Artsy Fartsy

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
                                                  -Alexander Pope

“So you’re scared of the masters?” Sir J. looked at me with calculating eyes like he had known me for a long time, while in fact we just had the conversation for ten minutes. “I am 58, and believe me when I say that I was only enlightened about art two years ago”, he made sure that I am looking at him and continued, “I dreamed of them, you know, Michelangelo, Da Vinci..Rembrandt, and in my dream, although I am quite old I saw myself as a baby.” I just nodded. I have heard of those stories before even in music, most successful musicians claim to have had dreams of meeting their own masters; Dylan, Elvis, Marley…you name it. Sir J. really looked sincere with his story so I didn’t have a choice but to listen. “Our realm of relativity – the idea that beauty, which is the purpose of art, is weighed by subjectivity, is the binding chains of most artists.”

“So without individual judgments, the preferences, the criteria, how do we define what is art and what is not? Is the person who takes mud and smear it on a canvas an artist already? A rich-boy with the most expensive camera can just take a picture of poop and claim that it is his artistic creation? A writer can just write random scribbles and sell it as a literary craft? Art, although a tool of expression, must also require skill and aesthetics to communicate excellently to an audience, right?” I asked.

“Well its not just expression, art is also an escape, an alternative…it is a way of life…no it is life itself. So, yes, everyone is an artist, regardless of how people perceive their work.” He quickly reminded me.

Paraphrasing Tolstoy, I mumbled; “Saying that an art is good, but cannot be understood by a majority people is the same as saying that a kind of food is delicious but cannot be eaten by a majority of people.”

“What?” he’d hardly heard it, but I decided not to push it further. Artists, as they call themselves, are complicated people – sensitive and free, structured but liberated, exclusive and universal at the same time. Some say that everyone is an artist, yet an artist guild may not include those who do not share their eyes…or their skills, or their eccentric personalities and maybe, weirdness – that sort of kindred, they say. Universal…but exclusive, depending on who you ask anyway.

“But, you cannot become an artist by just owning an expensive camera…”

“I know that.” I quickly retorted. “Its not even the subjects, one must have the eyes you know, the skills to utilize light and time.” I suddenly realized that he is bringing out his cellphone, perhaps to show the things he took”

“See this?’ he swiped his middle finger on the screen to show a nude woman. I grinned at the joke, men will always be men, regardless if you are an artist or not. But hey, Sir J. here said that we are all artist, even that random guy you meet on the sidewalk.

“Which do you prefer, a letter written by hand or an encoded one using the MSword?” I realized that this guy may not know about the MS softwares so I quickly explained the metaphor. “What I mean is that the heavy reliance of technology in art, will kill art. Musicians use autotune a lot and it will not sound sincere anymore. Photography using too much editing will not appear artistic anymore. Instead of using the machine…” “The machine uses…us”, we finished the quote together as we smiled at the duet.

“Did you take up philosophy?” He asked. I decided to give him his own poison: “Everyone is a philosopher…everyone asks why…everyone gives his own take on everything; the existence of a god, aliens, angels and demons; the inquiry of life and death, and what happens when you trip over to a shithole. Just like everyone is an artist, everyone is also a philosopher.” Again, depending on who you ask though.

“Interesting. I  like you.” He flipped his sketchbook to explain the concepts of art which he thought I must absorb as a pre-requisite to his art therapy. The basics of lines, shapes, contrasts and perspectives, and what have you. The Irony. Discussing the “musts” of art, the requirements of beauty, the standards…and also preaching that art has no standards at all.

“ What I mean is…” Feeling that I have not explained my point, I raised my voice so he would understand that I wanted to talk. “What I mean is, I can draw a perfect dog, all the tiny strands of its fur and the complicated brush strokes on its face…and so what?” I was reminded by a craftsman who explained that not all skilled people are artists and not all artists are skilled.

“I agree, that is why I pointed out that the art’s beauty is found on the effect of it to the audience. Example, your art work was bought meaning the buyer felt a certain connection to the artwork.”

“How?”

“Life imitates art, art imitates life…if he can relate to the art, maybe he finds something in his life in that art…a sort of relationship…then he would definitely take it home, put it in a frame, and hang it in a sacred space…its like adopting a child, you know…” I nodded in understanding. Its hard to let go of an artistic creation because there are memories in every strokes, time in every execution of techniques, a sort of attachment will definitely be there.

