfied and disillusioned. Pain and suffering follow inevitably. 

Remember, it's all a play. The sooner we wise up the better the play. 

2. We look in all the wrong places.

Then the search for meaning and purpose of life begins. We look for other passions, possessions, and people thinking they may be the answer. We get to soothe ourselves again momentarily. But they're just temporary, soon the same cycle of pain and suffering resurfaces and we sink further into destitute, desperation and depression. We resort to medicating our pain with alcohol, drugs, shopping or other therapies but nothing on this road can bring us lasting relief. Sounds familiar? That's pretty much where the human race is at. 

The good news is the search for meaning and purpose continues. Because deep down, we know, we just know that, there is something we have to remember about ourselves..

Remember, it's all Maya. An illusion. Wise up.

3. This life is not about me. It is about ALL of us. 

Life is certainly very seductive. One cannot be faulted if one falls heavily infatuated with it, or worse head over heels in search of pleasure. It isn't and it shouldn't be about pleasure. At least not in the way Hollywood portrayed it to be. As much as I abhor isn'ts, wouldn'ts and shouldn'ts, the pursuit of pleasure is not prohibited. But I have discovered that pleasure comes with it's inseparable terrible twin called pain. Pursue pleasure by all means, but be prepared to face the pain that comes with it. It's guaranteed. 

But I for one has been brought up on the concept of pleasure and I intend to live in pleasure whenever I can. Pleasure in this respect as defined by the stoics;

"The absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul." ~ Epicurus

Whatever your religious inclinations, beliefs, ideologies, philosophies, or superstitions, this is mine; 

I know deep down, we all come from the same place, the same source. The universe is conscious. How do I know? Because I am conscious. Conscious of the fact that, just like Copernicus and Galileo discovered, the sun doesn't revolve around our earth. Our Sun, one of many suns in our galaxy, one of many galaxies in our universe, keeps our solar system in place with Mercury in first, Jupiter in fifth is our largest planet. It is our sun's gravity that pulls the planets in our solar system together to revolve around it. Much like how electrons revolve around protons. By design, the configuration of atoms that make up our body is almost identical to our solar system. It is no coincidence that we are designed and configured as such. It is a universal spirit, tao, energy, god or brahman that unites us. We are ONE.

Remember, we are ALL in on this charade. The ONE playing all the roles. 

4. The answer lies within us. 

Our knowledge of outer space, however minuscule, serves little to satisfy our curiosity about the immensity that surrounds us day and night. The empty space that we gaze out upon, seem to be full of 'nothing'. Is it really just nothing? Or can only something come out of nothing? That idea can only be understood when we explore inner space which we know so little about compared to outer space. 

Inner space has two parts- the first is physical space on our planet, our own backyard, our forests, rivers, seas and oceans. We seem to know more about the other planets than our own planet. That's because the powers that can afford to do this has conquest driven by ego on their agenda. This line of thinking pretty much defines the relationship we humans have with the cosmos including nature, they are to be conquered and controlled. Hence the fight with nature and the conquest of outer space. 

Second, there's the inner space within us. That space some would call our higher self, inner being or just our consciousness. This is the space that is the most important but least visited hence least known- ourselves. This is our 95%. 

Remember, we are connected to a higher eternal source. 

5. Who Am I?

Who we truly are or Who am I? is the question that is as old as the existence of the human race. Yet it remains the current question that confronts all generations. It is one of the most confounding and perplexing questions that has ever riddled humankind. Perhaps because the answers are difficult to find or perhaps the answers we have on hand are difficult to comprehend, we turn to seek external answers from religion, science or philosophy. Having found, read, listened to thinkers, writers, philosophers like David Friedrich Strauss, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Neitzsche, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. These sages paved the way for nihilism, existentialism and absurdism, they killed God and triggered the search for life's meaning and purpose. 

The better question to contemplate and query; Who Am I? The answer is... see #4.

6. Nature is separate from us. (?)

Therefore it has to be conquered and controlled. Hence the destruction of the rainforests and flattening of the earth to build steel and concrete cities and communities with little regard to nature. 

Results show that this belief is not only not working but it is threatening all lives on the planet. Science tells us that we inhale oxygen produced by plants and trees through photosynthesis which uses the carbon dioxide we and other animal lifeforms produce as waste. Isn't that already a miracle of life? A symbiotic relationship in action.

There is so much we don't know about nature and the life that surrounds us. Science- originally known as Philosophical Studies was the pursuit and search for the truth. The philosophers were our first scientists. Truths and theories were already discovered since the days of Socrates, Copernicus and Galileo. Then it became institutionalised and politicised from as far back as time in memorial. 

Nature is not separate from us humans. We are part of nature just as stars are part of the sky. Nature is intelligent, nature has immense power, nature is god. We come from nature. Therefore when we destroy nature we destroy ourselves. 

ALL of us are guilty of this. This is a note to self #nts.

7. Mankind is a superior being created by god separate from all other forms of creation. 

Some forms of man is even more superior to other forms of man. Therefore some people see it fit to impose their will upon others. By force when the others refuse to succumb to their demands. Hence the propagation of wars and conquest of people and nations in the name of god, righteousness, threats, suspicions of threats, fabrication of threats, with no regard to the suffering imposed upon the lives of innocent human beings.

