Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Trying out the Milo Dinosaur; A property law laden interpretation of the Biblical Account of the fall of Man

While proceeding on my way to Khatib MRT to take the train to school today, I passed by a Muslim food store that had pictures of various interesting drinks on a panel affixed to the top of the store. One of the drink was the milo dinosaur, a milo drink that has a mound of milo powder on the top. I have heard that the this drink is a Singaporean invention. In December last year, I volunteered to be an exchange buddy to some Hong Kong law exchange students from Hong Kong University. We were having a casual conversation about what food and drinks are unique to our respective homelands. I told them that "milo dinosaur" is a drink that originated from Singapore. One of the exchange student replied, "But we have milo dinosaur in Hong Kong as well. There is this shop called Toast Box which sells this drink." "Ah", I eagerly replied, "Toast Box is a Singapore company".

I have never tried out the drink for myself though. I decided to try one today, and ordered the milo dinosaur from the Muslim Stall. Quite a tasty treat. Reminds me of my childhood days when I sometimes ate milo powders by themselves so as to enjoy the strong taste of the milo powder. Whoever came up with the idea for the drink probably know of the enjoyment of such similar experience.

I came across an interesting passage from the Kevin Gray's article Property in Thin Air featuring an interpretation on the nature of original sin. The interpretation expounded on the proposition propounded by Kevin Gray that the concept of property is not a thing that is concretised, but rather a power-relation between a resource and the person and is premised on the person's legal capacity to exclude access of the resource to other people. What Kevin Gray says is that Adam and Eve were guilty of original sin for wanting to appropriate resources into their individual possession that were not meant for such appropriation. I have excerpted the passage below.

'The value-laden mystique generated by appeals to "property" exerts a powerful and yet wholly spurious moral leverage. At the beginning of all taking was not a right but a wrong. The first takers were not, however, guilty of theft; they were guilty of believing the deception of the serpent. This deception consisted in the assumption that the fruit of every tree in the Garden is necessarily a fit subject of private taking; that there can be "property" in all of the goods of life; that human value in its totality is apprehensible through the private exercise of private domain. In the allegory of the Garden it is significant that the symbolic act of sin consisted of a usurpation of control over access to an especially desirable resource. When Eve seized and ate the fruit of the tree of wisdom - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - "and gave also unto her husband with her", her act was not of altruism but of beneficial control. It affirmed for ever the primal - the visceral - impulse of meum and tuum. Out of this act of arrogation was born the global pretence of comprehensively individualised rights of "property".' 

It is an interesting hypothesis to explain why the taking of the apple from the tree of wisdom should be the genesis of original sin. Professor Kevin Gray does give a very lucid description of his hypothesis. No doubt, I am sure his viewpoint is coloured from his expertise in property law. Thus, he sees property law in theology. I am sure the account of original sin is open to many interpretation, and intellectuals from various fields have their respective interesting interpretation of original sin. I am sure Jean-Paul Sartre, the great existentialist philosopher would have an intricately beautiful way of interpreting the theology of original sin. For me, I am rather satisfied with the simple answer that the basis of original sin premises simply on the disobedience of the first humans to God's instruction for them not to eat from the tree of wisdom.

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