Can anyone really be free?

Black Widow (2021)

Everybody talks about wanting to be free, free from any encumbrances, free to say and do as he pleases, free as a bird to move around. The caged dog looks at his stray counterpart on the other side of the fence with contempt for the freedom that he enjoys. On the other hand, the stray longs for the time when he does not have to scratch his head looking for his next meal.

We think we are free by living with our loved ones or within communities that we find commonalities. Sad to say that even within societies, certain norms and mores exist that one is excepted to conform to. Challenges are bound to happen with the members in the spring of their youth; the young feel restricted with educational exposure. They want to be free of any restrictive chains that bog them down.

Like it or not, it is not easy. Wilfully or not, we are tied down. A society is paved towards a particular direction by the instructions laid down by the majority. To reach greater heights, these laid laws need to be progressive in keeping with the changing times and their corresponding challenges. One cannot hope one archaic rule to apply to the end of times.

The Black Widow story is set before Avengers: Endgame, where Black Widow sacrificed herself trying to undo Thanos' snapping of fingers. It starts with Natasha Romanoff's (Black Widow) childhood in 1995 Ohio. She discovers that her parents had to flee to Cuba to escape arrest by the authorities. She soon discovers that her parents are Russian sleepers in the USA and that her family is just a front for espionage. In Cuba, Natasha's father (Red Guardian - Russia's answer to Captain America) is apprehended by Dreykov. Melina, her mother, is inducted as a chief scientist in the Red Room to research the mind. Natasha and her sister, Yelena, are enrolled on the Black Widow programme to churn out efficient lean, mean mind-controlled female assassins.

Along the course, Natasha escapes, join SHIELD and becomes a fugitive. When apprehending a rogue Black Widow, Yelena is sprayed with Red Dust, which removes her from the clutches of the Red Room mind control.

The rest of the story involves Yelena joining forces with Natasha to break their father from prison, influence their mother to reveal the location of the Red Room and destroy Dreykov to free all the Black Widows.

The word here is free. In the post-credit scene, we are told that Natasha had died, killed by Hawkeye. So, Yelena falls into the trap of Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine (Val) to avenge her sister's death. So much for being free. It looks like Yelena, like a Black Widow who was under the control of Dreykov before now, maybe under the thumb of possibly HYDRA.

Interestingly, HYDRA believes that humanity cannot be trusted with freedom. When freedom is taken away, they resist. Wars have taught them that humans become most resourceful, efficient and laborious under pressure. Hence, humanity has to surrender its freedom willingly. Sometimes it needs to be done without their realisation.

(P.S. This is a through and through a feminist movie. Almost every assassin, sharpshooters, armoured henchmen (who could be women) and the main characters are female. The theme of freedom and removal of ovaries hint at such an agenda. The male characters are weak. Look at the almost drunk-like Red Guardian and Natasha's sidekick/love interest Rick Mason who yearns for her approval by bending backwards to get the things she wants.)

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A God of convenience or conviction?

The Story of God (Documentary, Seasons 1 - 2; 2016-17)
Hosted by Morgan Freeman


I do not think nobody will think differently after watching this documentary which was released by National Geographic. Everybody is too entrenched in his belief system to be swayed away just seeing the singular purpose of all religions as seen here. Perhaps, cognitive dissonance would come in the way.

I think the moderator took a very unbiased and non-condescending approach when it came to extracting knowledge from various other non-dominant world religions. Kudos.

He goes discussing many life questions that have no answers. Topics on death, the end of the world, the beginning of all, the mysterious God, the creations, the genesis of evil, divine miracle, the concept of God's chosen representatives, the notion of heaven and hell as well as proof of God comprise the nine episodes in two seasons.

The fear of death must have given the fear of death in humankind. Even with the available advances around us, our knowledge on this subject stays limited. We are still trying to understand death through many hopscotching explanations. The Egyptians had elaborate rituals for the Kings to spend their afterlives. Others, like the Hindus and their off-shoots talk about re-birth cycles and their purpose of life to attain Moksha to escape the pain of reincarnation. Science talks about consciousness that makes us aware of our surrounding and how everything stops at the time of cessation of brain stem activity. Interviews with survivors of near-death experiences relate their encounters with the realm of the other side. The nagging question remains how much these thoughts were brain hypoxia-induced or is malleable by individual's understanding of the concept of God.

