Can you handle the Truth?

There he was standing undecided what to buy. He knew exactly what he wanted to buy. He knew how everything worked, right down to the low down nitty-gritty details. He knows where the nuts and the bolts should fit in. He knew what is the latest gizmo in town and what is the newest 'kit in the block'. And he knew how much each item costs. In short, he knew the good, the bad, the ugly and anything in between. But yet, he cannot decide on his latest gadget that he wants to lay his hands on.

The Smoking Man of X Files: Are you sure you

want to know the whole truth? I do not think you 

can handle the Truth! 

Item A is superior in one aspect which is less efficient than item B but is more pricey as compared to item C which in turn is more durable than item D and the list goes on. At the end of the day, he is at his wit's end on what to do next. The thought of losing his hard earned money to a sub-standard merchandise is unacceptable in his book. So he waits. The trouble is that this is not the first time he is caught in this type of conundrum. Again and again he feels fleeced as he always knows that there is something better out there!
His neighbour, on the other hand, never had life so good. With his newly gained windfall, life cannot be better. He sees something, he likes it and he buys it. Simple.
I guess that why they say ignorance is bliss. Things are easy when you are ignorant like what the Beatles said "Living is easy with eyes closed"! (Strawberry Fields).
Surprise, surprise. Even in the 3rd century BCE, the fear of information overload was suggested by Seneca the Elder who lived during the reign of Augustus, Aurelius and Caligula. His son, Seneca, a philosopher, served Nero but was forced to commit suicide when he was accused of conspiring to poison the Emperor!
This fear was highlighted again when Gutenberg's printing press took the world by storm. It was thought that man's ability to absorb all those vast information and to be able to make quality decisions was suspect.
Words like 'information glut', 'infobesity', 'infoxication',  'data smog' were thrown in as time went on and ICT opened the floodgates of information.
A learned man can be a confused one. The thin line separates the ingenious and the insane. Many things were left unanswered to be discovered by ourselves and for us to draw our own conclusions. Perhaps, the level of ignorance amongst us is the only quality that help us to be level headed and be level on the ground we stand on. Ignorance is the driving force that makes the human race want to explore and makes us reflect upon ourselves and our fellow earthlings.

FG says that deciding to buy something is like ordering in a Chinese restaurant. After finalising on your order, you would realise that the Joneses at the next table have a nicer more palatable-looking spread and you wish you had ordered the same. The same can be said about life partners unless it is decided at the end of a shot gun! It all comes in a package, the good, the bad and is all at how you look at it.

Wartime sensitivities?

Sanshiro Sugata ( (姿三四郎, aka Judo Saga; 1943)
Director: Akira Kurosawa

Japan was at the pinnacle of spreading the influence of The Land of the Rising Sun over its Eastern and South East Asian minions. Back home it was business as usual, art and culture wise. Movies were still made and Kurosawa made his directorial debut through this movie. To keep to the wartime sensitivities of the nation, the censors slashed 1845 feet (17 minutes) of the film footage prior to screening without the consent of the producers.
This debut effort shows unique characteristic camera work of Kurosawa.
The story is simple. A rogue but talented street fighter, Sanshiro Sugata, tries to learn martial arts from a master who refuses. First, he has to learn humility and discipline.
He transforms into a conscientious and respected Judo fighter.
A shady character appears to challenge him to a square fight but his master denies that. The fight eventually happens at the end. Before that he has fight other great jujitsu proponents. In the process Sugata falls in love with a demure girl whose father coincidentally happens to his challenger. His dilemma is that the duel is to last to to death and the girl seem to be endlessly in deep prayers invoking the Gods to the safety of her father, the great respected jujitsu exponent!
The fight ends amicably with Sugata winning and gaining the respect of the elder and his girl.
The final showdown shows the reluctant Sugato winning the encounter with the stranger and maturing into fine man.
This film does not stand out together with Kurosawa's other great efforts. Anyway, I am a lover of peace, not a fighter.
Wartime sensitivities? What is that? I thought man lose all his senses, sensibilities and sensitivities before he finally plunges into the bottomless quick sand of war!

The best documentary ever?