Again, the slaughter of fellow humans come with great ease and little remorse amongst us. Nothing seems to have changed since the beginning of civilisation. As I write this, major conflicts and wars are still being propagated in Asia, Europe, South America and Africa. 

Remember Socrates was sentenced to death by the Athenian court, Jesus was killed by his own people, the Jews, Copernicus and Gallileo were branded heretics by the catholic Church, Gandhi was murdered by an Indian, and JFK was assassinated by a white American. What were their sins? All of them had only one thing in common, they discovered, spoke and stood for the truth. Now didn't Jesus say that, "the truth shall set you free?" but obviously not for these blokes. And more evidently; all of them had the support of the masses. 

So if man can turn on itself with such ferocity and self righteousness, what hope do 'lesser' beings or organisms have? 

Good and Evil is the inseparable duality within the singularity. 

8. The earth, nature, we, are all doomed to destruction and extinction. 

Seems that way however all is not doom and gloom when we consider this generation of humans as the most comfortable, convenience-empowered and most informed about almost everything everywhere. 

Thanks to technology, which is a by-product of science in the pursuit of the conquest and control of space, nature and nations, we get to enjoy high speed internet connections enabling more bandwidth for multiple layers of interactions to better living in the comfort of wherever we are. 

Jack Kilby, (and Robert Noyce) in 1958, invented the integrated circuit or microchip at Texas Instrument, they had no idea this creation would change the world with information. Later Noyce together with Gordon Moore founded Intel to work on the production of semiconductor memory chips which became Intel's first big commercial success. They worked on improving the integrated circuit and microprocessor which led to a law bearing Moore's name postulating that the number of transistors on a single chip will double every 18 months to 2 years. This exponential law prophesized in1965 is still delivering. The microchip today has shrunk to an invisible 2 nanometers (nm) housing an incredible 60 billion transistors. A single strand of human hair is 100nm in diameter. As I write this, IBM has this latest capability in store. 

The microchip will be the world's most affordable commodity, it will be cheaper than scrap paper. Soon everyone will be wearing contact lenses infused with microchips storing and accessing information tethered to the www. In just a blink, information is presented in our sight in real time.  

Artificial intelligence will grow body parts, organs, bones, skin, tissue from our bodies. At the risk of this post sounding like a science fiction novella, it is highly likely that I get to see the human body regenerate itself and even reverse ageing in this lifetime. As much as the new technology and AI sounds inspiring, it is also frightening. 

Humans have evolved with environmental factors. We are already cyborgs in the making. 

9. What will become of us?

Machine learning and AI will be so advanced that perhaps it is inevitable that they take over. The rise of the machines seems plausible now as it was mooted since the science fiction days of Asimov, Clarke and Wells. 

In 1997, the world's greatest player of chess, Gary Kasparov, was defeated by the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in a highly publicised match. He then described the loss akin to playing against sheer brute force. 

Then in 2016, the ancient Chinese game of Go widely played in China, South Korea and Japan, succumbed to Google's DeepMind AlphaGo program. Go was considered a more complex game than Chess with far more possible moves which requires more intuition and is far less susceptible to brute force. The unthinkable happened. The machine beat top-ranked Lee Sedol in a game where the number of legal board positions has been calculated to be approximately 2.1 x 10170 which is far greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe, estimated to be of the order 1080 (read as ten to the power of eighty).

While DeepBlue relied on brute computational force to evaluate millions of positions, AlphaGo relied on neural networks and reinforcement learning. See the thrilling award-winning documentary >HERE

The machines have arrived, the gradient of exponential doubling of transistors on a microchip has metastasized into a wall. A wall of unstoppable brute force propelling mankind into a super bright future or condemning us to a dark world where we become slaves to the machines. Gordon Moore's vision of exponential growth has been realised much like the evolution of the species that started with a single-cell organism. 

It appears we have come full circle. 

10. What do we do?

We should keep on doing what we have been doing or have been trying to do for the longest time. Nothing.

Let's face it, we have basically been doing nothing. Except when the life as we know it, tries to tell us to get busy doing things that don't make sense or even matter. These so called 'things' that we were told or told to do by our parents, teachers, preachers, bosses, the system were useful only to the extent of merely surviving as humans. The great potential, found in the 'being' equation of 'human beings' was left largely unaddressed, needs to be seriously addressed. After all, we are human beings not human doings.

Perhaps now, with the rise of the machines we are compelled to face, meet, confront our being to discover who we really are. 

There has never been a better time than now to sit and do nothing while the machines do all our non-essential work that doesn't require our own special creativity, taste, feelings or emotions. 

We sit in stillness to connect with our divine nature tapping into the unlimited realm of endless possibilities.

Here is the search for meaning and purpose. 

Here is where we bestow meaning and purpose in our lives to pursue our hearts desires. 

Here is when we create our art to share with the world.

Here is where we ask the difficult question of; Who am I?

And here is where we start to tell our stories from our hearts, which the machines do not possess.

Start doing Nothing. Start with Meditation. 

Thank you for reading/listening to my Birthday rant.

See you on the other side. 

*Pohon Beringin or Tree of Life symbolises the abundance of life. Life in the water, on land, in the air, in Kelantan shadow puppet. The Banyan tree is the symbol of the wayang kulit at the start and the end of the show. Art by Wayang Kulit, Kelantan.