Science has probably paved an avenue for Man, or least his thoughts to stay immortal. His writings, video presentation and more recently artificial intelligence, are used to predict his actions after analysing tonnes of data which can be obtained via his habits.

Interestingly, most religions talk about a tragic end to our civilisation. I wonder if this apocalypse is on induced by human's indiscriminate destruction of our planet or by religious bigotry started by Man to fight over whose God is the real true one. Perhaps, it is just a warning for mankind to fall in place. It is about now, not about a day of judgement. The Hindus may have a prosaic view - that the world we live in is part of the cycle, anyway. What will happen, will happen. There is nothing anyone can do anyone can do about it.

God is many things to many people. It may be an inner voice, a friend, music, energy, anything beautiful or awe-inspiring. The Sun, with its immense strength and its role of the nidus of civilisation, has been venerated as God. Many mammoth structures and monoliths have been erected to gauge its movement to aid in many of Man's annual activities.

The great driver of any civilisation is religion. Religion forms a mesh upon which purpose of life is wound around. Law and order enforced by an invisible force is more natural. As the earlier people centred their lives around agriculture, natural forces that ensured handsome produce were held in high esteem.

Are we inherently good or evil? Is evil an external force that is hellbent on wrecking the goods that we do? The ancient Egyptians believed that evil arose from the heart. The Hindus, however, do not differentiate between good and evil. Both are complementary and are of a continuum and forms a guide to good. Some spend their entire lives trying to purge the evil in their pursuit to steer their life paths on the right track.

The believers insist that divine miracles do occur. Stories of miraculous recoveries from seemingly certain fatal conditions are rife. Perhaps healing starts in our minds, and a positive attitude is vital. With so many chances in occurrence in life, our mere existence is a miracle by itself. Birds are flown, fishes are flown, energy is harnessed, the wind is ridden, anything possible.

It seems that mankind, quite often than not, goes off-track. This is when a Chosen Person manifests on Earth to help people to steer towards the right direction or to show an entirely new one. Maybe to remind us that Mother Earth is the source; not a resource.

Is heaven or hell a human construct, just to warn us of a possible life that appears to us if our home is not guarded well?

As mentioned earlier, no one is going to change his convictions to one that is inclusive or receptive to others' view of the Divine. Hopefully, somewhere hidden in the crypt of mind, stays the idea that professors of all religion are indeed the same boat. We are in the vessel of ignoramus trying to make a sense out of the world around and add on a feather or two, wisdom as we brave through the hailstorm and gales of life. Perhaps everybody's truth is the truth.

 

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Freedom and liberation?

traveldigg.com

Everybody yearns to be free. They want to be liberated. They dream of eudaimonia. Sadly, their search for bliss is anything but fulfilling.

When we are young, we long for the time when we are adults and do not have to play to the whims and fancies of our parents or to bow to societal pressures. We thought we had to conform, as a payback measure to our parents to all the food, accommodation and care rendered in our teething years.

Then we get our keys at 21, and we thought that is it - our path to unleashing the caged animal within us. With education came conformity and decorum. With a life partner came mutual respect, reciprocity, tolerance, empathy till death do us apart. With the expansion of the family tree, came commitments, responsibility and leadership by example.

The elusive freedom and liberation just slither us by. We tell us that is just the circle of life. We still bear hope of release from the shackles in the horizon, and we straddle along.

Cornered at a wall, we ask questions, when will rescue come? At senescence, perhaps? We seek solace with people who possess wisdom, supposedly. They raise more queries with their elusive double-tongued talk. Maybe, they themselves are equally in the dark. They escape embarrassment via their non-committal double-headed didelphian speech.

We tell ourselves to suck it up, for the uncertainties were sins of past doing and that we still had time to rectify the next birth. We labour through. More trials and tribulation are hurled at us. We accept graciously. It is an appraisal to probe our conviction and faith. We falter, and our partner does. We take it in our stride. Oh freedom, oh liberty, where art thou?

Will they come when we are free from our worldly duties? Or is it when we separate from our earthly bodies? Perhaps only when we are free from the cruel cycle of rebirth?

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Toe the line?