Man with a Movie Camera ( Человек с киноаппаратом, Silent; 1929)
Director: Dziga Vertov

In a BBC poll recently, this documentary from the silent film era got the nod as the best documentary film ever made. It is surprising that even with the modern investigative journalistic techniques and presentations, this Russian entry won hands down. And the best part is that there is no story, no plot, no actors and no inter-titling (the message that comes in between scenes to convey the unspoken words).

What the director is showing are his newly thought movie making techniques which were considered avant-garde at his time. The use of slow motion, panning, super-imposing, zooming and others are highlighted. He also tries to promote his 'state of the art' mobile camera on a tripod. His wife did an excellent job on editing.

The subjects were ordinary subjects from three Russian towns doing their daily chores like dancing, sleeping, cleaning, washing, commuting from the trams and even engaged in childbirth!
The director goes on exploring new daredevil and innovative cinematographic techniques like filming an on-coming train, filming from the undercarriage of a tram and burying a running camera in the sand as the train went over it.


Sometimes, he becomes cheeky and tries to equate our daily constitutional duties to our daily chores, e.g. washing the face is compared to scrubbing clothes! The director belonged to a group of filmmakers who were disillusioned with movies with fictional stories whom he feels is 'the opium for the masses'. As expected from the message above, he and his team became part of the team who became the mouthpiece of the Soviet regime to spread their ideology.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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!

What gives? What it takes?

A dejected kilt-wearing Scotsman walking back to day time
job and back to reality....

Since King James I/VI united Scotland and England under the same umbrella after his mother was abdicated, imprisoned and eventually beheaded for treason, Scots had always been feeling that they have been short changed. The impression that I got when I was there is that the Scots were just waiting to break free from the union.
The recent referendum outcome obviously proved me wrong.
Come Monday, it is back life and back to reality. The nay sayers and the yay sayers have to bury the hatchet, hold hands, walk into the sun set and be embroiled in the daily challenges of life.
That is life. No matter what differences we have harbour against each other and the outcomes that may despair us, we have to carry on with life with a straight face.
To all the people who think that we are being hypocrite by not standing our ground and rejecting all kinds of actions that contradicts our belief, I say get real. At the end of the day, the equilibrium and sanctity of the institution has to be preserved. This can also be said of a family. A family member may have certain strong beliefs on certain subjects. By comprising and adjusting his decisions to accommodate the desires of other members, it is by no means indicative of a weak leadership or sucking up to populist sentiments. Life is a game of give and take. It is a game of tug-of-war where the final outcome is determined by what gives and what it takes!

Milliennial offspring of Helicopters

http://time.com/3154186/millennials-selfish-entitled-helicopter-parenting/

Millennials Are Selfish and Entitled, and Helicopter Parents Are to Blame

Nick Gillespie @nickgillespie Aug. 21, 2014

There are more overprotective moms and dads at a time when children are actually safer than ever

Peter Lourenco—Flickr RF/Getty Images

It’s natural to resent younger Americans — they’re younger!— but we’re on the verge of a new
generation gap that may make the nasty old fights between baby boomers and their
“Greatest Generation” parents look like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Seventy-one percent of American adults think of 18-to-29-year-olds — millennials, basically — as “selfish,” and 65% of us think of them as “entitled.” That’s according to the latest Reason-Rupe Poll, a quarterly survey of 1,000 representative adult Americans.

If millennials are self-absorbed little monsters who expect the world to come to them and for their parents to clean up their rooms well into their 20s, we’ve got no one to blame but
ourselves — especially the moms and dads among us.

Indeed, the same poll documents the ridiculous level of kid-coddling that has now become the new normal. More than two-thirds of us think there ought to be a law that kids as old as 9 should be supervised while playing at a public park, which helps explain (though not justify) the arrest of a South Carolina mother who let her phone-enabled daughter play in a busy park while she worked at a nearby McDonald’s. We think on average that kids should be 10 years old before they “are allowed to play in the front yard unsupervised.” Unless you live on a traffic island or a war zone, that’s just nuts.

It gets worse: We think that our precious bundles of joy should be 12 before they can wait alone in a car for five minutes on a cool day or walk to school without an adult, and that they should be 13 before they can be trusted to stay home alone. You’d think that kids raised on Baby Einstein DVDs should be a little more advanced than that.