“I remember a doctor whom I talked to who visited the art village. After admiring the art works in the gardens, he turned to me to declare that if he will have a second life, he would want to become an artist." Then he searched my eyes before he continued; then the doctor asked me, ‘how about you sir, if you have a second life, what do you want to be?'"Sir J. waited for my reaction before his revelation.

“What was your answer?” I asked.

“Still an artist.” He smiled.

On Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica: 'God'

(I wrote this for my Educ1b subject when I was in college - hence, the poor organization of ideas. It may not reflect my present views of the metaphysical, but it does comfort me to know that I have thought of these before. :)

One of the greatest discussions and debates on the early cold centuries of humanity is the the existence of a god, or a transcendent being – the ultimate reality that rises above all other existences. Throughout civilization, loads of theologians and philosophers have come up with various propositions and philosophical ideas to disprove or approve the existence of a higher being. The debates never really ended as it was, at a point, not really understood – many modern thinkers have regarded it as if it was without a purpose, nor a meaning.

It was on the 11^th up to the 15^th century when much of the theologians used rationalization and reason to justify a higher being’s existence. It was called scholasticism, which was primarily employed by Thomas Aquinas – one of the great Christian theologians who used this mode of thinking at that time. He published the Summa Theologica in hopes to enlighten the world, and resolve the existential debates, but just like most discoveries and works of man, it faded – buried by tons of counter-prepositions and principles.

One primary flaw of Thomas’ Scholasticism is its very own design. Faith, in which the movement should protect, had been ironically made an option -- scholasticism created a world where reason and faith co-existed (perhaps a perfect excuse to cure its imperfections). However, faith can never be one with reason. The Judeao-Christian concept of faith is to believe without question, that is faith. It will be a great contradiction for Christianity to betray its own foundation by engaging itself to the same weapon which was mainly used by its enemies and critics – logic and reason. It is also very interesting to note that Aquinas used limited objectives on the complicated question of whether a god exists or not. He did not consider any  ‘other’ objectives that ‘may be’ present outside his own mind. Many philosophers, especially existentialists and atheists had come up with hundreds of objectives and questions which were challenging even for Aquinas to answer using his few objectives and propositions (the biggest is Science). In the later years after he died, numerous critique by modern day philosophers dug a pit for his work by citing a comical  cherry-picking on the application of faith and reason in interpreting the bible. From Noah's ark to Yahweh's 'favoritism'.

Thomas Aquinas’ main idea of a 'main mover' in his ‘God’ chapter actually encompasses his sum of five ways. Considering that he used the realm of logic to explain an illogical phenomenon is not just ironic but irresponsible on his part ("since everything that is moved has a mover" logic). The bible cannot explain the universe, at least logically; it cannot explain the event when a woman sprouted from a man’s rib, the  friendly co-existing animals in the garden of Eden, among others. In the realm of reason, the bible stories play like myths and fairy tales. It is also inconsistent to select which part of the bible uses logic, and which part uses faith. If we think that, say, an eternally burning bush is logical, then we are betraying our faith; if we use faith to validate such unusual experience, then we cannot be logical in its sense. See, no matter how impossible and illogical an existence can be, if a person has faith, then he or she must not need any explanation. That is faith, far from the logic used by Scholasticism. To use the Scripture to explain a universal existence damages the fact that other civilizations believe in their own god, outside the Jewish and Christian belief of ‘God’. Would it not constitute prejudice to the different civilizations on the corners of the world to assert a predisposition which intends to serve a selfish desire of personal salvation? Or the; “if you don’t join us, then burn in hell” mentality? Perhaps faith, is simply a belief taught by a society which one, in the sheer accident, belongs to - I, for instance, would've been a muslim if I was born in an Arab country.

Another of Thomas Aquinas’ greater flaw is to 'assume'. How could he be sure that all his reasons exist in such a very enlightened mind (such like his)? How could he assume that there should be an order and a mover? How could he use the system governing the inexplicable universe  in explaining the system that could explain a god’s existence? What made him rank his ways into a more obvious or not? If there is really a prime mover, how could he be sure that the prime mover was the Christian God? How could he say that ‘all man’ recognized the Christian God as their own god? What made him think that he can lay and post his own premise and answer it in his own theories alone?