I have the urge to laze around all day on a Sunday because I know that my services are not needed. I convince myself that I should reward myself by patting myself at the back and tucking myself to sleep. After all, I have been on my feet all week long. Even God who created the Universe rested on the Sabbath.

Fine. I pamper myself on my rest day. My regular activities and clockwork-like demands of duties kind of puts my biorhythms in place. That is, I know I will need to do this and that with the satisfaction that whatever I am doing serves a certain purpose in continuity of life; of my life, my progeny, my lineage, perhaps the next generation and wishfully mankind on the whole.

I shudder to think what will happen when I am given the standing orders or 'privilege' to stop doing all these. No more deadlines to meet and no more compulsions to present myself in person to perform my one thing I am given the pleasure of! What happens next? Am I going to slide down the path of slackers, surely ending to the pleasures of inactivity, procrastination, of sleep and decadence? It will surely take a mighty load of willpower and inner prodding to maintain this level of activity, alertness and suppleness of the joints, age minding!

That is the same rationale in laying down rules and regulations for feeble minded humans to follow. Let loose, the herd-like minded human species would be heading life like headless chickens, crashing into things aimlessly indulging into purposeless activities, going in circles satisfying only their primitive biological needs of gluttony, sleep, sex and procreation and sensual gratifications. 

Just to give a push to a particular direction to evolution of our species, the selected 1% of the upper crust of the society must have laid out the framework of dos and do nots for future generations to follow whilst putting the fear of eternal condemnation into it.

Sure, the restless would question the merits and authenticity of such claims and hence would cry for tangible proof. Devoid of such hard proof, they too, at times of desperation and the tide is high, would bow to submission just like Blaise Pascal (Mathematician, 1623-1662) prophesied that from a mathematical probability standpoint, it makes more sense to be a believer than not. As eternity is a mighty long time. The question is what do we call the Higher Force?

It ain't easy!

They say the earth is everyone to share. That we are just temporary residents here, holding fort for the next generation who would preserve it for their descendants.

That we own nothing, do not owe anybody anything, come with nothing and go with the same suit we came with, except with memories, good or bad, a legacy or a nightmare, hailed or cursed in our graves.

That they say that richness handed to us by Mother Nature is for all her children. That there is no country, no borders, we are all one and no religion too!

So when our brethren come a knocking, we should share our daily bread with them. The deep basket of charity would never stay empty.

But then, I realise that life is never so easy. Why do we invest so much in security system to protect our hard earned possessions. Should we not just practise open-door policy in the true sense? Why bother with immigration and border control.The trouble is we have taken pains to improve living standards after going through the mills which we have to maintain. The purpose of our existence is to go one step above the generation before us. Just too bad that some people with their choice of leaders decide to keep them in the backwaters. We are not giving up that easy.

We do not mind if they conform to our pace and our perspective of doing things. What if they come in and take over our system and impose their ideology here. They should come on our terms and leave us do the things we set to do. They came here because they wanted to be part of our success story...

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What is it that you really want?

After the demise of Singapore's founding father, LKY, the question of personal liberty and freedom versus the need for Big Bro to oversee things for the nation's greater good made its rounds. Proponents of human rights and individual freedom would argue that the Government has no business barging into personal lives and tapping into our telephone calls. After gruelling all the wrong decisions in the past and paying dearly, the West could no longer trust their governments. Instead, they would let their elected leaders mess up all people's (Third World) future than their own. The leaders are elected servants, and they are there to serve.

On the other end, paternalistic leaders feel that human beings are just brainless blind invertebrates with a herd mentality. They just follow their peers without much thinking or analysing! This was proposed by Sayyid Kutb, the Egyptian school inspector who earned a scholarship to the USA. In his daily dealings, he discovered that people are only obsessed with materialism, violence, and sexual pleasures. They are clueless about what they actually want in their lives, and they need strong leadership to pave and lead the way. His ideology became the spine of many ultra-nationalistic and religious bigots.

LKY has an impressive set of laurels to prove that his formula of regimentalised dictatorship had been pivotal in transforming a backwater village into a first-class metropolitan city. His foes would say that the only difference between Kim Jong Il and LKY is the prosperity of its citizen. But is not that the end of all, being prosperous and affluent? Or is something more than being happy, belly full and money jingling in your pants and knowing your old age is taken care of?

