Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Perspective

The actual reason why people are happy about WikiLeaks is not the secrets. People are not voyeurs, at least not most of them. The real reason is that the politicians have lost their credibility and people trust leaks more. People no more believe it when the leaders tell them that the information is to be kept secret in the national interests. Credibility is the key to the cloak of secrecy. But the leaders have enjoyed this secrecy thingy for their own interests, as evident from the scams galore. If they had some credibility left, there would be little to worry about the leaks because honest leaders would have peoples' support in any adverse situation. In such a case, people would have said - we do not want the secrets, we fully trust in our leaders when they say that these documents are to be kept confidential.

Same goes about the Arundhati Roy drama. As a democratic society, we must respect her right to speak. We should answer argument only by the means of argument. But is there a single trustworthy person left in the political arena whose arguments people will believe in? This the real reason government worries about Arundhati Roy. Its not only popularity, its about credibility and these two things aren't the same. Perhaps the only person who enjoyed such trust from people was Dr. Kalam. If only there were leaders of such stature who could stand up and tell Ms Roy that she was wrong - then citizens would pay no attention to whatever she says. Sedition charges against her is certainly not the way to go about it.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Real

Neo: "This --- This isn't real?"

Morpheus: "What is real? How do you define real? If you are talking about what you feel, taste, smell or see then real is simply the electrical signals interpreted by your brain."

(Morpheus shows a picture of John Lennon's world in Imagine)
Morpheus: "This is the world that you know. The world which never was there. It exists only in your mind, a projection on your mind created by media."

Morpheus: "This is the world as it exists today."
(Morpheus shows slides of war, oil field politics, financial scams, nuclear arsenal smuggling, biological weapons, mafias of religion)

Morpheus: "As you watch the pics of fashion shows in Paris, the nations are fighting for every single drop of the oil. As you see the hero kissing the heroin, most frightening bio-weapons have already been created. While you are kept busy reading about sex, the land is being given to worthless kith and kin at throwaway prices. They give you Pamela Anderson on Big Boss and keep mum about the most gigantic 2G scam in the history."

Morpheus: "Control of the thoughts, Neo, thats the ultimate power. Orwell saw it. Now you in India believe that Arunachal Pradesh has always been yours. Chinese children from their childhood are taught that it is theirs. Once you infiltrate the thoughts in childhood, not even God can change them. You see, they groom you since your childhood, in the most intangible way. Neo, there is an obvious way to hide the truth - to teach lies as truth.... And Neo, this is the world as it exists today. The desert of the real. For a long time, I did not believe it. Then I saw the telegrams, listened to the tapes and came to realize the obviousness of the truth. The media is the matrix."

Morpheus: "What is matrix Neo? Control. The matrix of media is a digitally generated dreamworld built to keep us in control in order to change a human being into this -"
(Morpheus shows a puppet controlled by strings)

Neo: "No!!! I don't believe it. It's not possible."

Morpheus: "I didn't say that it would be easy, Neo. I just said that it would be the truth."

Neo: "Stop! Let me out! I want out!"
(Falls on the floor and wakes up in front of TV. TV is showing the latest wardrobe malfunction of Yana Gupta. Sometimes it is so difficult to differentiate between the dream and the real, he says to himself. The show goes on.)
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Note: I did not plan it at all, just wrote it. So, technically
it might be as unsound as it gets.
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