Questions.

See, ‘truth can only be achieved when it survives numerous questions’. Throughout centuries, the existence of a god was mostly reduced from a debate to a choice – only the person can choose and decide what to believe in. In the 16^th century, Agnosticism was developed for people who choose the middle ground. It proposes that we cannot talk of something that is beyond the facts that we know. That, our minds, which is capsuled in a mere piece of flesh, cannot grasp something that is really vast and transcendent. In the words of a philosopher; ‘how can a god, who has thoughts higher than us, expect us to think like him and know what is to be expected from us?’ Can we really prove or disprove the existence of a god? Whether it is just a concept created by mankind to justify their own existence, whether we created god, or God created us, may not be as important as it was before. A certain joke proposes that ‘debating whether a god exists or not is like lice or flea debating if there is a dog; debating who the real god is like those lice debating the name of the dog’. A drunk I overheard at a bar even shouted, ‘Yes, God can do everything except for one thing…to show himself to us!’. We have to wonder why, just like that drunk; why not show himself and command us lower beings? Why not show him once and for all to settle the minds of the skeptics?…but then, when all questions have been raised, all the faithful will comfort us with the same idea(excuse) that the god/s who can’t show himself/themselves only wanted us to have faith in him/them, even without seeing anything. Faith and reason may never blend.

Just like the tiny ant who will never know the name of the American president, or the dog who will never know the Diplomat of Iraq, our limited consciousness is only restricted by what we experience – far from the knowledge of the gods we want to covet to understand the world, and our existence. We are mere dust and this vast and limitless universe that we know or we wont ever know, and we are only sure of one thing – life. And, if there is that one good thing which can come up from these debates, it is humility and humanity. That, our short lives may be spent for the purpose of living and co-existing with other lives in this world of nations and institutions which pale in comparison with the size of the universe and vast ideas that we will never know. Perhaps, that is what matters most.

(Read Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica here http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/aquinas/summa/index.htm)

The rock and roll life

(I wrote this when I was 20 years old. I was too idealist back then; I don't know if I can live up to the message now. haha)

The sin of the youth today is their delusion that they are living the rock and roll life. The laid-back culture, borne from television shows and yes, MTV, had taught our credulous young generation to experience, “sex, drugs and rock and roll” – although this time, getting high with drugs was substituted with getting drunk – a more acceptable yet an equally deviant practice.

I was just 16 years old when I first tasted the bitter liquid they called “gin”. I did it to impress some friends; I took a shot and even with a sour face, I ended up liking it. There’s something about the feeling of getting tipsy that makes me long for it every time. With every sip, inhibitions fade; people become the closest of friends or an enemy for a night, strangers become lovers and can go all the way to having sex, people can laugh really hard or can cry oceans, you can sing really loud or dance stupidly and it will not matter because you’re drunk – drinking is, after all, an outlet to divert the antisocial violent and sexual human nature into a more acceptable domain.

The mass media can be traced as one of the major culprits on introducing these rotten tendencies. Rock music, which evidently appeals to the youth, has presented itself with intoxicating drinks and, of course, myriads of sex symbols such as sexy women – a suggestive message to resurrect the rock and roll life. With this hypnotic appeal, college life and even high school life were mostly about late nights at bars, drinking with friends, and hangovers at school.

Wine, gin, vodka, beer or brandy – what ever form it may take, remains to be, simply, an intoxicating and depressing liquid. But, it is not surprising at all that most of us would rather be intoxicated than to face the realities of life; the corrupted world, the angry parents, the strict teachers, the broken love life, or even the irritating classmate. Drinking has become an escape to another world – free from the agony of life’s pains, frustrations and disappointments. It became an outlet to the tiring norm of life and the stress of everyday hassles.

Today, I’m 20 years old in a world that is starting to make sense to me. I’ve finished a degree and started working for a future that is getting clear. I have finally realized the value of every sober moment that I have. Although I drink occasionally, I have come to point where getting drunk is boring. When I look back at those four years of having fun; of waking up with women, of being drunk for weeks even with the strongest hangovers, and of regularly absenting from my class , I don’t regret that - although, I can’t see that person in me now. I’ve grown (maybe); the rock and roll life is not really for everyone but only for rock stars who can afford it.