Can freewill ever be free?

Now how often have you heard, "Stop controlling me, let me be free!" "I just want to be me. Me with my own desires." It is actually nothing new. This kind of mantra seems to have been around since the turn of the 20th century for the generation next. Everybody wants to be left alone to do things at their own freewill.

Just like an indoor pet who rushes through the front door whenever it is ajar, human beings (whether they like it or not, they are still animals) always crave for something that they do not have. Without savouring what they already possess, they yearn for the unattainable or the utopia that only exists in their imagination.

Can people really be free? Is freewill really free? Can people ever be free to be and do anything as and when they feel free? Are our thoughts really free?

What dictates our will? Is it not a sum of all the indoctrination given to us via our parents through their upbringing, the teachings that they learnt from their elders who eventually learnt it as the word of the Divine. Our actions, intentions and willpower is determined by the composite of these conditionings. So, from the word go, there is no freewill. What we think is already moulded our years of learning via example. When we make a decision especially in a public domain in view of others to be judged, we would always decide to take the path of the majority or least the path that we know would be supported by a sizeable others.

Even when we are alone, when the decision is not viewed by other to judge, the fear of God and morality dictates what we do. If we were left really free with no responsibilities or no remorse on our actions but only to satisfy our animalistic instincts, our course of actions would only be geared to gratify our real primordial needs, that is cardinal, food and gluttony, sleep and satiety. That is the end point. This human trait, unfortunately manifests under extreme duress or during a mob.

Press freedom versus privacy!

Shubun (Scandal, Japanese; 1950)
Director: Akira Kurosawa

The theme of this movie is still relevant today. The talk of the need for the public to know everything versus the space for citizens and people in authority to safeguard their secrecy is an ongoing debate. Where the line should be drawn on the Truth is anybody's guess. With the recent leakage of supposedly private intimate poses of celebrities to the media is proof of this ongoing debate on this debacle. The boundary of what is indeed trash and what is news is progressively blurred as the public gets all excited with trivial unimportant happenings or smut that happens to people in the limelight or are the people in the press simply sensationalizing these trivial non events?
Again, Kurosawa had chosen a modern looking post war Japan with a Western outlook. People are dressed in Western clothes, jackets, pants and dresses and the ladies were donning cropped modern hairstyles. The recreational activities mirror their Western counterpart. Instead of horses at the races, in this movie, cyclists were the racers!
The legal system is also Western in outlook. With modernisation come the scourge of modern living, journalists.
Even back in the 50s, pressmen had become a nuisance to modern living especially amongst the rich and famous. This, is the basis of this movie.
After seeing Toshirō Mifune (a Kurosawa regular) in mostly stern and serious roles, here he is seen as a happy smiling free wheeling artist, Ichiro Aoye, motorcycling by the countryside painting natural landscapes. During one of these trips, he gives a ride to a famous singer, Miyaso Saijo, unknown to him at that time, after she misses her bus and was heading to the same inn as himself.  Miyaso, a shy artiste, was moving around incognito but was identified by a tabloid reporter. As she was sipping tea in Aoye's room dressed casually in kimono, they were secretly photographed. And the tabloid has a field day promoting a non-existent secret love affair of the singing star. Suddenly, the general public recognises both of them everywhere. They are both everybody's darlings. The paper is also happy, laughing all the way to the bank with their sudden increase in circulation.
Aoye is not amused, however. He intends to sue the tabloid for invasion of privacy. Ms Saijo later joins in.

