Perception and Amsterdam

I spent 3 nights in Amsterdam. My New Year was spent there with some friends from London and Cardiff. The city was amazingly beautiful, very lively with a myriad of colour and vibrancy. Due to cost restraints we travelled there via ferry from Harwich International to Hook of Holland and then took a train service from Hook to Amsterdam Central. I can’t seem to remember where we stayed the first night, but the second was in Bulldog and the third was in Shelter City.

New Years was quite intense with an hour or so of fireworks coupled with a huge (and I mean really gargantuan) stage with a DJ in the middle blaring out just about every type of techno variation possible. I spent time in some coffee shops and bars and sampled some amazing chocolate delicacies. I sadly missed out on the Heineken factory but I did manage to give the Anne Frank house a visit and it was simply astounding; it was a beacon of culture, history and knowledge, delving not just on the life of Anne Frank but also on the dissemination of knowledge on Human Rights, the Holocaust and wars. There was the usual visit to the Red Light district (which is pretty much where I lived) and to some of the live shows showcased by the night clubs. I did go to the sex museum amongst the hundred other museums there in Amsterdam but I unfortunately missed out on the Jewish museum which I shall go to when I visit Amsterdam again.

Now, on the last day I actually met a Malaysian man who I recalled saying “You know these prostitutes, they all look really good, but it’s sad that they have to do such things”. I thought about it for a second and I replied to him saying “Well, maybe they don’t really consider it something immoral, eastern values perhaps does, but this is a regulated income earning profession”. A rather impulsive answer but I began to think of the concept of moral relativism. A person’s perspective on an event is only dictated by his closeness to it. A teetotaller is going to find alcohol consumption immoral and a man of religion is going to find pre-marital sex wrong on the other hand a man who drinks will find alcohol to be a source of happiness and a person who has sex often may just consider it as being another way of individual expression. But what bothers me is not so much ones personal outlook or beliefs but the imposition of such beliefs on others and the emancipation of those who do not conform to their beliefs.

Overtime in UK, I’ve come to meet many people especially so in the Malaysia diaspora who are keen on behaving and acting in a certain manner so as to feel accepted and not be rejected. In other words, lying to themselves and placating themselves from being who they really are in order to fit with the expectations of the majority. Religion is once again used as a tool to subordinate these people and create them into mere clones. What is sad is that people can be so encapsulated with their beliefs that anyone who diverges from their view is stamped as being a heretic. What remains to be asked is, who are these people to judge one another when their religion itself disallows against judging one another?

Equally it should also be made clear to those who try and shy away from being who they are; that you should never be one who is committed to a set of made religious laws. Always question and go on questioning for as long as you can. The Dutch have showed the world that even with the existence of weed, prostitution and gambling, they’ve been a formidable force of Human Rights propagation including having a bastion of international justice better known as the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Now it is practically impossible to change the minds of those who try and impose their views on others for to do so would be violating their principle and it would only serve as a paradox to my entire entry. But realisation must be made into the minds of followers that one should never be bothered about how they are perceived, I have for awhile now tried to move away from Goffman’s Dramaturgy for I believe it hampers individual growth. It may work subconsciously, that I believe, but when it’s taken to a conscious level, then I abhor it. We are not people who behave in accordance with how people want us to be perceived, we are people behaving in ways that we wish ourselves to be perceived.

One man’s idea of morality may never be another. That is paramount to achieving personal growth and individual autonomy. It is indeed arguable to say that things like “weed and prostitution are not eastern values thus what the West is doing is wrong” but one only has to take a trip to Indo-China to see the drug trade and prostitution in progress. What must be understood is that the West has a different opinion on prostitution and weed, one that circulates around the notion that this is one man’s freedom of exercising himself in how he believes benefits or detriments himself; no one either than himself should have the right to question his judgment if he is not in fact violating someone else’s rights or evoking illegality.

Perhaps it’s time we all considered the views of the Dutch and juxtaposed their concept of moral relativism with that of our herd conformity, more so reaching out to those who we see blindly conforming to “unquestionable” rules. As for Amsterdam, I had a fun and trippy time and would most certainly be paying it a visit soon again.


"…there are altogether no moral facts. Moral judgments agree with religious ones in believing in realities which are not realities. Morality is merely an interpretation of certain phenomena — more precisely, a misinterpretation. Moral judgments, like religious ones, belong to a stage of ignorance at which the very concept of the real, and the distinction between what is real and imaginary, are still lacking…Moral judgments are therefore never to be taken literally…so understood, they always contain mere absurdity.”… Friedrich Nietzsche