Digging for Meaning

Love the way people dance in this video. Look at the women especially. So beautiful, so joyful, so full of life. Their movements come so easy to them - Like a leaf flows with breeze, their bodies move to rhythm - with a happy natural suppleness.  (Well, the song that plays is different from the original to which they danced, but you may check out the original ). It is as if they have turned their bodies into superconductors of happiness and joy - joy runs through their bodies with no hesitation or pretense or opposition. The others around them are not necessarily moving along in the same way, but they instinctively make space for each other, instinctively anticipating each other's moves.  They move individually, true to themselves, but in step with everyone. It is amazing how individualities can exist even when you are fused in a collective. Plugged-in to the collective energy of convivial togetherness, yet alive with unique expressions of the same energy. As against ...

just saw this talk on TED. Its the usual evangelical white man's talk to other white men about the need for understanding a people as a people rather than a 'problem' or a 'situation'. its about the 'shadow city' as he calls the slums in developing world. its an interesting talk and an earnest attempt in the right direction. However, in their politics to humanize, they tend to absolve the other forces at work. earlier in his talk, he talks how these shadow cities are expanding and more and more people are trooping in, without questioning why is that the case. he talks of how the shadow cities lack basic amenities of life but all these cities are built on hope and freedom. true, but what is making the people uproot themselves culturally, socially, materially and move to inhuman filth-holes in hope of what? while everyone should be able to enjoy his rights, at the same time he need not be elsewhere, far from his home to enjoy those rights and freedom. compou...

the craziest man i have ever seen has to be Klaus Kinski. just the image of him. god! god is one kickass artist, to chisel out such amazing creatures. those scavenging eyes. the unkempt hair. the mad un-contained energy. its bloody infectious. wish, i had known him, met him. it would have been something. was watching his film fitzcarraldo yesterday. what a movie! and more so due to klaus. the mad plague of an idea starts from klaus and grips you. the sheer magnanimity of thought. its such an inspiration. god/s, please make more people like him and werner herzog.. we need them.

I am against hyper efficiencies sought in these days in everything. These hyper efficiencies are being sought without an understanding of the implications thereof. Take the case of energy systems. May it be the invention of the nuclear weapons, which has made extinction of human race a possibility in immediate future. Or see how this need for efficiency is fueling our irrational want for everything. There is a chasm of understanding between how things get made and how they get consumed. The hyper efficiencies are created by specialization of work. Vocations are getting more and more specialized. As such, human is getting distanced from the understanding of mechanisms of production of things that one consumes. This is harmful, because one then doesn’t understand the cost that natural resources, human life and flora and fauna is paying in producing something that may be totally superfluous. This drives irrational wants and creates a maddening consumerist race towards annihilation of wo...