Death: Life's Final Page

by: Valred Olsim

They say life is a mystery to be solved, a riddle, the ultimate puzzle that can only be deciphered through living it. For centuries, writers and poets have written loads of literary pieces, not just to celebrate life, but to mystify the human experience called, “existence”. It struck me, however, as a cynic, that this proposition is trying to disguise the most important part of life: Death.

Sometimes, life is really simple; you‘re born, you live, and then ultimately, you die. Death, as a subject, has been always avoided, not just by conformist writers (which I’m already sick of), but nearly every soul you want to talk it with. None of us seems psychologically ready to the idea of permanent unconsciousness, whether to others or to ourselves. We always seem to deny the condition of being lost to nothingness and its cold grip that haunts our human thought. The idea is simply, terrifying and different from the day to day events that we are used to face. Death’s reality and its closeness have always inspired methods that would help us cope with the anxiety and fear that we repress. We disguise its power through mystification, religion, jokes and euphemisms such that we forget about its terror; much like hiding from the glares of a monster. We hide our eyes from its face, but still we spread our fingers just a bit, because there’s something in us that just can’t resist a peek.

Death is never the other side of life as others claim; it is just part of a vicious cycle that everyone will go through. The truth is, nobody knows what lies there; whether there is an after-life as they call it, or maybe nothing, but an empty vacuum. See, what scares us is our weakness and inability to know – our “innate fear of the unknown”. Still, we try to conceal its presence and live our life as though we can live forever.

I have nothing against the conformist and optimistic view of life and death. Certainly, it is not a crime to hide the dark and absurd reality of life by covering it up with flowers and rainbows. It’s just that I am bothered by how humans have become conceited even with its mortality; we have successfully reached the moon but have never visited our closest neighbor, we have made a lot of discoveries but have not discovered the secret to happiness, we have advanced technologically but have moved backward with out our ideals and values, indeed, we have forgotten the only thing that can humble us.

I have my own experience of watching a person you know or even you’re close with disappear from the face of the earth. It is painful; it takes a long time to realize that it is the nature of life that you must accept. I wrote about death not to scare anyone, but to remind us once more of studying how we have been living this temporary state. It is very evident that we have all been caught with the false and tempting promise of this material world; that, we are obsessed with the latest gadgets, money and property as if these are the only things in life. We have become soaked with vanity and triviality as if death is not looming in the corners. I wrote this for us to perhaps, stop for awhile and think about our lives and how we make every second valuable; after all, life is so short. 

Happiness, Slavery, and Call Centers (2007)

by: Valred Olsim

“What’s the point if you’re not happy?” I announced when a friend asked me why I quit my call center job. I wonder why I have to work on a stressful environment and pretend to like what I do when, in fact, I don’t want to do anymore of it. Most of my friends are working as call center agents and I could tell from the look of their eyes that they are not happy – they go home tired, weary, stressed and depressed. They wake up and do the same routine; wake up, go to work, make a call or receive a call, endure the rude deafening comments of customers and even the cold sarcasm of their supervisors, log out, go home – broken, unhappy and wondering; how the hell could they face the next day.

The rise of the call center industry has given a social status to call center agents – they are seen as sophisticated, articulate, professional and highly paid working class. Maybe it is really true; maybe it is an avocation of a remunerative description - a high paying job, but, maybe…it is not; you lose time trying to earn money and lose money trying to enjoy the little time that remained. After they get their salary, they go drinking at bars, enjoy expensive food, shop for new clothes, or buy new gadgets not just to relieve themselves of the pressure and depression that they get in the work place, but, to make them forget that they are exploited people – slaves of a bigger and more powerful structure of capitalism, industrialization and globalization.