Curiously, this sort of ridiculous hyperprotectiveness is playing out against a backdrop in which children are safer than ever. Students reporting bullying is one-third of what it was 20 years ago, and according to a study in JAMA Pediatrics, the past decade has seen massive declines in exposure to violence for kids. Out of 50 trends studied, summarize the authors, “there were 27 significant declines and no significant increases between 2003 and 2011. Declines were particularly large for assault victimization, bullying, and sexual victimization. There were also significant declines in the perpetration of violence and property crime.”

There are surely many causes for the mainstreaming of helicopter parenting. Kids cost a hell of a lot to raise. The U.S. Department of Agriculture figures a child born in 2013 will set back middle-income parents about $245,000 up to age 17 (and that’s before college bills kick in).

We’re having fewer children, so we’re putting fewer eggs in a smaller basket, so to speak. According to the Reason-Rupe poll, only 27% of adults thought the media were overestimating threats to the day-to-day safety of children, suggesting that 73% of us are suckers for sensationalistic news coverage that distorts reality (62% of us erroneously think that today’s youth face greater dangers than previous generations). More kids are in institutional settings — whether preschool or school itself — at earlier ages, so maybe parents just assume someone will always be on call.

But whatever the reasons for our insistence that we childproof the world around us, this way madness lies. From King Lear to Mildred Pierce, classic literature (and basic common sense) suggests that coddling kids is no way to raise thriving, much less grateful, offspring. Indeed, quite the opposite. And with 58% of millennials callingthemselves “entitled” and more than 70% saying they are “selfish,” older Americans may soon be learning that lesson the hard way.

Evil by whose standards?

Victory over evil?
Burning effigy of 10 headed Ravana on Vijayadashami.

Now, what is education and what is it to be learned? Is it the ability to regurgitate in verbatim what is written by page and chapter without actually understanding what is written or recited? Or is it the ability to understand that there may be two sides of the coin and allowance must be given to an alternative perspective to what has been accepted as the truth without batting an eyelid?

I do not think that one becomes stupid or is a trouble maker by questioning what seems to be a no-brainer.

Year in year out the effigy of Ravana is burnt with so much pomp and vigour to signify the win of good over evil with the help of the Gods. Ravana is painted in hideous hues and is vilified as the epitome of everything that is evil on Earth. After fasting and praying for 9 days to signify the greatness of the matriarchal forces of Nature, devotees celebrate their victory of staying true to their endeavour by symbolically burning something that is synonymous with evil. Who is going to argue? The scriptures innumerates the numerous misdeeds done by Ravana, the Demon and his equally demonic sister. They were accused of upsetting the tranquility of Rama's exiled household.
But then... History is written by the victors...

The remnants of the untold history of the losers insist that Ravana indeed was a cultured emperor of 10 kingdoms as well the one who had mastered the knowledge of 10 holy scriptures. The 10 heads in his representation of him is the symbolism of his supposed grandiosity. He was an intelligent physician, a talented musician (veena player) and devout Shiva devotee. His subjects enjoyed peace and prosperity under his rule. Poverty was unheard of. Even peasants in his rule used golden utensils in their daily household usage! - so they say.

Even today, he is hailed as a hero, a demi-god and is worshipped in many parts of India. Temples and statues had been erected in his name in northern and southern parts of India. 

They assert that the whole bad publicity came about because of vested interest of certain superpowers over the other. Ravana is said to be the last of defiant kings who resisted the hegemony of aliens or invading forces from the North. Or was it another deathly clash between Vaishnavites and Shaivites?

Again and again history is re-written to justify the tyranny of the victors and to put them in a better light.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/ravana-is-a-hero-for-sinhala-nationalists/article1-249335.aspx

... used the Ramayana to radicalise the Tamils in southern India against Brahminical supremacy and the domination of North Indian Sanskritic culture. For him, Rama, Sita, and all the rest of them were northerners without "an iota of Tamil culture", but Ravana, the king of Lanka or southern Tamil Nadu, was a Tamil.

Periyar E.V. Ramaswami