fists in my pocket
a deep breath
i throw up my head
its another day

so much to remember to do
how annoying
but its such a lovely day

The Human...

very interesting lecture in class today...
the human and the non-human... how modern cinema explores the two realms and how they may not be so distinct as humanitarian discourse might have them be..

terminator, robocop, X men... there was a time when the american cinema saw the enemy as outside..the german, the russian, the muslim today...but its differnt now..the enemy is closer home..its at home..its even within you... the machine overtakes...

Agamben, uses the concept of musselmanner, to under stand the position of a life that if not worthy of living... the musselmanner, was a slang for the typical figure of a concentration camp that is living but is dead... shuffles around, glazed look. A captive of a camp essentially has no identity. we underestimate how things like having a name, a national identity, a gender identity gives a sense of self... imagine a man with no sense of anything...
dispensible... non-human... non-existent...on no records anywhere...

such a life, which can be killed but not sacrificed...for you sacrifice something of value. and something that the gods will accept. Such non-human entities, if you may even call them that, become sites of excessive torture, even in modern camps like guantanamo bay...

at another level... a life that can be sacrificed, but will not be killed..that can still live on...the figure of the suicide bomber..the martyr.

the machine man, is facsinating in its extreme power. power is seductive, as much as it is destructive... one way we can understand torture perhaps... the machine man is pure... untarnished by any humanity... that is why it fascinates us...

similar reductions to the non-human happen in medical experiments, the body drasticlly reduced to its parts... thoroughly objectified... and an entire vocabulary gets built around it... of abuse...

imagine this conception magnified on an entire nation...afghanistan... the red spots on your screen that have to be bombed...targets of the video game... some of the NATO guys in the places who attacked Serbia in the name of democracy, had past records of genocide...

hmm... messy business...

It is said that a common belief in traditional (though perhaps not ancient) India was that travelling beyond the seas that surround the subcontinent would make a man impure... robbed of his caste, his religion. It was also said that travelling to the char dhams would bring salvation from the cycle of births and deaths, will wash our sins. Today an Indian eyes new York accross 2 seas (why is it seven seas by the way?), and may not have visted his neighbourhood shrine.

The average countryside man in europe or Russia prior to the Rennaissance would have scoffed at a desire to go beyond his town. When a passionate marxist youth tells a bunch of jew men in Fiddler on the Roof that the 'world out there is changing', they said what does it have to do with us. And moreover were they not safe in their haven odf a jew community in roman catholic Russia? Did not the Good Book say that we are one kind of people, the chosen people and they another?

When the colonial era arose on the world did Europe set out the discover the world! To conqure, civilise, explore, educate, proselytise or in some cases to free their own souls. The churning of time and ideolgies brought the formation of America, the land where all our highest ideals were to be realised and lived. Such an ideal land that there is nothing beyond to be seen. Its borders mark the end of the modern, liberal, civilised world, bracketing it off from the rest of the vast mass of barbarians, underdeveloped, pitiable and recently terrorist elements. An average american feels no need to know where India lies on the map, while even small town indians could correct you that Washington lies on the east coast, and california on the other.

And the buddhist monk who travels all over Asia, or the muslim historian of yesteryear.

Aggassi who breakfasts in USA and travels to london from Lunch.

Our ideas of travel have much to do with our beliefs. Not all nations at all times have had a culture of travelling beyond their borders. It is a mindset. When Brit upon brit would travel to Africa and asia and write books about how 'they live out there' you are bound to have an influx, and not so before.
Even our books... lord of the rings, eragon, a travl to another universe, science fiction... a move beyond current paradigms...

These trends speak much of the ways in which we view the world and live our lives... Travl sparks off conquest and spiritual quest,