Everyone wishes for a job that they would enjoy, at the same time, get paid for it; earning millions while just shooting the ball, or getting checks by just smiling or dancing. We fantasize about it in our secret dreams, so pleasurable but yet, so foolish. Most of us wanted a luxurious life, but behind every luxury, are exploited people who don’t have a choice but to do things they don’t want to do in order to live. Behind the lights of malls are security guards, sales ladies and underpaid employees working overtime to make ends meet. Behind the glamorous parties that are thrown are cooks, abused waiters and harassed staffs that only wanted to have food on their plate. Behind the things that we use are mistreated workers, tolerating the harsh working conditions that the industries impose just so that their families could live more comfortably. And, behind all of these abused and exploited people is an ancient powerful social order of masters and slaves - of people who live like gods in mount Olympus and of mortals who only wants a piece of that paradise -- an order that has been maintained by the powerful few by instilling us a culture of consumerism and apathy; “When you want to be happy eat chocolates”, “ When you want to relax, go to this place”, “If you are stressed, drink this”, “ To be in, buy this”. They utilize art, technology and the media to create a chaotic environment of entertainment and fear, such that we will be preoccupied with things that may wake us up with the truth that we are, in fact, slaves.

Maybe, I have thought of it too much. Maybe a certain kind of paranoia from watching a lot of socio – political documentaries and from submerging myself with history books has confused me about it. But, maybe it is true; maybe humans have created a corrupt order that will always define the destiny of history. That, behind us is a great system capable of manipulating our tendencies and us, especially those who don’t have much choice. Or maybe, I wrote this because I cannot find happiness or contentment in what I do, that maybe there is more to life than just making a call. Or maybe, I have yet to learn how to enjoy what I do rather than waste so much time being unhappy about it. But then, maybe if there are other options, why not choose? Like what they always say: “What’s the point when you’re not happy?”

Bluejeans: Hope

I’ve just seen the numbers. This month, another set of hopefuls who have passed their professional licensure exams must have gained a gleam in their eyes, probably still celebrating what they have thought of as a great victory. Towards the end of this year, hundreds of thousands or even millions of new nurses, teachers, engineers, criminologists and all other professionals will find themselves in the first steps of their career – confident, believing, imagining.

Ironically, national news reports had been confirming the growth of our unemployment and underemployment rates, (as if we have never known of it); the oversupply of nurses and teachers and other graduates who have resorted to taking call center jobs or even jobs in retail stores, or the unlucky professionals who have spent most of their lives seeking for a permanent job. The truth, however, of the hideous link between population, oversupply of professionals, unemployment, and poverty is kept behind a curtain of cheap optimism. Unable to find a proper solution to these economic problems, our government has been promoting overseas work as a noble alternative to earn a living. For the hopeless professional, it is not just a noble alternative, it is the ONLY alternative – to work and earn a decent wage, not minding the pain and homesickness of being away from home and family.

In this society devoid of humanistic goals, in this society built on enterprise and money - making, and which the new professionals find themselves a commodity, rather than a human being, what is then there left to do?  For some who still hope, they pursue higher studies; they take up graduate school, not on the assurance that they will be employed after, but in hopes that they may be someday, some take up Medicine or even Law, but even Lawyers would chuckle on the fact that there are a lot of them in the country, “throw a stone in session road and you are sure to hit one”.

The dilemma that our generation of today has to face is numbers - more people, more schools, and more competition. New professionals find themselves competing with last year’s new professionals, or even the other professionals from years ago who haven’t been employed until now, or even among themselves. In the process, they are reduced to their innate tendency to self – preservation, call it acts of realism, or maybe, just simply being practical. They are trapped in a suffocating chaos, competing for vacancies of jobs and even of positions; there is not much hope in this “dog eat dog” world, this neurotic society, this jungle that is ruled with only one law: “survival of the fittest”. Whether we like it or not, we will be submerged to the absurdity of life and of living. 

The irony is; we cannot afford to give up even if our ideologies can’t cope up with reality, in the end, we must accept that we can never defeat the system, that we cannot blame the government or the school, our parents, or the “flying cockroach”. We can never make the world revolve around what we want, or what we have exactly dreamed of; nevertheless, even if we have grown cynical with just about everything, perhaps, the best thing is to keep even the tiniest amount of “hope”, that tiny thing left in Pandora’s Box even with all the evils released. Hope that someday, and maybe someday…”things will get BETTER”.

The Existentialist

The Existentialist

By: Valred Olsim

There is a self in us that that longs to make sense of day and night; that self which pulls itself into a distant, strange, yet, familiar encounter with the absurdity of our existence – of being born, of eating,  aging, working and ultimately, dying. There is this stranger in us that feels this boredom of human routine, the one that seeks meaning and asks why? And what? And who? And back to “why?” again. “Why do I exist? Who have put me in this world? Why was I not consulted? If I have something to say, To whom shall I take my complaint?”

