Showing posts with label dialectics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dialectics. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

1984

It was at night that they came for you, always at night. The proper thing was to kill yourself before they got you. Undoubtedly some people did so. But it needed desperate courage to kill yourself in a world where firearms, or any quick and certain poison, were completely unprocurable. He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed. It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one's own body.

Suggested Read : George Orwell, 1984

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

the face of God

JENSEN suddenly wheels to his audience of one and roars
out:


JENSEN :
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale,
and I won't have it, is that clear?!

You think you have merely stopped a
business deal—that is not the case!
The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and
now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is
ecological balance!

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations
and peoples. There are no nations!There are no peoples!
There are no Russians. There are no Arabs!
There are no third worlds! There is no West!
There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and
immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national
dominion of dollars! petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars!,
Reichmarks, rubles, rin, pounds and shekels!

It is the international system of currency that determines
the totality of life on this planet!
That is the natural order of things today! That is the atomic,
subatomic and galactic structure of things today!
And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature,
and you will atone!
Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?
(pause)
You get up on your little twenty-
one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy.
There is no America. There is no democracy.
There is only IBM and ITT and A T and T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide
and Exxon.
Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think
the Russians talk about in their councils of state—Karl Marx?
They pull out their linear programming charts, statistical
decision theories and minimax solutions and compute the price-cost
probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. We
no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale.
The world is a college of corporations, inexorably deter- mined by the
immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It
has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children, Mr.
Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and
famine, oppression and brutality—
one vast and ecumenical holding
company, for whom all men will work
to serve a common profit, in which
all men will hold a share of stock,
all necessities provided, all
anxieties tranquilized, all boredom
amused. And I have chosen you to
preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.


HOWARD :
(humble whisper)
Why me?


JENSEN :
Because you're on television, dummy.
Sixty million people watch you
every night of the week, Monday
through Friday.


HOWARD slowly rises from the blackness of his seat so
that he is lit only by the ethereal diffusion of light
shooting out from the rear of the room. He stares at
JENSEN spotted on the podium, transfixed.


HOWARD :
I have seen the face of God!

Suggested DVD : NETWORK

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Fleas interest me so much

Fleas interest me so much
that I let them bite me for hours.

They are perfect, ancient, Sanskrit,
machines that admit of no appeal.

They do not bite to eat,
they bite only to jump;

they are the dancers of the celestial sphere,
delicate acrobats

in the softest and most profound circus;
let them gallop on my skin,

divulge their emotions,
amuse themselves with my blood,

but someone should introduce them to me.
I want to know them closely,
I want to know what to rely on.

Suggested read : Pablo Neruda

Suggested rythm : tAi tOmAr Ananda AmAr par - Pankaj Mallik - Rabeendra Sangeeth

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

the loveless tale of karma

... Long before the lizards, before the dinosaurs, two spores set out on
an incredible journey. They came to a valley bathed in the placid glow
of sunset.

My elder sister, said the little spore to the bigger spore, let us see
what lies beyond. This valley is green, replied the bigger spore,
I shall journey no farther.

I want to journey, said the little spore, I want to discover. She
gazed in wonder at the path before her.
Will you forget your sister ? asked the bigger spore.
Never, said the little spore.
You will little one, for this is the loveless tale of karma; in it
there is only parting and sorrow.

The little spore journeyed on. The bigger spore stayed back in the
valley. Her root pierced the damp earth and sought the nutrients of death
and memory. She sprouted over the earth, green and contended.

A girl with silver anklets and eyes prettied with surma came to
Chetali's valley to gather flowers. The Chempaka tree stood alone-
efflorescent, serene. The flower gatherer reached out and held down a soft
twig to pluck the flowers. As the twig broke the Chempaka said,
My little sister you have forgotten me !


Suggested read : O.V.Vijayan ,"Legends of Khasak"

Suggested rythm: Karmane balawanta maaye.,Saveri,chaypu - K J Yesudas - Thyagaraja.