To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."
ARUNDHATI ROYI once wrote an essay on peer pressure in high school that equated succumbing to the whims of others as being dead while one is alive, and vice versa. That's how I interpreted it as at the time, anyway.
is it also death to be dependent on the validation of others to feel worth something? we're scared of having opinions that other people don't share, i.e. validate, we're scared of being alone, we act according to peer pressures all the time in the music we listen to, caring out what others will think when we share our opinions in conversation etc. Then there are more abstract societal pressures like following rules even if we don't see any meaning in them.
ReplyDeletehow free are we?
is there a way to follow you guys? where's the button? I really like this blog btw!
ReplyDeleteI just read this article by her tonight (it was bookmarked on Amira's browser...thanks Amira!)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ratical.org/ratville/nukes/endOfImagine.html
PS Reza, do you want email updates for posts/comments?
"Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains."
ReplyDeleteNot exactly what Rousseau meant, I suppose, but still. . .
I think that's why being completely free is a "dream," -- true freedom (or at least some semblance of it) is a struggle to achieve. Malcolm X spent his whole life chasing after it. . . but I do think that he did, in the end, die a "free" man.
http://www.nmazca.com/verba/roy.htm <-- This changed my life. =D
yes i would, absolutely!
ReplyDelete"There could be a freeman with the spirit of the slave, and there could be a slave with a spirit full of freedom; whoever is faithful to his self – he is a freeman, and whoever fills his life only with what is good and beautiful in the eyes of others – he is a slave." --Abraham Isaac Kook
ReplyDelete