Most people regard Existentialism as a very high thought. This philosophical thought which contemplates on our existence and our struggle to find “meaning” in this, suppose to be, meaningless existence. During the past fifty years, it has influenced mainstream culture, revealed itself through arts, the media and even through music – from Pollock’s paintings to the Matrix movie, from Goth music to Sponge Bob square pants. It has become a house hold term, however, portrayed as an evil thought, associated with cynicism and atheism. It has been misunderstood, not by wrong reasoning but of ignorance – only a few people seem to care about philosophy and metaphysics anymore, most will choose to play video games than to get a book to read, we refuse to neither ponder nor even care to know about Nietzsche, or Sartre, or Camus. We are in this industrial world after all, a profit-centered society, of practicality – a culture that forces us to escape philosophizing and choose to be oblivious to these ideas and thoughts.

Existentialism is not actually those “never-ending questions” or those lots of whys’. It is only the gate to a deeper understanding of life before we live it. It is a consciousness or awareness of facing the emptiness or void of our existence and struggling to find “purpose” to fill that void. There is this myth of Sisyphus, who was punished to roll a stone forever in never ending drudgery of pain and boredom. “What then is there left to do?” Revolt. Find meaning behind that senseless rolling of stone, make a purpose out of it; That, is existentialism.

Humanism is existentialism; it is a revolution to confront the absurdity of human existence. Unlike Sisyphus who is pointlessly chained to roll a huge stone FOREVER, humans only live TEMPORARILY, we only live once. We are only a shooting star who will be brilliantly luminous and beautiful for a short moment of time. We are born, we grow up, meet people, will work, experience things and will, ultimately die. That is human. Humans will struggle and live behind the emptiness of it - they will find meaning to what they are doing; Find meaning in human activities, find meaning in work, in school, find meaning in their dreams and goals and everything that humans have come up with so that they will be happy or at least to enjoy this short and temporary thing called life.

Humans will revolt and will struggle to find meaning even in the smallest and most insignificant things; behind the repetitive cycle, behind the boredom, behind the angst, behind the drudgery, behind the absurdity...they will. That is Existentialism - Humans will struggle to put meaning and purpose on this short and absurd life, they put colors in it. They struggle to be happy and search for happiness behind life's gloom and bleakness. They will Revolt, and they will Struggle...That is existentialism.


                        

Wasted World

WASTED WORLD (by: Valred Olsim, 2009)

So much has changed since the 18th century industrial revolution; at the beginning of it, few could imagine humans flying, communicating with people on the other side of the globe instantaneously, the explosion of modern inventions, and the evolution of information technology – indeed, we have moved into a faster era, a faster world: The world of the instant. Yet, despite this increase of available information, there were remarkably few insights – we are constantly faced with the inquiry of “what now?”

Each second, a portion of our world is carved away from the little space where we can freely roam. The philosophy of private property which has enabled us to own and keep owning parts of this earth sprouted from a culture that we invented to secure an important necessity: Shelter. Yet, this culture, together with the idea that our existence is far greater than the lives of any other living organisms on the face of the earth, created a system of enterprise that compromises the subsistence of our natural resources; we burn forests for a space to construct our houses, we cut trees for it, we mine minerals, and we reconstruct our very own natural habitat such that, we become more like gods with the power to build and destroy.

As if we had never done enough damage to our mother earth, we have fashioned a false illusion of “wants” that would keep us working from the little time that we have in our lives. We dream of bigger houses, finer clothes, more shiny stones, just to live the arrogant and luxurious lives of those who we call 'the rich and the famous'. We attempt to fill up an insatiable urge, and we remain empty-- no contentment, no happiness. Consequently, we have reached the point of squeezing our resources to satisfy the needs and "wants" of our population, we have reached a turning point of rapid consumption and exploitation of these gifts – we continue to expand our numbers; more buildings, more cars, more factories, more products to consume, more profit to the global economy and, more wastes. The issue is not just about overpopulation, capitalization, industrialization and global-warming, it has something to do more of the responsibility that we have forgotten as caretakers of the world. That even in these modern times, we are no different from our hunter – gatherer ancestors; we will always depend on the fruits of the earth and the gifts of our environment.