Comes in attorney, Hiruta, a failed lawyer who had lost the rat race in the dog-eat-dog world of lawyers offering his services to represent Aoye. The role of Hiruta is played by Takashi Shimura, another regular feature of Kurosawa's movies. Unlike his previous outings where he is docile and reserved, Shimura is a fast talking lawyer, at least initially. He has a heavy sorrow of a burden that he carries on his back. He has a very sick TB infected daughter at home and an unquenchable addiction for the races. He feels inadequate both as a father and a lawyer.
The publishers, fearing that they may lose money at court, entice Hiruta by sponsoring him at the races and bribing him.
As the case progresses, Hiruto's throwing of his case become apparent to everyone. His clients, however, still gives him a chance as they get closer to Hiruto's charming but ill daughter. This further depresses Hiruto who is caught in a bind - he is cheating his clients blind even though they go all out to cheer and fete his terminally ill child!
Along the course of the trial where the tabloid's defence attorney, a prominent law figure from the university, has a field day, Hiruto's daughter succumbed to her illness.
At the crucial moment, during submission, Hiruto makes clear to the court of the defence's treacherous attempts at bribing him and turns the case around in his clients' favour.
A nice feel good movie which tries very hard to show the goodness in every individual. Just like the 1946 Christmas movie 'It's a wonderful life' the formula of using the songs 'Silent Night' and 'Auld Lang Syne' seem to work wonders to highlight this point.
In embracing the cultures of their captors, even the Japanese have these songs sang in their own lingo. They don't go around complaining that they have been wronged by a world conspiracy to outsmart their success and bring down their culture.In the 70s many rock bands like 'Cheap Trick' were pleasantly surprised when they performed live in Budokan. Their fans in this non-English speaking land could sing every verse of their songs word to word!

Perfect sense

Growing up in RRF, Amma tried all the ways that she knew that could impart the values that could mold her son into a knowledgeable individual. One of the ways that she carried off her duty was reading aloud the proverbs and quotations printed on the daily leaf of a Tamil calendar. This calendar had daily chart of good and bad astronomical times together with daily saying of the day. The leaf of the calendar is torn daily and viola, another gem comes out.
Mother read me about JFK's 'Ask what your country has done for you...' long before I knew about American foreign policy, about 'turning the other cheek' from Gandhi and Jesus, and Socrates' call to think critically and question intelligently. I would then in turn rebut with some wise crack ridiculing the sayings but must helped in thinking outside the box.
In the growing and trying age of teenage, quotations were a big deal. Teachers' autograph on annual school magazine were treated as gems. LHS' 'plough hard while sluggards sleep' and 'cows may come and cows may go but this bull stays here forever' were inscribed permanently at my reading corner!
The Gen-Y may have missed all these while they were growing up.  Like they say, a poor man and unhappy man are philosophical men. Our parents, from the doldrums, have many gems that they have learnt in the course of trailing the pebble-stoned path of life.
Anas, a fellow Free, had complied some of life lessons from his parents that make perfect sense today, even at the time of 4G and Google!

Feel free to be free...

Another pastime that I occasionally indulge in is T-shirt watching. Some of the things written on them could be quite entertaining. Of course, some of them could be construed as sexual harassment if uttered by an individual. As it only written and not uttered, nobody gives a second look. Actually it is meant to be looked again and again! T-shirts with messages like 'Wish these were brains', 'Hammer says "You can't touch these"' would fit this bill. My favorite must be 'My girlfriend went to Vegas and all she got me is this lousy T-shirt'. Not to forget the abbreviations of the word 'Fornication Under Consent of the King' purposefully spelt as the abbreviations of 'French Connection United Kingdom' to  give a false sense of grandiosity to its wearer. Grandiose feeling by its wearer who is awed by his the fact that he is not wearing a garment but a statement. A statement that he dares to be different and fight against the self imposed worldly prejudices against him!
Just the other day, I saw this man who from his appearance as a vagabond with his disheveled hair, unshaven 1 week's stubble, more of a beard, worn out Japanese rubber slippers which had seen much better days, walking aimlessly with his gaze far into the horizon donning an equally worn out T-shirt screaming with red clenched fist and the fiery red words 'Walk for Freedom' emblazoned on it.
My curious mind wondered....
What kind of freedom is he looking for? Is he not free to wonder where he fancied - unlike a time not so distant in the past, where signboards like 'Dogs and so and so not allowed' were placed outside reputable restaurants. Is he not free to be restricted to dress in a particular way or manner (lack of) of grooming? Is he free to speak as he pleases? Is he not free to pursue his dreams if he had any?
Even the epitome of freedom, the bird, is not totally free. He is not free from his daily obligations to look for food. He is definitely not free from predators and pranking kids.
Maybe our homosapien friend wants to be free from the curse of the cycle of karma!
For all you know, the T-shirt could be a discard from a formerly radical thinking individual who had turned his back and to the dark side of capitalism because it is more self gratifying...