Did you know Ramesh Sir has always wanted to be a film director?
“Power needs compassion to be partial, patriotic, rooted in self-concern. Humanity needs compassion to be universal, unconditional and equal.”
The problem with the world is this: we look at different people differently. We look at people, talk to them, even live with them but don’t seem to notice them. I wonder how many of us look at a beggar on the street and wondered where he was born, who his parents were, whether he got married, does he have children, did he have a home somewhere, all the millions of other details which if Bill Clinton writes would be a best seller or if it was about a film star would be on Page 3. Forget about wanting to know these details, how many of us even know the names of people we interact with on a daily basis, be it the security guard who you have been seeing for the past five years, the woman who washes your clothes and cleans your toilets, the gardeners, the construction workers, the canteen staff, the office assistants and all of those millions of people whose lives just don’t matter. I am sure here we all want to stand up and vehemently argue at this point that we are compassionate towards all human beings and that we vehemently espouse the often used but more often abused, the magic word- equality. Of course, I am not saying that one should have known the lives of everybody one meets in all its intimate detail or one should have had an interview with all persons one meets or might have met. But I am only asking how many of us genuinely even imagine all these people as people, with lives, with families, with histories, with stories which are probably stories just likes yours and mine? My experience has been, not many do. And I earnestly hope I am wrong.
I have had friends, very close friends, and friends who I consider as being sensitive people, who have been amazed at my capacity to have “random conversations” and who have found me talking to the guard or Babu Bhaiyya (the girl’s mess Babu Bhaiyya) and said, “you really can socialize with anyone”. And I have seen reaction pretty much across the board. I have seen my friends being rude to auto drivers and small shopkeepers, because they are “pissing off” or “incompetent” or plain “slow” just because they know they can get away with it. Even worse, they think that they have a right to do it. I have always contended that this is a class attitude in most contexts, not all.
I believe that we have dehumanized suffering. I believe we are being selective about understanding human experiences. I believe that ‘injustice’ and ‘inequality’ are simply words that take up dictionary space till we are able feel them. When you cant imagine yourself or your mother, working her ass of at 60, breathing dust and dirt till she almost collapses under her ailing lungs, (an image that I seem to witness everyday specially with the ongoing construction) then you should not imagine it happening to anyone else either. But we hardly seem to notice it. Arent they also people who need some form of social security and a right to retire at their old age? Some form of health care and such other basic needs? A friend of mine once said, “its when you stop noticing that you are fucked”. Pain is pain after all isn’t it?
http://www.medialens.org/cogitations/050725_they_just_never_meant.php This provides a critical account of the mainstream and even the so called 'liberal' media in the West and their coverage of the Iraq war. I was glad to find that what I had always considered an 'emotional' response of mine, found support with David Edwards. He apparently compiled his writings into a book called the "Guardians of Power".
The problem with the world is this: we look at different people differently. We look at people, talk to them, even live with them but don’t seem to notice them. I wonder how many of us look at a beggar on the street and wondered where he was born, who his parents were, whether he got married, does he have children, did he have a home somewhere, all the millions of other details which if Bill Clinton writes would be a best seller or if it was about a film star would be on Page 3. Forget about wanting to know these details, how many of us even know the names of people we interact with on a daily basis, be it the security guard who you have been seeing for the past five years, the woman who washes your clothes and cleans your toilets, the gardeners, the construction workers, the canteen staff, the office assistants and all of those millions of people whose lives just don’t matter. I am sure here we all want to stand up and vehemently argue at this point that we are compassionate towards all human beings and that we vehemently espouse the often used but more often abused, the magic word- equality. Of course, I am not saying that one should have known the lives of everybody one meets in all its intimate detail or one should have had an interview with all persons one meets or might have met. But I am only asking how many of us genuinely even imagine all these people as people, with lives, with families, with histories, with stories which are probably stories just likes yours and mine? My experience has been, not many do. And I earnestly hope I am wrong.
I have had friends, very close friends, and friends who I consider as being sensitive people, who have been amazed at my capacity to have “random conversations” and who have found me talking to the guard or Babu Bhaiyya (the girl’s mess Babu Bhaiyya) and said, “you really can socialize with anyone”. And I have seen reaction pretty much across the board. I have seen my friends being rude to auto drivers and small shopkeepers, because they are “pissing off” or “incompetent” or plain “slow” just because they know they can get away with it. Even worse, they think that they have a right to do it. I have always contended that this is a class attitude in most contexts, not all.
I believe that we have dehumanized suffering. I believe we are being selective about understanding human experiences. I believe that ‘injustice’ and ‘inequality’ are simply words that take up dictionary space till we are able feel them. When you cant imagine yourself or your mother, working her ass of at 60, breathing dust and dirt till she almost collapses under her ailing lungs, (an image that I seem to witness everyday specially with the ongoing construction) then you should not imagine it happening to anyone else either. But we hardly seem to notice it. Arent they also people who need some form of social security and a right to retire at their old age? Some form of health care and such other basic needs? A friend of mine once said, “its when you stop noticing that you are fucked”. Pain is pain after all isn’t it?
http://www.medialens.org/cogitations/050725_they_just_never_meant.php This provides a critical account of the mainstream and even the so called 'liberal' media in the West and their coverage of the Iraq war. I was glad to find that what I had always considered an 'emotional' response of mine, found support with David Edwards. He apparently compiled his writings into a book called the "Guardians of Power".