With all these readily available facts, we blind ourselves to the vanity and pleasures of modern day life, unnoticing the reality that the world has evidently grown older, showing signs of illness every time; the year-to-year fall of the water level, climate change, natural disasters like floods and mudslides, food shortages and waste problems. We refuse to listen to these voices, our earth’s sobs, perhaps of being tormented…we never gave these problems a single thought. That, unless we take action to redesign our ways to manage our economic system and stop the pressure to our environment; unless we sacrifice the comforts of using plastic bags, unless we stop dreaming of having many cars, unless we do the simplest things to reverse our culture of vanity and consumerism, we will ultimately destroy the natural fabric that underpins life itself – our planet.

It has been centuries since literature had discussed about a Utopia – a perfect and ideal society of the future. Surprisingly, today’s art, literature, and futuristic movies depict a future of global destruction, chaos and anarchy – the end of the world? Is it possible that the civilization of humans had also mapped its destruction? Maybe. There will be no plane crash without the invention of airplanes, no complicated diseases had we not poisoned our air with chemicals and smoke, no wastes without the system of production which we had created.

Nature always finds ways to reckon with human’s arrogance. There is an end to everything whether it is great or small; like the birth and death of a star, or the life cycle of a butterfly. There is such a thing called doom’s day; when our planet will fail us like how we fail it - when we eventually deplete its resources and die. We may not live long enough to witness it, but maybe our sons and daughters would. It does not take a complicated deduction to measure its reality; there is an impending doom and we cannot stop it…we can only postpone it.

(Although I wrote this about 7 or 8 years ago, it is surprisingly still right on spot for the environmental issues that we have today. What  changed anyway? Still, I hope to make this an entry to PIA-CAR's social media campaign on environment..and yes, hope..:)

The Idiot Box

“Do you know what the greatest and worst invention that humans ever made was? Television. It pollutes the mind of those who watch, those who lose themselves in a dream world, afraid of reality.”

I don’t quite remember where I got these lines, whether it is from an animated film or from a book that I’ve read a year ago, is now completely beyond the memory that I trust. There is something on these words that always hit me every time I touch the remote control. Whatever it was, I came to contemplate on it every time, such that I became accustomed to the very idea that it suggests.

Indeed, television is one of the greatest inventions that men ever created. It is the favorite son of technology, making its space on millions of household all-around the world. It doesn’t only seek to entertain, but it also seeks to inform. Through it, the world became a global village – much like viewing the world through a window, watching it as it moves. People in this modern world regard it as an indispensable object that makes life easier and more convenient. Yes, it has become a necessity – People can’t really imagine themselves living the same life without television. It did not occur to them, however, that the invention of it, is maybe, as worse as its greatness.

Television, in a way, has become an escape from reality. Humans will always seek to escape reality – this gloomy, dark and corrupted world. So, they immerse themselves in a great, big image formed by little dots of insignificant light. In its own self, television has become a new religion. People watch it to be happy, to get through by the day, to relieve them from things that they don’t want to see. It bombards us with numerous information, such that we lose ourselves. Commercials and Ads have turned us into willing consumers, controlled by the psychology that reality exists on that box-like frame. It controls as and forces us to oblige on a standard; that being beautiful is to look like models, and to try their product to become one, that we have to eat “this” or to do “that” in order to be “in” – it fed us with a rotten culture of vanity. We become too anxious and confused on what we should do that we become depressed – and the only antidote is the one which caused it: Television.

Sometimes, I wonder who is crazier. The only intention of that dirty homeless man on the streets we call insane is to satisfy his stomach. We, on the other hand, are preoccupied with a lot of things such that we don’t know what we need and what we want. Is it possible that we have truly lost ourselves? Is it true that the television maybe the culprit of it? Are we consumed by its effects that we can’t decide on our own?  These questions have dwelled in my in my mind since I started my contemplation about it. The only answer that I have is not to answer anything at all, for it leads me into a wider web of unending questions. The only sensible thing that I realized is to turn off the “idiot box” for once and think about how I am living this life. So that, whenever I touch the remote control, I ask myself; am I controlled? Am I in an escape? Am I…lost?