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 ...

I live these days in a coastal city where property prices are only going up. I live in an island country where, the debt it owes is several times bigger than its revenues. And my mental reaction is to look at exit doors - be ready to flee, for the oceans are going to claim the land and capitalist vultures are going to claim natural resources - don't know which one will swoop in first, but to me, it seems inevitable. And yet, I see optimism around me. Maybe others know something that I don't know. Or maybe, I know something that they do know but don't want to acknowledge? I tried to understand their source of optimism. Maybe, I was wrong. People are buying real estate at insanely inflated rates, expensive cars and so on. At first I thought that not everyone is an idiot like me who doesn't have too much into savings. Perhaps these are people who have some form of savings - either from inheritance or perhaps they can negotiate better salaries than I do. Something's...

  21st century Weather report The world is reeling under the hate wave of right wing xenophobia, binaries of ' us v/s them '. The hate wave is projected to continue and expand as people turn their back on ideals of liberty and fraternity which had yielded unequal fruits for the majority in the globalised world of 20th Century. While the globalisation of 20th century opened up the barriers for free flow of money across the world, the flow of people has been artificially impeded creating great pressures at the arbitrary borders. The potential energy arising from the stalled flow is bound to turn into kinetic energy, overpowering the borders - sooner or later. And that possibility of bursting of dam obviously scares people on either side. Uncertain times, Uncertain times. In times of uncertainty, people obviously seek certainty - Certainty of 'walls ' to save their way of life. These hate filled winds have given wings to proponents of wall builders everywher...

This is a Charles Bukowski poem called "All the way". Essentially, his thesis is that you must go 'all the way' whatever the cost may be. And I felt, what a fucking loser is this wierdo. I mean, I have read his 'Post office' and it is a kickass piece of literature. But what I realise now is that an incomplete and naive philosophy of self-absorbed nihilism possibly informed his work. Problem 1: All the way with what? We see a lot of this kind of inspirational bullshit being shared by people these days - exhorting people to do what they want to do. But the problem is no one these days knows what he/she wants to do. These videos and poems only add to consumerist angst whose only beneficiary is the capitalist power centers and not the social organism called human.(" Must do something, don't know what.. running with expensive shoes seems to be working for some as per commercials, let me try that." ) Purposeless souls are angstily drifting from...

The vent So.. I watched the new 'Independence Day' movie. First off - what an amazing combo of  terrible film making and thrilling sfx. I can't believe someone gets paid gazillions to write such shitty scripts. The disaster is really not in the movie but in the making of the movie - the end of intellect and start of idiotopia. I think they should have edited out all the dialogs. It would then have been a better movie. A 'disaster movie' porn of sorts. With just the sfx to get thrilled with and no jarring and stupid dialogs and no non-sense attempts at building emotional arcs and no lame character building. Anyways, here's some more venting about current lack of imagination -  Tired trope 1: The kill switch - Aliens with a death wish Independence day, Star wars, 10 Cloverfield Lane... So to defeat a highly advanced aggressor civilisation that has apparently destroyed many civilisations before us, all you need to do is find and kill 'ONE...

How many among us are sure about our 'careers'? Doesn't it seem odd that in modern times, where we think we have answers to most problems, we are most clueless about our selves? Never in the history of human civilisation have we been so privileged to be confused about our 'purpose'. If you look at it from a certain high enough vantage, humanity looks like a drunk colony of ants. tittering around in uncertain directions - bumping into each other, getting lost even when around other people. 20th century would be seen as the time when these infant species won a lottery of hydrocarbons with which it fueled mindless orgy of consumption. 21st century would be the time when the species would be forced to 'grow up': To wake up with a hangover.   In that sense, 21st century humanity is really an 'early growth stage' civilisation. (borrowing from marketing jargon). We are far from maturity as a civilisation. We have no clue what humanity want...

Today, UK decided to leave EU. EU itself has now far more ‘far right’ xenophobic  parties in the European parliament than ever before in its history. On the back of very virulent xenophobia, Trump, otherwise a sideshow freak in the branding/entertainment industry, is now a presidential contender in USA – His promise of the ‘wall’ between mexico and USA garnering him followers among republican US citizens. India recently elected a right wing government with an unprecedented majority – putting majoritarian fictions in the central consciousness of the nation, instead of actual issues that need public debate. From Netherlands to Australia to Nigeria to Philippines… people everywhere are electing xenophobic parties and leaders. Are we collectively getting dumber? Or is their something beneath our collective psyches that needs recognition? The fear of loss of control If the last century was about opening the world with fast rails, conco...