How it started

It all started late one night in the year 1986. I was ten years old.

Sitting cross-legged on my bed as I contemplated the day’s happenings, I felt myself slipping into an altered state of mind. The events that transpired during the day faded in and out of my consciousness even as I tried to make sense of them. Like a haphazardly edited video recording, the arrangement was chaotic and choppy. Though the pandemonium was similar to the mad flashes of lights and angry bursts of noises that one would associate with urban city conditions during the evening, it surprisingly left me with a clearer mind than at the start of the episode.

The social and emotional frustrations that I had as a growing child lightened their tight grip on me at the end and I felt myself relax, both physically and mentally. I did not take note of the duration of the episode but I distinctively remembered laying back down after that to fall asleep almost immediately.

In the nights that followed, I did the same. Each night before I slept, I assumed the same cross-legged posture on my bed and closed my eyes. I did not specifically will myself to experience the same sensations though I did try to recreate the same train of thoughts that I had on the very first night. Occasionally, the sensations that I experienced were similar. Flashes of light and loud sounds.

On other nights, I had other experiences in which my mind’s eye saw the people I had met during the day. They would be walking past me most of the time; sometimes they walked right through me. What particularly struck me during such episodes was that I perceived certain feelings in varying degrees from each of them – anger, happiness, distrust, sadness among others. It was almost as if my mind was revisiting the things that had happened and analysing the people I had encountered during the day. Unknowingly, I had stumbled upon the power of the subconsciousness through a variant meditative state.

Incidentally, I had begun to feel strongly about the notion of good and evil just about the same time when I started having these nocturnal pseudo-hallucinatory episodes. I had also just received a gift that I valued tremendously as a child, a set of encyclopedia. As I was by nature a curious child, I sought answers to my many questions in the tomes.

My thirst for knowledge was so intense that I kept at least one volume with me whenever I could. Volume A would be with me as I ate my lunch and dinner. Volumes T and U were for my bed-time reading. The more questions I asked, the more my mind queried. It was as if my hunger was insatiable. There were many uncertainties that the books could not resolve. Issues such as good and evil, right and wrong. These were ideas for which examples existed in both non-fiction and fiction but were extremely difficult for a child to grasp directly from flat two-dimensional examples.

My parents were traditional in their thinking and strict in bringing up their children. They gave me guidance in the form of do’s and don’ts but offered little in explaining what the intricacies of life entailed. The combination of my experiences at that point in time was likely the primary reason for start of the nightly meditation sessions. By a twist of fate perhaps, an avenue was opened to me where I could obtain some form of closure for some of the numerous unknowns in my life at that juncture in life.

Double-Edged Swords

Much has been said about the fear of loss of privacy, the loss of freedom, the loss of civil rights in this context and in others as well. If such security-related technology and activities were to become de facto in future, would generations of the future lament the loss of privacy? Would they regret the loss of freedom? For them, having been born without experiencing such things, the concept of loss in these areas probably would not apply.

To cite an analogy (this is a true case): I have a friend who is a social worker. An extremely motivated lady who dedicated much of her life to help those in need, sacrificing her time and money just to lend cheer to those who were not as well off as her. On weekends she would visit old folks who stayed by themselves in the older housing estates (usually one-room flats) and bring them food and money. Though what she could do for each individual is limited by her finite resources, her spirit was indomitable in rendering her help.

One day, she visited a particular family for the first time. The nucleus was made up of the parents and two young daughters. She spent more than two hours talking to them and trying to understand their situation. Though she knew that happiness can exist even in an improverished state, she was still pleasantly surprised to find that the two young daughters were playing happily with what little they had. As she tried to get to know them better, she found that they had little realisation of what other children of their age knew - Kentucky Fried Chicken, Barbie dolls, etc. They rarely left their home.

Feeling sorry for them, my friend brought along two big boxes of KFC burgers and chicken wings for the family the following visit. The children were curious but nevertheless ate the unfamiliar food which tasted great. My friend felt happy to see the children enjoying the treat and thought to herself that seeing the smiles on their faces made whatever she had sacrificed to help others in need worthwhile.

The subsequent visit was a totally different situation altogether. The mother of the two young children was upset and when my friend asked her what she was troubled by, she replied that the two young daughters had been pestering her to buy them KFC for the past week. Never did my friend realise that her good deed of wanting to bring some enjoyment to the poor children had inadvertently turned into misfortune for the family. Without having even seen a KFC advertisement (the family did not have a television set at home), the children had not realised that they were missing what other children possessed. The introduction of this apparent luxury had unfortunately seeded the feelings of craving and desire in them.

We appreciate privacy, freedom and civil rights because we are aware that such things exist. If there were to come a time when the future generations do not even know of these fundamentals, they will likely not view the world in the same way we do right now.

What is right and what is wrong? There isn't a clear line to separate right and wrong for they differ from individual to individual, and even for a single individual, the definition varies from situation to situation and from time to time. Your definition of the "right balance of privacy and security" is possibly not the same as mine. We often have little option but to depend on those in the positions of power (political, scientific fields) to make decisions on our behalf such that the majority of the people agree with their selected definitions and can therefore (usually) benefit from these decisions.