On Bullshit

They say if you can change the way people behave, you can then change the power they perceive. Freedom from fear. Because by the time we are used to fear, we are conditioned to be ignorant of being suppressed. So what’s the point of trying when it’s useless in the end? Over time, it becomes one with us. Welcome to the monkey’s experiment.

“Shh… The walls have ears.” my mother scoffed at me for speaking the name of General Ne Win. I questioned her why as I giggled. “I said stop! Do you want to die? The walls have ears.” she aimed her loud palm toward my cheek as her eyes opened wide. 50 years of authoritarian military dictatorship, civil war, and the cold-blooded murders of the 1988 uprisings have kept my mum shivering to my immature imitation of protesting “Doh Yay! ( Our rights )” My eyes watered as I whispered, “But mum, I don’t want to live in fear….”

She told me how MRTV ( the national television ) would start with the same tedious patriotic song about how powerful the government was every 8 pm. Artists, comedians, and liberals who went against them had their licenses destroyed, stopping them from making art and sentencing them for the next 25 years to “disgracing the nation.” For decades, showing emotion was taboo among families; being under females’ longyi ( our traditional wear ) is seen as indignifying men’s value; and “Men don’t cry” forcing us to be enduring the pain of lashes, wild and drugged like the soldiers of their sadistic military. The armed versus unarmed. What could we do to defend a bullet? Wear a plastic helmet? As an annoyingly curious 12 years old, I wrote in my nerdy yellow diary, “I want to become a scientist one day. Every day is so boring… I wish mum listen to me sometimes.”

On Feb 1st, 2021, we saw the coup again, but before my own eyes this time. I felt for myself the first time the stories of how youth’s dreams got crushed, and my people’s direction got lost in a matter of a day. The armed versus unarmed. A Facebook live video of a child being shot for going out after 9 pm, the mob mentality, toxic propaganda, and unfair imprisonment… Fear turns into trauma, and trauma makes us avoid it.

People kept shutting each other in fear until everyone returned to “normal.” Gone are the four years of uncertain liberalism, and back to the “normal” days in which meaningful emotions couldn’t be seen in the eyes of the confined.

9 years have passed by and I still have that 12-year-old curiosity in me. “It is not power that corrupts but fear” - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi; It is the fear of losing power and being the subject. I realized I didn’t need to go to a battlefield to be freed. It is time for lucky fellows like me to advocate escaping fear in a smarter way with whatever is accessible to us - the internet, a pen, and a camera to tell my stories.

I am fueled to experiment with human characters and their events in their extreme nature like how Charlie Brooker turned his own autobiography into a thriller in "Hated In The Nation.” I like to signify characters' voices in an ambiguous approach, mesmerized by the emotional psychology of viewers and how characters think, interact, and express their emotions. With my gift to innovate in building worlds, I will inspire the next generations of the young, the oppressed, and the underrepresented that they too have a chance to live with a purpose; to live without fear. When power can’t be resisted, art shall become a way to express.